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He pored over the pages, as if he were a philosophy student attempting to understand Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

“Critique of Pure Reason,” 1781 edition, Pages 341 to 405 of the German text, especially 384, discusses at great length the state of the soul in the life of a human being, the soul in and before the birth of that being, and the soul in and after that being’s death.

But, like The Critique of Pure Reason, it is also magnificent and to read it is to enter into a glorious dialogue with one of the great minds.

We’re enjoined to do ostensibly improving things: give up alcohol; strip down to our pants and get shouted at by British Military Fitness in the park; put the Hobnobs back on the supermarket shelves; enrol for grade 3 bassoon; join a book club reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

The exhibition draws its title from Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” a lifelong touchstone for Piper, and marks the first time in MoMA’s history that the work of any living artist has earned the entirety of its sprawling sixth-floor special-exhibitions gallery.