Answer to Kant’s Enligtenment

“An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” written by Immanuel Kant is an essay which brings light to the debate that was most common during Kant’s period: the freedom of self and thought. In his essay he discusses the freedom of thought. He explains how to reach this freedom and that a person may willingly want otherwise, by discussing the maturity of a society using the different roles of the society’s members.

Kant was encouraging a revolutionary state in the human race that would free men from the chains they lock themselves in. However, it is the most peaceful and safe guarded revolution in history. Kant’s call to free a man’s thoughts from the guardians of others, no matter what that may be, even one’s own previous thought, is the call of freedom. He even criticised his own previous understanding of enlightenment, which he, at the time, believed to be the exercise of “abstract reason”. Kant links enlightenment to many different levels and understandings: the individual’s belief verses his responsibilities, ruler obligation, and the community’s safety.

Kant outlines a unique structure for enlightenment in a society that leads to the age of enlightenment. First, he links it to the quality of maturity which he facilitates as the courage to free ones thoughts by questioning everything through the knowledge and reasoning. One will then reach the reason of believing something to be true, which includes religious beliefs, also. Te scholar should provide the means in which options of on truth is seen i.e. when scholars express their thoughts they are presenting another possible way to look at knowledge. They are widening a person vision to understand the other, and decide through their own reasoning what do they truly think.

Kant explains reason to be the most sublime state: “All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason” (Kant, 1784). He goes from there to distinguish between the public, private, monarchy, and scholarly use of reason that proves humans maturity. The public use of reason presented in the scholar in each human should always be free. To Kant each person carries the ability to become a scholar, but some individuals choose to immobilize this ability. However, the private use of reason is free and restricted at the same time: free to judge and question the knowledge, actions and truths around us; restricted when doing so without causing chaos in the society by performing one’s duties and responsibilities even if they differ with his beliefs. For example, an educator may disagree about a curriculum and argue about the validity of it, yet he or she will teach it until the system in which he works through is enlightened enough to change it.