Answer to Kant’s Enligtenment

Although Kant was calling for the freedom of thought and eliminating the power of the guardians imposed on people’s thought, he himself uses several expressions that impose some guardians of the thought. He is presenting his understanding of enlightenment and claiming it to be the educated way to enlighten the society. He implies the idea of guarding the people towards the freedom of thought, but how or who will free them from his thoughts? Yet, he outlines the most mature and steady manner for bringing enlightenment to a society from within. By transforming a society into a free community that has the ability to think and reason, that will insure enlightenment no matter which system they are placed in; it is building a soul that is truly enlighten, not just in an enlightened phase, to move from an age of enlightenment to an enlighten age. Kant emphasises that force and revolution may free the people in a physical manner but can never free the thought or “reform a manner of thinking,” like he is seeking to do. His enlightenment revolutions threatens no free person, the only threat is to the week, cowardice, lazy, irresponsible soul that may be present in any human. Yet the question lays to which extended should an educator for fill his responsibilities in presenting the given knowledge, rather than voicing his opinion and acting according to that?

References:

Kant, I, ( 1784). “An Answer to the Question ‘What is Enlightenment?’ in Schmidt, J.( 1989) What Is Enlightenment? Journal of the History of Ideas 50, no. 2 pg. 64