Essay on Tartuffe and the Enlightenment
“We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.”
-- Iris Murdoch
We are immature people. Immanuel Kant defines immaturity as the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another (Kant, 1). This is exactly what we do day in and day out. Day in and day out we live our lives like passive little robots that follow the rules and follow a routine. When questions or situations come up that we do not feel comfortable with we are quick to avoid them as we look at the ground and walk away. We want others to tell us what to do because it means we don’t have to think about it. Not thinking makes life easy and an easy life means comfort. This means not asking questions, accepting whatever you are told, and ultimately living in the dark while someone else guides you. Once again, you are immature. The idea of someone else controlling your life is sickening and hard to swallow, but for some reason millions of people continue to let someone else control them.
The question that must now be asked is why people would want to live in mental slavery. This is the question provides an answer that Enlightenment thinkers have waged a war against. People want to live lives of comfort and any struggle will cause them to sink back into their submissive state. However, the question that really needs to be asked is not why people want to live in mental slavery, but rather why people choose to stay immature? Everyone understands the concepts of the Enlightenment and the social norms of the time, but almost no one questions the actual process of Enlightenment and overcoming our innate biological tendency to stick with the familiar and comfortable rather than the strange and difficult. In this regard, the ultimate question is again, “Why do we remain immature and what can be done about it?”
To introduce the topic, I am drawing from the German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and his essay titled “The Challenge of Every
-- Iris Murdoch
We are immature people. Immanuel Kant defines immaturity as the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another (Kant, 1). This is exactly what we do day in and day out. Day in and day out we live our lives like passive little robots that follow the rules and follow a routine. When questions or situations come up that we do not feel comfortable with we are quick to avoid them as we look at the ground and walk away. We want others to tell us what to do because it means we don’t have to think about it. Not thinking makes life easy and an easy life means comfort. This means not asking questions, accepting whatever you are told, and ultimately living in the dark while someone else guides you. Once again, you are immature. The idea of someone else controlling your life is sickening and hard to swallow, but for some reason millions of people continue to let someone else control them.
The question that must now be asked is why people would want to live in mental slavery. This is the question provides an answer that Enlightenment thinkers have waged a war against. People want to live lives of comfort and any struggle will cause them to sink back into their submissive state. However, the question that really needs to be asked is not why people want to live in mental slavery, but rather why people choose to stay immature? Everyone understands the concepts of the Enlightenment and the social norms of the time, but almost no one questions the actual process of Enlightenment and overcoming our innate biological tendency to stick with the familiar and comfortable rather than the strange and difficult. In this regard, the ultimate question is again, “Why do we remain immature and what can be done about it?”
To introduce the topic, I am drawing from the German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and his essay titled “The Challenge of Every
Cited: "." BrainyQuote.com. Xplore Inc, 2013. 16 April. 2013. https://www.google.com/ Chalk, Frank Robert, and Kurt Jonassohn. The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies. New Haven: Yale UP, 1990. Print. Kant, Immanuel, and Mary J. Gregor. Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Print. Kaufmann, Walter Arnold. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre. New York: Meridian, 1956. Print. Molière. Tartuffe. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2000. Print.