Immanuel Kant On Enlightenment

HYPERLINK "http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/kant.htm" Immanuel Kant answers the question in the first sentence of the essay: “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.” He argues that the immaturity is self-inflicted not from a lack of understanding, but from the lack of courage to use one’s reason, intellect, and wisdom without the guidance of another. He exclaims that the motto of enlightenment is “Sapere aude”! – Dare to be wise! The German word Unmündigkeit means not having attained age of majority or legal adulthood. "Unmündig" also means "dependent" or "unfree", and another translation is "tutelage" or "nonage" (the condition of "not [being] of age"). Kant, whose moral philosophy is centred around the concept of autonomy, here distinguishes between a person who is intellectually autonomous and one who keeps him/herself in an intellectually heteronomous, i.e. dependent and immature status. Kant understands the majority of people to be content to follow the guiding institutions of society, such as the Church and the Monarchy, and unable to throw off the yoke of their immaturity due to a lack of resolution to be autonomous. It is difficult for individuals to work their way out of this immature, cowardly life because we are so
Every time we acquire external data from that absolute reality, our perception of it assumes a greater degree of accuracy. And what would be the optimal way of acquiring such data with only minimal if any contact with other persons' perceptions (which are, like ours, inaccurate, only in different ways, since each human being possesses a unique arsenal of