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Immanuel Kant's Impact On Enlightenment

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Personally, I believe that Immanuel Kant had the greatest impact on the enlightenment. His writings opened the minds of individuals allowing them to realize that they can think for themselves. Kant writes about something he calls the “guardians”and self-incurred tutelage, Private and public use of reason, and civil freedom.

In Immanuel Kant’s essay “What is Enlightenment” he writes about “self-incurred tutelage”. Self-incurred tutelage is essentially the inability to make decisions for one’s self. He goes on to say “Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage.” (Kant 1784, Modern History Sourcebook) what this means is that enlightenment allows people to think for themselves, and not let other people make decisions for them. Kant believed that the main reason man relied on others to make decisions for them was due to the fact that man is lazy and cowardly. With man at this disadvantage, it allows others to “step in” and take charge and spew lies for their own gain. Kant writes “It is so easy not to be of age. If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. …show more content…

The point that he’s trying to make is that everyone should have the right to think for themselves and have their intellect grow, without being confined. In time the people will be able to confidently think for themselves, manage their freedom, and manage the aspects of the government. Kant writes “A greater degree of civil freedom appears advantageous to the freedom of mind of the people, and yet it places inescapable limitations upon it. A lower degree of civil freedom, on the contrary, provides the mind with room for each man to extend himself to his full capacity.” (Kant 1784, Modern History Sourcebook) He talks about how bountiful it is to allow the mind to grow, allowing one’s self to think

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While influenced by others the human race is individually minded, and has been able to obtain much knowledge at a substantial rate because of enlightenment. Throughout history man was able to shape the face of the earth by controlling others, but until the age of enlightenment man was not fully aware of the accomplishments he could achieve. In this period the ideals of society having a voice, changed history through bringing light to the genius and talent of not one but the vast majority of the world. To challenge one’s self-worth enlightenment must be achieved through leaving a cowardly stage to become mature. Presently, the enlightenment ideals have given many people around the globe a chance at a free life through natural rights and tolerance,

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He suggests that a great society is an enlightened one – one in which people have achieved “emergence from … self-incurred immaturity” (Kant, [1784] 2013, p. 25). He argues that one should avoid being controlled by institutions and rulers and that a great society requires perhaps not a great leader, but a sense of civil and intellectual freedom among the people (Kant, [1784] 2013). This freedom, however, is very difficult to achieve – hence why Kant states that we live in not an enlightened age, but one of enlightenment – as no matter how free a society is, and how many people think for themselves, “guardians” will always emerge (Kant, [1784] 2013). These guardians will blind the public – and possibly even themselves – from the truth (Kant, [1784] 2013), and will always find a way to somehow “serve as a leash to control the great unthinking mass” (Kant, [1784] 2013, p. 25) unless true enlightenment is achieved through a revolution (Kant, [1784] 2013). Kant suggests that if this is achieved, and all people think independently, a society will govern itself, create its own laws – or, at least, proposals for them, which would be sent to the crown – and naturally fall into a state of order (Kant, [1784] 2013).

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In my rhetorical analysis of Immanuel Kant’s “What Is Enlightenment” I hoped to solve some of my own questions that I have concerning this consequential essay. Kant is a cornerstone of philosophy, and while this piece does not relate to one specific philosophic discourse, it is uncontrovertibly written in a philosophic manner. Yet within Kant work, he veers dangerously close to making what seem to be appeals to a to authority. I would like to think that Kant is not making this appeal in order to justify his own argument.

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The Enlightenment was a period of time that stressed the importance of reason and individual ideas. Many philosophers published works criticizing a country’s monarch or divulging the flaws they saw in a system within the government, such as the justice system. The Enlightenment also stressed the importance of education, and as a result of this, literacy rates experienced a major upward trend. Now able to read the philosopher’s works, a larger sum of people now were educated on the corruptions within their government. This caused a questioning of traditional practices, and people began to believe they could revise their government.

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Considered one of the world’s greatest philosophers, Immanuel Kant revolutionize thinking of his time and sparked the end of the Enlightenment and into modern thought. His influence is so great, philosophy is divided into pre-Kantian and post-Kantian schools of thought. Outside of philosophy, Kant's essays on the meaning of Enlightenment have been hugely influential in for many years and brought his name to the World. Kant was born in Konigsberg, then the capital of Prussia, but now a Russian exclave and it was renamed Kaliningrad at the end of World War II when the city was occupied by Soviet forces. Even by the standards of his own time, Kant was extremely unworldly, he never travelled more than 100 miles from his hometown, and almost his

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It is in light of a legitimate concern for the totalitarian express that subjects not think for themselves, significantly less give about their reasoning. Composing under the antagonistic watch of the Prussian control, Immanuel Kant set out to contend the requirement for open contention, in the college if no place else. In this brave feedback of restraint, initially distributed in 1798, he expected the emergencies that imperil the free articulation of thoughts for the sake of national arrangement. Made out of three segments composed at various times, The Contention of the Resources harps on the interminable battle between the lower workforce of rationality, which is responsible just to individual reason, and the resources of philosophy,

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Immanuel Kant was a widely known German philosopher who was born in 1724 in Konigsberg, Prussia and died in 1804. Kant was often known as one of the most influential thinkers of the Enlightenment Era. Kant was the fourth of nine children born to Johann Georg Cant and Anna Regina Cant. Later on in his life he would decide to change his name from Cant to Kant so that it would reflect the German spelling and pronunciation practices. He was raised under the influence of Pietism, which was a movement within Lutheranism that began in the late 17th century.

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The use of such Salons, books or literary journals was not just to help the propagation of the Enlightenment’s ideal and raise more awareness to people’s state of being. They became embodied practices of it. Kant’s view on the Enlightenment was that it would be brought by mankind itself only if they used reason as freely as possible. This is what Haberman called “Public sphere” and defined by Kant as “(…) enjoys in this public use of reason an unrestricted freedom to use his own rational capacities, and to speak his own mind” . The public sphere is therefore an environment where people can be exempt from the obligation of their ranks, where men are allowed to write and criticize without fearing consequences.

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Are we enlightened today? To answer this question first we need to define enlightenment. Immanuel Kant saw enlightenment as freeing individuals from the social and especially from religious rules and restrictions, as ability to reasoning and think without someone’s direction. Of course most of the people would say that we achieved a lot since the XVIII century in terms of the freedom. We fought for abolishing slavery, women’s rights, rights to vote and be educated, to have property and choose religion, rights to have freedom.

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Allowing people to think freely and come up with their own ideas was what the enlightenment was about. Kant says, “And what a people may not decree for itself can even less be decreed for them by a monarch, for his lawgiving authority rests on his uniting the general public will in his own” (5). What he is saying is that if people cannot think for themselves and make rules for themselves, then the king cannot make these rules for the, because his authority is based on bringing his people together through what they want and believe. I believe that Kant writes it like this to make the reader think about how it is their responsibility to think and make their own decisions. This is also what makes a good king, the ability to allow the people to think and question any laws that are put into place.

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Kant rather encouraged that each individual should have the ability to question authority instead of following it blindly. Kant expressed this by saying: “Nonetheless, the same citizen does not contravene his civil obligations if, as a learned individual, he publicly voices his thoughts on the impropriety or even injustice of such fiscal measures” (Kant). Kant challenges individuals to question the norms, expectation and habits that have been planted deep into their minds, and to critically analyze why we do such things or expected to preform in certain ways rather than simply going through the motions because that is what is expected of us. Scholar Julian Lowndes echoes this sentiment in writing: “ This is not to say that we should never rely on experts or authorities but rather that we should stand ready to question such authority” (Lowndes). This quote comes in response to Kant’s statement that individuals should enlighten themselves, and it reiterates the fact that sometimes experts and their opinions are necessary, but individuals must too be knowledgable enough to refute their claims if they are untrue or attempting to lead people

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Picture a society where there are no conflicts between nations. A ‘perpetual peace’ occurs, where states enter an agreement to renounce force. However, in an ideal Kantian society, there would be no one world government, because that would sap an individual’s will to know. Since he believed that knowledge came from experience, an ideal society would include a multitude of experiences as to provide a wealth of sources for knowledge production.

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He argues the notion of intellectual autonomy, in relation to the concept of immaturity, in which demonstrates the failure to think and make decisions on your own without the guidance of another. As a result, Kant argues the

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This restriction of freedom allows humans to become lazy and immature which prevents them from becoming Enlightened. Kant argues that once people embrace laziness and immaturity, it becomes difficult to think by one’s self. He believes in the use of two types of reason, the public and private use of reason. He claims that the public use of reason alone can bring mankind into Enlightenment because it is this reasoning that allows groups of people with similar thoughts and criticisms to take a stance on a specific issue and bring it to the attention of the king.

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The philosophy of Enlightenment has been most famously summarised in Immanuel Kant's essay, “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” Kant's answer in 1784 to the question what is Enlightenment? Is that it is a “human being's emergence from his self-incurred tutelage” which is the inability to use one's own understanding without direction from another.” The immaturity is self-incurred when it is caused not by lack of mental capacity but by the lack of resolution. Kant urges each of us to refuse to remain under tutelage of others. In Kant's opinion, we must think and decide for ourselves.

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