Kant's View On The Enlightenment Examples

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. The public sphere was composed of all the institutions that enabled freedom of speech and thoughts

It was defined by Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks as the combination of both the elite and ordinary people deciding what is acceptable or not. As said previously, the Salons, Academies, literary journals and arts, were means to spread the ideals of the thinkers, but there were also embodied practices on a small level of these thoughts. As a matter of fact, if the example of Salon is taken for examination, they were the perfect example of how the Enlightenment ideas were embodied. This gathering of men and women of the French “bourgeoisie” were the place of discussion and debate on a particular subject. No censorship or limits were enforced during the conversation, and that is what Haberman and Kant meant when they talked about “Public sphere”. They had the freedom to be and to express themselves, without any constraints or fear. Obviously, this freedom was not