“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity”. Immaturity is when laziness and cowardice overwhelm man. When he finally overcomes these natural instincts that hinder him from being enlightened, he becomes an independent thinker who can judge and decide everything on his own and express himself without fear. At the end of “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?”, Kant asks “Do we presently live in an enlightened age?” and gives an answer of “No, but we do live in an age of enlightenment.” If the same question is asked today, the answer would be yes. At least people living in a democratic country like the United States live in the enlightened age. People might not be completely enlightened, but freedom, the only requirement for the enlightenment is undoubtedly assured.
The complete freedom gives people rights to speak freely in public. In democratic country, people can think what and believe what they want and express their thoughts without any impediment. People even have freedom to criticize authority. They do not fear to do so, because freedom has become one of their rights. They have ways to appeal to the government for what they think is right and wrong. People freely interact, and their opinions actually influence what authority does. Emergence of World Wide Web has made this freedom even more complete. Individuals can anonymously post any ideas on web. These accumulated ideas and opinions on web affect what authority does as number of individuals on web increases.
Some people might raise such argument that people do not have freedom to disobey the laws. People are bound to the laws as citizens of a country. Disobedience means penalty. Authority strictly enforces laws to keep a stable society. However, people living in a democracy have options to influence governmental policies. Freedom to express any ideas allows this. The democratic government is designed in a way that candidates running for government offices have to take electorates’ opinions into account. Even after elected, people in authority cannot just ignore public opinions, because public is entitled with the power to remove them from the office. Even though people have to obey the laws that might be seemingly unfair, they can always appeal and mend those laws.
Even among the most conservative areas such as religion has changed. Different from the past, citizens in democracies have complete freedom over what they believe. They can decide on their conscience on their own. They can freely choose which religions to believe and not to. Their preferences over different belief does not cause them any disadvantages. Even among the religions, various dominations arise. A pastor freely establishes his own church apart from any of the nominations. Some religious men go out to set their own religions.
For people to be enlightened, freedom is necessary. Today’s people might not be completely enlightened, but they have opportunities and circumstances that guarantee the freedom which is the only requirement for the enlightenment. People live in an enlightened age.
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Reference
An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” by Immanuel Kant
I believe the entire idea of enlightenment is based on how we define enlightenment. If we go off of Kant’s definition, of breaking through our ignorance I still have a hard time seeing this notion of enlightenment. To me, enlightenment is when we finally have the answers to questions that we can not, such as why are we here and what is the purpose for human life. However, in relation to other societies of the past, our society would have to be deemed more “enlightened” then any other just due to our new found knowledge and growing separation from outlandish and primitive beliefs.
Sure, we do live in the Age of Enlightenment. But the question is, do we take advantage of those rights? I would say much of our time simply obeying the laws without consideration of whether they are just or not. On a daily basis we excercise free speech, yet there are limitations on what we can and cannot say.
By addressing “enlightenment” with the characteristics of immaturity, I find many flaws in saying that we live in an enlightened age today. People still focus on self-interests and therefore, practice immaturity. I do not think we will able to fully enter into an Age of Enlightenment, self-interest is too popular and will never be able to completely disappear.
I do not think we live in an enlightened age today. Despite the fact that we have many technological advances as well as advances in other fields, this does not really have to do with our personal opinions on things. People believe they are more knowledgeable about politics, government, etc., but in fact, most people get their information from propaganda and glogs written by people who are no more experts on the matter than the reader.
i also think that people have the possibility to be enlightened today, but i don’t think that everyone is enlightened. I feel that a lot of people today go with what they originally think and aren’t open to others’ ideas.
Many people have pointed to a serious lack of autonomy in society as the main reason why we cannot be called entirely enlightened today. This discussion of autonomy and acting for oneself ties into our current discussion of Mill as well. Mill says that experiments of living and practice of autonomy are vital to human development and progression. This process of development must then lead to something like Kant’s conception of enlightenment.
I think it is impossible to say if we live in an enlightened age or not. For everyone person who has no idea what is going on in the world today, there is someone who is up to date with all the issues. What I think is certain, is that if you want to find out information, there are lots and lots of resources for you to get it from. The key is making sure you don’t just follow someone’s blog or listen to one website, but get a full understanding of the issue from all perspectives.
I also agree with that it is impossible to say whether we live in an enlightened age or not. There are people that do not know all of the issues in the world today for themselves and they will take what others say as the truth and there are also people that look at a bunch of different truths and try to create one for themselves. As for the freedom to believe what we want, yes we do have that, but some people do not take advantage of that.
I think that everyone does live in an enlightened age today in the US. Because news and information is so easily spread and accessible, than almost everyone can get information. However, just because we live in an enlightened age, does not mean that everyone is enlightened. These two things are two different things and one does not necessary lead to the other. The information is accessible to everyone but people may not put it to use. For example, finding information on the internet only works if have you a computer and listening to the news only works if you have a radio or TV. Therefore, some people may not have access to these things due to, say, socioeconomic circumstances. Furthermore, even if people do have access to the internet or a TV they may not necessary use these things to get information. Some people could care less about what is going on today and so does not use the information. Therefore, just because we live in an enlightened age does not imply that everyone is enlightened.
I disagree that we live in an enlightened age. It is true we live with great freedom today, but freedom is not the same as enlightenment. You argue that freedom is the only requirement for enlightenment but I disagree. Kant says that enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. This immaturity is seen around the country today in the form of ignorance despite the freedom. Freedom does not eliminate immaturity.
I think that we are in a standstill as to whether or not we live in an enlightened age. In any kind of situation, there will always be the few that are not afraid to speak their mind in regards to what kind of action we should take or how we should react to something. However, there are also people that go through the motions of their daily life, never pausing to question or intellectually think in depth about something. In this way, these two extremes balance each other out to a society that is part enlightened and part apathetic.
This is an interesting post, but I am unsure that we can say that we live in an enlightened age due to the fact that it requires freedom. I would argue that some people in the United States are more free than others. Kant does also say, as Ellis points out, that “enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity,” and I would argue that there is a good number of people who do not take advantage of their freedom. There are quite a few people that are happy with their paradigms and are fine living in a life of immaturities (think congressmen and women who refuse to even debate the health care issues, halting progress) or people who are not concerned with the rights granted to them (think of the percentage of people that vote in the United States).