"Answer to the question: What is Enlightenment?" by Immanuel Kant
10/09/12
“Enlightening is, Man’s quitting the nonage occasioned by himself. Nonage or minority is the inability of making use of one’s own understanding without the guidance of another”
– Immanuel Kant, Freedom to Reason
During these days, we discussed Kant’s definition of Enlightening. We had trouble finding what Kant meant by nonage, because in my perspective we can have understanding and use it. The difference between some who has reached the Enlightment and someone who hasn’t is that the enlightened does not need the guidance of another for him or her to use their own understanding. Nevertheless, both can make use of their understanding. This idea was one of the main points to discuss, without getting to a unanimous decision. What I liked of Kant’s essay was the phrase, Sapere aude! In Latin, this means, “dare to wise” or “dare to know”. Kant made this phrase well known, however it is attributed to Horace in his Epistles where he wrote: dimidium facti qui coepit habet: sapere aude, incipe ("He who has begun is half done: dare to know!").
On Tuesday, we read Mark Twain’s posthumous essay, Corn-Pone Opinions. It is about the relationship he had with his family’s slave, a black man. Twain says: “The black philosopher’s idea was that a man is not independent, and cannot afford views which might interfere with his bread and butter”. Bread and butter? Please, don’t get me into it again! After an exhausting discussion (which I take part of the responsibility) of what does Twain meant by “bread and butter”, we concluded that it was the “well being” of people. At first, I thought Twain was referring to the group’s opinions and way of thinking in which one belongs. Part of the problem was that many of my classmates thought of “bread and butter” as only the food and way of survival, there was my problem. I then realized that it was not only that, but also the social status and general well being, and how can our opinions, if different from those of the general opinion, can harm our well being, our “bread and butter”.
Who are the "guardians"? (17/09/12)
During our individual work time, I decided to invite whoever wanted to discuss Kant’s essay, What is Enlightening? I had a particular question about this essay and it was regarding the guardians. Who are they? Could they be enlightened? Are they bad people that affect our society in a negative way? To be honest, the dialogue was not so helpful to answer my question, but it made me realized that the question was always in front of me if only I could’ve read more carefully. After reading it several times, I got to the conclusion that the guardians are negative influences, also people at nonage, that try to prevent the minors to not step to majority. Thus, the guardians are not enlightened. They are in some sense the profit seekers of the minors, and are those who stop them from thinking by their own, although the minors will always have the capacity to step out of the go-cart.
Another Kant and Twain Dialogue (27/09/12)
I kant believe it! Another dialogue about whether Kant and Twain agree or not about what is Enlightenment! Actually, it wasn’t bad at all. I was just practicing my irony, got it? And Twain thinks his irony is good, ha! The dialogue went pretty well, we had a long discussion with many arguments and although we didn’t reach a general consensus, it was very constructive. My point of view is that they don’t agree because in order for them to agree, Twain’s entire essay must be an irony, and I didn’t see any concrete evidence on his essay that he was doing so. Also, nobody was successful persuading me that he was in fact being ironic. I was not the only one thinking this way, since Kata and Chacho also thought this way. It was a relief to finally put an “end” to this discussion, although I’m sure we will eventually come back to this.