Age of Enlightenment
FYS 15 Batyrkanova Kyzzhibek
Do we live in an enlightened age or the age of enlightenment? Each person has his own opinion which depends from his level of “enlightenment”. So in order to start I would like to define what enlightenment is. For me enlightenment is a process of self – purification. Only when a person is free from prejudice, fears of being responsible for himself, when he remains honest and sincere to others, when he’s in search for justice and knowledge he can be called enlightened. A person should understand his responsibility for his or her freedom and should be wise enough to use this freedom of mind. Kant thinks that a person is enlightened when his mind is free from other people’s mind and he can analyze situation from his own not depending on other’s.
So let me now answer: do we really live in an enlightened age or do we still remain in an age of enlightenment? I think that we will always have a process of enlightening. A human can never be free from fears. We are close to animals that live only lead by their instincts. Our political, economical and social situations are making us “animals” that want to survive. In this race for the life there can be no thoughts about enlightenment. Many common people don’t understand that enlightenment could give them a freedom for developing in these spheres of life. They could become richer and would have an easier life only if they mentally developed. Most of people are afraid of taking such a responsibility of freedom as I said before. It affects them in a bad way but what is worse they don’t understand it. It is described in a book “Committee 300”. When society gives a power to some enlightened group of people they naively consider that they will solve their problems. This enlightened group of people is able to see that society is full of silly uneducated people. Society doesn’t want to solve its problems and this enlightened group uses this silliness. You see that when we talk about definition of
Do we live in an enlightened age or the age of enlightenment? Each person has his own opinion which depends from his level of “enlightenment”. So in order to start I would like to define what enlightenment is. For me enlightenment is a process of self – purification. Only when a person is free from prejudice, fears of being responsible for himself, when he remains honest and sincere to others, when he’s in search for justice and knowledge he can be called enlightened. A person should understand his responsibility for his or her freedom and should be wise enough to use this freedom of mind. Kant thinks that a person is enlightened when his mind is free from other people’s mind and he can analyze situation from his own not depending on other’s.
So let me now answer: do we really live in an enlightened age or do we still remain in an age of enlightenment? I think that we will always have a process of enlightening. A human can never be free from fears. We are close to animals that live only lead by their instincts. Our political, economical and social situations are making us “animals” that want to survive. In this race for the life there can be no thoughts about enlightenment. Many common people don’t understand that enlightenment could give them a freedom for developing in these spheres of life. They could become richer and would have an easier life only if they mentally developed. Most of people are afraid of taking such a responsibility of freedom as I said before. It affects them in a bad way but what is worse they don’t understand it. It is described in a book “Committee 300”. When society gives a power to some enlightened group of people they naively consider that they will solve their problems. This enlightened group of people is able to see that society is full of silly uneducated people. Society doesn’t want to solve its problems and this enlightened group uses this silliness. You see that when we talk about definition of