Enlightenment By Immanuel Kant Summary

Immanuel Kant addressed his view on Enlightenment in his article, An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment. Kant explains that guardianship and supervision of higher rank authorities happened for many reasons. The first one because of apathy, people just found it awkward to reason anything and thus, their knowledge of every subject was limited. Displaying obedience over matters they should have argued more against was often seen. The second reason seemed to be cowed, and this fed their apathy and people dreaded to wander out of what seemed to be the norm. The third reason was those guardians who had more schooling often deprived the common people of education and knowledge. In Kant’s writings, he states that everyone should “Have courage
Anyone solving a homework problem will ask a friend for the answer without ever asking the reasoning behind the problem. Society has been so frequently surging through life that they fail to notice why things happen. Standards and rules in society are holding us back from becoming mature. We have relied so much on everybody else that if we were ever to be left alone we would be helpless. Our reliance on others in undeniable, the modern era we live in pushes us further away from accomplishing enlightenment, as a result, we become increasingly immature. Now everyone goes to Google to get the answers they need for almost everything without much effort. All the information about medicine, school, and religion just at our fingertips. Even though the internet has made numerous advances, it the end it had made us lazier by taking away our thinking process. If we find ourselves at Yahoo and see through the articles of today’s news you will discover more articles on subjects such as how to lose weight, than news themselves. Society has become so dependent on the internet that it has started to take their time away from important things like friendships, “I just had an appointment with my best friend at seven this morning” (Brooks). Society is losing their touch on what is important. I have started to ponder whether we have reached an age of enlightenment since it was written over
This may be somewhat because of the need of understanding, but its most likely caused more so by our desire to be validated by others. Many people in the society are so frightened of doing things on their own, as well as making choices because of how other people might label them and this is the genuine source of our lack of enlightenment in the society. People frequently request approval before any decision, whether it is checking an essay or picking careers. Once people are acknowledged, they continue to the next thing, but most of the time people are too indecisive to act by themselves. A New York Times article states, “The multiplicity of options invites relativism as a response to the insurmountable complexity. We know we are unable to scientifically appraise different options, and so, given the information constraints, we stick with the evil we know” (Brooks). As an attempt to better ourselves, we should strive for enlightenment. Tragically, in today’s world we are barely in an age of enlightenment, and unquestionably distant from an enlightened age. Society has been moving in reverse since Kant replied the question of enlightenment. We will continue to head in the wrong direction and when we are too lazy to apply ourselves, we will turn to Google for direction. Enlightenment is the breaking absent from the self-imposed immaturity of being