
What is Enlightenment? (1784) - anuraag2601
http://legacy.earlham.edu/~mileske/Files/Kant%27s%20An%20Answer%20to%20the%20Question%20What%20is%20Enlightenment.htm
======
cosmic_ape
Regarding 2:

>> Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men ...
It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a
pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and
so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay:
others will readily undertake the irksome work for me.

This is beautiful in its simplicity and still has a piece of truth. But a more
elaborate modern take would be probably that we also have finite resources. I
do believe for instance that the earth surface is spherical, although I cann't
immediately come up with an argument to prove this. I have not personally
traveled around the world in a boat or launched satellites.

It seems that there is _fundamentally_ no choice but to trust some people or
traditions of thought on some things and then somehow to decide when to start
doubting. Which is why fake news is a problem, for instance.

~~~
tw1010
You'd be surprised how much resources you have available if you spend zero
time in front of the TV or surfing the web, and spend all your free time on a
hard chair with pen and paper studying.

~~~
felipemnoa
>>You'd be surprised how much resources you have available if you spend zero
time in front of the TV or surfing the web

Not really. Your available time, even if not wasted is still tiny. Seriously,
just think about it, after college maybe you have some 40 years of peak
productivity, if not less (and I suspect it is a lot less for most people).
That doesn't really sound like a lot to me. Especially if you want to spend it
doing things that are none trivial.

>>and spend all your free time on a hard chair with pen and paper studying

You cannot do this. You need to unwind. You need to enjoy culture, watch some
TV, have relationships. Otherwise you will likely just burn out early. Plus,
inspiration many times comes when you are just relaxing doing something
completely unrelated to what you are pursuing.

~~~
trevyn
> _You need to unwind. You need to enjoy culture, watch some TV, have
> relationships._

In my experience, these things merely distract from underlying pain, including
the underlying pain of human mortality. When you free yourself of this pain,
weird and unexpected things happen.

~~~
aoner
Could you explain further?

~~~
trevyn
I propose that there exists an active mental state in which one is emotionally
neutral (i.e. no emotional valence) toward any possible outcome -- removal of
access to entertainment, pleasure, one's relationships, even your own death.

I don't claim that this mental state is "better" or that anyone should try to
achieve it, but experiencing it does tend to disrupt beliefs about what is
necessary and important in life. Evidence suggests that desires and pleasures
and entertainment and social comforts and ways to unwind that previously felt
reasonably harmless and natural start to feel irrelevant and unimportant.

As far as I can tell, most of the written evidence is from the spiritual
perspective, which is not always the most intellectually rigorous perspective.
For a more scientific treatment of the underlying neuroscience, I'd recommend
Thomas Metzinger's work; "The Ego Tunnel" is a good start. My experience is
that understanding the physiological mechanisms behind our awareness,
cognition, and emotion gives us a better map of how we might engineer
different mental states, some of which have significant overlap with
historically desirable mental states.

Metzinger proposes that our conception of "self" is basically an illusion that
our brain generates in specific ways for specific purposes. Conceptually
experimenting with "if this was true, what would it imply?" seems to lead to a
world in which no one and no event can hurt "me", because in a way of
speaking, there is no "me". Then backing down the ladder of abstraction, if I
_really, truly_ believed this, but of course still had the brain-generated
perception of self, what would it imply for my everyday behavior?

The result seems to be sparser but deeper and more meaningful relationships
(including with myself), much less interest in mindless entertainment and
distraction, and intensified curiosity about the natural world. To the point
where spending "all your free time on a hard chair with pen and paper
studying" actually seems like a good idea.

~~~
aoner
Thanks for your comment. I've got Metzinger's book on my shelf so thanks for
the reminder to read it :).

I must admit I have similar ideas about the self, I am currently inclined to
believe that it is indeed an illusion but have not thought about the
implications of that illusion (I have peace with it though).

I'm a bit more nuanced towards the emotional side. I think we all have
emotions but being able to perceive them as just that, gives us true freedom.
There are people that chase the emotional state/high of being happy above your
normal baseline/hormonal levels, as the emotional state they want to have
continuously. True freedom however comes with accepting all these states as
they are. That means you are not chasing any "happy" states or getting out of
other states.

How do you link the illusion of self to intensified curiosity about the world?
I've always had an intensified curiosity but I'm unable to link this to
"self".

------
hblanks
Michel Foucault also wrote about this essay. His essay starts thus:

> Today when a periodical asks its readers a question, it does so in order to
> collect opinions on some subject about which everyone has an opinion
> already; there is not much likelihood of learning anything new. In the
> eighteenth century, editors preferred to question the public on problems
> that did not yet have solutions. I don't know whether or not that practice
> was more effective; it was unquestionably more entertaining.

> In any event, in line with this custom, in November 1784 a German
> periodical, Berlinische Monatschrift published a response to the question:
> Was ist Aufklärung? And the respondent was Kant.

([https://www.libarts.colostate.edu/leap/wp-
content/uploads/si...](https://www.libarts.colostate.edu/leap/wp-
content/uploads/sites/24/2017/01/Foucault-What-is-enlightenment.pdf))

------
tim333
Paragraph 1 reminds me of a Yuval Harari quote from an article discussed here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13905249](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13905249)

>The other major contribution, I think, is that the entire exercise of
Vipassana meditation is to learn the difference between fiction and reality,
what is real and what is just stories that we invent and construct in our own
minds. Almost 99 percent you realize is just stories in our minds. This is
also true of history. Most people, they just get overwhelmed by the religious
stories, by the nationalist stories, by the economic stories of the day, and
they take these stories to be the reality.

------
motohagiography
Reading this through the lens of a current era where hierarchies are being
subsumed by networks, and then reasserting themselves, this was written in a
similar context, can't help but recommend "The Square and the Tower," a recent
book that talks about the historical tension between networks and hierarchies.

Obligatory Niall Ferguson link for modern take on history, and a pleasant
sunday afternoon listen:
[https://youtu.be/f3rhUZPNqX0?t=576](https://youtu.be/f3rhUZPNqX0?t=576)

------
cat199
> One age cannot bind itself, and thus conspire, to place a succeeding one in
> a condition whereby it would be impossible for the later age to expand its
> knowledge (particularly where it is so very important), to rid itself of
> errors, and generally to increase its enlightenment.

Unless they are talking correctly about truths which are unchanging. in which
case, good sir, you have a philosophical bias towards false progress.

Plato teaches me far more about true knowledge than does the enlightenment.

~~~
api
There is some truth in this. Two and two will never be five.

Unfortunately I most often see the notion of eternal unchanging truth invoked
to defend very temporal and mutable things: cultural and aesthetic biases,
social and economic hierarchy, gender roles, racial stereotypes, religion, the
state, etc.

People wish to rub some of the eternal truth of math and logic onto their
favorite idols but it never sticks. Human hierarchy and symbol are very
mutable.

Nobody bothers to pound the table about the eternal truth of actual eternal
truths. There's no point.

~~~
agumonkey
> There is some truth in this. Two and two will never be five.

unless you swap some digits name's :cough:

------
maxharris
This review of _What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum
Physics_ and _The Ashtray: (Or the Man Who Denied Reality)_ contains an
excellent introduction to Kant's ideas:

[http://bostonreview.net/science-nature-philosophy-
religion/t...](http://bostonreview.net/science-nature-philosophy-religion/tim-
maudlin-defeat-reason)

~~~
ctchocula
+1

This was a really enjoyable read that goes through the history of science from
the 20th century, and draws connections between the measurement problem from
quantum mechanics and ideas from philosophy including logical positivism and
transcendental idealism. It's well worth reading if you are at all interested
in open problems in quantum mechanics.

------
muxator
This piece is one of the foundations not only for Illuminism, but for modern
thinking in the western culture in general. Thanks for submitting.

------
nomadiccoder
Steven West's podcast `Philosophize This` has a neat explanation of how this
work came to be and paints a picture of what life was like during this time. I
think episode ~50ish

------
l5870uoo9y
Text in original language, German:
[http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-3505/1](http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-3505/1)

The German "Unmündigkeit" has more formal connotation than immaturity in the
English translation. For instance you are considered "Mündig" when you are 18
years old.

------
esturk
>> Thus a public can only attain enlightenment slowly.

Its unfortunate that somethings never change. Even as technology is growing at
an ever increasing rate, human nature sets to dampen most of its adoption. And
since the largest expansion of population is coinciding with the largest
increase in longevity, we're seeing a even larger dampening effect.

This is something a lot of our peers in the tech world don't realize. Too
great an effort is put into building said technology and not enough is put
into helping the public adopt it.

------
JanneVee
Sad to see that the public discourse has moved away from point 5 with the
freedom to argue. To the point of that I'm afraid of giving examples.

~~~
charlesism
Tell me about it! Everyone in my village knows full well my neighbor is witch.
But if I even suggest we hold a witch trial, some weak-kneed SJW tries to de-
platform me. The Enlightenment is truly dead.

~~~
Torgo
These days, the witch is a Russian troll, an alt-reicher, maybe a closet
"bro", or heaven forbid, a g@merg00ber.

------
mabynogy
It's a polically-correct (at that time) revolt against the King and the
religion. The word light refers also to the religion (first words of the Bible
and the angel of the light).

~~~
pulisse
Nope. "Enlightenment" in German is "Aufklärung", which is not cognate with the
German for light ("Licht").

~~~
mabynogy
It's a french invention.

~~~
rhythmvs
‘Le siècle des Lumières [plural] … Le terme de «Lumières» a été consacré par
l’usage pour rassembler la diversité des manifestations de cet ensemble
d’objets [la superstition, l’intolérance, l’abus des Églises et des États].’
(fr.wikipedia.org) — Except for Postmodernism, an era does not usually give
itself a name. The term was coined later on (say, just about the acme of the
revolution’s Terror, when a cult of such lights/gleams/luminaries was
contrived). Where in German it reads ‘Aufklärung’, in French ‘éclaircissement’
is used instead.

First words of the Bible: בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת
הָאָרֶץ. ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ (Gn 1,1) —
Okay, the third verse reads, in French (Bible de Sacy translation): ‘Or Dieu
dit: Que la lumière soit faite. Et la lumière fut faite.’ — Not a plural.

The angel of the light = Lucifer (<Lat. ‘light-bearer’); cfr 2 Cor. 11:14:
‘And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.’ — I don’t
believe Kant could ever have imagined him being associated with satanism…

~~~
mabynogy
Probably not but he is german, not french. French philosophy and ideology
assimilated elsewhere.

------
snambi
sounds like blabbering to me.

------
osrec
Your username suggests Indian heritage. I find a great deal of Indians
interested in this topic, as am I.

I'm not sure how correct this description of enlightenment is, but my personal
description of it is simply this: a state of total, mindful flow. Like when
you solve a problem effortlessly because you have such a deep, intrinsic
knowledge of it. It seems to impart a very profound feeling of calmness and
equanimity across my mind.

A rather wise old man once told me, enlightenment is existing with intrinsic
knowledge of your "sense of existence". Apparently it's very subtle and not so
easy to pin down mentally... Still not sure how to interpret that, but part of
me thinks there's some value in it.

~~~
bpd1069
It is simply being fully awake. We take our consciousness for granted, but in
reality, we are sleep-walking the majority of our waking lives. Reacting, not
Acting.

It is a wakefulness that is universal, I would image another species of
intelligent beings also existing with full knowledge and acceptance of
existence, be they organic or digital. It is not a human quality, but
something much more.

