Immanuel Kant’s Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?
Immanuel Kant’s Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?

Summary/Abstract: The article provides a historically informed exposition of Immanuel Kant’s notion of enlightenment. The 18th century marked the zenith of absolute monarchy in Europe. The century was accompanied by the emergence of new social, economic, and technological conditions and the simultaneous rise of an intellectual culture that sought a wider public adoption of independent critical thinking through the proliferation of schools and academies across the Old Continent. This was the semantic setting in which Kant poses and answers the question of enlightenment. The article explicates the individual and societal aspects of the Kantian concept of enlightenment, while stressing their argumentative dependency on the analytic distinction between the public and private uses of reason. Enlightenment is conceived by Kant as a gradual progress both of the individual and of society towards a fuller mastery of their rational capacities, especially as they pertain to the public sphere of life. The philosopher’s insights are as relevant to our times as they were to his.

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