This text is a short essay from 1784, which we obtained as an online document.
Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804),
born in Konigsberg in what was Prussia but is now Russia.
SAPERE AUDE
Dare to know. Kant argues that we all start in an immature, unenlightened state (nonage) and as we leave childhood we should all direct our efforts towards becoming enlightened (to think for ourselves or to have to courage to use our own understanding and not rely on others to tell us how or what to think). He says that all people are capable of enlightenment and the true waste of a life would be remaining unenlightened (especially choosing to remain so).
So far so good. I can agree with all of that - though living in a world that has fewer religious or state restrictions on becoming enlightened than during Kant's time, I am probably less optimistic than he is about the degree to which the mass of humanity will opt for enlightenment when given the freedom to do so. There is certainly a segment of the population that seems to prefer to leave their opinions and ideas unchallenged and unexamined. How informed a choice this is, I don't know. It's something I'll have to think more closely about.
I have more trouble with his distinction between the "private person" and the "public person". Kant acknowledges that in one's employment (public person), one may have to support or promulgate ideas or actions which we privately disagree with. It's hard to assess this without examples of where these compromises would occur and Kant does qualify this perspective by saying, about religion:
Thus he will benefit his congregation as much as possible by presenting doctrines to which he may not subscribe with full conviction. He can commit himself to teach them because it is not completely impossible that they may contain hidden truth. In any event, he has found nothing in the doctrines that contradicts the heart of religion. For if he believed that such contradictions existed he would not be able to administer his office with a clear conscience. He would have to resign it.
On a small scale, minor matters, I could agree with this - and maybe this is all Kant is saying. Or he may be trying not to rock the established structures so much that there is anarchy (I'm not sure whether anarchy or mass rebellion would have been contemplated pre-French Revolution and pre-Marx).
Kant also argues strongly about the wrongness of impeding anyone else's search for enlightenment or tying the hands of future generations in their search.
Kant asked "Are we now living in an enlightened age? The answer is, No, but we live in an age of enlightenment." If I transfer that question to the year 2012, I think I would have to say we live in a more enlightened age but I don't believe we are fully enlightened. I think we have more freedom to think - which is not to say that there are not many forces out there trying to curtail that freedom.
The Enlightenment was a reaction to the rise and successes of modern science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There was widespread confidence and optimism about the power of human reason to control nature and to improve human life. The Enlightenment was about replacing traditional authorities with the authority of individual human reason. It seems a natural progression from Descartes' work where he proposed that the 1st step to know anything is to doubt what you think you know. Descrates would put every proposition or piece of knowledge to the test. To determine whether a proposition is doubtable you attempt to construct a possible scenario under which it is false. Kant's philosophical work has been described as trying to reconcile the experiential with the theoretical. A quick search about Kant brings up many of his essays that deal with philosophical questions or subjects I would be interested in reading more about. Someday.
"He aimed to resolve disputes between empirical and rationalist approaches. The former asserted that all knowledge comes through experience; the latter maintained that reason and innate ideas were prior. Kant argued that experience is purely subjective without first being processed by pure reason. He also said that using reason without applying it to experience only leads to theoretical illusions. The free and proper exercise of reason by the individual was a theme both of the Enlightenment, and of Kant's approaches to the various problems of philosophy."
I'd like to read more Kant. The Stanford site describes some of his other ideas:
Kant's revolutionary position in the Critique is that we can have a priori knowledge about the general structure of the sensible world because it is not entirely independent of the human mind. The sensible world, or the world of appearances, is constructed by the human mind from a combination of sensory matter that we receive passively and a priori forms that are supplied by our cognitive faculties. We can have a priori knowledge only about aspects of the sensible world that reflect the a priori forms supplied by our cognitive faculties. In Kant's words, “we can cognize of things a priori only what we ourselves have put into them” (Bxviii). So according to the Critique, a priori knowledge is possible only if and to the extent that the sensible world itself depends on the way the human mind structures its experience.and
Perhaps the central and most controversial thesis of the Critique of Pure Reason is that human beings experience only appearances, not things in themselves; and that space and time are only subjective forms of human intuition that would not subsist in themselves if one were to abstract from all subjective conditions of human intuition. Kant calls this thesis transcendental idealism.
[these are his Copernican moments I think]
I very much agree that it is important for each individual to become enlightened as they leave childhood behind. I'm not sure about the public and private aspects Kant distinguishes nor about the 'argue all you want but obey' comment towards the end.
We will have a small class tonight as there might be picket lines at SFU until 10 PM and many in the class won't cross the picket line. I was hoping they would relocate the class but I can't wait until tonight to find out and then try and catch a ferry to Vancouver. I'm currently on the ferry heading towards Active Pass on my way to Vancouver. The pickets have been going up on various dates and at various universities so it is just chance if it occurs on a date you have a class. We've had a back and forth discussion amongst the class and the variety of viewpoints have been interesting: some won't cross a picket line (despite not knowing what the strike issues are), some will cross regardless, some are torn, some wish to meet elsewhere so they don't have to cross the picket-line and some argue that that would also violate the spirit of the job action. I can see this point (if I felt I knew enough to support the picketers) but I don't see the distinction between not crossing the picket line tonight (and also not meeting elsewhere tonight) but it being OK to schedule a new class for Saturday AM to discuss the books we were going to be discussing tonight, for those who don't wish to cross a picket line tonight (which all those not willing to cross the picket line tonight seem to feel is OK). Very interesting situation. Kant would have argued that the morality of an action is a function of the internal forces that motivate one to act rather than of the external actions or their consequences - which I can agree with but I'm still stuck not feeling that I have enough information to support one side or the other - or to support one side enough to take an action against my own interests.
I've found it very valuable to think more critically about this - I don't usually have it come up where I have to make a decision whether to cross a picket line or not and so I haven't been forced to think my position through very stringently. I'd like to have a discussion with some one active - and knowledgeable - in the union movement to explain the principles, theories, ethics etc.
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