What Is Enlightenment?

Today, let's explore Immanuel Kant's "What is Enlightenment?" This 1784 essay questioned our perception of enlightenment itself. Kant suggested that enlightenment emerges from self-imposed immaturity, urging us to "Dare to Know." He criticized reliance on external guidance, advocating for independent thinking. Kant warned against surrendering autonomy to societal guardians, urging us to challenge complacency. Reflecting on his essay, I wonder if Enlightenment is ongoing. Despite revolutions and technological leaps, the spirit of Enlightenment endures. Kant's legacy challenges us to embrace reason, guiding us towards a brighter future. The essence of Enlightenment lies not in a historical period but in an enduring ethos—an attitude of questioning, exploring, and seeking truth.

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What Is Enlightenment?

Introduction

Hello, my name is Darren and welcome to the makers rage podcast. So today I wanted to discuss an essay, a very famous essay by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, answering the question, 'What is Enlightenment?' or in German, 'Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?', published in 1784, at the height of that period we designate the Age of Enlightenment. And it's curious to note that unlike with other periods in history, which historians name retroactively, like the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, or the Renaissance, we have examples of notable people living in the midst of the so called Enlightenment interrogating or questioning that very term, which we've adopted in our own time to describe that moment in history. I call it a moment. It's a period that spans, well, depending on who you ask, decades or centuries. We can't necessarily point to a date and time when the Enlightenment began, or ended, if it even ended. But we recognize the period in which Kant worked, more or less by the other great names contemporary with him, like Jefferson, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Mary Wollstencraft, etc., the great historical events, the wigs, the fashion. 

What is Renaissance?

Most people living in the 15th century didn't describe the period as the 'Age of Renaissance'. It was a term invented by the 19th century Swiss historian Jakob Burkhart, who said conveniently, that it began in Italy with the painter Giotto, and ended with a death of Michelangelo in Rome in 1564. Burkhart's contemporary, the French historian Jules Michelet, associated the Renaissance more with the sciences than the arts, asserting that it spanned the period between Copernicus and Galileo. Incidentally, Galileo was born, the year Michelangelo died. And 1642, the year Galileo died, is the same year Isaac Newton was born. Newton whose 1687 work the Principia Mathematica many view was the locus classicus of the scientific revolution and the beginning of the Enlightenment. I don't think the town criers we're announcing these historical shifts: "Hear ye, hear ye! The Renaissance is over, the Enlightenment has begun". Giorgio Vasari in 1550, writing the lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors, and architects knew he was living in an unusual time, and that these biographies were of extraordinary artists - the equal, at least, of any the ancients produced. But I'm sure he was too conscientious to approach the peasants toiling in the field, and declare they were living in a golden age. And let's keep it real, women had it better in the Middle Ages. So while the Medici and Montelfelto were holding court, most Italians at the time would live and die having never seen a painting by Leonardo, Raphael, or Titian. 

Reason and Enlightenment

So what about Kant, writing in 1784, in answer to a question, which few when his time or since have been better positioned to answer: what is enlightenment? He'd only just published the fourth edition of his Critique of Pure Reason, arguably the most influential philosophical text since antiquity, and he knew it too! For the conceptual shift that resulted was compared by him and others with the achievement of Copernicus. But whereas Copernicus's revolution revised our perception of the earth being stationary to a planet that moves about its star, so that any observer on earth, watching the heavens must do so with this understanding: they are not stationary, they are moving with the Earth, around the sun. So, Kant, in his work reputes that our knowledge of the world is determined by how we perceive it, that we can never truly know the world as it is in itself. What it is to exist as an inanimate object like a rock, or to perceive the world as another organism, say, like an octopus, or a bee. We are limited by the cognitive apparatus our species evolved with - or were created with (and Kant believed in a creator). In other words, what this apparatus permits us to understand about things in themselves, like exploding stars, or the behaviour of electrons, is limited by the very fact that we are limited beings. This is very different to what Aristotle believed. Even Copernicus, even Newton, who must have taken for granted that the knowledge we accrue about objects in the world are about those very objects, and that there isn't a perceptual filter that both limits and encompasses everything we know or can know about the universe. In the 19th and 20th, centuries, one might have agreed or disagreed with Kant's conclusion here, there were many in both camps. But most thereafter agreed that the history of modern philosophy can be written as what was understood before Kant and after Kant. 

So the essay, 'What is Enlightenment?' answers the question posed by the Reverend Johann Friedrich Zollner, who, it's fair to say was, outraged after reading the conclusions of another essay in the same journal entitled, 'Proposal: Not to Engage the Clergy Any Longer when Marriages are Conducted.' So basically, marriage need not be a religious ceremony. It could be a civil one. Zollner complained that such proposals threaten to, quote, "shake the first principles of morality, degrade the value of religion, and to confuse people's heads and hearts under the name of enlightenment. What is Enlightenment?", he asks. "The question, almost as important as what is truth, needs to be answered before one sets about 'enlightening' and I've never yet found an answer." The Berlin Monthly eventually received two replies, one by Moses Mendelssohn, incidentally the composer Felix Mendelssohn's paternal grandfather, whose Wedding March is so famous - appropriate given the context of this dispute. The other response was of course by Kant. 

 Essay Introduction

Mendelssohn's reply is actually quite interesting. He distinguishes between intellectual enlightenment or Aufklarung, and broader social refinement or Culture, and he points out that the two can easily get out of sync. But he draws a somewhat stereotypical conclusion by suggesting the English had more Aufklaring, and a French more Culture. The ancient Greeks of course, had both completely in sync, despite the slavery and lack of women's rights, I guess. By the way, I want to credit Ritchie Robertson's book The Enlightenment, for the breakdown of Mendelssohn's reply. It's a big book for an excellent read. And it's also on Audible for those of you who are interested. Kant, in his reply, avoided cliche or stereotyping. One feels he met the challenge of answering the question, as to a throwing of the gauntlet, and he stepped up as a spokesperson for a decade's long project that was still ongoing, calling on men and women not to accept what tradition has taught them unquestioningly, what dogma enjoins them to accept on faith instead of reason. They should, on the contrary, dare to question, dare to know, and this is the way to enlightenment. 

 So, after that lengthy preamble let's get to his answer. By the way, I won't be reading it through verbatim, since there's a lot to unpack. And I'd rather not leave the business of unpacking till the end. It's more a commentary on his argument with enough quotation to ensure all context is given. The translation I'll be reading is by Mary Smith. But I'll be updating some of the language and vocabulary here and there so it's more accessible to the modern listener. The essay is reasonably short. There are 12 paragraphs and I'll be reading the shorter ones more or less uninterrupted. But even in a very short essay, Kant can get a little bit convoluted. So I'll summarise the longer ones with commentary, but not interrupting the flow of his argument, as I said. I encourage you, however, to read it for yourself. 

Reading & Commentary

'What Is Enlightenment?' by Immanuel Kant. "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This immaturity is self-imposed if it's cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in indecision, and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know. Sapere Aude. 'Have the courage to use your own understanding' is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment." He certainly doesn't keep us guessing. But answers the question in the very first paragraph. Enlightenment is man's, or woman's of course, emergence from self-imposed immaturity. There's no adequate English rendering of the word Kant uses for immmaturity here: Unmündigkeit, the state of being a minor, as it were, of requiring guardianship. Incidentally, the münd in Unmündigkeit is also the German word for mouth. So Unmündigkeit can also be interpreted as the inability to speak for oneself. The word 'infant' is cognate with it, since in Latin 'infantia' literally means unable to speak. But infancy doesn't convey all the senses of the German word Unmündigkeit and an infant's inability to speak is clearly not self-imposed. A self-imposed immaturity suggests a surrendering of one's capacity to speak and think for oneself, a voluntary submission to and unwillingness to break free from guardianship. Guardians must speak on our behalf. 

We've all heard the phrase, 'children should be seen not heard', or that they shouldn't speak unless spoken to. Unmündigkeit seems to suggest that even when spoken to, they need permission to respond. But controlling a child's thinking is more challenging for The Guardian. There will come a time when a child starts doing it for themselves, and they will thus inevitably begin speaking for themselves. The problem is, many fully grown adults have never emerged out of that immaturity, that Unmündigkeit, and Kant maintains that it's not through lacking the ability to use their own understanding, since this emerges inevitably in the individual as they grow up. But it's through indecision and lack of courage that this immaturity persists in so many grown ass men and women. Which is why he doesn't say, 'try to know'. He says, 'dare to know', have the courage to use your own understanding. And this is the motto of the Enlightenment. 

"Laziness and cowardice" he continues, "are the reasons why such a large part of mankind gladly remain minors all their lives, long after nature's freed them from external guidance. And this is why others are happy to set themselves up as guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor. If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on, then I have no need to exert myself, I have no need to think. If only I can pay someone, they will take care of that disagreeable business for me. This, of course, gives guardians the incentive to see to it that the step to maturity is understood to be not only difficult, but extremely dangerous. They therefore make their domestic cattle stupid, and carefully prevent the docile creatures from taking a single step without the leading strings to which they have fastened them, then they show them the danger that would threaten them if they should try to walk by themselves." Don't stray too far from the pen, in other words, for there are wolves and jackals. Don't explore those blank parts of the map, for there be dragons. 

Well, of course it's scare mongering. The guardians will be out of a job if they had no wards, and Kant reassures us of this. "This danger is really not very great. After stumbling a few times, they would at last learn to walk. However, examples of such failures intimidate and generally discourage all further attempts." There's a slight suggestion the guardians are willing to resort a propaganda, even, to keep their cattle in check. And Kant moves from overcoming Unmündigkeit (learning how to think and speak for oneself), to learning how to walk without assistance, without the leading strings to which the guardians have fastened them, and which they use to lead them along a prescribed path flanked with dangerous they protect them from. But the Guardians couch her language, their propaganda, to make these dangers appear great, rather than innocuous, to make them seem very real, instead of imaginary. Thus, Kant continues, "it is very difficult for the individual to work himself out of the immaturity, or Unmündigkeit, which has become almost second nature to him. He has even grown to like it and is at first really incapable of using his own understanding because he has never been permitted to try it." 

The idea of being incapable of doing something despite having the latent ability seems contradictory. But then we've all tried walking after spending eight hours seated in a chair. It takes a few moments to adjust. Now imagine a lifetime. Imagine 30, 40, 50 years or more, not thinking for oneself, relying on a book, or pastor or political leader, or party to do these things for us. It doesn't have to be a person, even. It can be a doctrine, or dogma, or formula, as Kant says, mechanical tools designed for reasonable use, which only end up abusing our stultifying our natural gifts, an easy to follow step-by-step guide for attaining happiness, a simple regimen for losing weight, getting healthy, achieving nirvana - don't question, just follow, and the results will follow. While these formulas appear reasonable, they are still fetters of an everlasting immaturity. 

"The man or woman who cast them off, would make an uncertain leap over the narrowest ditch. Because he or she is not used to such free movement." It makes me think of being deceived by the depth of a swimming pool until I take the plunge. And notice it's only two feet deep. And one can imagine the Guardians holding fast to the leading strings, securing you as you lurch over the precipice, staring down as they repeat the oft heard dangers that threaten below - an abyss, and monsters swim therein, until you leap into the safety of their arms once more: Hush now, baby, baby, don't you cry? Don't worry your pretty little head. I'll keep you safe. and Kant maintains that because there are only a few who walk firmly and who have emerged from immaturity by cultivating their own mind, it's incumbent upon them to spread about the spirit of a reasonable appreciation of Man's value, and if his duty to think for himself, and then gradually, the public will grow less reliant on these leading strings, and on the Guardians controlling them. 

Indeed, Kant says, "if it is only given freedom, public enlightenment is almost inevitable." But it must happen by degrees. Slowly. "A revolution may bring about the end of a personal despotism," he says, "or of avaricious tyrannical oppression, but never a true reform of modes of thought. Those without the stomach to follow the motto of the Enlightenment, Sapere Aude, dare to know, must be persuaded to cut the leading strings one by one. Once a sufficient number do so, the effect will cascade and without the need for violent revolution. People will throw off their yokes and bring the Guardians into submission, at least those guardians who are themselves incapable of enlightenment. Again, one imagines Kant writing this as the temperature in Europe was increasing, and in France, was reaching a boiling point. And as the Austrian Chancellor Klemens von Metternich said, "when France sneezes, Europe catches a cold." 

So it's pretty simple, apparently: "the Enlightenment requires nothing but freedom. And the most innocent of all that may be called Freedom, freedom to make public use of one's reason, in all matters." But then comes the clamour from those in positions of authority: the police officer - do not argue, show me your licence and registration. The taxman - do not argue, pay. The clergy - do not argue, believe. You may not agree with the current speed limit or the tax rate, but that's not an excuse to break the law. And as for the clergy, well, we are more free to say no to belief (including the belief that Marriage should be done in Church) than they who are accountable to their congregation, having sworn an oath of office. And it's precisely with duties of Office that the conflict between the public and private use of one's reason comes into play. The police officer herself may believe the speed limit unreasonably low, but it is still her duty to give you a ticket. Same with the tax people - you may have an engaging discussion over the phone with the tax office, and even persuade the person on the other end to agree with you that the rate is too high. But it's neither their prerogative nor yours to decide to change it there and then. A priest may be undergoing a crisis of faith, and may no longer believe in the doctrine they've been charged by his congregation to preach about and defend, but he or she must be free to voice their reservations without imperilling themselves. One exercises the private use of reason in everyday life when discharging your duties as an employee, as a family member, a citizen, where each individual must be free to use their reason publicly as well. 

Kant says, "By public use of one's reason I mean, that use which a man or woman as a scholar makes of it before the reading public. Thus, it will be very unfortunate if an officer on duty and under orders from his superiors should want to criticise the appropriateness or utility of his orders," - peoples lives may even depend on it! "He must obey. But as a scholar, he could not rightfully be prevented from taking notice of the mistakes in the service, and from submitting his views to his public for its judgement." The citizen cannot refuse to pay the taxes levied upon them. Indeed, imagine a society trying to function where everyone decided what tax they were going to pay. "Nevertheless, this man does not violate the duties of a citizen if, as a scholar, he publicly expresses his objections to the impropriety, or possible injustice, of such levies." It's the same with a member of the clergy. Kant says "For what he teaches in pursuance of his office as a representative of the church, he represents as something which he is not free to teach as he sees it." If you happen to be an atheist, why are you taking holy orders? "But any pastor has full freedom as a scholar, and indeed, it is, his or her obligation to communicate to their public, all their carefully examined and constructive thoughts concerning errors in doctrine, and proposals for improvement of religious dogma and church institutions, and they should, moreover, have freedom to do this without any burden to their conscience." 

For this reason, even church doctrine should be amendable, as any constitution whose principles can be adjusted to the needs of a ever changing society or polity. Should a Council of Ministers, say, commit itself by oath to a certain unalterable doctrine, this would secure perpetual guardianship not only over all its members present and future but over those they govern now and their successors in the future. Such a contract, Kant says, is simply null and void. Doesn't matter if it's confirmed by the King or Ayatollah, by Parliament or God himself. Because an epoch cannot conclude a pact that will commit succeeding ages, prevent them from increasing their significant insight, from purging themselves of errors, and generally progressing in enlightenment. "That would be a crime against human nature, whose proper destiny lies precisely in such progress. Therefore, succeeding ages are fully entitled to repudiate such decisions as unauthorised and outrageous. Simply put, to agree to a perpetual constitution of any kind, which is not publicly questioned why anyone, would be, as it were, to annihilate a period of time in the progress of man's improvement. This must be absolutely forbidden." "That would be a crime against human nature" - Strong words indeed, affirming that even religious doctrine should be subject to the same rational scrutiny as any other doctrine, even that which God reputedly carved with his finger in stone can be smashed to pieces on the ground, and revised. 

And as for temporal rulers, Kant says, "What a people may not decide for itself may even less be decided for it by a monarch. Salvation", he says, "is none of his business. It is the monarchs business to prevent one man from forcibly keeping another from determining and promoting his salvation to the best of his ability." And one, of course, can substitute monarch here for President Prime Minister, ruling party or government more generally. But Kant is thinking of a very specific monarch here, Frederick the Great of Prussia. And remember this essay was submitted to a Berlin periodical, and Kant, let's say, wasn't above some toadying to the powers that be. He even calls the 18th century the century of Frederick. But we shouldn't let these questionable passages distract us from the brilliantly insightful and thought provoking passages that are still salient in our time. And despite Kant's appreciation for a century of enlightened despots like Frederick the Great, Peter, the great, Catherine the Great, he still wasn't ready to admit to the end of history, as it were; that the culmination of human progress and civilisation has been reached. Quote, "When we ask, Are we now living in an enlightened age? The answer is no. But we live in an age of enlightenment." In other words, enlightenment has begun, but is an ongoing process. 

And it was true in Kant's time as it is now, that men and women are more comfortable under guardianship and lack confidence to reason for themselves without external guidance. And this isn't the guidance of a teacher or mentor whose goal is or should be to enable their students to think for themselves. It is the guidance of having one's thinking done for us by guardians who have a vested interest in keeping this status quo. That said, Kant believed the hindrances against general enlightenment, or emergence from self imposed immaturity, are gradually diminishing. This is the optimism so characteristic of the 18th Century. And it was Kant's confidence in the Enlightenment project that made him believe that quote, "when one does not deliberately attempt to keep men in barbarism, they will gradually work out of that condition by themselves." 

One condition that men and women can't work out of by themselves, is, of course slavery. And it was still widely practised by the European powers, and in America, whose recent Declaration of Independence insisted all men are created equal, and that they have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And Thomas Jefferson was no fool. He knew the hypocrisy of writing such a statement as a man who owned slaves himself, but he nonetheless believed in the Enlightenment project. The bust of Voltaire he owned is still on display in his home and Monticello. Voltaire, who despised slavery, smiling his sardonic smile. And after writing the Declaration of Independence, every day thereafter, he must have felt the silent reproof of that great enlightenment wit grow louder for every day he continued to own slaves after composing that famous document. It makes me think of the Bust in Salvador Dali's famous painting, entitled "The Bust of Voltaire", featuring a depiction of a slave market and the image of Voltaire among them growing translucent, disappearing, for every moment the slave market stayed open for business. Voltaire died in 1778, two years after the Declaration of Independence, 11 years before the French Revolution. And Kant, who praised Frederick of Prussia so lavishly, would soon see Napoleon's Grande Armee marching through his peaceful Konigsberg. 

And while people like Edmund Burke in England condemned the French Revolution for its sudden, violent overturning of the social order, and feared it would be contagious. Remember Metternich - "When France sneezes, Europe catches cold", the revolutionaries did free the slaves, initially. It was Napoleon who brought them back into bondage, after a heroic resistance by the slaves on Haiti in particular, ironically enough, under the command of their own black Napoleon, Toussaint Louverture. Napoleon, who at it his coronation took the crown from the Pope and crowned himself emperor, would love to have been the greatest of all enlightenment despots, but it would have been enlightenment on his terms, and that is precisely the problem with despotism. Even Frederick whom Kant praised fulsomely for giving his subjects the freedom to exercise the public use of their reason, even on matters concerning a better constitution, for separating church and state, for patronizing the arts and sciences, even he would have bristled at a prominent philosopher questioning his authority, and had he not had the best drilled infantry in Europe at a time, such challenges may have come more readily. A king with a strong army tends to cow dissenters from voicing their misgivings about his rule. In the last paragraph can't write, "but only the man who is himself enlightened, who is not afraid of shadows, and who commands at the same time a well-disciplined and numerous army as guarantor of public peace, only He can say 'argue as much as you like, and about what you like, but obey.'" Question everything except my rule, in other words. And of course any absolutist who fancies themselves a patron of the arts still has a veto over the kind of art that is produced. 

I'm sure Michelangelo was happy to adorn the Sistine Chapel with biblical figures. But it's no coincidence that his benefactor was the Pope. It's also no coincidence that instrumental music became so popular and heavily patronized under Joseph II of Austria, another enlightenment despot. It's difficult to convey dissident opinions in a string quartet. Opera proved a little more problematic, of course, as Mozart's Marriage of Figaro proved - based on the play by Beaumarchais, which includes the lines, "because you are a great lord, you imagine yourself a great genius, having taken trouble over nothing in life, except being born." Dangerous words, indeed, under an absolute monarch. And although Kant believed Frederick the most exemplary among the heads of state in Europe of the 18th century, for the reasons outlined - his unwillingness to establish a state religion, leaving matters of faith private, and for allowing free public use of one's reason, even without a single charismatic head of head of state like Frederick, too much freedom can, ironically, lead to the establishment of "insurmountable barriers to enlightenment". We can't choose what laws to obey, what tax rate to pay, whom to imprison, or kill, without the consent of the wider community of people that constitute the state. 

"And yet these limitations that are placed upon us as citizens don't debar us from carefully cultivating the seed within the hard core, namely, the urge for and vocation of free taught." Because although we may rail against unjust laws and the corruption of politicians, having the freedom to air those grievances in the public arena, in other words, to exercise the public use of reason is precisely what, according to Kant, allows for enlightenment to unfold, because, quote, "this free taught, gradually reacts back on the modes of thought of the people, and men and women become more and more capable of acting in freedom. At last, free taught acts even on the fundamentals of government, and the state finds it agreeable to treat man who is now more than a machine, in accord with his dignity." Rousseau said, "Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains." But how many among us, if we were honest, would be willing to abandon the city and civilization forever? To return to a state of nature? Hunting and gathering, making sure our loved ones aren't mauled by predators? Some, I'm sure, but certainly not many? Sure, we'd have greater freedom, fewer laws to obey, no tax or insurance, no traffic, no rat race, no intertwining with a plodding and sordid crowds. 

True, we must give up certain freedoms to participate in society. This is the Social Contract. But as a society, we must cherish and protect those inalienable rights Thomas Jefferson wrote about - inalienable because you don't have to earn them or have them granted to you. They are assumed to belong to you simply because you are a human being, no matter where you're from, and therefore as a prospective member of society: the right to life - to exist and subsist without fearing your neighbour will take what rightfully belongs to you, including your life; the right to liberty - to not be enslaved, to be master of your own destiny, to the extent you can be while not infringing on the rights of others, and the right to pursue happiness - if you are poor, you have the right to not stay poor, if you have a dream, you have the right to follow it. And if you perceive there is an unequal distribution of these fundamental rights, you moreover have, according to Kant, the right to voice your misgivings publicly. Because it is only through each citizen's ability to exercise the public use of their reason that the Enlightenment project can continue unfolding; and tha, moreover, those individuals who haven't yet the courage to think or speak for themselves can learn to do so, by the example of orders, even if they ultimately deviate from their example, because as an entity who was more than a machine that is his or her prerogative. 

Concluding Remarks

The distance in time between us and Kant, is the same as the distance between him and the conquistadores. Can we say in the 21st century the Enlightenment is still ongoing, is this current period we live in now in 2022, post industrial revolution, post information revolution, post two world wars, still a continuation, and unfolding of enlightenment? The 19th century was in many ways a reaction against the over rationalization of the Enlightenment project, against the privileging of reason over matters of the heart, of society over the individual, of rules and protocol over spontaneity... Some have claimed this revolt against reason led to the atrocities of the 20th century. But this, of course, is nonsense. Even Kant acknowledged in the very last sentence of this essay that people are more than machines. And it wasn't Enlightenment the Romantics were reacting against, it was Reason with a capital R, the mode of thinking that reduces individuals to ciphers. Some have called the 20th century the modern period or modernity, some still call the 21sth century modernity or some variation on it, postmodernity or metamodernity, or whatever. 

Michel Foucault, who wrote a response to Kant's essay in the 20th century wrote, "I wonder whether we may not envisage modernity rather as an attitude than as a period of history. And by attitude, I mean a mode of relating to contemporary reality, a voluntary choice made by certain people. In the end, a way of thinking and feeling a way to, of acting and behaving that at one and the same time marks a relation of belonging, and presents itself as a task." I feel like once the Scientific Revolution got underway, and it was made clear the role that reason plays in making the universe comprehensible to us, the cat was out of the bag, and whatever you want to call the historical periods that followed, the enlightenment, the industrial age, The Information Age, they all had in common the same attitude, as Foucault said, that we characterise with the word modernity, which is why people have been calling themselves modern for 200 years or more, an attitude that presents itself as a task, or for Kant, an injunction: Dare to Know, Sapere Aude, have the courage to use your own understanding.