General logic is constructed from understanding, judgement, and reason. Logic is what’s used to deal with concepts, judgement, and inferences.

Reasoning is something that extends to knowledge beyond possible experience, meaning you can reason something that is not in any way something you can experience.

Judgement is better at indicating the nature of the task. To find out how you end up making a choice.

Logic however doesn’t contain rules for judgement, logic just leads to knowledge as it is the connection for all the pieces of things you know in your head.

Judgement as it is an action can only be practiced and not taught, and poor judgement is what often leads to stupidity.

A narrow minded person although can teach themselves or be taught with alot of knowledge can still make very poor decisions, as their judgement is flawed. Its not hard to find people in this archetype.

Kant was only put under the scope of people because of this answer to what is enlightenment. Prior he already had his largest work of 800 pages being “Critique of Pure Reason”, I read pages 176-178 of this (random numbers I picked). It is extremely dense. However, due to it’s density I got a lot of info out of it.

This is almost word for word my journal entry in response to reading “What is Enlightenment” I feel that it conveys what I think pretty well.

It is very aggravating reading Kant, rather its really difficult just like any philosophical writing. I took philosophy and the readings for that class were probably the worst I’ve come across. Rarely is the language all that hard, but the thickness and density of the words is similar to that of a contract, or a bill passing through congress. If I do take my time to read through slowly, carefully, and analytically I do enjoy it. However reading philosophy is like the cream of the crap to me. In other words the best of the worst. 

To sum up Kant’s answer to What is Enlightenment, he claims that people need to let go of the clutches that society places on them, get out and innovate the current ideas, if not make new ones. Few people however can truly succeed this though, and upon success should make the change slow for fear it may change in a bad way fast. The biggest drive of enlightenment is freedom, and the main supplier of freedom should be the government. While the worst captor of enlightenment is religion.

Kant goes to say “man’s inclination and vocation to think freely—has developed within this hard shell” so I picture that the human inclination is like an egg. It constantly feeds on ideas of others (the yolk) and once it hatches, it needs freedom to express itself and grow. (space)

“But only a ruler who is himself enlightened and has no far of phantoms, yet who likewise has at hand a well-disciplined and numerous army to guarantee public security, may say what no republic would dare to say: Argue as much as you like and about whatever you like, but obey!”

Words that I relate to “The Prince” by Machiavelli, a how to be a prince guide written by a prince. The main idea behind it is that its better to be respected and feared, than it is to be loved. 

The two are related to me as Kant is saying that a ruler can only say believe, and argue about what you want, as long as by the end of the day you obey my command. Something that at the time, and still to this day can only be done when you have no clear enemies of a certain belief at your doorstep, and have a people to back you, such as the army.

Due to the author being Kant, an Agnostic in a very religious period “religious immaturity is the most pernicious and dishonorable variety of all” seems like something very suiting he’d say. However I too would have to agree. Although I’m not against religion, the fact that a pure belief is what holds a people back, being that it’s not something physical, nor is it tangible to me is as he would say it, is dishonorable.

The slaves had no choice but to be held back in progression, in religion the people are but forcing it on themselves.

“Men will of their own accord gradually work their way out of barbarism so long as artificial measures are not deliberately adopted to keep them in it.”

Now a perfect example of this would be of slavery. Slaves were treated like barbarians, and were forced to not work their way out of it. However as history will show, and the world around you as well, once the Emancipation Proclamation was passed, loads of freedmen were roaming around with not much idea of what to do with the new found freedom. However give them some time, and today you have an African American as president.

“Men will of their own accord gradually work their way out of barbarism so long as artificial measures are not deliberately adopted to keep them in it.”

Now a perfect example of this would be of slavery. Slaves were treated like barbarians, and were forced to not work their way out of it. However as history will show, and the world around you as well, once the Emancipation Proclamation was passed, loads of freedmen were roaming around with not much idea of what to do with the new found freedom. However give them some time, and today you have an African American as president.

Now after I looked up Kant, I realize that Iv’e studied him in philosophy, wikipedia is a great refreshing tool. Kant was a man that didnt believe in religion all too much due to being very skeptic about the whole institution, and was thus an agnostic. All info taken from wikipedia.

In the essay he goes to say royalty, in particular the king should be granting freedom to the people, at the very least freedom of the mind. However even if you disagree with that, you cannot argue as he says that you must give royalty credit for being “the man who first liberated mankind from immaturity”, this speaking of how government is what organized the people in history. With an organized people, came organized thought, and lots of enlightenment be it of culture, technology, the arts, or anything else that had to be developed.