Hey everyone, my name is Michael Rosilio, and I’m a sophomore at Baruch College. I was born and raised in Brooklyn and am majoring in Real Estate Finance. The essay by Kant had many valid arguments, Kant wrote the essay in 1784 to basically reply to a question that had been earlier put forward by a government official. The official had posed a question concerning removing clergies from marriages and Kant’s reply was the most famous one. In his essay, he emphasized on the then present situation. The situation present at the time was that there was a big difference between the previous eras and the present and also the fact that the world was moving to a new kind of direction. Kant through his essay discusses why enlightenment was absent and what it would take for enlightenment to flourish.

According to Kant, enlightenment is what is achieved when a person frees themselves from the inability to make decisions on their own that leads to them relying on other people’s opinions in decision making. That inability is what Kant referred to as immaturity. According to Kant immaturity hinders people from using their own judgement and understanding their surroundings, which leads to people depending on others to help them decide things for themselves.

Kant draws his argument by comparing how the government influences its citizens to how tamed animals are controlled; Kant argues that the government uses a set of ideas and beliefs to tame its people which then leads to the citizens to naturally agree with those ideas and beliefs without questioning them; a situation that intensifies their immaturity. Kant feels that this government influence is the same as that of tamed animals in the sense that they cant cross certain boundaries because they have been made aware of the danger that lies ahead.

Kant feels that it is difficult to achieve enlightenment due to the fact that it is usually hard for a man to achieve maturity on his own. However, he argues that maturity is easy to achieve when a number of people act together. This is because it is difficult for a person who has been relying on other peoples’ opinions to break from the chain and begin thinking on their own. That person may feel that the imperfections in their decision making will be exposed when they make mistakes while thinking on their own.

Kant feels that freedom is essential for enlightenment to be achieved. He argues that people should be free to express their thoughts openly because that will help influence the decisions being made by those holding authoritative positions. Freedom brings about constructive criticism and it is that lack of such freedom that made it difficult to achieve enlightenment. I do believe we are currently living in an enlightened age due to all of our advances in society & technology, however not the entire world, rather only a specific amount of countries that are so called “first world countries”. The sole fact that we are allowed to think freely In this country proves we are living in an enlightened age.