Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” (1490)

from an illustrated edition of Vitruvius’ De architectura (~0) by Cesare Cesariano (1521)

How many times do we hear restrictions from our parents about what we can and cannot do? I believe for most of us, the answer is “a lot.” As we are growing up, getting older, and learning different knowledge, we seem to hear fewer restrictions from them because we gain experiences throughout our lives. When people face challenges or have problems, they tend to finds out the reasons, analyze them, and finally get to the solutions. It is obvious in their daily lives, but it is rare before the Enlightenment.

During 1600s, religion played important roles in people lives and was really influential that even the powers of authorities could be affected by it. Religion itself was so powerful that people rarely develop solutions that were not somehow related to religion. Kant states in “What Is Enlightenment?” that “this tutelage is self-incurred when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another.” I agree with this quote because when there have already been a set of rules and thinking in society, it is difficult to change people’s perspectives, especially when the new ideas are contradicted what people have believed for long time. When a person brings up a new idea, it will definitely be examined by others and they may finally have a discussion about it. However, before and during Enlightenment period, people were afraid of bring up new idea because people were not getting used to new things. Some people might believe that new ideas would eradicate the old beliefs and that was not acceptable, while some believed new reasoning allowed them to develop intellectually. Bring new ideas seemed to be a good idea that could eventually move society as a whole into new direction, but it was, at the same time, not easy to implement due to the suppression from people ahead of them.

Nevertheless, when the number of people who believed the new ideas increased, it would become new power that others could not ignore. After it kept spreading out, it would eventually become something acceptable to society. In another word, letting people embrace new idea was not a one-day process and could not be done by only one person, it in fact took a lot of time to make more people believe and accept it at the end.

After the reading of “Discourse on Method from Rene Descartes, he inspired me and changed my attitude toward learning. The biggest doubts that I have in mind after reading the whole text was “What is learning? What is knowledge?” As I read the article, I agree that knowledge is not just something that put into your mind and reinforces it.  At the begging of the article, the author talks about how the “old method” – Aristotelian science that is based on demonstration and syllogism. He was unsatisfied with the educational method that claims he would get everything he needed to know for higher education. Even though he completed the learning successfully, he felt that he should not just satisfy whatever is given to him. He believes that those “truth” are uncertainty, and he needs to reexamine the right and wrong. By having this idea in mind, he attempts to put away the precepts and principles of Aristotelian philosophy and adopt the new method to fulfill his desire of finding certainty. He argues that people should doubt and questions the “truth” instead just accept them by not knowing the certainty. After he decides to abandon the former principles, there are four rules that guide him through his journey. And I find these helpful for studying new knowledge. The four principles are (1) Do not accept everything as true unless it is evident, (2) solve problems individually by breaking them down into small pieces (3) learning from the basic knowledge and go toward higher level (4) double check/reexamine your work carefully. His theories seem as philosophy, which he claims that “I am thinking, therefore I exist.” His ideas have great contribution philosophy study, he argues that his mind can be distinct from the body. This argument raised some significant philosophical questions such as the relationships with my mind/body and myself. And the connection with the body and mind. His thinking has inspired the others, and his ideas could also see as the role of modern philosophy. Overall, it was a great article that it can raise many debates on this topic.

As Immanuel Kant states enlightenment was a man’s release from his self incurred tutelage. Which means that a person can make his decisions without the help of another person. Kant talks about how he wants the public to think freely and act judiciously, but there problems arise because of tutelage. Tutelage is when a person can think or do anything for themselves with direction form another and Kant talks about the reasons for which this occurs. One of the reasons is laziness as men thought it was difficult to enlarge their knowledge, this is a point I definitely agree on because now a days this occurs often people often get lazy to learn or do thing that seem hard so they find the easy way out by getting someone else to do it for them. Another reason the Kant talks about is cowardice which he says the general public feared to use their own reasoning and he gives a great example as he talks about how a guardian puts fear into a person by making them so used to having the help of the guardian and even showing the dangers if they try and go alone when the danger is not great at all and all this does is make the person fearful and timid to even try to think or do anything for themselves. I’ve seen many cases of this happen when fear is put into a person and they get traumatized it really affects them and the way they think it is still a problem to this day. Kant discusses the requirements for enlightenment and the most important one mentioned was freedom and I can agrees with that as freedom is our way of expressing ourselves freely without any fear of anything, but Kant also mentions that their are many restrictions to freedom which limits enlightenment. Kant goes on about the restrictions but its seem a bit extreme when he talks about it because while I agree with having to thinks for ourselves but it is also important to keep an open mind because at the end of the day you make your choices and decisions no one else.

The Enlightenment in Europe and the Americas brought me to think about different perspectives especially in philosophy and society.  One of the greatest movements all around the world, the enlightenment tells how people are changing their mind.  They do not feel that they are belonging to their monarchy anymore instead they want to have their own authority.  People are seeking more goods, rationality, and practical mechanisms that it brought about “the Industrial Revolution”, “American Revolution”, and more.

To apply this act into our life, we can vote for our president and we are seeking more pleasure.  Personally, I do not believe the Enlightenment occurred since not only people’s changing mind, but also inventions became more primarily issues.  The idea that pleasure is mainly settled in our life.  Furthermore, philosophical ideas are declining and now practical is getting popular.  Although, a lot of philosophical thinkers like Decartes and David Hume navigated ideal theories and thoughts to people, I think that it is not enough to persuade people getting into more theoretical things because as time goes by, people want to eliminate their dislike opinions and acts.

Every time I heard the word enlightenment I refer it to the mindset of inspiration or new ideas. It was the movement when people start to ask about the existed and question the reality. In “what is enlightenment “the author Kant views it as the freedom of making our own decision without any guidance from others, the bravery of acting under our own reasoning. It is very important to express ourselves as a unique individual and share our emotion to others. And it is absolutely true that are plenty of people who don’t use their full potential to logic everything they experience in this world,

However, there is a one thing I like to argue with the author is that not everyone can think or act like a scholar. The aspects of laziness and cowardice are the normal behaviors of a human being. It is too difficult to ask every person to reason everything for themselves, and there are a lot of challenges and obstacles a man can experiences in his life, feel the urge to ask someone else for a solution is not a horrible thing to do.  If a person is facing a lawsuit, ask a lawyer for a legal consultant is way better than solve the issue on his own, or a student has trouble understanding a math question, he should reach out to a mathematics professor to solve the problem. the help from others doesn’t necessary make us mindless but rather an easier way to learn. There are rules or laws under every country because those resections keep the society organizes and functional.

“What is enlightenment?” Kant defines it as “Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage.” Self-incurred tutelage is because of laziness and is lack of courage. People are not dare to know and not dare to make use of their own reason but only slavishly obey the “guardians”, which chiefly in matters of religion instead of arts and sciences. I also have question about Kant’s “the guardians of the people (in spiritual things) should themselves be incompetent is an absurdity which amounts to the externalization of absurdities.” Compared with individuals, the public should enlighten itself more possibly, if only freedom is granted. Here, Kant uses a few sentences to explain why “the public can only slowly attain enlightenment.” I did not quite get why. Enlightenment requires a greater degree of freedom to make public use of one’s reason. That is, to be human, to argue as much as you will, to appreciate your worth, and to think for yourself. Human starts to see themselves, rather than gods or spirits. People should believe that guardianship could never be possible to shut off all further enlightenment.

If one wants himself or herself be enlightened, one must divest the human race of its tutelage and freely use his or her own light of reason. “Do we now live in an enlightened age?” I really like Kant’s answer. “No, but we do live in an age of enlightenment.” And I believe today we still live in an age of enlightenment, as we are still lacking critical thinking, are scared of challenging authorities, and are reluctant to argue why. For example, instead of thinking about how this mathematical formula forms, most students just automatically accept what the professor teaches and memorize how this formula works in those practice problems. Students are focus more on how to get a better grade on the exam rather than truly learning. I believe this is not what the education system wants to see.

Enlightenment is a common word that it seems that we all know it, but we are seldom to think about it. If someone ask us: “what is Enlightenment? And are we live in the age of enlightenment?” We may not able to answer this question because we never think about these questions. After I read Kant’s “What is Enlightenment?” I began to wonder the meaning of the enlightenment. As Kant stated, “Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage.” From my understanding, it means that Enlightenment is a man’s release from immaturity that caused by himself and able to use his own reason to guide himself.

From this article, I agree that laziness and cowardice are the reason that it causes people lacks of reason. In my opinion, each person has the sense of reason, but the influence of society or environment make him hard to get out of the state of immature. Human have a tendency to depend on someone else. If they are accustomed to living in a comfortable environment, they would not like to change it. If they don’t worry about something due to someone else’s help, they would not attempt to do things by themselves. Therefore, the state of dependency is the reflection of laziness that it causes people not enlightened. Also, even if people are willing to do things or face threaten by themselves, failure would often make them frightens and keep away from dangerous. Therefore, cowardice also make people cannot escape from immaturity.

Moreover, society is also an important place for the enlightenment. the restriction of society also limited people to be enlightened. Because society has to set a rule for the benefit of public to make society in order, so people have to sacrifice something such as freedom to satisfied public interest. However, in the other hand, I believe society is a good occasion for enlightenment thought to be propagated by enlightenment thinker, so it is possible for people to release from “self-incurred tutelage” with the help of public. Therefore, society is a contradiction place because it can spread the enlightenment thought as well as restricting it. It is impossible for all people to be enlightened. As Kant said that we do live in age of enlightenment, but we do not live in an enlightened age.

What is enlightenment? As the first sentence in the passage goes, “enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage.” Throughout the passage, I think the immaturity is self-inflicted not from a lack of understanding of reason, but from the lack of courage to use one’s reason. Why do people lack of courage to use reason? Kant comes down to two major reasons – “laziness and cowardice”. I believe that “laziness and cowardice” cause not only the lack of courage to use reason, but also the lack of courage to try something new and challenging. It’s a common situation in the society. Somehow, people are unwilling or afraid to change. Take me as an example. Once I’m familiar with an environment, I don’t want to remove. Besides, if I’ve already had a stable friend circle, I would not do networking anymore, because it’s unnecessary and it’s not easy to start a new relationship.

I learned from psychology class that people get used to stay in their comfort zone, which is a psychological state in which things feel familiar to people. I can totally understand why people want to keep themselves in comfort zone. However, what happens outside the comfort zone is magic. We have to summon up all our courage to break out of the comfort zone to take challenges and try to be a better man. To some degree, Kant’s “What is Enlightenment” positively helps us to realize how important to encourage ourselves to overcome laziness and cowardice. In a word, the spiritual value of “What is Enlightenment” still plays a significant role even now.

Descartes core ideology and purpose is the truth and nothing but the truth. It is constantly brought up that he seeks the truth and wishes to distance himself from the act of jumping to conclusions. He describes four laws as a method to abandon previous opinions entirely. The first law is to not accept anything as true unless evident in order to avoid prejudice. The other laws are to break down problems for an easier analysis, begin studying subjects that are very simple and then move forward to more complex ones, and to be wary of progress and to review it to make sure nothing has been left out.

Descartes way of thinking may be effective if you are seeking the plain truth, but it gives little to no room for imagination or creativity. There isn’t much flexibility with his straight forward way of thinking. Just because something isn’t evident or in your face doesn’t mean that it’s not real or true. The one thing I can agree on is the fact that Descartes makes a clear division of mind and body. Ultimately, he believes that the mind is who we are and what we are meant to be. In my opinion, this distinction should be implemented by everyone daily. Your mind is the core center of who you are, where as physicality is redundant in comparison.  I also found it very interesting how Descartes sees himself as almost god-like towards the end when he describes and reflects upon his previous doubts. This work overall highlights the importance of questioning what you learn, what you are told, and inclusively your own beliefs, In other words, doubt is something you should always have on your mind, and you should go outside the box a bit instead of sticking to norms.