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.