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.