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.