With the human cognitive developed from ignorance to ration, knowledge based on facts makes human better knowing themselves and the world, helping them to control their own desire. Life would be struggling for people who are ignorant or thinking of this world only by feelings. It says in the article, ‘Life could be understood as a struggle between rationality and emotion, with feeling frequently exercising controlling force.” (93) This struggle also happens in the article of ‘life of a sensuous women’, the narrator struggled all her life time between physical love and emotion love. Probably because the narrator lived in the community where knowledge was closed and limited, and the only thing she could used to think of this world is just her feeling, which is irrational.
It also says, “The gap between the ideal and the actual caused frustration and often despair’. We, as human beings, live in nature and make connection with nature every single day. Human have to make connection with nature and real world through gaining more and more knowledge based on facts, forcing human better understand this world. Without understanding the nature, human beings feel frustrated and painful because the difference of their feeling and real world. Thus, Enlightenment can help us get through the gap between emotion and ration.
In old society, treatment for men and women are unequal. This unequal treatment breaks the relationship between women and men, binding the improvement of community. This happens in ‘Life of a sensuous woman’. The narrator was born to service to men. The society clamp down women, making her feel low and ashamed during their life time. However, the Enlightenment as a way let men and women connected by making them know the vital of marriage which is a small community.
Although irrational experience to some extent binds us understanding the community, it is humanity which is fundamental thing of this world. It says “rationality thus lies below all apparently irrational experience.” I think the rational thing here indicates the universal that will never change which is humanity. Our values and knowledge changes all the time, but all of these based on humanity.