In his essay “An answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?”, Immanuel Kant writes “For this enlightenment,however, nothing is required but freedom… ” He goes on to elaborate that the type of freedom he is referring to is the freedom to use one’s own reason. Enlightenment, according to Kant is defined as being able to think for yourself and use your own understanding instead of relying on the orders from others.
However, in the example of Frederick Douglass we see that the enlightenment cannot be achieved without the essential tool that is education. Without an education, Douglass would have not been able to see through the misconception other colored people believed that they were required by God to obey their masters: “I have met many religious colored people, at the south, who are under the delusion that God requires them to submit to slavery, and to wear their chains with meekness and humility. (Chapter 6 “A change Came O’er the Spirit of My Dream”).”
The education provided to him in the beginning by Mrs. Hugh and from his own pursuit in the matter is the true ingredient that led to his enlightenment. If we were to use the criterion used by Kant to determine how enlightenment could be achieved, Frederick Douglass would never have been able to reach enlightenment because he was not allowed to “make public use of one’s own freedom (Kant).” Frederick Douglass even admits it in chapter 11 of My Bondage and My Freedom that it is because of his education that he can truly start to think for himself:
“The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest slavery, and my enslavers…Knowledge had come; light had penetrated the moral dungeon where i dwelt…”
At this point, he is not longer just obeying the norms and laws of the land, he is challenging them and using his own reasoning instead of that imposed on him by his masters and white men. It was not through freedom to publicly use one’s own reason since he was a slave; but through education that Douglass was able t reach enlightenment.
What’s good:
You’re putting the two texts in conversation.
You use specific quotes.
You have an angle.
Concern:
Your integration of quotes needs to be smoother for a paper.
I am not really sure how your saying that Douglass has to learn to read before he can be enlightened goes against what Kant is saying.
First Kant’s idea of enlightenment doesn’t mean that people might not be taught how to read. Indeed the freedom it’s predicated on is about being a scholar and writing in a public sphere (so one must need be able to write and read to exercise that enlightened ability).
Also learning to read is not itself knowledge or thinking. It is literally a skill set that opens one up to the places where histories, current event, and debates are often staged.