Kant states that to be an enlightenment thinker you have to think on your own and have your own ideas and thoughts. He states “The public use of one’s reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among human beings; the private use of one’s reason may, however, often be very narrowly restricted without this particularly hindering the progress of enlightenment”(Kant, 1798), he means that to encourage enlightenment in society freedom is enough and you have to go pubic with it so the ideas can spread instead of just keeping it to oneself because it can’t be spread and you can’t bring about change through the education which can’t or isn’t spread to others. This is contradicted by Douglass when he states that, “She was an apt woman; and a little experience soon demonstrated, to her satisfaction, that education and slavery were incompatible with each other” (Frederick, Chapter 7), so basically the woman says that a slave couldn’t be educated because those two things don’t compliment each other. These things both contradict each other because Kant says that to encourage enlightenment you only need freedom, but that isn’t true because you do need education to think whether its education from school, people, or experiences, but the woman said that education and slavery don’t go together meaning if you don’t have freedom your education is useless because as slaves they couldn’t even do anything with the education they got from their experiences. Even though slaves did get education, but there was no impact because they didn’t have freedom to spread it.
Experience and Knowledge
Mary Shelley’s monster in her novel, Frankenstein, demonstrates John Locke’s theory of tabula rasa– no innate principles in mind. Rather the knowledge of the monster builds from the sensations and reflections he experiences in his striking journey.
Rousseau and Young Fredrick Douglas
“We are born sensitive and from our birth onwards we are affected in various ways by our environment. As soon as we become conscious of our sensations we tend to seek or shun the things that cause them, at first because they are pleasant or unpleasant, then because they suit us or not, and at last because of judgments formed by means of the ideas of happiness and goodness which reason gives us. These tendencies gain strength and permanence with the growth of reason, but hindered by our habits they are more or less warped by our prejudices. Before this change they are what I call Nature within us.” (Rousseau 2) Jean Jacques Rousseau is talking about how children absorb everything surrounding them. Everything they encounter effects their point of view and feelings. I believe this theory resonates with Fredrick Douglas’ childhood.
It starts with him being raised by his grandma. Young Fredrick was raised to fear the “Master”. “… whose huge image on so many occasions haunted my childhood’s imagination.”(Fredrick 16) Because of his big fear his grandma kept the date of his departure a secret. He never met his mother so the only love he knows is from his grandmother. Now, when he was sent away he was heart broken because his grandmother had tricked him and left. His mother would visit from time to time around the night. Of course, he was not deeply attached to his own mother but he noticed that even though she was going to get in trouble every time she visited, to her it didn’t matter because “That a true mother’s heart was hers and slavery had difficulty in paralyzing it with unmotherly difference.”(Fredrick 18) When she passed away he didn’t feel anything because those feelings never developed. He even says “I had to learn the value of my mother long after her death, and by witnessing the devotion of other mothers to their children.” By observing other mothers he ends up learning what he should have felt for his own. Rousseau would agree that he didn’t seek his mother because she wasn’t their to care for him when he was a baby.
One of the first observations Douglas made when he was little ,that opened his eyes to the cruelty of slavery and the heartlessness of his Master, was when a young slave woman came to ask for help. She was beaten up pretty bad, her face was covered in blood and all the Master said was that he ” believed she deserved every bit of it”. (Fredrick 27) Fredrick took the master’s actions as “stern, unnatural, violent.”(Fredrick 27) There were many other mistreated slaves that Fredrick witnessed. He observed, listened, and hated whippings. Some of his nights consisted of screams and shrieks from slaves being punished. “Why am I a slave? Why are some people slaves, and others masters? Was there ever a time this was not so? How did the relation commence?” ( Fredrick 29) All of his observations led him to question and hate slavery. Also when God, who supposedly made black people slaves and was a good man, became involved he claims that point blank it was against all his notions of goodness. (Fredrick 29) He was told many contradictions that did not satisfy his questions of why he was in this situation. All of these people and observations made a huge impact on his feelings as a child, which led him to develop a certain point of view and curiousity.
Enlightenment
Having a institutionalized education does not make you an enlightened person. John Locke attended school for years before coming across philosophical work that sparked his interest free thinking and the ideas of ones self. The monster in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein was deeply depressed because, It was aware of its self and how he will never be welcomed in society, in comparison to Victor Frankenstein who was well educated but had so sense of self or of its responsibilities to the monster.
Sensation and Reflections, the Best Source of Knowledge
Knowledge can be best obtained from personal experiences such as sensations and reflections; through the work of John Locke’s “Human Understanding” and Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” it illuminates and demonstrates this idea.
Knowledge comes through experience.
The school system is not the only way of becoming more knowledgeable, Emerson states that the world around us opens up our thoughts and through actions we are able to gain wisdom just how Frankenstein’s monster was able to use the world around him to grow as a person.
The Linking of Experiences and Sensations
Knowledge is obtained through sensations and reflections, as stated by John Locke, which is emphasized through Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, where the monster learns through experiences with the absence of any preconceived ideas and innate principles.
The Interconnectedness of Experience and Literature
Jean Jacques Rousseau emphasized the importance of personal experience for a pupil’s education in his treatise for education while the monster in Mary Shelley’s story relied on books to formulate his education, and although both are important, education should not solely be based off books or experience only, instead, it is the interconnectedness of the two that creates a valuable and priceless education.
Education from Experiences
Education is not only attainable through schooling, but one’s experiences can be a means for his/her education, like Rousseau believed education is gained through “other things” and it can be seen when Frankenstein was able to learn to survive on his own through the education he gained from his experiences from nature.
Life is Our Dictionary
One particular point that I thought was interesting in An American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson was where he made the metaphor that “Life is our dictionary.” He then continued to state many more metaphors about basically how in life, we define everything we know through our experiences. The then concluded by saying, “ Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.”
What he means here is that learning from books and colleges are sort of a secondary, or back-up, source. All they do is merely copy the things you can experience by yourself in life.
I feel that Emerson also believes that the best way to learn in life is to learn through experiences instead of institution. He states that your experiences are what allow you to know how to live day-to-day. “Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of to-day.” What he is saying here is that life’s experiences give us tools or guidelines on how to live.
I for the most part agree with Emerson because books are written by people who have put their experiences in writing. However, there may be a limit to how much of your experiences you are able to put into writing. Basically, books are reflections of other people’s experiences, but not to their full extent. Only the writer of the book understands the book the best.
So in order to really understand life and nature, you can’t read about other people’s limited experiences, but experience things on your own.