How did Kant define Enlightenment? Use Kant’s definition to discuss
whether either Rousseau or Marx is an Enlightenment figure. In other words,
choose one of the following comparisons to write about: Kant compared to
Rousseau, OR Kant compared to Marx.
Kant defined Enlightenment as man’s emergence from his self-incurred
immaturity, where immaturity is defined as the inability to use one’s own
understanding without the guidance of another. He went further to argue that
this immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack
of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. He
supplements his definition with the motto “Sapere aude!” (Dare to know) [1 p1].
Reading through Kant’s essay it is possible to find evidence to support the
notion that Rousseau is an Enlightenment figure. In ‘daring to know’ Kant
rejects any value of ‘a book to have understanding in place of me’ meaning he
would ‘need not make any efforts at all’ when thinking about the world [1 p1].
Rousseau’s writings are a critique of both Enlightenment and counter
Enlightenment thinking and thus challenge the thinking of his readers, Kant
included.
For instance Rousseau’s agrees that the Enlightenment is an emergence,
writing ‘it is a great and beautiful spectacle to see a man emerging from
oblivion of his own by his own efforts’, these efforts being his ability to reason,
but he sees the rewards as being false in the form of manners and appearance
which separate man from his true nature where there are no sincere
friendships, no real esteem and no well-founded trusts [2 p3, p5]. This
viewpoint would run against that of Kant but in doing so would create ‘the effort’
that Kant demands from books. Kant would no doubt appreciate the
opportunity to criticise Rousseau’s conclusions but at the same time admire
those conclusions as coming from a mind which has the ‘freedom to make
public use of one's reason in all matters.’ [1 p2].
It is the need for freedom where Kant and Rousseau agree. Rousseau’s
complaint in the first discourse [2] is that arts and sciences remove man from
his natural state and thus curtail his freedoms, whilst in the second discourse
[3] he argues that this separation from nature has created the source of
inequality, particularly from the point where man develops a sense of
ownership of property. For Kant however freedom to use reason as a public
tool, in other words to publish and disseminate ideas, is the freedom which
counts and is the source of enlightenment.
Rousseau’s writings meet the standards that Kant applies to the public use of
reason [1 p2]. Rousseau’s voice is the voice of a learned man publicly
expressing his views on social impropriety and injustice. He meets the test of
being a scholar, who is completely free as well as obliged to impart to the
public all his carefully considered, well-intentioned thoughts on the mistaken
aspects of those doctrines which he stands against.
Neither Kant nor Rousseau believe they are living in an enlightened age but
Kant argues that they are living in an age of enlightenment [1 p3]. I would
conclude from the arguments that I have laid out above, that Rousseau is a
writer who both challenges his readers and is an example of a public use of
reason, that Kant would view Rousseau as being a figure of the
Enlightenment.
1.
2.
3.
Immanuel Kant, ‘An Answer to the Question “What is Enlightenment?”’
http://ebooks.gutenberg.us/WorldeBookLibrary.com/whatenli.htm
Jean-Jacques Rousseau ‘Discourse on the Arts and Sciences’.
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/r/rousseau/jean_jacques/arts/
Jean-Jacques Rousseau ‘A Discourse on Inequality’. Penguin Classics.
London.