Sapere Aude!

This post is a short comment on an essay by Kant titled "An answer to the question: what is Enlightenment?" So, you're probably asking a completely different question: what does Kant have to do with knitting? right? Nothing. No need to write an essay to answer that.

But there is so much a girl can say about knitting for the heck of it as opposed to out of obligation. Yep, I know this blog is about knitting, but I'll be damned if I'm wasting my time writing about knitting if I've got nothing I want to say about it, just because this blog has got knitting in its title.

Besides philosophy is a nice complement to knitting, they sure as hell have got nothing in common.

So, back to the subject of enlightenment. I'm talking about this little book on the  Great Ideas series published by Penguin. It comes with a series of 4 essays by dear uncle Immanuel, the first one of them provides the title to the book and the quotation on the cover which reads like this

For enlightenment of this kind,
all that is needed is
Freedom.
And the
Freedom
in question is the most
innocuous form of all   
Freedom
to make public use of
one's reason in all matters.

Pretty, uh? Very nice. Have you noticed the use of the word innocuous? Doesn't it make you suspicious? Yes... It should.

The essay argues in favour of what Kant names enlightenment but is really quite simply complete freedom of the press (I know I shouldn't need to write complete here), for Immanuel and the likes of him, although you're left with the vague impression that uncle Immanuel is more worried about saving his own neck if he publishes something that makes Aunt Frederick unhappy. He therefore uses the occasion to butter the latter up, let me quote to prove my point:

In this respect our age is the age of enlightenment, the century of Frederick.

It makes you want to be named Frederick, doesn't it? It goes on to describe what makes being Frederick so great. And of course this is nothing but what serves Kant's own agenda of being able to publish whatever pleases him while keeping is head attached to his neck. A very disingenuous essay in favour of a very good cause indeed. It is not that I disagree with what he says, but I'm not very impressed with how he says it. It makes one wonder if Aunt Frederick was really so vain as to turn naive (I won't go as far as say stupid). From what I've heard, wasn't he a near genius?

Still there are some truly wonderful pearls. I'm particularly fond of the beginning.

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. 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. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere Aude! [Dare to be wise!] Have courage to use your own understanding.

The essay goes on to defend that people should stop being lazy and cowardly and start thinking with their own heads instead of following orders of bosses, priests, politicians and the like. I'm afraid that Immanuel was being very naive about this. In an ideal world I'd absolutely agree, in the real world there is plenty of evidence that people are stupid and mean, specially mean. If they started following their own minds they'd start killing themselves. Let them watch American TV instead, dear Immanuel, it is depressing but we get to keep our necks attached to our shoulders. Of course I've got the benefit of the modern WWW, a window to the brilliant minds of the common folk. Oh boy, I'm probably going to be trolled for this, or... most probably, some idiot is going to agree with me.

Already at the end of the first page, no need to read further, a bold statement on the entire fair sex is made that clearly proves the man has never met me. God bless him.

PS: If you think this is a scathing review because being a member of the entire fair sex, I've got offended with Immanuel, think again. I loved the essay, if I hadn't I wouldn't have bothered writing about it in here. I don't need to agree with everything he says to love it. On the contrary, I like being challenged, I like being forced to think. If someone just tells me something I already know, well, I get bored, don't you? I don't get why most people only like to be told what they already think. Maybe they need enlightenment? Yes, that must be it. They need to dare to have their own opinions without the need to have them validated by others.

Beside, as I mentioned before, I mostly agree with what he says, I'm just having a go at how he says it for fun. I actually laughed out loud at Kant's primitive sexism. I thought it was hilarious and probably quite justified based on his own experience, if you want my sincere opinion. Although the addition of entire when fair sex would have been more than enough to get his point across makes me suspicious.

Since I'm at it, I may add that my jocular use of aunt and uncle is not meant as disrespect but only as a reminder that these people, no matter how deserving of our admiration, have a brain just like yours. After all, there is a difference between admiration and reverence. The latter being the one that may froze your brain. So Sapere Aude! Don't get too impressed with names like Frederick and Immanuel, call them aunt and uncle, it helps. Don't get too impressed with lofty subjects like enlightenment. Dare to laugh at them. Dare making a fool of yourself by making stupid jokes about them. Have fun! Don't take anything in life too seriously, soon you'll be dead like them.

It is nice to think that there was a time when an intelligent man like Kant could write utopian essays on how to achieve perpetual peace. Today, after two great wars that completely destroyed the world as Kant knew it, I couldn't even bare to read his essay. Too much disillusionment and bitterness. I wish politicians did read Kant, not necessarily his utopian essays but Kant in general. It would avoid so much unnecessary trouble caused by ignorance and stupidity. This post was supposed to be short, and here am I starting a whole new subject. Good night, sleep well.

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