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What is Enlightenment?

What is Enlightenment?. “What is Enlightenment?”. “Enlightenment” as a Figure, an Age, a Process Ideals, institutions, ideology of “Enlightenment” (e.g.: equality, rights, the market, the public) Kant on “Enlightenment”: What? Who? When? Where? Why? How?

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What is Enlightenment?

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  1. What is Enlightenment?

  2. “What is Enlightenment?” “Enlightenment” as a Figure, an Age, a Process Ideals, institutions, ideology of “Enlightenment” (e.g.: equality, rights, the market, the public) Kant on “Enlightenment”: What? Who? When? Where? Why? How? Enlightenment and the Problem of “Freedom”

  3. What does it mean to become "enlightened"? Nosce teipsum: “know yourself” Become a better, wiser, more mature person: change yourself Private good, public good: on collective ‘betterment’ How does “enlightenment” work? Who knows? (a real question)

  4. Enlightenment = Aufklärung Aufklärung: to clear up, bring (to) light, illuminate (light as a figure or metaphor for knowing) Enlightenment as Historical Age (DieAufklärung): 17th/18th centuries (roughly, Descartes to Kant) Enlightenment as Process: as ‘Progress’ (teleology, moving toward an ‘end’) as a ‘Project’ (the project of ‘reform’)

  5. The Enlightenment: An “Age of Criticism” Philosophical foundations for social and political change: actions follow ideas The transformation of “common sense” Enlightenment and the making of “public opinion” New institutions of “the public”: new spaces and forms for public dialogue and debate

  6. Ideals of Enlightenment Reason as communication: know yourself, read yourself, discuss yourself/yourselves Equality: by right(s), by law, by nature (“We hold these truths to be self-evident”) Self-governance: by the people, for the people (“The people” makes and gives “itself” the law) On Reform: remaking society, reshaping ourselves

  7. Circulation and the enlightened res publica What makes a public ‘thing’? the circulation of ideas(and persons) within a state, and beyond… The “res publica of letters” and the Cosmopolitan ideal (the interconnected “World”) How do we imagine the “subject” of enlightenment? (What is it, and who takes part or makes it happen?) Ideology as “objective illusion” (Habermas)

  8. An answer to the question(s) of “Enlightenment”:What? Who? When? Where? Why? How? “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity” Who does it (happen to)? “Man,” individual and collective What is it? An emergence: a movementor change from (out of) one state or condition to another Where does it lead? (by inference), to a state of ‘maturity’ How will it/’he’ get there? By overcoming ‘self-imposed’ limits (how?: “have the courage to use your own understanding!”)

  9. A closer look “self-imposed immaturity”: hetero-nomy vs. auto-nomy “Have courage to use your own understanding”: (the individual vs. the collective “you”) “the public” as the (“more likely”) “subject” of Enlightenment How does a group think? through expression, dialogue, debate (nosce teipsum “discourse yourselves”)

  10. The (tricky) question of “freedom” The public needs “only…freedom” to become Enlightened– but more of one kind than another… 1. Less private freedom, more public freedom 2. Less civil freedom, more “spiritual” freedom (Kant on the Kingdom vs. the “Freistaat,” and the problem of the freedom of speech) “Argue, but obey!”: On making men “more than machines,” while preserving the “mechanism” of society and state

  11. Onthe limits of Enlightenment The temporality of Enlightenment: slowly, slowly A duty to the present, and a duty to the future (but not the same ‘duty’…) Negotiating the dangers of enlightenment: just be yourself, you know? speak from your heart...(but I’d hate for you to have to leave..) A dynamic “solution” to the paradox of freedom:moving toward an “end” in principled self-governance (the “kernel” and the “shell”: on habits of thinking)

  12. The ends of Enlightenment (?) Does Enlightenment ever reach its “end”? “Age of enlightenment” vs. an “enlightened age” Enlightenment, probably(“most likely…almost inevitable”) The work of the ideal: beliefs about progress as the foundation for (actual) progress…

  13. The ends of Enlightenment (?) “This enlightenment, and with it a certain commitment of heart which the enlightened man cannot fail to make to the good he clearly understands, must step by step ascend the throne and influence the principles of government.”(Kant, Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View) Last word: does “enlightenment” need an “end”? (Foucault’s reading of Enlightenment, two ways…)

  14. Enlightenment and Modernity Two ways of reading “Enlightenment” [Foucault] a) As teleology (progress toward an end) b) As a break with the past/present (an idea of “the modern”) “Let us imagine that the Berlinische Monatsschrift still exists and that it is asking its readers the question: What is modern philosophy? Perhaps one could respond with an echo: modern philosophy is the philosophy that is attempting to answer the question raised so imprudently two centuries ago: Was ist Aufklärung [What is Enlightenment]?” – Michel Foucault

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