Enlighten me, please.

What is enlightenment? Is it Buddha perched upon a large rock in a mist filled forest in the dawn of day? Is it the Pastor preaching parables upon the masses? Or is it the newly liberated people of an oppressed nation? Is it discovering new knowledge or evaluating old ones? Like most of the topics on this blog, if not all, it is certainly objective and open to interpretation but there are some basics for which to guide you in your dark filled corridor toward enlightenment. It is a slow and gradual process, like puberty, sprouting from below and making its way up. The theorist Immanuel Kant simply put enlightenment as “man’s emergence from his self imposed immaturity” (What is Enlightenment?, Kant). This is a unique claim in which our immaturity is self imposed rather than just a habit of our being, part of the human growth. But furthermore, what is immaturity? Is it a lack of peach fuzz on your chin or missing vibrato in ones voice? Again I turn to Kant who said “immaturity is the inability to use ones understanding without guidance from another” (What is Enlightenment?, Kant). As much as it is up to us to rid the mind of the affliction of immaturity it lies also in the hands of the community. An oppressed populace cannot claim enlightenment when their liberties are constricted and confined to the corners of a particular regime or ideology, only freedom can usher in enlightenment. When one is free to think for himself, free from the burdens of a career or designated post, and free from the obligations society demands, then and only then can a public take delight in its own enlightenment- only then can the shackles of an immature mind be lifted and allow man to teach himself and others.


"Kant's "What Is Enlightenment"" University of Pennsylvania | Department of English. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.