Kant's An Answer To The Question: What Is Enlightenment?

Humans are always reluctant to figure out new information and for this we have had centuries of incredible thinkers, artists, and musicians come about. Some have come across new findings by accident and others have worked their entire lives to figure out something to be remembered by. What makes human beings so distinguishable from other species is we have the ability to think and feel and with this we can act in a way that makes us a superior species. With this kind of view on the world we as humans are subjective to our surroundings and build a system of belief through our experiences. While human beings are all destined to be great at birth, the desire to know who we are, why we behave the way we do, what our nature is, and explaining the

It started with Socrates, but eventually went down to Plato and then Aristotle and what they all took from each other was the idea of reason. In Kant’s An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? Kant explains that “it is difficult for any individual man to work himself out of the immaturity that has all but become his nature” (Kant 41). This suggests that the more a man gets comfortable in his lifestyle, the more it becomes a part of him. Man becomes solely dependent on other people to tell them how to live their life and never thinks for themselves. This makes it to where man can only interpret the world in the eyes of their leader, and this gives a false viewpoint of man as an individual. As for John Locke’s view of society that we are all born with a “blank slate” and that we evolve from the experiences we come in contact, gives us the understanding that we are not born with prior knowledge of the rules and that we only learn these rules through our sensory experiences. With the approach many artists had on the nature of human beings dates back centuries. For example, the mysterious paintings done by Vermeer give reasoning to how they viewed women at the time. His painting Girl with a Pearl Earring speculates the role he viewed women to have at that time. Given the nature that women were to stay at home and raise children and keep the household together this fueled the stereotype of the role of women throughout time. We know now that women’s nature is not just for these reasons, but can hold an equal role in society also. Musicians like Bach and Beethoven created music with their human nature. This music was filled with their views and ideas in which humans interpreted to their everyday lives. Music gave another background in human nature that only humans take as an experience worth