Enlightenment: Outside of Guidance From Culture and Society
Enlightenment is men’s ability to choose to use his own reason outside of guidance from culture and society. It is the abolishment of one’s blind faith and the belief in superstitions. This requires not only the freedom to make one’s own decisions but the freedom to express one’s thoughts. Enlightenment involves one’s choice to step beyond the line of ‘what is known’ and the realization that their own logic is more powerful than any monarch’s decree.
To be Enlightened means to have overcome the burden of societal guidance. This burden is placed upon an individual before their age of realization, in other words, the caregiver raises the individual and asserts a relationship as a ‘superior guardian’. While this relationship is necessary for an adolescent, it is all too common for adults to continue this practice throughout their lives. A person can be Enlightened and still follow the rules of society. For Enlightenment is not about rebelling, but rather expressing opinions or interpretations. For example, a citizen can discuss their negative views on the current leader’s policies while ultimately obeying.
Critics of the Enlightenment declare that philosophers had the wrong idea of the individual. “The individual is not an a-cultural and a-historical entity who can stand apart from his/her time and place to appraise how well that context realizes abstract-universal notions of rationality.” These critics argue the concept of reason is the result of the surrounding culture. Rhianwen Lowry-Thomas states “culture is a river you can’t just climb out of to decide if you like the way that things are flowing.” This is a valid argument, because how can a man leave all picturing of societal guidance and culture behind, while still taking part in society. On the other hand, there are plenty of individuals throughout history who have claimed to be Enlightened. Kant wrote, “Men work themselves gradually out of barbarity if only intentional artifices are not made to hold them in it.”
Although individuals throughout time have been Enlightened, I believe that as a society we have never been Enlightened, and we certainly aren’t Enlightened today. While society today has more freedom and religion isn’t taken as seriously, there are far fewer Enlightened individuals. This comes back to man’s ability to choose to use his own reason. Perhaps most of society has been in the shadows for so long that they no longer realize there is light. “New prejudices will serve as well as old ones to harness the great unthinking masses.”
In the 1976 prophetic political satire Network, television anchorman Howard Beale goes on a public rant about how people no longer think for themselves. “You’re beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, and you raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness you maniacs! In God’s name, you people are the real thing, we are the illusion!” This is a perfect example of why society is not Enlightened in the existence of technology. Though present society has the freedom to think for themselves, technology is too convenient. There is no need for someone to take time out of their lives to do such things if they can pay for someone else to do it. As Kant said “If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if I can only pay-others will readily undertake the irksome work for me.” The Age of Enlightenment was a time where it was easier for men to break their chains of self-induced immaturity. However, in the present, it is far more difficult to become Enlightened.
