In November 1784, the Berlinischer Monatsschrift published an article titled 'An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?' The article's author was Immanuel Kant. His famous answer was, "Enlightenment is man's emergence from self-inflicted immaturity (Unmündigkeit)." This long-standing question is a historical staple that continues to preoccupy the present. Two hundred years later, the French post-modern philosopher Michel Foucault still asks it in What is Enlightenment? (1984). In this essay, Foucault claims that modernity finds itself with a constant desire to know where we are right now. So where are we? Has humanity emerged from our immaturity, that is to say, really progressed?
American author J.B. Bury's The Idea of Progress, published in 1920, contains a difficult interpretation of 'progress'. According to his definition, the idea of progress is the belief that 'civilization has moved, is moving, and will move in a desirable direction'. But what is 'desirable' here? When the elderly Romantic philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau went for a walk in a pasture he admired for its beauty, he discovered a knitting factory in the middle of the idyll and was horrified and disgusted. Yet if his old adversary Denis Diderot had made the same discovery he would have become curious and happily interested, maybe even paid a study visit. For Diderot, but not for Rousseau, the factory in nature's womb was a sign of progress 'in a desirable direction'. So clearly, subjective perceptions cannot be used to define progress. Social movement is always in some direction and we'll never have a universal I agreement that any particular direction is good.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June / July 2022-Ausgabe von Philosophy Now.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June / July 2022-Ausgabe von Philosophy Now.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
The Two Dennises
Hannah Mortimer observes a close encounter of the same kind.
Heraclitus (c.500 BC)
Harry Keith lets flow a stream of ideas about permanence and change.
Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.
Is Driving Fossil-Fuelled Cars Immoral?
Rufus Duits asks when we can justify driving our carbon contributors.
Abelard & Carneades Yes & No
Frank Breslin says 'yes and no' to presenting both sides of an argument.
Frankl & Sartre in Search of Meaning
Georgia Arkell compares logotherapy and atheistic existentialism.
Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray, now ninety-two years old, was, among many other things, one of the most impactful feminists of the 1970s liberation movements - before she was marginalised, then ostracised, from the francophone intellectual sphere.
Significance
Ruben David Azevedo tells us why, in a limitless universe, we’re not insignificant.
The Present Is Not All There Is To Happiness
Rob Glacier says don’t just live in the now.
Philosophers Exploring The Good Life
Jim Mepham quests with philosophers to discover what makes a life good.