Kant: Was ist Aufklärung?

This chapter focuses on Immanuel Kant's analysis/view of the cultural phenomenon called Aufklärung and his argument that the Enlightenment was “a great act of courage, a passionate invitation never to be afraid of emancipation.” In 1784, Kant published a short essay advancing an “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View.” The article discussed the growing importance of the Aufklärung and distinguished between the traditional “work of practicing empirical historians” and the effort to draft instead an “[i]dea of universal history.” The chapter considers Kant's views on the “enlightenment,” whether we now live in an enlightened age, and the clash between faith in God and Enlightenment reason. It also examines Kant's description of the Enlightenment as a precise modality of the exercise of reason, which was animated by a strong “spirit of freedom” and intimately connected with mankind's natural need for knowledge.