Understanding Kant

The article examines Immanuel Kant’s judgments about the principles of mutual understanding between the author and the reader. The philosopher was forced to finalize these principles by the atmosphere of reader misunderstanding that arose immediately after the publication of the book Critique of Pure Reason. However, already in his first publication, the young Kant began to develop the foundations for ensuring mutual understanding between the author and the reader, focusing primarily on the intellectual and moral responsibility of the writer to the reader. And to analyze the degree of readiness of the reader him­self, it is important to understand the general spiritual atmosphere of society. As shown in the article, Kant’s arguments and proposals reflect his deep under­standing of the essence of the Enlightenment as a process of liberating a person from knowledge imposed and imposed on him and gaining the ability to think independently, to be critical of knowledge and the process of cognition itself. The author of the article notes that the same reasons that in the 18th century, ac­cording to Kant, prevented the full manifestation of the spirit of Enlightenment – ensuring free, critical and independent human thinking – have multiplied in the 21st century. What Kant called “a person’s own guilt”, which found itself in a state of “immaturity”, that is, dependence on the opinions of others, has not disappeared, but has clearly intensified in the digital age: now it is much easier to obtain the necessary information than to adjust to its independent perception, and even more so critical reflection and understanding. Although philosophers, psychologists, and educators often write about this disturbing trend, the public discourse generally perceives their arguments as groundless alarmism: people seem to be more interested in the possibilities of independent thinking of artifi­cial intelligence. In the paradoxical situation of the incessant development of the technological power of mankind and the obvious lag of meaningfulness in its use, Kant’s ideas about the own guilt of an intellectually immature per­son are still relevant. Keywords: Immanuel Kant, the Age of Enlightenment, the problem of man, the author – reader relationship, understanding the text, causes of misunderstanding, independent thinking, critical attitude to knowledge, relevance of Kant.