In a famous essay, Kant set out to define the Enlightenment.

For all their differences, the Enlightenment thinkers had this one thing in common: faith in reason.

Kant viewed perpetual peace as the culmination of the Enlightenment ideal.

In 1783, two years after the publication of his masterpiece, The Critique of Pure Reason, the 59-year-old Immanuel Kant could finally afford to buy himself a house. A wall had to be knocked down to create a lecture room, since lectures in those days were not held on university premises but in private rooms, often in the lecturer’s lodgings.

A year later, Kant published an essay in response to a question posed by the Revered Johann Zöllner in a German periodical. The reactionary reverend had asked against the liberals: “What is enlightenment? This question, which is almost as important as what is truth, should be answered before one begins to enlighten! And still I have never found it answered!”

Kant’s Famous Essay: What is Enlightenment?

Kant published his response, entitled, Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment, in his preferred outlet, the Berlin Monthly. The short, thousand-word........

© Psychology Today