Immanuel Kant’s essay An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’ is a work that creates a sense of dependence and independence.” The motto of the Enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding.” (Kant 54).Kant plainly tells the audience that we as human beings aren’t able to function in society properly and yet dares us to go out of our comfort zone. Kant presents the problems with society and the people within then encourages the people to better people because Kant knows the potential that each of the people in society holds. Is Kant’s an essay a call to democratic thinking? Kant’s essay dares us to be wise which is a call to go out and be an individual; go into the world and think for you. As a society we are still being spoon feed everything we don’t like change, we don’t like being told to do something different because we don’t know or what the unknowing. “Instead, new prejudices, like the ones they replaced, will serve as a leash to control the great unthinking mass.” (Kant 55). Society constrains the thinking process, we see what we can do and we replace the old with the same new thing or we choose not to change a thing. Kant essential words tell us that we need to be given freedom we can’t be prepared for it. Kant’s work provides examples and different experiences that can happen between the population of the society and the different aspects of the society compared to the government and how the government operates separately and coherently. Kant saw this when he decided to write this how could we have not choose to change, or maybe all of Kant’s words were correct?
One point that I would like to present is the modern democratic thinking that Kant has written within his answer to the question what is enlightenment. I read this and instantly thought about today and how relevant it was. “…if only the public