11 ms·

What is Enlightenment? (1784)

144 points by anuraag2601 8y ago

osrec 8y ago
Your username suggests Indian heritage. I find a great deal of Indians interested in this topic, as am I. I'm not sure how correct this description of enlightenment is, but my personal description of it is simply this: a state of total, mindful flow. Like when you solve a problem effortlessly because you have such a deep, intrinsic knowledge of it. It seems to impart a very profound feeling of calmness and equanimity across my mind. A rather wise old man once told me, enlightenment is existing with intrinsic knowledge of your "sense of existence". Apparently it's very subtle and not so easy to pin down mentally... Still not sure how to interpret that, but part of me thinks there's some value in it.
- bpd1069 8y ago
  It is simply being fully awake. We take our consciousness for granted, but in reality, we are sleep-walking the majority of our waking lives. Reacting, not Acting. It is a wakefulness that is universal, I would image another species of intelligent beings also existing with full knowledge and acceptance of existence, be they organic or digital. It is not a human quality, but something much more.
mabynogy 8y ago
It's a polically-correct (at that time) revolt against the King and the religion. The word light refers also to the religion (first words of the Bible and the angel of the light).
- pulisse 8y ago
  Nope. "Enlightenment" in German is "Aufklärung", which is not cognate with the German for light ("Licht").
  - mabynogy 8y ago
    It's a french invention.
    - rhythmvs 8y ago
      ‘Le siècle des Lumières [plural] … Le terme de «Lumières» a été consacré par l’usage pour rassembler la diversité des manifestations de cet ensemble d’objets [la superstition, l’intolérance, l’abus des Églises et des États].’ (fr.wikipedia.org) — Except for Postmodernism, an era does not usually give itself a name. The term was coined later on (say, just about the acme of the revolution’s Terror, when a cult of such lights/gleams/luminaries was contrived). Where in German it reads ‘Aufklärung’, in French ‘éclaircissement’ is used instead. First words of the Bible: בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ. ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ (Gn 1,1) — Okay, the third verse reads, in French (Bible de Sacy translation): ‘Or Dieu dit: Que la lumière soit faite. Et la lumière fut faite.’ — Not a plural. The angel of the light = Lucifer (<Lat. ‘light-bearer’); cfr 2 Cor. 11:14: ‘And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.’ — I don’t believe Kant could ever have imagined him being associated with satanism…
      - mabynogy 8y ago
        Probably not but he is german, not french. French philosophy and ideology assimilated elsewhere.
muxator 8y ago
This piece is one of the foundations not only for Illuminism, but for modern thinking in the western culture in general. Thanks for submitting.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
maxharris 8y ago
This review of What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics and The Ashtray: (Or the Man Who Denied Reality) contains an excellent introduction to Kant's ideas: http://bostonreview.net/science-nature-philosophy-religion/tim-maudlin-defeat-reason http://bostonreview.net/science-nature-philosophy-religion/t...
- ctchocula 8y ago
  +1 This was a really enjoyable read that goes through the history of science from the 20th century, and draws connections between the measurement problem from quantum mechanics and ideas from philosophy including logical positivism and transcendental idealism. It's well worth reading if you are at all interested in open problems in quantum mechanics.
cosmic_ape 8y ago
Regarding 2: >> Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men ... It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. This is beautiful in its simplicity and still has a piece of truth. But a more elaborate modern take would be probably that we also have finite resources. I do believe for instance that the earth surface is spherical, although I cann't immediately come up with an argument to prove this. I have not personally traveled around the world in a boat or launched satellites. It seems that there is fundamentally no choice but to trust some people or traditions of thought on some things and then somehow to decide when to start doubting. Which is why fake news is a problem, for instance.
- laretluval 8y ago
  "We make constant use of formulas, symbols, and rules whose meaning we do not understand and through the use of which we avail ourselves of the assistance of knowledge which individually we do not possess. We have developed these practices and institutions by building upon habits and institutions which have proved successful in their own sphere and which have in turn become the foundation of the civilization we have built up." Hayek
- dnomad 8y ago
  The entire frame is bogus. Starting with Socrates, westerners like Kant believe that cognition (computation) is a solitary endeavor. Thus humans are "vulnerable" to group-think and it's up to the philosopher to "break free" from the illusions of common society. But this is of course the "very persistent illusion." The reality is humans are group think machines, carefully evolved to carry out distributed cognition (language, consciousness -- which is always of others). Kant is fundamentally wrong when he suggests that a single person is unenlightened if he only accepts such truths from others because any rational and sane person in any significant group (>150 people) must accept the vast majority of their knowledge from second hand and third hand sources -- or go live alone in the forest. His command -- “Have courage to use your own understanding!” -- must be directed to the society as a whole. An enlightened society would be precisely that which had freely investigated and shared all of its knowledge as widely as possible.
cat199 8y ago
> One age cannot bind itself, and thus conspire, to place a succeeding one in a condition whereby it would be impossible for the later age to expand its knowledge (particularly where it is so very important), to rid itself of errors, and generally to increase its enlightenment. Unless they are talking correctly about truths which are unchanging. in which case, good sir, you have a philosophical bias towards false progress. Plato teaches me far more about true knowledge than does the enlightenment.
- RGS1811 8y ago
  Plato's procedural/dialogical approach to learning is also vastly superior to the Kantian/illuminist 'one and done' understanding of proof and discovery. Kant was a funny sort of progressive, who also believed that his work in metaphysics and epistemology laid the absolute foundation for the field. It's odd but only enlightenment and post-enlightenment thinkers seem to approach their work this way, as if it were an absolute step forward which will never need to be revisited. You don't generally find it in ancient or medieval philosophers, who are much more interested in eking out nuance and exposing difficulties than in laying absolute groundworks and so on. In the enlightenment (at least in philosophy), progressivism and delusional absolutism always go hand in hand.
- api 8y ago
  There is some truth in this. Two and two will never be five. Unfortunately I most often see the notion of eternal unchanging truth invoked to defend very temporal and mutable things: cultural and aesthetic biases, social and economic hierarchy, gender roles, racial stereotypes, religion, the state, etc. People wish to rub some of the eternal truth of math and logic onto their favorite idols but it never sticks. Human hierarchy and symbol are very mutable. Nobody bothers to pound the table about the eternal truth of actual eternal truths. There's no point.
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    > There is some truth in this. Two and two will never be five. unless you swap some digits name's :cough:
- 8y ago
motohagiography 8y ago
Reading this through the lens of a current era where hierarchies are being subsumed by networks, and then reasserting themselves, this was written in a similar context, can't help but recommend "The Square and the Tower," a recent book that talks about the historical tension between networks and hierarchies. Obligatory Niall Ferguson link for modern take on history, and a pleasant sunday afternoon listen: https://youtu.be/f3rhUZPNqX0?t=576 https://youtu.be/f3rhUZPNqX0?t=576
hblanks 8y ago
Michel Foucault also wrote about this essay. His essay starts thus: > Today when a periodical asks its readers a question, it does so in order to collect opinions on some subject about which everyone has an opinion already; there is not much likelihood of learning anything new. In the eighteenth century, editors preferred to question the public on problems that did not yet have solutions. I don't know whether or not that practice was more effective; it was unquestionably more entertaining. > In any event, in line with this custom, in November 1784 a German periodical, Berlinische Monatschrift published a response to the question: Was ist Aufklärung? And the respondent was Kant. (https://www.libarts.colostate.edu/leap/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2017/01/Foucault-What-is-enlightenment.pdf https://www.libarts.colostate.edu/leap/wp-content/uploads/si...)
tim333 8y ago
Paragraph 1 reminds me of a Yuval Harari quote from an article discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13905249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13905249 >The other major contribution, I think, is that the entire exercise of Vipassana meditation is to learn the difference between fiction and reality, what is real and what is just stories that we invent and construct in our own minds. Almost 99 percent you realize is just stories in our minds. This is also true of history. Most people, they just get overwhelmed by the religious stories, by the nationalist stories, by the economic stories of the day, and they take these stories to be the reality.
snambi 8y ago
sounds like blabbering to me.
nomadiccoder 8y ago
Steven West's podcast `Philosophize This` has a neat explanation of how this work came to be and paints a picture of what life was like during this time. I think episode ~50ish
esturk 8y ago
>> Thus a public can only attain enlightenment slowly. Its unfortunate that somethings never change. Even as technology is growing at an ever increasing rate, human nature sets to dampen most of its adoption. And since the largest expansion of population is coinciding with the largest increase in longevity, we're seeing a even larger dampening effect. This is something a lot of our peers in the tech world don't realize. Too great an effort is put into building said technology and not enough is put into helping the public adopt it.
JanneVee 8y ago
Sad to see that the public discourse has moved away from point 5 with the freedom to argue. To the point of that I'm afraid of giving examples.
- platz 8y ago
  The political is personal.
- charlesism 8y ago
  Tell me about it! Everyone in my village knows full well my neighbor is witch. But if I even suggest we hold a witch trial, some weak-kneed SJW tries to de-platform me. The Enlightenment is truly dead.
  - Torgo 8y ago
    These days, the witch is a Russian troll, an alt-reicher, maybe a closet "bro", or heaven forbid, a g@merg00ber.
l5870uoo9y 8y ago
Text in original language, German: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-3505/1 http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-3505/1 The German "Unmündigkeit" has more formal connotation than immaturity in the English translation. For instance you are considered "Mündig" when you are 18 years old.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

144 points by anuraag2601 8y ago

Your username suggests Indian heritage. I find a great deal of Indians interested in this topic, as am I. I'm not sure how correct this description of enlightenment is, but my personal description of it is simply this: a state of total, mindful flow. Like when you solve a problem effortlessly because you have such a deep, intrinsic knowledge of it. It seems to impart a very profound feeling of calmness and equanimity across my mind. A rather wise old man once told me, enlightenment is existing with intrinsic knowledge of your "sense of existence". Apparently it's very subtle and not so easy to pin down mentally... Still not sure how to interpret that, but part of me thinks there's some value in it.

bpd1069 8y ago
It is simply being fully awake. We take our consciousness for granted, but in reality, we are sleep-walking the majority of our waking lives. Reacting, not Acting. It is a wakefulness that is universal, I would image another species of intelligent beings also existing with full knowledge and acceptance of existence, be they organic or digital. It is not a human quality, but something much more.

mabynogy 8y ago

It's a polically-correct (at that time) revolt against the King and the religion. The word light refers also to the religion (first words of the Bible and the angel of the light).

pulisse 8y ago
Nope. "Enlightenment" in German is "Aufklärung", which is not cognate with the German for light ("Licht").
- mabynogy 8y ago
  It's a french invention.
  - rhythmvs 8y ago
    ‘Le siècle des Lumières [plural] … Le terme de «Lumières» a été consacré par l’usage pour rassembler la diversité des manifestations de cet ensemble d’objets [la superstition, l’intolérance, l’abus des Églises et des États].’ (fr.wikipedia.org) — Except for Postmodernism, an era does not usually give itself a name. The term was coined later on (say, just about the acme of the revolution’s Terror, when a cult of such lights/gleams/luminaries was contrived). Where in German it reads ‘Aufklärung’, in French ‘éclaircissement’ is used instead. First words of the Bible: בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ. ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ (Gn 1,1) — Okay, the third verse reads, in French (Bible de Sacy translation): ‘Or Dieu dit: Que la lumière soit faite. Et la lumière fut faite.’ — Not a plural. The angel of the light = Lucifer (<Lat. ‘light-bearer’); cfr 2 Cor. 11:14: ‘And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.’ — I don’t believe Kant could ever have imagined him being associated with satanism…
    - mabynogy 8y ago
      Probably not but he is german, not french. French philosophy and ideology assimilated elsewhere.

muxator 8y ago

This piece is one of the foundations not only for Illuminism, but for modern thinking in the western culture in general. Thanks for submitting.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

maxharris 8y ago

This review of What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics and The Ashtray: (Or the Man Who Denied Reality) contains an excellent introduction to Kant's ideas: http://bostonreview.net/science-nature-philosophy-religion/tim-maudlin-defeat-reason http://bostonreview.net/science-nature-philosophy-religion/t...

ctchocula 8y ago
+1 This was a really enjoyable read that goes through the history of science from the 20th century, and draws connections between the measurement problem from quantum mechanics and ideas from philosophy including logical positivism and transcendental idealism. It's well worth reading if you are at all interested in open problems in quantum mechanics.

cosmic_ape 8y ago

Regarding 2: >> Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men ... It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. This is beautiful in its simplicity and still has a piece of truth. But a more elaborate modern take would be probably that we also have finite resources. I do believe for instance that the earth surface is spherical, although I cann't immediately come up with an argument to prove this. I have not personally traveled around the world in a boat or launched satellites. It seems that there is fundamentally no choice but to trust some people or traditions of thought on some things and then somehow to decide when to start doubting. Which is why fake news is a problem, for instance.

laretluval 8y ago
"We make constant use of formulas, symbols, and rules whose meaning we do not understand and through the use of which we avail ourselves of the assistance of knowledge which individually we do not possess. We have developed these practices and institutions by building upon habits and institutions which have proved successful in their own sphere and which have in turn become the foundation of the civilization we have built up." Hayek
dnomad 8y ago
The entire frame is bogus. Starting with Socrates, westerners like Kant believe that cognition (computation) is a solitary endeavor. Thus humans are "vulnerable" to group-think and it's up to the philosopher to "break free" from the illusions of common society. But this is of course the "very persistent illusion." The reality is humans are group think machines, carefully evolved to carry out distributed cognition (language, consciousness -- which is always of others). Kant is fundamentally wrong when he suggests that a single person is unenlightened if he only accepts such truths from others because any rational and sane person in any significant group (>150 people) must accept the vast majority of their knowledge from second hand and third hand sources -- or go live alone in the forest. His command -- “Have courage to use your own understanding!” -- must be directed to the society as a whole. An enlightened society would be precisely that which had freely investigated and shared all of its knowledge as widely as possible.

cat199 8y ago

> One age cannot bind itself, and thus conspire, to place a succeeding one in a condition whereby it would be impossible for the later age to expand its knowledge (particularly where it is so very important), to rid itself of errors, and generally to increase its enlightenment. Unless they are talking correctly about truths which are unchanging. in which case, good sir, you have a philosophical bias towards false progress. Plato teaches me far more about true knowledge than does the enlightenment.

RGS1811 8y ago
Plato's procedural/dialogical approach to learning is also vastly superior to the Kantian/illuminist 'one and done' understanding of proof and discovery. Kant was a funny sort of progressive, who also believed that his work in metaphysics and epistemology laid the absolute foundation for the field. It's odd but only enlightenment and post-enlightenment thinkers seem to approach their work this way, as if it were an absolute step forward which will never need to be revisited. You don't generally find it in ancient or medieval philosophers, who are much more interested in eking out nuance and exposing difficulties than in laying absolute groundworks and so on. In the enlightenment (at least in philosophy), progressivism and delusional absolutism always go hand in hand.
api 8y ago
There is some truth in this. Two and two will never be five. Unfortunately I most often see the notion of eternal unchanging truth invoked to defend very temporal and mutable things: cultural and aesthetic biases, social and economic hierarchy, gender roles, racial stereotypes, religion, the state, etc. People wish to rub some of the eternal truth of math and logic onto their favorite idols but it never sticks. Human hierarchy and symbol are very mutable. Nobody bothers to pound the table about the eternal truth of actual eternal truths. There's no point.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  > There is some truth in this. Two and two will never be five. unless you swap some digits name's :cough:
8y ago

motohagiography 8y ago

Reading this through the lens of a current era where hierarchies are being subsumed by networks, and then reasserting themselves, this was written in a similar context, can't help but recommend "The Square and the Tower," a recent book that talks about the historical tension between networks and hierarchies. Obligatory Niall Ferguson link for modern take on history, and a pleasant sunday afternoon listen: https://youtu.be/f3rhUZPNqX0?t=576 https://youtu.be/f3rhUZPNqX0?t=576

hblanks 8y ago

Michel Foucault also wrote about this essay. His essay starts thus: > Today when a periodical asks its readers a question, it does so in order to collect opinions on some subject about which everyone has an opinion already; there is not much likelihood of learning anything new. In the eighteenth century, editors preferred to question the public on problems that did not yet have solutions. I don't know whether or not that practice was more effective; it was unquestionably more entertaining. > In any event, in line with this custom, in November 1784 a German periodical, Berlinische Monatschrift published a response to the question: Was ist Aufklärung? And the respondent was Kant. (https://www.libarts.colostate.edu/leap/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2017/01/Foucault-What-is-enlightenment.pdf https://www.libarts.colostate.edu/leap/wp-content/uploads/si...)

tim333 8y ago

Paragraph 1 reminds me of a Yuval Harari quote from an article discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13905249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13905249 >The other major contribution, I think, is that the entire exercise of Vipassana meditation is to learn the difference between fiction and reality, what is real and what is just stories that we invent and construct in our own minds. Almost 99 percent you realize is just stories in our minds. This is also true of history. Most people, they just get overwhelmed by the religious stories, by the nationalist stories, by the economic stories of the day, and they take these stories to be the reality.

snambi 8y ago

sounds like blabbering to me.

nomadiccoder 8y ago

Steven West's podcast `Philosophize This` has a neat explanation of how this work came to be and paints a picture of what life was like during this time. I think episode ~50ish

esturk 8y ago

>> Thus a public can only attain enlightenment slowly. Its unfortunate that somethings never change. Even as technology is growing at an ever increasing rate, human nature sets to dampen most of its adoption. And since the largest expansion of population is coinciding with the largest increase in longevity, we're seeing a even larger dampening effect. This is something a lot of our peers in the tech world don't realize. Too great an effort is put into building said technology and not enough is put into helping the public adopt it.

JanneVee 8y ago

Sad to see that the public discourse has moved away from point 5 with the freedom to argue. To the point of that I'm afraid of giving examples.

platz 8y ago
The political is personal.
charlesism 8y ago
Tell me about it! Everyone in my village knows full well my neighbor is witch. But if I even suggest we hold a witch trial, some weak-kneed SJW tries to de-platform me. The Enlightenment is truly dead.
- Torgo 8y ago
  These days, the witch is a Russian troll, an alt-reicher, maybe a closet "bro", or heaven forbid, a g@merg00ber.

l5870uoo9y 8y ago

Text in original language, German: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-3505/1 http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-3505/1 The German "Unmündigkeit" has more formal connotation than immaturity in the English translation. For instance you are considered "Mündig" when you are 18 years old.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]