Living In An Enlightened Age

Based on, Immanuel Kant’s definition of enlightenment, we are not at all living in an enlightened age. As Kant explained to his students, in order to achieve enlightenment, one must, “have courage to use your own reason” . This means that people should not be afraid to question anything, and become more independent from others. Also, as it was explained, “laziness and cowardice” are the biggest reasons for the dependence that humans rely on. First, our current reliance on technology makes us an unenlightened society according to Kant's definition. When someone has a question that they want to know, they can simply search it on the internet and get the answer directly. When these sort of answers are given however, it makes it much more rare …show more content…
Second, we are not living in an enlightened age because we continue to rely too much on Kant’s “guardians”. Guardians are the people who give orders, and disapprove self thinking and using one's own knowledge. When people go about life, they are taught to not question anything, but rather to follow orders. For example, in school, if a student is shown a certain method to solve a problem, they will automatically look to solve it that way rather than attempting to figure out a more efficient way or ask why an answer is really correct. These orders prevent a person's, “release from his self incurred tutelage” causing the society to go about like a machine, and not providing opportunity for thinking for yourself. Tutelage describes the way that people rely on others for answers to specific things. In this way, enlightenment truly has not been fulfilled, but rather becomes much more different from our society today. Overall, humans have not been getting a more enlightened life, but rather one where we don't ask questions and in the future could become fully reliant on