Marx Vs Kant

Throughout history there has a been a progression towards freedom for all people, not just the people in power. This trend is especially evident in Europe starting with the French Revolution where people fought to have more rights and for their government to work for them, not against. It is enforced by the ideas of Kant and Marx, both of whom had ideas that relied on the common man being free. The Industrial Revolution allowed for the common man to make more of an impact and established the common laborer as a cornerstone of society. There have also been some challenges to this trend, including the Holocaust, where Jews were enslaved and killed against their will and dehumanized to the point where people believed they were animals. However, …show more content…
Kant states that the “[e]nlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another” (Mason 33). For Kant, to be a useful, functioning member of society one must be free thinking and capable of thinking through problems critically, not relying on others for answers. Kant states that the main reason why the common citizen does not become enlightened is due to cowardice and laziness. It is much easier for a common villager to listen to the monarch and the aristocracy about what is expected of them, rather than deciding that for oneself. If one is not enlightened, then that person is like a sheep following blindly and accepting what happened to them without actively trying to improve one’s own wellbeing, thus you cannot be of use to society as a whole, only to those making decisions for you. However, Kant states that the only way to become enlightened is through freedom and often times monarchs try to constraint those freedoms to keep those citizens in the dark. For a person to a member of society and help it as a whole, they must be enlightened and make decisions that help the whole of society, not just the few who rule the …show more content…
The root of the problem in France was that the government did not reflect the needs and wants of the common person, but the needs and the wants of the aristocracy. The government had no way for citizens to have an input and this caused unrest among the common people in France. Essentially, the French people wanted the freedom to make decisions that influenced their government, instead of accepting the decisions of the monarch reluctantly. The French Revolution showed that people want freedom and expect some form of freedom from their government. If the government only made decisions good for the people involved in the government then people would revolt, like the French, and demand more democracy in their government. Without the French Revolution this idea of modern society being built on the foundation of free people would be entirely different. The French Revolution paved a path for other countries to demand more rights in their own government and to become free as a