Enlightenment

Enlightenment is a movement that started in England during the 17th Century, and was further developed in France and Germany in the 18th Century. The period of its predominant practise is known as the Age of Reason. This was so because the movement encouraged the individual to use reason, which contrasted the superstitious, irrationality and imposed religious beliefs associated with the Middle Ages. Immanuel Kant described it as being the “emergence of man from his self-imposed infancy”. This “infancy” was seen as the inability to use one’s own reason without the aid or another. An inability caused by one’s lack of courage to step out and think for his or herself.

Immanuel Kant

Enlightenment. [O]. Available:

http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/kant.html

Accessed on 2009-02-04



Roger Jones

The Enlightenment. [O]. Available:

http://www.philosopher.org.uk/

Accessed on 2009-02-20



T.W Adorno and M. Horocheimer, Dialect of Enlightenment. tr. J. Cumming (New York 1972)