Immanuel Kant Influence On Individual Identity
History has shown a pattern of increased freedom throughout the generations and it has also led to improvements in individuality and person identity. The Enlightenment with great thinkers, like Immanuel Kant, allowed for individual thinking to become more socially acceptable and expected. The increase in intellectual freedom allowed for commoners to gain more of an individual identity by expanding their knowledge as best as they could according to the ideas of the enlightenment philosophers. The Enlightenment was one of the first societal pushes to increase the intellectual abilities of everyone by increasing the freedom for everyone. A counterexample to the Enlightenment would be the Holocaust, where individual freedoms were stripped from
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Every person thinks differently and the ability to think critically for oneself for commoners was highly promoted by Immanuel Kant during the Enlightenment. Before this, commoners still had an identity, but the concept of critical thinking accented people’s identities and made one more unique. Kant believed that every person could and should be expected to think for oneself and make decisions that benefit that individual and society, as a whole. Before the Enlightenment, commoners were often at the mercy of the monarch and the aristocracy of that country. Very rarely did commoners have the option to make decisions for themselves. In fact, many monarchs tried to keep their peasants from thinking for themselves to avoid revolutions, like the French Revolution. The reason for this is because the more one can think for oneself, the more likely a person can realize the fixable problems in one’s live. The monarch was also able to exploit the commoners of a nation and tax them unnecessarily with the common people not knowing how to fix that type of a situation without critically thinking about solving the problem. Kant stated that the “Enlightenment 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), which means unenlightened people were too immature to see the fixable difficulties in their lives. Living in a nation where the government does not reflect the needs and wants of the common people was a fixable problem only after people thought for themselves and realized that they, individually, mattered and had an identity that should be supported by that
Every person thinks differently and the ability to think critically for oneself for commoners was highly promoted by Immanuel Kant during the Enlightenment. Before this, commoners still had an identity, but the concept of critical thinking accented people’s identities and made one more unique. Kant believed that every person could and should be expected to think for oneself and make decisions that benefit that individual and society, as a whole. Before the Enlightenment, commoners were often at the mercy of the monarch and the aristocracy of that country. Very rarely did commoners have the option to make decisions for themselves. In fact, many monarchs tried to keep their peasants from thinking for themselves to avoid revolutions, like the French Revolution. The reason for this is because the more one can think for oneself, the more likely a person can realize the fixable problems in one’s live. The monarch was also able to exploit the commoners of a nation and tax them unnecessarily with the common people not knowing how to fix that type of a situation without critically thinking about solving the problem. Kant stated that the “Enlightenment 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), which means unenlightened people were too immature to see the fixable difficulties in their lives. Living in a nation where the government does not reflect the needs and wants of the common people was a fixable problem only after people thought for themselves and realized that they, individually, mattered and had an identity that should be supported by that