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Wise words from an 18th century German fellow.

“Have courage to use your own reason.”

A quote from Immanuel Kant in the article What is Enlightenment? (1784)

Now, I’m not going to pretend that I’m Mr. Kant’s biographer. Believe me, that’s the last thing I am; I’m just a starry eyed college student taking a political thought class. Every once in a while though, while going through the assigned readings, one of these long dead titans of political thinking says something that strikes me as worth taking note of. Last time it was Rousseau.

The words from Kant, posted above, made me feel like there was something about life that I didn’t know, but he was privy to. In my experience, the quotes that give you that small hint or feeling of vulnerability, are the ones that are worth holding on to. I imagine that Kant learned, or encountered something during his study of philosophy that profoundly changed him, and influenced him to adopt that phrase as a lead in to one hell of an essay.

I like to imagine that I’m somehow going through my own enlightenment. As the school days bumble past me like tumbleweeds in the desert, the more I realize that there is so much out there that I don’t know, and the list of things that I do know, perceive, and have ideas about, only grows a very slow rate compared to the rate at which the world’s knowledge grows. Perhaps the difference is accurately proportional, and appropriate. After all, I’m just one person right? I’m by no means a super genius of any kind. But that doesn’t mean I can’t try to tip the scales a little by building on my own experience, and my own reasoning, to strive to attain something more than propriety. There’s so many things that I want to know.

Perhaps Kant had already figured this out for himself.

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