Great Books: "What is Enlightenment?" and "What is Orientation in Thinking?"

Wednesday, November 12

Gabriel Trop, Associate Professor of German

About the essays from Dr. Trop:

One of the most important texts by one of the most important philosophers—Immanuel Kant’s “What is Enlightenment” (1784), written in an age that was beginning to articulate what freedom could look like in an age of kings—begins with a bold injunction: we must dare to think. What intellectual and cultural resources do we have at our disposal to orient ourselves in an age of confusion—to know how and when to resist, and how and when to obey—at a moment when public life is inundated with voices exerting control, influence, and authority? This is the question Kant posed, and it remains the central question of our own time.