A N N O U N C E M E N T OF AN EVENT organised by the Aesthetics Laboratory of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences:
EstLab Colloquium “Is There (Still) an Enlightenment?”
TIME: Tuesday, 24 March 2026 at 17:30
VENUE: Room 39 on the first floor of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
How can meaning be restored to the expression “The Age of Enlightenment”? Why do we paraphrase the beginning of an old philosophical text using a French expression? And why do we use a Heideggerian formulation concerning meaning?
Kant’s text An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? states that Enlightenment is “man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity”, the goal set by this kind of project (Entwurf) of this “age of light”. The article, published in the Berlinische Monatsschrift back in 1784, may strike some as hopelessly outdated and… “superseded”(?) Does the motto Sapere aude! – that is, dare to use your own reason independently – still have any significance? Any meaning?
The legacy whose enthusiasm we wish to revive is the French Revolution of 1789. Indeed, this is an important motif in Kant’s later text The Conflict of the Faculties (1798). Enthusiasm for the revolution is not tied to the concrete results it produces in socio-economic and political terms, but rather to the enthusiasm it inspires in people, in those who observe it in an enlightened manner, as Kant says. And… what is its “meaning as such” (Heidegger)?
Of course, we all (do we?) know what we must do in order to become mature, determined, intelligent, and honest people. We also know the difference between the “public” and “private” use of reason… But what are we to do with this knowledge in a “world” that is such only in name? A “world”… because every moment in which we live today tells us, painfully and soberingly, that we abandoned long ago the idea of an “EMERGENCE” from the immaturity for which we ourselves are responsible. We would rather accept books (today, self-help manuals!), spiritual advisers and doctors, to take care of us. Because… we are cowardly, lazy, and full of fear. We no longer possess genuine thought in the form of the “public use of Reason”, corresponding to the dimension of the Universal. Everything has shifted into “private use”, placed in the service of universal submission… To what? TO EVERYTHING, and especially to the grotesque world order that mercilessly tramples everything the Enlightenment bequeathed to us as a project for a better and more just “lifeworld”. (It is enough to look at today’s “Europe”, which protects… its interests/!?/ in Ukraine, while showing no compassion for suffering and killing in Iran/!?)
Through a reading of Kant’s text and Michel Foucault’s lecture of 5 January 1983 (second hour), we will attempt to pose similar questions while also seeking to discern some new answers to them. In this endeavour, must we confine ourselves merely to the dispositif of “security”, or can we (still?) appeal to the revolutionary enthusiasm for freedom found in Kant’s 1798 text The Conflict of the Faculties?
We will address all of this at the colloquium “Is There (Still) an Enlightenment?”, through a discussion among philosophy students and members of EstLab, on Tuesday, 24 March 2026 at 17:30 (Room 39).