Comment redonner un sens à l’expression »L’âge des Lumières«? Why do we paraphrase the beginning of an old philosophical text in French? And why do we use a Heideggerian formulation about 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 such a project (Entwurf) of this “Age of Light”. The article, published in the Berlinische Monatsschrift back in 1784, may strike some as hopelessly outdated and… “overcome”(?) Does the motto Sapere aude!, that is, dare to use your own (reasoning) mind independently, still have any significance? Any meaning?
The legacy to which we wish to restore enthusiasm is the French Revolution of 1789. Namely, in Kant’s later text The Conflict of the Faculties (1798), this is an important motif. Enthusiasm for the revolution is not tied to the concrete results it produces in social, economic or political terms, but rather to the enthusiasm it inspires in people, in those who observe it in an enlightened manner, 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, resolute, intelligent and honest people. We also know the difference between the “public” and “private” use of reason… But what are we to do with that knowledge in a “world” that exists as such only in name? Namely, the “world”… because every moment in which we live today tells us, painfully and soberingly, that we abandoned long ago the idea of “EMERGING” from the immaturity for which we ourselves are responsible. We would rather accept books (today, self-help manuals!), spiritual advisers and physicians, to take care of us. Because… we are cowards, lazy and full of fear. We no longer possess genuine thought in the form of the “public use of Reason”, which would correspond to the dimension of the Universal. Everything has shifted into “private use”, in the service of universal submission… To what? TO EVERYTHING, especially to the grotesque world order that mercilessly tramples everything the Enlightenment bequeathed to us as a projection of a better and more just “lifeworld”. (It is enough to look at today’s “Europe”, which protects… its interests /!?/ in Ukraine, yet shows no compassion for the 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 trying to discern some new answers to them. Must we, in this entire endeavour, remain bound merely to the dispositif of “security”, or can we still (?) invoke the revolutionary fervour of 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 5:30 p.m. (room 39), marking the fifth anniversary of the Aesthetic Laboratory.
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