Modern and PostModern_Week1

MOOC Philosophy

Enlightment

What is enlightment

There are lots of definitions, one of them:

Enlightment is to make the world more of a home for human beings, through some reason.

As for reason, ex:
- reducing damage
- demand education

Idea and Real

Rationalism

Decarte

Je pense, donc je suis.

= I can doubt anything except that I am doubting.

Building on the certainity of doubting (bedrock, sth secure and must be true), we build up other clear and distinct ideas.

Empiricism

Locke

Locke thinks that we get knowledge through experimence, i.e. experiment leads to knowledge.

Skepticism

Hume

Experimece leads to habit, or custom. It is not foundation.

Steering a Middle course

Cant

Cant defines two sides:
- phenomina side
- Nounenon side: about faith itself

Knowledge comes from our construction of sensible world, like observing the world on wearing the glasses.

We must liberate ourselves from immaturity:

Enlightemnt is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. ... The motte of enlightment is therefore "Sapere aude!" [Dare to know!] Have the courage to use your own reason!

Core or foundation of democracy (empirical side of Cant):

The touchstone of everything that can be concluded as a law for a people lies in the question whether the people could have imposed such a law on itself.

People should think of themselves, it is a sign of being enlighted.

Get away the obstacles of learning:

Men work themselves gradually out of barbarity only if intentional artifices are not made to hold them in it>

We have to obey what is given as rules:

Thus the use which someone employed as a teacher makes of his reason in the presence of his congregation is purely private, since a congregation, however large it is, is never any more than a domestic gathering. In view if this, he is not and cannot be free as a priest, since he is acting on a commission imposed from out-side.

Conversely, as a scholar addressing the real public(i.e. the world at large) through his writings, the clergyman making public use of his reason enjoys unlimited freedom too use his own reason and to speak in his own person.

Conclusion: Cant tries hard to find the middle course between faith and freedom, obidience and freedon...