Issue Number: 93 ‘Enlightenment,’ wrote Immanuel Kant in his
1784 essay What is Enlightenment? ‘is man’s emergence from his
self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use
one’s understanding without guidance from another. This
immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of
understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it
without guidance from another. Sapere aude! [Dare to know!] Have
the courage to use your own understanding! That is the motto of
enlightenment.’ Age Of Reason An Encyclopdedia of the Age of
Enlightenment by Adam Dant. An Encyclopdedia of the Age of
Enlightenment by Adam Dant. Neither Kant nor his eighteenth-
century contemporaries believed that they lived in an
enlightened age. By ‘enlightenment’, they meant a process: the
lessening of darkness, the dawning of light. The human mind was
liberating itself from traditional authority over thought and
belief. ‘Nothing is required for enlightenment except freedom,’
wrote Kant, ‘and the freedom in question is th