Michel Foucault begins the essay by analysing the response of Kant to the question “What is Enlightenment?” According to Foucault, modern philosophy has not been capable of answering this question. Foucault emphasizes the relation between Kant’s brief essay and the three Critiques. Kant describes Enlightenment as the moment when humanity puts its own reason to use, without subjecting itself to a authority. In this moment, the critique of “what can be known, what must be done, and what may be hoped” is necessary (the Enlightenment is the age of critique).Foucault defines Enlightenment as “a modification of the pre-existing relation linking will, authority and the use of reason”. Foucault introduces the hypothesis that Kant’s essay is an outline of the attitude of modernity and stresses that what connect us with the Enlightenment is a permanent critique of our historical era.
In this essay, Foucault argues for a new philosophical ethos of “limit attitude” (criticism consists of analysing and reflecting upon limits). He proposes the transformation of the critique conducted in the form of necessary limitation into “a practical critique that takes the form of a possible transgression”.
The following questions arise from the review of the essay:
(1) Is Kant’s idea that humanity will reach maturity when it is no longer required to obey, but when men are told: “Obey, and you will be able to reason as much as you like” justified? Is this statement in agreement with the free use of reason?
(2) What is the attitude of modernity? Is the characterization made by Baudelaire valid?
(3) What is the will to heroize the present?
(3) What is the will to heroize the present?
(4) Do we have to make a decision between accepting the Enlightenment and remaining within the tradition of its rationalism or criticizing it and try to escape from its principles of rationality?
(5) In what is given to us as universal, necessary, obligatory, what place is left to what is singular, contingent and the result of arbitrary constraints?
(6) What is the central idea and purpose of the genealogical criticism?
(7) Is Foucault’s claim that the attempt to escape from the system of contemporary reality in order to produce the overall program of another society, of another way of thinking, another vision of the world has only led to the most dangerous traditions valid? How is this related to the idea of spontaneous orders developed by Hayek?
(8) What is the relationship between the growth of capabilities and the intensification of power relations?
The essay can be found here:
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