Practice question · Multiple choice
Kant defined enlightenment as humanity’s emergence from a self-incurred immaturity. Why does the phrase "self-incurred" carry so much of the argument?
Hints
- Ask whose fault the immaturity is, on Kant’s account.
- If the cause were missing information, the remedy would be teaching rather than courage.
Show the answer
A. It locates the obstacle in a failure of nerve rather than in a lack of available knowledge
Why
Calling the immaturity self-incurred makes the remedy an act of will — sapere aude, dare to know — rather than an act of instruction. It is a demand addressed to the reader, not a description of a deficit, which is why the essay reads as a summons and why Kant simultaneously accepts practical limits on what a subject may say while on duty.
Practise The Late Eighteenth Century and the Debate over Modernity
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