Kant's Enlightenment Thought

The enlightenment movement is generally taken as a turning point for the European civilization, turning forward the world of rationality and freedom in which everyone is deemed to own rational thinking and is possible to be perfect in morality. The enlightenment can be also considered as the further development of the renaissance of humanism and individualism under the religious reformation, and a kind of progress, advancement and development of knowledge system and research methodology of natural science toward worldly practices and uses after broken through the a wide range of dogmatic restricts of Christianity.As one of the key representatives in the German Enlightenment Movement, Kant, the great German thinker and philosopher presented an obvious enlightenment sprit. In this paper the author discussed what Kant's enlightenment sprit is by replying the general question of what the enlightenment is, and discussing of Kant's critical philosophy as the theme. The key ideas in his work What is Enlightenment is known as'view of rational free will and open examination', and'freedom of thinking and its transformation'as a guarantee to cover the boundary between private rationality and public rationality. Kant as matter of fact launched a Copernican revolution in field of knowledge and come to confirm that scientific knowledge is generally valid and that human freedom is possible and may reach more self-wanted values by transfer the world being ruled by others into the world of self-ruling (self-regulation) in morality, which laid a solid foundation for the functions of human morality as a reality. And more it is also a breakthrough of aesthetic essence that had already dominated the Europe world for over two thousand years and come to a brand-new realm between freedom and the nature. Therefore Kant presented readers an overall enlightenment in and from knowledge, emotion and willing of human.I think the enlightenment is the most prominent topic in Kant's critical philosophy. As the time goes by what is enlightenment is becoming a question because it is interpreted into a variety of discourses, however the core idea still stands there, not changed. Foucault said that'it is a need for man in the power system in the modern society to seek for the reconstruction so as to reach a real mature state by making use of the advantages of self-enlightenment.'Up to now Kant's enlightenment thoughts are still of great theoretical and practical significances and values and for our country for the promotion of humanity development and scientific development of society, we may take the philosophic concept as a good reference.