A Brief Analysis Of The Similarities And Differences Between Conceptions Of Enlightenment In Kant And Foucault

"Enlightenment" may not be a new topic,but by comparing Kant’s and Foucault’s views on enlightenment,we can find that enlightenment is not over,and both of them give the same answer to enlightenment,that is,we are living in an age of enlightenment.The "age of enlightenment" is not an age of ignorance,but a shore where "light is always approaching" and where we are looking at neither the past nor the future,but at our own present.Kant defines "enlightenment" as man’s emergence from the state of "immaturity" to the "maturity" of reason."Maturity" is the goal and ideal that runs through the Enlightenment,and it is also Kant’s hope for the direction of human history.Through the "Copernican revolution," Kant established that "man legislates for nature" and at the same time establishes the primary condition for "daring to know" reason.By distinguishing between the "public use of reason" and the "private use of reason," Kant shifted the path of personal enlightenment to that of public enlightenment.Kant shows a path for human enlightenment,but does not explain the path of personal enlightenment and the possible negative consequences of rationality.By explaining Foucault’s response to Kant’s enlightenment and analyzing the similarities and differences between their views on enlightenment,the essay tries to sort out the path of change from personal enlightenment to public enlightenment and then from public enlightenment back to personal enlightenment,so as to reveal the relationship between enlightened reason and irrationality,enlightenment and modernity and "ourselves.The relationship between Enlightenment reason and irrationality,Enlightenment and modernity,and " ourselves.Foucault attributes Enlightenment to a critique of modernity,and his ideas,attitudes,and ways of reflecting on Enlightenment are very different from those of Kant.However,Foucault actually inherited and continued the spirit of Kant’s Enlightenment.He shifted Enlightenment to the dimension of ethics,and Enlightenment is the soul practice of the art of self-governance under rational self-consciousness.The Enlightenment was thus not merely a historical movement that,while demanding the freedom to express rational thought,was also concerned with the human soul.In this way,the path of personal enlightenment,which was interrupted in Kant,becomes clear again in Foucault.By analyzing the development of Enlightenment in Kant’s and Foucault’s philosophical thought,the essay reveals that Enlightenment is a never-ending critical and reflective activity,and that it is through this ongoing activity that human beings gain the possibility of maturity.The article will take Kant’s enlightenment thesis as a logical starting point,and supplement it with a hermeneutic comparison of contemporaneous and subsequent enlightenment texts to extract the core elements of the connotation of Kant’s enlightenment thought,and to develop a logical argument for the archaeological critique of knowledge and the critique of subjectivity in Foucault’s philosophy,in order to clarify the dimensions of Kant’s and Foucault’s views on enlightenment and thus to explore their modern values.