I’m reading philosopher Susan Neiman’s just-published Why Grow Up? Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age right now and, since she frequently alludes to an essay by Immanuel Kant which I had never read, What is the Meaning of Enlightenment?, I set aside her book for a day or so to read the essay.
I’m not far enough into Neiman’s book to say much about it, though I generally agree with her proposition that we’re dangerously near to becoming a nation of Peter Pan clones. I’ve completed Kant’s essay, however, and it’s outstanding; if you’re the sort who doesn’t mind heavy reading on a computer screen, a public domain version of the essay is here.
My favorite passage:
Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of mankind gladly remain minors all their lives, long after nature has freed them from external guidance. They are the reasons why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor. If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on — then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable business for me. Those guardians who have kindly taken supervision upon themselves see to it that the overwhelming majority of mankind — among them the entire fair sex — should consider the step to maturity, not only as hard, but as extremely dangerous. First, these guardians make their domestic cattle stupid and carefully prevent the docile creatures from taking a single step without the leading-strings to which they have fastened them. Then they show them the danger that would threaten them if they should try to walk by themselves.
There, in a nutshell, you have the entire method and evil of religion. Honestly: You’d think the man had grown-up listening to himself berated by Southern Baptist preachers.