The Reasonable and the Absurd

Posted: Mon, Apr 6, 2026

Kant on Enlightenment

“Enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from his self-incurred minority.”

• What is Kant saying?
• What are the implicit assumptions that Kant is invoking in order to say this?

Reason in philosophy

• The world is governed by a higher power (Heaven, God).
• Because of this there is an order (Dao, Logos) to this world; we do not live in pure chaos, even though things might sometimes appear so.
  • Appearance is deceptive; our senses and emotions are misleading.
• A distinct feature of the Western tradition descending from ancient Greece as interpreted through the medieval Arabic world: This order is accessible to us through reason.
  • Reason is our connection to the higher power; our rational capacity is in an important way sacred.
  • While our senses and emotions are misleading, reason guides us towards deeper reality and real wisdom.
  • The body—defined by the sensory and the affective—is what limits us.

What if this is all a mistake?

1. What if the world is not governed by reason?
2. Working with your group, think of a contemporary analogy of the parable and use it to try to work out its meaning.

• Camus’s Sisyphus
• Nietzsche’s Madman