Kant's Flawed Definition

Many people use the adjective, enlightened, to describe people of great knowledge and wisdom, but Immanuel Kant would disagree. In his pamphlet, An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant defines and explains his view of enlightenment. He defines enlightenment as, “man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity” (1). Kant also explains that this self-imposed immaturity is the, “lack of resolve and courage to use [one’s own understanding] without guidance from another” (1). Kant’s definition of enlightenment is flawed because it requires that the individual’s understanding is entirely free from outside input.
Guidance from other minds can help to clarify an individual’s understanding of a concept. Kant proclaims that the motto of enlightenment is, “have courage to use your own understanding” (1). However, a person cannot use their understanding of something they do not know. They have to develop this understanding from an outside source just as a child learns from their parent. Inevitably, the person being taught will have the bias of the teacher, and therefore, they do not have their own understanding of the concept. Essentially, Kant’s definition of enlightenment ensures that virtually no one can become enlightened because they have not developed understanding by themselves.
Humans learn and progress by using the knowledge and wisdom of others to create new knowledge and understanding. Kant says, “Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without the guidance from another” (1). When a student takes a Chemistry class, he or she develops understanding of Chemistry through lectures and textbooks filled with multitudes of individual scientific discoveries. The chemists that discovered these concepts did not simply develop the concept from their own understanding. They succeeded by applying previous chemists’ discoveries with their own. Thus, they took guidance from someone else but still developed new understanding of a concept. In this situation, Kant’s definition of enlightenment says that these chemists and the student are not enlightened, but they are using their own understanding of world.
In An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment, Kant proclaims that enlightenment is, “man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity," but this definition of enlightenment is unsound because it necessitates that the enlightened use their own understanding without guidance from others (1). Humans are opinionated people, and they use their own understanding of different things to develop their opinions. No matter how sheltered and isolated someone is his or her opinion is always affected by another person’s opinion.