Page 9 - GALIET FREEDOM: Kant and Rousseau IV

also reinforces it. How appropriate it is to add, then, that Rousseau, in trying to advance the science of human beings (later known as anthropology) in accordance with the Delphic expanse “Man Know Thyself and You Will Know the Universe and the Gods” (Rousseau: 67), is also, and properly so, indirectly advancing Kant’s philosophical cannon: man through self-knowledge and “his own understanding,” is finally able to be free: he is to be released from the chains of “self- incurred immaturity” into the newfound freedom of maturity. What could not be then more appropriate to say 3⁄4 if I may 3⁄4 that self-knowledge, in meaning maturity, is also enlightenment. Then, for both, Rousseau and Kant: enlightenment is freedom and freedom is enlightenment.
I would like to add that both 3⁄4 Rousseau and Kant 3⁄4 (men of letters and philosophers) in being prime exponents of their particular philosophies of enlightenment (freedom) are also active seekers of progress. Emerging from fear, they criticize past and present in order to “correct and extend knowledge”, perhaps with the intention of exerting some influence (possible paradox!) or in the knowledge that they might be altogether dismissed in what Kant is a fervent exponent of 3⁄4 “one cannot enter into an alliance on oath to put the next age in a position where it would be impossible for it to extend and correct its knowledge, particularly on such important matters, or to make
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