Kant · Women in Philosophy · Thinkers of Color

Week 6 · Week 6: Kant · Women in Philosophy · Thinkers of Color · Ch. 10: Right Action, Ch. 11: Social Justice · Download .docx

Objectives

Explain Kant's definition of enlightenment and the motto sapere aude
Distinguish the public from the private use of reason in Kant's essay
Apply at least two thinkers — one woman, one thinker of color — to a contemporary issue
Explain double consciousness (Du Bois), the capabilities approach (Nussbaum), and King's distinction between just and unjust law

Key terms

Enlightenment (Kant): Emergence from self-imposed immaturity — the courage to use your own understanding.
Sapere aude: 'Dare to know' — Kant's motto for enlightenment.
Self-imposed immaturity: Relying on others to think for you when you could think for yourself.
Categorical imperative: Act only on a maxim you could will as universal law; treat persons as ends, never merely as means.
Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792): reason has no sex; educate women as rational beings.
Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex (1949): 'One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.'
Hannah Arendt: The banality of evil — great wrongs done by thoughtless, ordinary people.
W. E. B. Du Bois: Double consciousness: seeing yourself through the eyes of those who hold you in contempt.
Anna Julia Cooper: A Voice from the South (1892): Black women's education is the measure of a nation's progress.
Letter from Birmingham Jail: King (1963): a just law uplifts human personality; an unjust law degrades it — citing Aquinas.
Martha Nussbaum: Capabilities approach to justice: what people are actually able to do and be.
Kwame Anthony Appiah: Cosmopolitanism: we have obligations to strangers across borders.

The concept

Dare to Know: Kant and the Thinkers He Made Possible

Kant's 1784 essay What is Enlightenment? opens with a precise philosophical definition: enlightenment is the emergence from self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity here does not mean childishness or lack of intelligence — it means relying on someone else's understanding instead of using your own. Kant says laziness and cowardice keep most people in this state. The motto of enlightenment is sapere aude: dare to know.

Public and Private Use of Reason

Kant distinguishes two uses of reason. The private use is reasoning you do inside an official role — as an officer, a tax official, a pastor. In these roles you may be required to follow orders and not argue publicly. The public use is reasoning you do as a scholar addressing the whole reading public. This must be fully free. Kant's formula: argue as much as you like, but obey. The two uses do not contradict each other — they operate in different spheres.

The Thinkers Who Took Kant's Dare

The New Horizons readings show what it looks like to take Kant's challenge — use your own reason — and turn it on the assumptions of your own society about who counts as a full rational person. Mary Wollstonecraft (1792) argued that reason has no sex; if reason grounds human dignity, women must be educated as rational beings. Simone de Beauvoir (1949) argued that femininity is not a biological destiny but a social construction: one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. Hannah Arendt showed that great evil can be done by thoughtless, ordinary people — the banality of evil. W. E. B. Du Bois named double consciousness: the sense of always seeing yourself through the eyes of others who hold you in contempt, a divided self-awareness forced on Black Americans by a racist society. Anna Julia Cooper argued that the education and liberation of Black women is the measure of a nation's actual progress, not its rhetorical claims. Martin Luther King Jr. cited Aquinas directly to argue that a just law uplifts human personality while an unjust law degrades it — and that those subjected to unjust laws have both the right and the obligation to resist. Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach holds that justice is not about GDP or law-counts but about what people are actually able to do and be. Kwame Anthony Appiah's cosmopolitanism argues that our obligations do not stop at national borders. Each of these thinkers used philosophical reasoning — premises, arguments, conclusions — to challenge assumptions their societies had not questioned.

Worked examples

Example 1: Example 1 — Applying Du Bois' double consciousness to a school setting: A student from a community that is stereotyped as 'not academic' enters a school where teachers and peers hold this stereotype. She begins to see herself through their eyes — she monitors how she speaks, worries that any mistake will confirm the stereotype, and spends cognitive energy managing others' perceptions rather than learning. This is double consciousness: her self-perception has been split by having to see herself through a hostile gaze. Du Bois would say this is not a personal failure but a social structure imposed on her.

Example 2: Example 2 — Applying King's just/unjust law distinction: King's test: does the law uplift or degrade human personality? A law requiring separate drinking fountains based on race degrades the personality of those forced to use the inferior one — it enforces a legal statement that they are less than fully human. King argues (following Aquinas) that such a law is not binding in conscience even if it is on the books. A just law, by contrast, is one that a majority imposes on itself, not one imposed by a majority on a minority that had no voice in making it.

Common mistakes

Thinking Kant's 'private use' of reason means reasoning done privately to oneself — for Kant, private use means reasoning within an official institutional role, not reasoning that is hidden or personal.
Treating double consciousness as simply self-doubt — it is a specific structural experience produced by living under a dominant culture's contemptuous gaze, not a general feeling of insecurity.
Thinking de Beauvoir's claim is only about gender roles — she is making a philosophical claim about the construction of identity under conditions of power; her argument extends to any category where society tells people who they are before they can choose.
Applying capabilities approach as if it just means freedom — Nussbaum specifies a list of central capabilities (life, health, emotional development, etc.) and argues that justice requires a threshold level of each, not just the absence of interference.
Thinking King's argument means any unpopular law is unjust — King's test is whether the law degrades human personality, not whether it is unpopular; a just law can be widely disliked and an unjust law can have majority support.

Self-check

Try each one before you look. A miss here costs nothing and tells you exactly what to reread.

1. What is Kant's definition of enlightenment and what does he say keeps most people from achieving it?

2. What is the difference between the public and private use of reason in Kant's essay?

3. Explain Du Bois' concept of double consciousness in plain language.

4. How does King use Aquinas to define the difference between a just and an unjust law?

5. What does Wollstonecraft mean when she says 'reason has no sex'?

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