Week 6: Kant · Women in Philosophy · Thinkers of Color

• What is Enlightenment? — Immanuel Kant (1784) — five pages; the first paragraph is the whole thesis
• New Horizons readings (women in philosophy; thinkers of color) as posted in Canvas — Prof. Wilkinson's selections for Forums 4 and 5

Textbook chapters (Payne): Ch. 10: Right Action · Ch. 11: Social Justice

1. Kant (1724–1804) defines enlightenment as 'emergence from self-imposed immaturity' — immaturity is not lacking understanding but lacking the courage to use it without someone else's direction.
2. Kant's motto: Sapere aude — dare to know. Laziness and cowardice keep people under guardians (books that think for them, pastors who decide for them, doctors who judge for them).
3. Public use of reason (a scholar addressing the reading public) must be free; private use (an officer on duty, an official at work) may be limited. Argue as much as you like, but obey — and keep arguing.
4. Kant's ethics (Payne ch. 10): act only on rules you could will everyone to follow; treat persons as ends, never merely as means. Respect for rational persons grounds morality.
5. Women in philosophy: Hypatia of Alexandria (mathematician-philosopher, killed 415), Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792 — reason has no sex, so education must not either), Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex, 1949 — 'one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman'), Hannah Arendt (the banality of evil), Martha Nussbaum (the capabilities approach).
6. Thinkers of color: W. E. B. Du Bois (The Souls of Black Folk, 1903 — double consciousness, seeing yourself through others' contempt), Anna Julia Cooper (A Voice from the South, 1892), Frantz Fanon (Black Skin, White Masks), Martin Luther King Jr. (Letter from Birmingham Jail, 1963 — a just law squares with the moral law; an unjust law degrades persons; he cites Aquinas), Kwame Anthony Appiah (cosmopolitanism), Charles Mills (The Racial Contract).
7. The common thread: each thinker takes Kant's dare — use your own reason — and turns it on the assumptions of their own society about who counts as a full rational person.
8. Course Outcome 4 lives here: apply philosophical reasoning to a contemporary issue. Pick one issue, one thinker, one argument — and test it.

Discussion post

1. Claim: name one thinker from this week and one sentence on what they would say about a current issue.
2. One quoted or paraphrased line with attribution.
3. One connection to your own school or community.
4. Two replies that add a thinker your classmate did not use.

Philosophical Forums 4 and 5 — Kant's dare and the New Horizons thinkers

1. Forum 4 thesis: Are we enlightened in Kant's sense? One sentence.
2. Two reasons with quotes from What is Enlightenment?
3. Objection and reply.
4. Forum 5 thesis: one thinker, one contemporary issue, one argument.
5. Fair summary of the thinker's concept, with attribution.
6. Your reasons, the best objection, and your reply.
7. Close each forum with what would change your mind.

Netiquette from the syllabus: address ideas, not people. Complete sentences, correct spelling. Personal matters go to email, never the board.

Raise your hand. Mr. James gets a message right away and can help you remotely. Nothing else is stored — just your last name, grade, and where you're stuck.

Ask at home: Kant said 'dare to know' — think for yourself instead of letting others think for you. Who in our family taught you to think for yourself, and how?

En español: Kant dijo 'atrévete a saber': piensa por ti mismo en vez de dejar que otros piensen por ti. ¿Quién en nuestra familia te enseñó a pensar por ti mismo, y cómo?