So... What Is Enlightenment? An Inquisition into Modernity

The Significance of Civil Intellectuals’ Activism: A Case of Eco-Nationalistic Social Movement in Bangladesh

“…On this basis, for the current study, they were identified as symbols of the civil intelligentsia in the context of Bangladesh. In the relevance of an Enlighten being, Immanuel Kant's direct statement seems to be suitable as it says about a sense of courage which must be used for a being's understanding [95], whereas, the somewhat contrary Foucauldian position emphasized on "being born inquisitive" [96]. Although the arguments here dealt with the presence of civil intellectuals in the reality of political and cultural sense, this attempt certainly examined them in a performative framework [97], namely, the social movement of the Sundarban-Rampal Anti Power-Plant Movement.…”

What was enlightenment?

“…“So … What Is Enlightenment?” is the way Geoffrey Galt Harpham asked the familiar question, returning to it as many have before and since (Harpham 1994). 1 Like Michel Foucault and, most famously, Immanuel Kant—it seems superfluous to underscore this with the “is” italicized—Harpham pointedly asks in the present tense and about the present time.…”

“…Foucault may still be true to Kant, of course, insofar as he too wants to understand the present. Foucault may even be translating Kant’s “critical” to “historical” (“It does appear,” writes Harpham (1994, 526) wryly, “that, in this founding text, Kant has simply given things the wrong names”), but this is not a minor translation. As his rhetoric makes insistently clear (along with many of his famous book titles), Foucault (1984, 45–46) is after all quite militant here, embracing an explicitly historical and historicist endeavor, “a historical ontology of ourselves” and “a historical investigation into the events that have led us to constitute ourselves and to recognize ourselves as subjects of what we are doing, thinking, saying.” 6 Ultimately, with his call for a series of “historico-critical analyses” (48), Foucault is being Kantian and also very much not Kantian.…”

“…I am not even sure that it is possible (or daringly audacious) to know the past, present, or future, and how one would go about it, what “attitude” one should claim or develop toward it all. 9 Elsewhere, I did express reservations with regard to the work of historians, yet I have learned enough from them (if not necessarily from history “itself,” alas) to be mindful and even respectful of their endeavor, which, along with other forms of knowledge and action, may or may not bring us closer (and perhaps even back) to Enlightenment (Harpham 1994, 528) is no doubt being harsh when he writes that “all these earnest, heavily footnoted essays on Enlightenment do little to disturb the status quo and even, in their unresponsiveness to those deep and specific circumstances such as race, class, religion, ethnicity, and so on, make a powerful claim for the value and privilege of the tenured philosophical life”). It is just that I wonder whether the task of knowing (and of acting), that Kant advocates and directs at his present must now, as if of necessity, pass through the study of the past, the study of Kant and Hegel, and of history (which can, moreover, mean a large number of different things, as historians will agree—that is, disagree).…”

“… 7 “Foucault’s historicism … leads one away from the letter and the law of Kant, but curiously preserves Kant’s spirit,” is the way Ian Hacking (1986, 239) sees it; Harpham (1994, 533) quotes the same sentence. Neither comment on the tension between Foucault’s historicism and Kant’s lack thereof.…”