Cover of An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

Immanuel Kant was one of the most influential philosophers in the whole of Europe, who changed Western thought with his examinations of reason and the nature of reality. In these writings he investigates human progress, civilization, morality and why, to be truly enlightened, we must all have the freedom and courage to use our own intellect.

Read more

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

Audience
adult
Length
short · 144 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (1st Discourse) and Polemics (Collected Writings, Vol 2) Shares philosophy, nonfiction, essays
  2. On the Suffering of the World Shares philosophy, nonfiction, penguin great ideas
  3. In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays Shares philosophy, nonfiction, essays
  4. The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations Shares philosophy, nonfiction, essays

“People who read An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Dialogue Between Fashion and Death
  2. The Spectacle of the Scaffold
  3. Of Man
  4. An Attack on an Enemy of Freedom

“If you want more of the same (philosophy about morality), start with these.”

  1. Essay on the Freedom of the Will
  2. Free onlineFree Essays in Radical Empiricism
  3. The Mystery of Things
  4. Philosophical Essays

“If it was the essays that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. The World as Will and Representation, Vol 1
  2. An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture
  3. The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell: 1903-1959
  4. Philosophical Essays

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. The Christians and the Fall of Rome
  2. The Inner Life
  3. The First Ten Books
  4. On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings