Enlightenment

For over two centuries, Western intellectual culture has revered Immanuel Kant as the ultimate lighthouse of the Enlightenment, the undisputed architect of modern reason, and the intellectual father of human autonomy. In academic lecture halls, philosophical treatises, and public commemorations, we are repeatedly taught to recite his three cardinal questions as if they were holy scripture: What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope? To the modern educated reader, these three questions sound like a noble, liberating blueprint for human self-determination. But if we dismantle this hagiography through the lens of modern cognitive…