ABSTRACT
Enlightenment for I. Kant, says M. Foucault, is the ‘moment when humanity is going to put its own reason to use, without subjecting itself to any authority’. Thus the Enlightenment is the age of critique, and critique is the self-examination of reason by itself, the result of which is enlightenment. However, only an investigation which risks not dominating enlightenment, not presupposing it beforehand, is one which is truly ready to learn about itself, and one in which the broken middle of social and educational relations can be known. In comprehending the instability of enlightenment it is also recognised that this instability is inherent within and caused by enlightenment itself. Critique is held by those who practise and teach it to contain two moments which, together, constitute the whole of enlightenment. The self-relation is interpreted in critique as enlightenment about the self brought about by the self.
