The Allegory Of The Cave By Emmanuel Kant

For centuries, people have been content living their lives with the knowledge passed on through their families. However, there have also been groups of people with the strong desire to seek education. But why? Why would someone ever introduce new, uncertain ideas when there is something more concrete in their place? The truth is nothing is concrete, and humans will spend the rest of their existence introducing new concepts to replace the old.
Emmanuel Kant outlined his views on enlightenment in a 1784 essay titled “What is Enlightenment?” He started with his own definition of immaturity, which is the inability to think for oneself, instead relying on others for guidance. He argued that this immaturity is self-inflicted due to the lack of

Written during the times of Ancient Greece, prisoners chained in a cave are only able to observe the shadows cast by people and objects behind them being lit by a fire. A prisoner is freed, and is blinded by the sunlight when he first exits the cave. Eventually his eyes adjust, and is able to see the outside world. When he reenters the cave, he can no longer see the shadows because his eyes have adjusted to the light, and the prisoners refuse to accept that there is a world beyond the one they know. This symbolizes the journey from ignorance to enlightenment, where in the cave the people live unaware of the truths beyond their perception. The freed prisoner was able to gain a deeper understanding of reality, just how those who venture to gain knowledge can go beyond the limitations of appearances. This connects to Kant’s way of thinking, where an enlightened individual must question traditional beliefs and ways of thinking. The freed prisoner was no longer able to see the shadows when he came back into the cave, and did not try to see them once again. Once he became enlightened, the old beliefs no longer made sense to him because education is a journey forward, not

One in particular that stood out to me was Marie Curie, an accomplished scientist. Christina was listing some of her achievements, including being the first woman to win a Nobel prize, the first person to win a Nobel prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel prize in two scientific fields, among other things. I felt very honored to stand next to her tomb, because Marie Curie was the patron of the Polish school I attended for eleven years. Marie Curie was born in Poland as Maria Sklodowska, and I spent my entire childhood learning about her and looking up to her as a fellow woman in science. I know she accomplished so much in the name of science, helping discover polonium and radium, and to do so as a woman in the early 1900s must have been extremely difficult. Today I even visited the Musee Curie, where I was able to see her laboratory and read about the experiments she carried out during her career. I could not wrap my head around how she was able to do so much during a time that, in my opinion, was not extremely technologically advanced. Even so she persevered, continuing to work after the tragedy of her husband’s death and making incredibly important contributions to science. As a woman, she had to have ignored traditional gender roles to do so, as both a student and an educator. This ties back to Kant’s definition of enlightenment, where she