Enlightenment

Definition

The Enlightenment is the 18th-century intellectual movement, epitomized by Kant's famous definition of Aufklärung as "man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity" — the courage to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. It championed reason, autonomy, scientific inquiry, and critique against tradition and authority. For architecture, the Enlightenment is the epochal backdrop of modern architectural rationality: it gave rise to the techno-scientific worldview that would underwrite modernist functionalism, while also grounding the emancipatory ideals (public reason, human dignity, cosmopolitanism) that critical architecture claims as its inheritance. Kant's own "dwelling house" metaphor — building a "secure home for ourselves" rather than "castles in the sky" — models the Enlightenment's sober, critical ambition for architecture.

Key Thinkers

• Immanuel Kant — "What is Enlightenment?"; the motto sapere aude (dare to know).
• Diane Morgan — Kant's Enlightenment as the "dwelling house" metaphor and critical project.

Related Concepts

• Ethics — Enlightenment ethics of autonomy and dignity.
• Humanism — the Enlightenment's humanism, later critiqued by posthumanism and Foucault.
• Modernity — the historical condition the Enlightenment set in motion.
• Aesthetic Judgment — the Enlightenment faculty of reflective judgment.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Kant for Architects — the Enlightenment and the "dwelling house" metaphor.