“Kant and the Enlightenment” is an interesting read even for philosophical laymen because …
– the philosophy of the Enlightenment is presented in comprehensible language and embedded in the 300-year struggle for liberation of the middle classes against feudalism,
– the importance of reason in our knowledge, in the sciences and in the democratic republic is elaborated on the basis of Kant’s writings,
– in times of threat with Kant’s philosophy a reassurance can be made regarding the foundations of the democratic republic and the worldwide spread of this form of government since the 1st French Republic,
– Kant’s “categorical imperative” must be reinterpreted as a fundamental political norm of the democratic republic, if his ethics is understood as a “German theory of the French Revolution” (Marx),
– countering the postmodern discrediting of the philosophy of history by placing the current struggle for the democratic republic in the context of Kant’s goal of history, which called for a democratically organized and federally unified humanity on the grounds of reason.