What is enlightenment? I told you in the first lecture that Kant put forward a classic sentence, four words-dare to know. He explained it this way, Kant said: "Enlightenment is the immaturity caused by human beings' separation from themselves. Immature means that you can't use your own reason without the guidance of others. If the reason for immaturity is not lack of rationality, but lack of determination and courage to use one's own rationality without being guided by others, then this immaturity is self-inflicted. Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own reason! This is the motto of enlightenment. "In Kant's view, ordinary people have the ability to exercise their rationality, participate in social affairs, and exert their intelligence. But it is because for a long time, they are used to being guided by others. By who? I was guided by nobles and missionaries, so they lost their courage and thought I should be guided. Kant said that you should be brave and dare to know each other. This is the motto of enlightenment.

At that time, another scholar Karl Leonhard Reinhold explained it this way. He said: "I think enlightenment generally means creating rational people from those who can be rational." "Cultivating rational people from rational people" means that as long as your intelligence is complete, you may and must become a rational person and a mature person. This view is actually consistent with Kant's thought, but Kant's words are more poetic and literary.

Although Kant's definition was later proved to be the best definition of the Enlightenment, at that time, many people expressed doubts and doubts about the Enlightenment. For example, Friedrich Karl von Mo Ze tried to distinguish between two kinds of enlightenment, one is true enlightenment and the other is false enlightenment. He said this: "What is true enlightenment? The mission of true enlightenment is light and truth, their growth and spread, and the harmony, order, tranquility and peace of all mankind. The content of false enlightenment is confusion rather than inspiration, deception rather than guidance, disintegration rather than harmony, arrogance rather than freedom, vicious confusion of mind and temptation of human heart. " Mozer believes that true enlightenment is to make your heart upward, your personality complete, and live in harmony with others and society, while false enlightenment is to indulge people's inner evil and let you seek legitimacy for your own desires. So false enlightenment, it depends on propaganda, confusion and brainwashing to achieve its goal, not on inspiration, guidance and guidance.

At that time, there was a famous enlightenment organization called Berlin Wednesday Society, and an important member named Gadicke, who made a very strict division of the boundaries of the Enlightenment. He thinks there must be differences in enlightenment. Note that enlightenment is different: "enlightenment depends on and must change according to the location, time, social class, gender and several subjective and objective conditions." In other words, you have the same idea and can't tell everyone. Therefore, Confucius said very clearly, "You can talk to it without talking to it, and you will lose people." You can't talk to it. You can't talk to it. "You should reason with him and tell him the truth. If you don't tell him, you will lose such a person. You should not tell him the truth. If you insist on telling him, you are sorry for the truth itself. Therefore, Gadicke hopes that this difference can be used as a strategy or principle of enlightenment. He is naive. He said, "complete equality of enlightenment, like complete equality of property, is not only undesirable, but fortunately, it is also impossible." "But he didn't expect that with the Enlightenment, there was a great change-social change, which is the rise of mass media. The rise of mass media led to the sage and the fool being on the same platform, so the Enlightenment was not only carried out, but also carried out equally, not bad at all.

Kant won. Kant's "dare to know" is actually to let everyone dare to know. Finally, everyone really dares to know. The result that everyone dares to know is that everyone dares to do evil, and everyone dares to do evil, so being fearless is doing evil.

At the end of China19th century, Kang Youwei wrote two of his masterpieces, An Examination of Confucius' Political Reform and An Examination of New Learning and Pseudo-Classics, which had great influence. But the conclusions of these two books, in our view today, may have very big problems. And its social impact, the consequences are extremely profound. Of course, after 1903, Kang Youwei's thoughts have changed greatly from those before. I admire Kang Youwei because I think Kang Youwei is always a thinker who insists on independent thinking. Unlike Liang Qichao, he was always just a second-hand dealer of ideas, and after 1903, his thoughts did reach a very brilliant realm. I don't agree with his thoughts before the Reform Movement of 1898, but I think even if his thoughts are wrong, he is such a scholar with independent thoughts and personality. So when his two books were published, a scholar named Zhu Yixin wrote to him. When writing a letter, Zhu Yixin wrote this very profound and sincere letter. My teacher, Mr Zhou Duwen, has mentioned this letter to me countless times. Of course, I also watched it later. In this letter, he mentioned that if you pursue Tao, it would be like setting up a water tank in the street to get water for everyone to drink. Then some people drink more when they are thirsty, and some people drink more when they drink more. This is called "depending on the quantity". So he emphasized the difference. Then, Zhu Yixin said, "You can't go through the back wall in everything." You can't tell what's behind you. He said that Buddhism and Buddhism-Buddhism and Huang Lao's theory-are all behind the wall, which will make bad-tempered people worse after learning. He said that Confucius' thoughts and saints' thoughts just couldn't cross the back wall. The so-called failure to open the back wall is actually emphasizing that, first, the same truth cannot be told to everyone; Second, there are some reasons that you can never tell the public.