Enlightenment and Maturity

I came across an essay by Kant, “What is Enlightenment?”, while doing some research online. This piece first crossed my path the senior year of my undergraduate studies, and revisiting it proved interesting and fruitful.

While I’m no longer as skilled as I was in reading such dense prose, the gist of the essay comes across to me that Kant equates enlightenment with maturity, and defines this as the individual’s choice to step out from under the authority of others. Kant’s attitude is one of supporting social structures and maintaining this freedom as an academic pursuit of the mind.

One can trace the same sort of arc in personal development, and as Kant points out, those who choose to remain immature are many. To genuinely become an adult means to accept yourself as the authority of your life - and thus to also accept responsibility for the conditions of your life. If you are not willing to accept that responsibility, can you really be considered an adult, no matter your biological age? How many people are still operating under the authority of their parents, years after moving out or even the death of their parents? And what then of those parents and their parents?

In a shamanic context, concrete steps in enlightenment or maturity are marked with initiations, in which an individual accepts both the power and responsibility that comes with being granted (a degree of) personal authority. Initiations are usually highly ritualized, and they often include a very real threat of literal death with the idea of provoking a metaphorical death. In a runic context, initiation is represented by Peorth.