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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

Critically evaluate: “… he (Voltaire) was living in the Age of Enlightenment….The age itself was not enlightened.” – E. Kant.

  • UPSC 2010
  • Enlightenment and Modern Ideas

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Writing six years after Voltaire's dispirited death in 1778, Immanuel Kant drew a distinction between living in an age of enlightenment and actually inhabiting an enlightened age — a distinction that captures both the promise and the practical failure of the eighteenth century's rationalist project.

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What the full answer covers

  • Kant's Definition: Release from Self-Incurred Tutelage
  • "Age of Enlightenment" versus "Enlightened Age"
  • Voltaire as the Emblem of Unfinished Enlightenment
  • Public and Private Reason: The Practical Machinery of the Distinction
  • Assessing the Judgment: How Far Was Kant Right?
  • Conclusion
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