Question

Compare Kant’s purposes in “What is Enlightenment?” to those of Dante Alighieri in Inferno. How are the ambitions of each author different and what do these ambitions reflect about the age in which each author wrote?

Answer 1

Immanuel Kant's purpose is defining enlightenment and to make people aware that laziness and cowardice is the hindrance towards goodness. He campaigns that we should be responsible for our own actions. As Kant said, "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage." In other words, enlightenment is one's rise from self-immaturity. On the other hand, Dante Alighieri wrote Inferno to make people realize what are the consequences of sinfulness on earth and that afterlife exists with either eternal happiness or punishment. Dante also reimagines the mysteries of the afterlife through the 9 circles of hell and that the graveness of sin has a corresponding circle or punishment.

Answer 2

Dante Alighieri and the age of the High Middle Ages, where he wrote Inferno, is a time where he wrote about that the Universe is created by God. His general idea is to reeducate ourselves heeding about hell. For Immanuel Kant, in Enlightenment, he calls for taking responsibility for our own actions. Meaning you are doing something because you choose to do so.