Enlightenment, Truths, and the Sciences

Abstract

Sorgner distinguishes two different understandings of the Enlightenment: a Kantian and a Nietzschean. In both traditions, reason gets employed to criticize traditional standards. Contrasting with the Kantian notion of reason claiming to provide us with the truth in correspondence to the world, the Nietzschean concept of reason has an evolutionary origin and has merely a pragmatic function.

Reason came about as part of a wide range of human capacities enabling us to deal with challenges encountered in the lifeworld. It is possible so to generate working hypotheses with an empirical foundation. In close cooperation with empirical data, reason enables us to develop scientific insights which might provide us with not only truths in correspondence to the world but also pragmatic insights which usually work.