Kant's view of enlightenment. 

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. 

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Sapere aude! (dare to be wise). Have courage to use your own understanding --is the motto of the enlightenment. 

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The spirit of the Enlightenment  is using one's own reason, not remaining under the yoke of anything and anyone other than one's own reason - this spirit spreads among the people, and thereby the public enlightenment can be achieved. 

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The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was an intellectual and cultural movement in the eighteenth century that emphasized reason over superstition and science over blind faith.  It emphasized reason and individualism rather than tradition. It was heavily influenced by 17th- C philosophers such as Descartes, Locke, and Newton, and its prominent exponents include Kant, Goethe, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Adam Smith. 

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The 3 major ideas of the Enlightenment were: 

1) Reason, 2) individualism, and 3) skepticism 

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The Royal Society was formed during the Enlightenment. The Society's fundamental purpose, reflected in its founding Charters of the 1660s, is to recognize, promote, and support excellence in science, and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity. 

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The Royal Society's motto "Nullius in verba" is taken to mean "take nobody's word for it."  It is an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment. 

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