In the year when the 300th anniversary of his birth is celebrated Immanuel Kant Serbian students confirmed the famous "password" of this great philosopher in the most impressive way: sapere aude, "have the courage to know," or, more elegantly, "have the courage to think for yourself."
Why did Kant, a republican who lived in a dictatorship, write that you need to have courage to think for yourself? And what courage was he referring to?
Although a free-thinking man in the Prussia of Kant's time could experience great inconvenience if the regime did not like what he said and wrote, Kant still did not think of the courage of a man to oppose the regime. After all, one of the biggest contradictions of his philosophy (unless it was a maneuver to deceive the government) was precisely that he rejected the possibility of rebellion against the regime, even if it was deeply unjust.
The courage that Kant writes about is deeper and more far-reaching than the courage for a person to oppose an unjust, senseless, harmful regime: to think for oneself means to give up being guided by a parent, tutor, soulmate (pop), authority, leader, through life.
Getting out of self-inflicted immaturity
This, therefore, means to get out of "self-inflicted immaturity" (the term is Kant's), i.e. from immaturity conditioned by long submission to authority. Because it is comfortable to be guided. You hold out the handle and go where they lead you. You don't think so. You don't ask. You let yourself go. You're listening. (Good kid.) It's not up to you anyway. You're happy when the leader pats you on the head for being smart. No way to grow up. To mature. And why would you mature when it's easier like this?
But, freed from responsibility, you are freed from freedom. It is self-inflicted immaturity. To get out of such conditioning means, first of all, to withdraw the outstretched hand yourself. Maybe a parent, tutor, caregiver, authority figure, leader will be a little surprised and will convince you that what you are doing is stupid - after all, what is wrong with you? Then, if you stand your ground, he will get angry, and he will remind you to live thanks to him - didn't he (ungrateful one) provide you with everything you need? Even freedom.
Do you think you could live the way you do without him? Do you think it is easy to live without him, a parent, a tutor, a guardian, an authority, a leader? If, after everything, you still stand your ground, he will start to threaten you, he will confront you with the possibility of being left without care, without money, without all the comfort you are used to. And then, if that doesn't help either, he'll lay hands on you.
Seeing through the false soul keeper
The rebellion of Serbian students is an indication that they have learned to think for themselves. That they saw through a soul-bearer devoid of elementary human qualities: compassion, for example. (Even an honest tutor can be dangerous, as can an over-caring parent, let alone a fake tutor and a parent disinterested in their own child.)
They refused, along with their better professors, to submit to the lies, incompetence and bad will of the leader. They refused, in fact, to have a leader. Students began to learn freedom. Not the inner freedom that is easy to enjoy: you retreat, cover your head with a quilt and nobody can do anything to you because you are free from the inside. Even though you're a slave to fear, who doesn't dare poke your nose under the covers.
This is about the only freedom that counts: external freedom. Political freedom. The freedom to publicly say what one thinks, to write it freely and to live according to what has been said. And yes: that the opposites are lies.
Will the regime back down before the students? They won't. He will try to buy them, then to blackmail them, finally to break them. Will they start violence against students? He doesn't seem ready for that. For now. And, again, if it does not break the students, the regime, this rotten, this deeply mired in its own misdeeds, this incapable of anything but destruction, will fall apart faster than it seems possible at this moment.
