Kant and the Enlightenment - ‘What is Enlightenment’ Hi everyone! For the first week of class we are talking about Emmanuel Kant, who is one of the most famous philosophers of the Enlightenment. And of course, the text that we’re reading for today is called What is Enlightenment, or Aufklärung in German. So the Enlightenment, as you may know already, is a period in the 17th and 18th centuries that roughly begins with the Scientific Revolution, following the Renaissance.