Sapere Aude! Dare to Think!

I have a friend who hold a certain view, that is not common to dogmatic appeal of religious doctrine. Some people label him as free thinker. What comes into our mind when we heard the word free thinker attached to a person? Does it mean that they are rebellious and outrageous? Maybe that's the way we look on them at the moment. In this case, what the standard we use to judge? If we use the measurement of the most right orthodoxy, we can easily tag them as a free thinker, by that negative sense as they are quite far from the right spectrum. If we are the left, we can just say he is not free thinker at all. Free thinker or more precisely, free thinking cannot be said as negative because it is not referring to the set of position in a spectrum of thinking, either left or right. Free thinker is a people who dare to think by their own mind no matter left or right position they are in. They can agree with a most acceptable and dogmatic view of things, yet they can be said as free thinker. Why so? The key is, they know and understand the reasons behind and every thought process in which, the conclusion of a view derived. Many people hold a truth just by imitating the whole sell view of radom idea, without ever questioning and disagree before at the end, agree with it. By this new given definition, even by the most novel idea that someone dubbed, they cannot be said as free thinker, without understanding the rationale behind the conclusion per se.

Free thinker is actually not a rebellious nor outrageous. Everyone should be one, to be free in their thinking. I argue that we need to get out from this unhelpful connotation. Free thinkers is someone who dare to think. They are equal to a deep thinker, serious thinker, and most precisely, a process thinker as oppose to a short-cut thinker. If we bring an analogy from the world of mathematic, every deep thinker in mathematics is not a kind of person who used a formula just to solve a problem but also a person who know the reason behind the formula he used, as it come to a final form. Immanuel Kant famously say, "have the courage to use your own reason". Kant, has a good point/ He mentioned how we are ought to be mature in our thinking, Sapere Aude! We are not merely spooned by someone, yet we need to taste the food by our own spoon and choose which nourish us the best. When Kant read Hume, he does not agree full set of what Hume says. Hume's writing wake Kant from his "dogmatic slumber". It moves Kant to write a piece that really thrust the very thought of Hume. That piece known as his masterpiece, The Critique of Pure Reason. Nonetheless, this example does not imply that free thinker need to totally oppose someone view. In the book, Kant also agree with some of Hume assumption about the causal necessity about how the world works. Once again, the point is this, whether we oppose or agree with whatsoever views, we need to know why people think as they think and why we agree/disagree with them. Apart from this definition, we are not free in our thinking, and hence immature.