Abstract
Today, especially in Iranian society, the public sphere has become a place of conflict between political and public groups and the government, and in other words, a wide field of ideas has been formed, which is one of the consequences of the spread of politics and successive popular uprisings in the past years has caused a general desire for “consciousness” among different strata of society.
But which “consciousness” does this desire speak of? Naturally, what we call “people” is not a unified and unified whole like the parts of a living organ (the same old dream of fascism) and due to class, gender, nationality and race and mediators of this kind, it has always been fragmented and plural and only through mediation Politics are connected to the signifier “people” and as a result, the intention of each of the concepts such as “consciousness” is different. In the meantime, the ruling classes themselves, through the ideological apparatuses of the government, and especially in our era, the media and social networks, are constantly producing and reproducing a “false consciousness”. On the other hand, in a part of the opposition media, “consciousness” is always reduced to “disclosure” and in all these cases, what is missing is the breaking of the relationship between “consciousness” and “intelligence” which means leaving childhood, an interpretation of Kant that in ” What is enlightenment? It deals with the relationship between intelligence and the public sphere. By examining this treatise and this relationship, this article tries to answer the question of whether it is possible to help the development of critical thought in the public sphere and Iran today with the legacy of the Enlightenment. And how does maintaining and expanding the public sphere in this way contribute to the emergence of democracy (a condition for the growth of critical thinking) and the elimination and removal of autarky?.
