My career as a country lawyer is marked with many wonderful memories. My greatest recollection is not the good times or the happy times; instead it is the recall that, when I didn’t understand something, I focused on it until I did. The outcome of my pursuit wasn’t always the way I originally imagined it; but I was never disappointed to have followed my dare to know. This I learned over 50 years ago at an early age and in spite of a senior lawyer having said to me when I dared to question, “That’s not the way we practice law in Lanark County.”
Sapere aude is a Latin phrase meaning “dare to know” or “have courage to use your own reason,” famously used by philosopher Immanuel Kant as the motto for the Enlightenment, urging individuals to think for themselves and overcome self-imposed immaturity by relying on their own understanding rather than authority. Originally from the Roman poet Horace, it calls for courage to question, form independent perspectives, and seek true understanding through independent thought, not just accepting given answers.
Old age is known for its wisdom. Yet while youth resonates with avoidable dilemmas, being old with all the answers is seldom considered fully advantageous. Besides we need to go through a problem before we adequately appreciate its importance. Second hand problems are at best pitiable but seldom convincing or instructive.
Sapere aude — dare to know — sounds noble carved in stone, but in real life it usually shows up looking inconvenient, awkward, and badly timed.
Here’s a small fable.
Martin had a habit of not wanting to “make trouble.”
At work he was known as reasonable, agreeable, “easy.” This was considered a virtue.
One afternoon he reviewed a contract his company was about to sign with a waste disposal firm. He wasn’t a lawyer, just operations. But a clause caught his eye: disposal methods described in vague language, oddly cheaper than industry norms. He felt the quiet itch of suspicion.
He also felt the heavier weight of social reality:
- His boss had already praised the deal.
- The company needed the savings.
- The vendor had a glossy sustainability brochure.
He could have done what most people do when unease meets hierarchy: assume someone smarter had already checked. He told himself, I’m not the expert. Don’t be difficult.
That would have been the comfortable life.
But he looked again. Then he did the annoying thing: he asked questions.
Not dramatic questions. Just small, specific ones.
“Can we see the exact disposal site?”
“Are they using licensed facilities?”
“Why is this price 30% below the regional average?”
The room cooled. His boss frowned. Someone joked, “Martin’s in lawyer mode.” Another said, “We don’t want to lose this.”
For two days he was “that guy.”
The answers came back slowly, then defensively, then not at all. A quiet investigation followed. The firm had been routing hazardous material to an unregulated site outside a rural town.
That town’s water supply fed a school.
The contract died. The boss was irritated for a week. The savings vanished. Martin did not get a medal. What he got was a reputation for being “cautious,” which in corporate dialect means slightly inconvenient.
Six months later, news broke: the same vendor had contaminated groundwater in another community. Lawsuits. Sick kids. Ruined farms. A mayor crying on television.
Martin watched the news at his kitchen table, cereal going soggy, and felt a strange mix of relief and nausea. He imagined the alternate version of himself — the agreeable one — reading that same story and wondering if the plume in the diagram might have been his doing.
That’s sapere aude in ordinary clothes.
Not heroism.
Not genius.
Just the decision to follow a thought all the way to its uncomfortable conclusion.
We like to think “dare to know” means reading big books or having bold opinions. Often it means smaller, less glamorous acts:
- A patient who questions a rushed diagnosis and catches a medication error.
- A daughter who asks where her father’s retirement money is really invested and discovers a predatory scheme.
- A citizen who reads the fine print of a local proposal and notices the park will quietly become a parking lot.
Knowledge here is not abstract. It is protective. It prevents harm that would otherwise wear the bland mask of normal procedure.
The cost is social friction. You risk being wrong. You risk being disliked. You trade the warm bath of belonging for the cold air of scrutiny.
But the alternative is worse: living inside decisions shaped by forces you never bothered to examine — and bearing consequences you never meant to authorize.
Sapere aude improves life not by making it grand, but by making it less accidentally tragic.
It is the courage to say:
“Before we proceed — I want to understand.”
Civilization, at its best, is built out of those interruptions.