What Is Enlightenment?

Kant’s essay on enlightenment finds him arguing with more passion and less technical detail than one usually finds in his work. He is also writing for a popular (though likely still well-read) audience, so he spends less time on his argument’s finer points in favor of making his claims forcefully and concisely.

He answers the question of the title directly in the first sentence in a way that challenges readers, implying that humans as a species have not fully grown up and that this is their own fault; humans live in a state of “self-imposed immaturity” (41, 8:35). Enlightenment, as Kant describes it, is just humanity’s emergence from that state, which requires Thinking for Oneself and becoming the master of one’s own will rather than relying on external authorities. The reason people are not enlightened, he says, is their own lack of resolve—their “laziness and cowardice” (41, 8:35). They have allowed “guardians” (the term Kant uses throughout for authorities) to step in and do most of their thinking and decision-making. Kant deploys the metaphor of livestock to make this condition vivid and to raise the stakes. People are falling short of full humanity by allowing guardians to keep them “dumb” and treat them as “docile creatures [that] will not take a single step without the go-cart to which they are harnessed” (41, 8:35). He also describes the rules and dictates of outside authorities as “shackles” that people must throw off.

Enlightenment, then, is self-mastery and freedom from outside authority—while Kant does not use the term in this essay, autonomy best captures the ideal that Kant is aiming at. While some readers might think of freedom as simply freedom from restraint and the ability to do whatever one wants, the notion of autonomy actually has restraint built into it: Stemming from the Greek word for law (nomos), it literally means following a law that comes from within oneself. Kant sees the capacity to reason as humanity’s defining feature, and in other works he argues that one can derive a system of moral laws from reason itself. Far from being a free-for-all where one does whatever one wants, autonomy involves the self-mastery of following the moral law.

Kant does not have much faith in individual people achieving this sort of autonomy on their own, so he shifts the discussion to the collective level, claiming that the enlightenment of the whole public is much more likely. In fact, it will be almost inevitable if the public is only granted freedom. Just as true freedom in the individual case means autonomy, freedom (and therefore enlightenment) for the public involves self-mastery and government by a rational will. Furthermore, he calls the kind of freedom necessary for enlightenment “the least harmful of all, namely, the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters” (42, 8:36). This type of freedom is compatible with all sorts of restrictions on freedom—even on the sorts of freedom that people take for granted today. Contemporary readers are familiar with constraints like the requirement to pay taxes or follow traffic laws, but Kant’s Freedom of the Pen could also coexist with, for instance, forced military conscription. The notion that a public should be self-governing, moreover, is not necessarily a defense of democracy; Kant’s republic may not even require any sort of electoral system or right to vote. Kant collectively refers to these as “civil freedoms” and says that restrictions on them are not just compatible with but in some cases conducive to the public’s enlightenment.

Kant’s understanding of the public/private distinction is also very different from the contemporary one. While contemporary readers might favor fewer restrictions on private individuals than on those serving in some public role or give people more freedom “in the privacy of their own homes” than “in public,” Kant insists that the public sphere is where the most important freedom lies. Further, Kant’s examples of private uses of reason involve people who occupy some official position (just the opposite of what many would now see as private individuals). In each case, the private use of reason is characterized by obedience, whether following orders in the military, obeying the law as a citizen, or following church doctrine as a member of the clergy. While the occupants of each of these positions may publicly criticize these orders, laws, or doctrines as scholars, their objections do not give them a right to disobey. Kant would not recognize the legitimacy of civil disobedience. If a member of a specific office feels that they cannot in good conscience follow their orders, Kant says they ought to resign that office.

The public use of reason, on the other hand, must be free of all interference from external authorities. Free public discussion paves the way for enlightenment. As he acknowledges, though, Kant does not focus much on free thought and discussion on military matters or issues of civil law such as taxation. Rather, his focus is almost entirely on religious and spiritual matters—The Separation of Church and State. He is responding to his social and historical context in this respect. The greatest threats to Enlightenment free thinking came from those who were trying to protect religious dogmas. Even the scientific researchers of the Enlightenment who were not engaged in religious discourse per se tended to get themselves in trouble when someone in the church or the government (or both, as they were linked in many places at the time) deemed their research a threat to Christian belief.

Kant’s appreciation for Frederick the Great’s toleration of free discussion of religious and spiritual matters dominates the closing paragraphs of the essay. He even describes the current “age of enlightenment” as the “century of Frederick” (45, 8:40). The closing thus doubles as a tribute to Frederick the Great and an optimistic ode to the possibility of an enlightened public.