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In this text, immanuel kant explores the reasons why people remain in a state of immaturity despite being released from external guidance. He argues that the public's enlightenment is inevitable with freedom, specifically the freedom to use reason publicly. Kant discusses the importance of this freedom in various aspects of life, including religious matters, and its impact on the principles of government. He emphasizes that every individual has the inherent right to make intellectual, political, and religious decisions for themselves.
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An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?[1] IMMANUEL KANT (1784) Translated by Ted Humphrey Hackett Publishing, 1992
the guardians is suitably aroused by some of those who are altogether incapable of enlightenment, it may force the guardians themselves to remain under the yoke--so pernicious is it to instill prejudices, for they finally take revenge upon their originators, or on their descendants. Thus a public can only attain enlightenment slowly. Perhaps a revolution can overthrow autocratic despotism and profiteering or power-grabbing oppression, but it can never truly reform a manner of thinking;[5] instead, new prejudices, just like the old ones they replace, will serve as a leash for the great unthinking mass.
lawgiving authority rests on his unification of the people's collective will in his own. If he only sees to it that all genuine or purported improvement is consonant with civil order, he can allow his subjects to do what they find necessary to their spiritual well-being, which is not his affair. However, he must prevent anyone from forcibly interfering with another's working as best he can to determine and promote his well-being. It detracts from his own majesty when he interferes in these matters, since the writings in which his subjects attempt to clarify their insights lend value to his conception of governance. This holds whether he acts from his own highest insight--whereby he calls upon himself the reproach, “ Caesar non eat supra grammaticos ”[10]—as well as, indeed even more, when he despoils his highest authority by supporting the spiritual despotism of some tyrants in his state over his other subjects.
respect to which no monarch surpasses the one whom we honor.
Immanuel Kant, Konigsberg in Prussia, 30 September 1784
***** Today I read in Büsching’s Wöchentliche Nachtrichten for September 13th^ a notice concerning this month’s Berlinischen Monatsschift that mentions Mendelssohn’s answer to this same question. I have not yet seen this journal, otherwise I would have withheld the foregoing reflections, which I now set out in order to see to what extent two persons thoughts may coincidentally agree.
pens restrict one another so as not to lose their freedom)—is the sole protector of the people’s rights. To want to deprive citizens of this right is not only tantamount to depriving them of all claim to rights in relation to the supreme commander (according to Hobbes), but it also denies him, whose will commands subjects as citizens only because it represents the general will of the people, all knowledge of such matters as he would himself change if he knew about them; and denying such freedom places the commander in a self-contradictory position. Encouraging the leader to suspect that unrest might be aroused by men thinking out loud and for themselves is to awaken in him both distrust in his own power and hate for his people. The general principle by which a people may judge, though merely negatively, as to whether the supreme legislature has not decreed with the best of intentions is contained in this proposition: Whatever a people cannot decree for itself cannot be decreed for it by the legislator.
[8] Kant distinguishes between two classes of concepts, those that we can schematize, i.e., directly represent in experience (intuition), and those that we must symbolize, i.e., indirectly represent in experience (intuition). Symbolized concepts, such as the one we have of God, are those for which no experience can provide adequate content; consequently, experience can only be used to indicate the content we intend. All religious concepts have this character. By symbol in this context, then, Kant means those beliefs and practices in which a group expresses the content of this concept of the divine ( Critique of Judgment , 351-54).
[9] This would seem a peculiarly political expression of the Categorical Imperative, particularly as it is expressed in Groundings , 428-29.
[10] “Caesar is not above the grammarians.” See Perpetual Peace , 368 f.
[11] Frederick II (the Great), King of Prussia.
[12] The term Kant uses here is Freistaat , which is idiomatically translated “republic.” However, Kant never again uses the Germanic rooted word in the essays included in this volume (Hackett’s Perpetual Peace and Other Essays ). In all the other essays he uses the Latin loan word Republic. I point this out because what Kant says here about a Freistaat is inconsistent with what he says elsewhere about a Republic.