FREE ESSAY ON EMMANUEL KANT

EMMANUEL KANT

What Is Enlightenment?
Immanuel Kant
Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's
inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred
is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and
courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude!1 Have courage to use your
own reason!--that is the motto of enlightenment. 
Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a portion of mankind, after nature
has long since discharged them from external direction (naturaliter maiorennes),
nevertheless remains under lifelong tutelage, and why it is so easy for others to set
themselves up as their guardians. It is so easy not to be of age. If I have a book which
understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my
diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if I can only
pay--others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. 
That the step to competence is held to be very dangerous by the far greater portion of
mankind (and by the entire fair sex)--quite apart from its being arduous--is seen to by
those guardians who have so kindly assumed superintendence over them. After the guardians
have first made their domestic cattle dumb and have made sure that these placid creatures
will not dare take a single step without the harness of the cart to which they are
tethered, the guardians then show them the danger which threatens if they try to go
alone. Actually, however, this danger is not so great, for by falling a few times they
would finally learn to walk alone. But an example of this failure makes them timid and
ordinarily frightens them away from all further trials. 
For any single individual to work himself out of the life under tutelage which has become
almost his nature is very difficult. He has come to be fond of this state, and he is for
the present really incapable of making use of his reason, or no one has ever let him try
it out. Statutes and formulas, those mechanical tools of the rational employment or
rather misemployment of his natural gifts, are the fetters of an everlasting tutelage.
Whoever throws them off makes only an uncertain leap over the narrowest ditch because he
is not accustomed to that kind of free motion. Therefore, there are few who have
succeeded by their own exercise of mind both in freeing themselves from incompetence and
in achieving a steady pace. 
But that the public should enlighten itself is more possible, indeed, if only freedom is
granted, enlightenment is almost sure to follow. For there will always be some
independent thinkers, even among the established guardians of the great masses, who,
after throwing off the yoke of tutelage from their own shoulders, will disseminate the
spirit of the rational appreciation of both their own worth and every man's vocation for
thinking for himself. But be it noted that the public, which has first been brought under
this yoke by their guardians, forces the guardians themselves to remain bound when it is
incited to do so by some of the guardians who are themselves capable of some
enlightenment--so harmful is it to implant prejudices, for they later take vengeance on
their cultivators or on their descendants. Thus the public can only slowly attain
enlightenment. Perhaps a fall of personal despotism or of avaricious or tyrannical
oppression may be accomplished by revolution, but never a true reform in ways of
thinking. Rather, new prejudices will serve as well as old ones to harness the great
unthinking masses. 
For this enlightenment, however, nothing is required but freedom, and indeed the most
harmless among all the things to which this term can properly be applied. It is the
freedom to make public use of one's reason at every point.2 But I hear on all sides, Do
not argue! The officer says: Do not argue but drill! The tax collector: Do not argue but
pay! The cleric: Do not argue but believe! Only one prince in the world says, Argue as
much as you will, and about what you will, but obey! Everywhere there is restriction on
freedom. 
Which restriction is an obstacle to enlightenment, and which is not an obstacle but a
promoter of it? I answer: The public use of one's reason must always be free, and it
alone can bring about enlightenment among men. The private use of reason, on the other
hand, may often be very narrowly restricted without particularly hindering the progress
on enlightenment. By the public use of one's reason I understand the use which a person
makes of it as a scholar before the reading public. Private use I call that which one may
make of it in a particular civil post or office which is entrusted to him. Many affairs
which are conducted in the interest of the community require a certain mechanism through
which some members of the community must passively conduct themselves with an artificial
unanimity, so that the government may direct them to public ends, or at least prevent
them from destroying those ends. Here argument is certainly not allowed-one must obey.
But so far as a part of the mechanism regards himself at the same time as a member of the
whole community or of a society of world citizens, and thus in the role of a scholar who
addresses the public (in the proper sense of the word) through his writings, he certainly
can argue without hurting the affairs for which he is in part responsible as a passive
member. Thus it would be ruinous for an officer in service to debate about the
suitability or utility of a command given to him by his superior; he must obey. But the
right to make remarks on errors in the military service and to lay them before the public
for judgment cannot equitably be refused him as a scholar. The citizen cannot refuse to
pay the taxes imposed on him; indeed, an impudent complaint at those levied on him can be
punished as a scandal (as it could occasion general refractoriness). But the same person
nevertheless does not act contrary to his duty as a citizen when, as a scholar, he
publicly expresses his thoughts on the inappropriateness or even the injustice of those
levies. Similarly a clergyman is obligated to make his sermon to his pupils in catechism
and his congregation conform to the symbol of the church which he serves, for he has been
accepted on this condition. But as a scholar he has complete freedom, even the calling,
to communicate to the public all his carefully tested and well meaning thoughts on that
which is erroneous in the symbol and to make suggestions for the better organization of
the religious body and church. In doing this there is nothing that could be laid as a
burden on his conscience. For what he teaches a consequence of his office as a
representative of the church, this he considers something about which he has no freedom
to teach according to his own lights; it is something which he is appointed to propound
at the dictation of and in the name of another. He will say, Our church teaches this or
that; those are the proofs which it adduces. He thus extracts all practical uses for his
congregation from statutes to which he himself would not subscribe with full conviction
but to the enunciation of which he can very well pledge himself because it is not
impossible that truth lies hidden in them, and, in any case, there is at least nothing in
them contradictory to inner religion. For if he believed he had found such in them, he
could not conscientiously discharge the duties of his office; he would have to give it
up. The use, therefore, which an appointed teacher makes of his reason before his
congregation is merely private, because this congregation is only a domestic one (even if
it be a large gathering); with respect to it, as a priest, he is not free, nor can he be
free, because he carries out the orders of another. But as a scholar, whose writings
speak to his public, the world, the clergyman in the public use of his reason enjoys an
unlimited freedom to use his own reason and to speak in his own person. That the
guardians of the people (in spiritual things) should themselves be incompetent is an
absurdity which amounts to the eternalization of absurdities. 
But would not a society of clergymen, perhaps a church conference or a venerable classis
( as they call themselves among the Dutch), be justified in obligating itself by oath to
a certain unchangeable symbol in order to enjoy an unceasing guardianship over each of
its members and thereby over the people as a whole, and even to make it eternal? I answer
that this is altogether impossible. Such a contract, made to shut off all further
enlightenment from the human race, is absolutely null and void even if confirmed by the
supreme power, by parliaments, and by the most ceremonious of peace treaties. An age
cannot bind itself and ordain to put the succeeding one into such a condition that it
cannot extend its (at best very occasional) knowledge, purify itself of errors, and
progress in general enlightenment. That would be a crime against human nature, the proper
destination of which lies precisely in this progress; and the descendants would be fully
justified in rejecting those decrees as having been made in an unwarranted and malicious
manner. 
The touchstone of everything that can be concluded as a law for a people lies in the
question whether the people could have imposed such a law on itself. Now such a religious
compact might be possible for a short and definitely limited time, as it were, in
expectation of a better. One might let every citizen, and especially the clergyman, in
the role of scholar, make his comments freely and publicly, i.e., through writing, on the
erroneous aspects of the present institution. The newly introduced order might last until
insight into the nature of these things had become so general and widely approved that
through uniting their voices (even if not unanimously) they could bring a proposal to the
throne to take those congregations under protection which had united into a changed
religious organization according to their better ideas, without, however, hindering
others who wish to remain in the order. But to unite in a permanent religious institution
which is not to be subject to doubt before the public even in the lifetime of one man,
and thereby to make a period of time fruitless in the progress of mankind toward
improvement, thus working to the disadvantage of posterity--that is absolutely forbidden.
For himself (and only for a short time) a man may postpone enlightenment in what he ought
to know, but to renounce it for himself and even more to renounce it for posterity is to
injure and trample on the rights of mankind. 
And what a people may not decree for itself can even less be decreed for them by a
monarch, for his lawgiving authority rests on his uniting the general public will in his
own. If he only sees to it that all true or alleged improvement stands together with
civil order, he can leave it to his subjects to do what they find necessary for their
spiritual welfare. This is not his concern, though it is incumbent on him to prevent one
of them from violently hindering another in determining and promoting this welfare to the
best of his ability. To meddle in these matters lowers his own majesty, since by the
writings in which his subjects seek to present their views he may evaluate his own
governance. He can do this when, with deepest understanding, he lays upon himself the
reproach, Caesar non est supra grammaticos. Far more does he injure his own majesty when
he degrades his supreme power by supporting the ecclesiastical despotism of some tyrants
in his state over his other subjects. 
If we are asked, Do we now live in an enlightened age? the answer is, No, but we do live
in an age of enlightenment.3 As things now stand, much is lacking which prevents men from
being, or easily becoming, capable of correctly using their own reason in religious
matters with assurance and free from outside direction. But, on the other hand, we have
clear indications that the field has now been opened wherein men may freely deal with
these things and that the obstacles to general enlightenment or the release from
self-imposed tutelage are gradually being reduced. In this respect, this is the age of
enlightenment, or the century of Frederick. 
A prince who does not find it unworthy of himself to say that he holds it to be his duty
to prescribe nothing to men in religious matters but to give them complete freedom while
renouncing the haughty name of tolerance, is himself enlightened and deserves to be
esteemed by the grateful world and posterity as the first, at least from the side of
government, who divested the human race of its tutelage and left each man free to make
use of his reason in matters of conscience. Under him venerable ecclesiastics are
allowed, in the role of scholars, and without infringing on their official duties, freely
to submit for public testing their judgments and views which here and there diverge from
the established symbol. And an even greater freedom is enjoyed by those who are
restricted by no official duties. This spirit of freedom spreads beyond this land, even
to those in which it must struggle with external obstacles erected by a government which
misunderstands its own interest. For an example gives evidence to such a government that
in freedom there is not the least cause for concern about public peace and the stability
of the community. Men work themselves gradually out of barbarity if only intentional
artifices are not made to hold them in it. 
I have placed the main point of enlightenment--the escape of men from their self-incurred
tutelage--chiefly in matters of religion because our rulers have no interest in playing
the guardian with respect to the arts and sciences and also because religious
incompetence is not only the most harmful but also the most degrading of all. But the
manner of thinking of the head of a state who favors religious enlightenment goes
further, and he sees that there is no danger to his lawgiving in allowing his subjects to
make public use of their reason and to publish their thoughts on a better formulation of
his legislation and even their open-minded criticisms of the laws already made. Of this
we have a shining example wherein no monarch is superior to him whom we honor. 
But only one who is himself enlightened, is not afraid of shadows, and has a numerous and
well-disciplined army to assure public peace, can say: Argue as much as you will, and
about what you will, only obey! A republic could not dare say such a thing. Here is shown
a strange and unexpected trend in human affairs in which almost everything, looked at in
the large, is paradoxical. A greater degree of civil freedom appears advantageous to the
freedom of mind of the people, and yet it places inescapable limitations upon it; a lower
degree of civil freedom, on the contrary, provides the mind with room for each man to
extend himself to his full capacity. As nature has uncovered from under this hard shell
the seed for which she most tenderly cares--the propensity and vocation to free
thinking-- this gradually works back upon the character of the people, who thereby
gradually become capable of managing freedom; finally, it affects the principles of
government, which finds it to its advantage to treat men, who are now more than machines,
in accordance with their dignity.4
I. Kant
Konigsberg, Prussia
September 30, 1784
1[Dare to know! (Horace Ars poetica). This was the motto adopted in 1736 by the Society
of the Friends of Truth, an important circle in the German Enlightenment.] 
2[It is this freedom Kant claimed later in his conflict with the censor, deferring to the
censor in the private use of reason, i.e., in his lectures.]
3[Our age is, in especial degree, the age of criticism, and to criticism everything must
submit (Critique of Pure Reason, Preface to first ed. [Smith trans.]).] 
4 Today I read in the Buschingsche Wochentliche Nachrichten for September 13 an
announcement of the Berlinische Monatsschrift for this month, which cites the answer to
the same question by Herr Mendelssohn.* But this issue has not yet come to me; if it had,
I would have held back the present essay, which is now put forth only in order to see how
much agreement in thought can be brought about by chance. 
*[Mendelssohn's answer was that enlightenment lay in intellectual cultivation, which he
distinguished from the practical. Kant, quite in line with his later essay on theory and
practice, refuses to make this distinction fundamental.]