Réponse à la question : qu'est-ce que les Lumières ?

In December 1783, a Berlin clergyman, Johann Friedrich Zöllner, asked in a footnote to an article in the "Berlinische Monatsschrift": "What is enlightenment? This question, which is almost as important as 'What is truth?', should surely be answered before one begins to enlighten!" Both Moses Mendelssohn and Kant replied. Kant's essay, dated "Königsberg, 30 September 1784," appeared in December. It was written under Frederick the Great of Prussia, whose relative tolerance in matters of religion and the press Kant praises. The essay is short and undivided, so it is given here, nearly whole, as one episode. The English is my own, made from the German, and does not use any modern copyrighted translation. Kant's own footnotes are omitted.

Enlightenment is the human being's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to make use of one's own understanding without direction from another. This immaturity is self-incurred when its cause lies not in a lack of understanding, but in a lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! Have courage to make use of your own understanding! — that is the motto of enlightenment.

"Sapere aude" — "Dare to be wise" — is from the Roman poet Horace (Epistles I.2). "Unmündigkeit," translated here as "immaturity," literally means the condition of a minor, not yet entitled to speak for himself.

Laziness and cowardice are the causes why so great a part of humankind, after nature has long since freed them from alien direction, nevertheless gladly remain immature for life; and why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so comfortable to be immature. If I have a book that has understanding for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a doctor who judges my diet for me, and so forth, then I need not trouble myself at all. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will readily take over the tiresome business for me.

That by far the greatest part of humankind — including the entire fair sex — should hold the step towards maturity to be not only troublesome but also highly dangerous, is seen to by those guardians who have kindly taken upon themselves the supervision of them. After they have first made their domestic cattle dumb, and carefully prevented these placid creatures from daring to take a single step outside the leading-strings of the go-cart in which they are confined, they then show them the danger that threatens them if they try to walk alone. Now this danger is not in fact so great, for by falling a few times they would in the end learn to walk; but an example of this kind makes them timid, and generally frightens them away from any further attempt.

Kant's aside about "the entire fair sex" reports how the guardians regard women, though it also reflects assumptions of his time. The "go-cart" (Gängelwagen) was a wheeled frame in which small children learned to walk.

It is therefore difficult for any single individual to work himself out of the immaturity that has become almost his nature. He has even grown fond of it, and is for the present really unable to make use of his own understanding, because he has never been allowed to try it. Rules and formulas, these mechanical instruments of a rational use, or rather misuse, of his natural endowments, are the ball and chain of an everlasting immaturity. Whoever did throw them off would still make only an uncertain leap over even the narrowest ditch, because he is not accustomed to such free movement. So there are only a few who have succeeded, by their own cultivation of their spirit, in freeing themselves from immaturity and yet walking with a sure step.

But that a public should enlighten itself is more possible; indeed, if only it is left its freedom, it is almost inevitable. For there will always be found some who think for themselves, even among the appointed guardians of the great mass, who, after they have themselves thrown off the yoke of immaturity, will spread around them the spirit of a rational valuing of one's own worth and of the vocation of every human being to think for himself.