What Is Enlightenment?

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Immanuel Kant
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"Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" (German: Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?), often referred to simply as "What Is Enlightenment?", is a 1784 essay by the philosopher Immanuel Kant. In the December 1784 publication of the Berlinische Monatsschrift (Berlin Monthly), edited by Friedrich Gedike and Johann Erich Biester, Kant replied to the question posed a year earlier by the Reverend Johann Friedrich Zöllner [de], who was also an official in the Prussian government. Zöllner's question was addressed to a broad intellectual public community, in reply to Biester's essay titled "Proposal, not to engage the clergy any longer when marriages are conducted" (April 1783). A number of leading intellectuals replied with essays, of which Kant's is the most famous and has had the most impact. Kant's opening paragraph of the essay is a much-cited definition of a lack of enlightenment as people's inability to think for themselves due not to their lack of intellect, but lack of courage.^[1][2][3][4]

See also

• Age of Enlightenment
• Anti-intellectualism
• Golden Age of Freethought
• Higher criticism
• Natural philosophy
• Public reason
• Self-efficacy
• What Is Enlightenment? (Foucault)

References

Further reading

• Kant, Immanuel (1999) [1784]. "An answer to the question: What is enlightenment?". In Mary J. Gregor (ed.). Practical Philosophy. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 11–22. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511813306.005. ISBN 9780521654081. English translation and commentary.
• Siskin, Clifford; Warner, William, eds. (2010). This is Enlightenment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226761466.001.0001. ISBN 9780226761473. OCLC 457149493.
• Schmidt, James (2017). "What sort of question was Kant answering when he answered the question: 'What is enlightenment?'?". In Boucher, Geoff (ed.). Rethinking the Enlightenment: Between History, Philosophy, and Politics. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. pp. 89–112. ISBN 9781498558129. OCLC 1005697529.

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

What is Enlightenment?

German Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?

Wikiquote has quotations related to What is Enlightenment? (1784).

• An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? Translated by Ted Humphrey. Annotated. Hackett Publishing, 1992.
• An Answer to the Question: 'What is Enlightenment? (with endnotes). Evergreen State College, 1994.