From: Damien Broderick (damienb@unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Tue Aug 19 2003 - 07:38:48 MDT
I just did a free rendering into somewhat idiomatic English of the great
philosopher Kant's key essay (for a German newspaper) on the topic of the
Enlightenment. Of course, where I speak of representatives and elected
heads of state he was speaking of Frederick the all powerful ruler; he
meant Prussia where we tend to read the USA. His tone is somewhat
chillingly patronizing to most of his fellow citizens, but that isn't alien
to many posts on this list. What is disturbing is how little the rhetoric
and argument has changed in nearly a quarter of a millennium.
The most hilarious line comes toward the end, where Kant mentions that at
least these pesky thought controllers don't try to interfere with our
choices in science and the arts. Maybe this was bleak irony, but I suspect
it was just that few people had access to either, and that the sciences had
not yet revealed their power.
When I say `idiomatic' I'm speaking loosely; the tone that comes through
still has a musty 1930s flavor. You can compare a more literal
interpretation at
http://eserver.org/philosophy/kant/what-is-enlightenment.txt
Damien Broderick
=======================
IMMANUEL KANT
An Answer to the Question: "What is Enlightenment?"
Konigsberg in Prussia, 30th September, 1784.
Enlightenment is our emergence from self-imposed intellectual submission.
By submission I mean the refusal to trust your own grasp of reality, bowing
to the dictates of authority. What's lacking in the submissive isn't any
raw capacity for understanding, but the resolution and courage to use it
without kowtowing to imposed direction. So the motto of enlightenment is:
Have the guts to use your own intelligence, to follow your own reasoning!
Why do so many people happily submit their whole lives long to authority?
Laziness and cowardice! This allows a few among us, all too easily, to set
themselves up as guardians over the rest. It's so convenient to drift
along! If I can depend on a manual of instructions, a spiritual adviser to
serve as my conscience, a doctor to choose my prescriptions, all the rest
of it, I needn't make any effort. Don't think, just pay up and toe the
line; let others take over the tedious job of thinking for me.
Those do-gooders who generously accepted the task of running our lives
quickly made sure that the majority think any step in the direction of
self-command must be extremely dangerous and difficult. First they dumb us
down, then they lead us by the nose. In reality, the danger isn't so very
great. Despite a few early topples, everyone eventually learns to walk. But
falling on your face intellectually is intimidating, and usually frightens
us off from further attempts.
Such self-imposed submission becomes almost second nature, so for an
isolated individual it's hard to work your way free. You grow fond of being
told what to do and think-it's nice to have someone else do the work for
you! When you've never been allowed to make the attempt, you lose the
capacity to exercise your own understanding. Dogmas and formulas come to
seem the automatic and rational default. In fact, they're a brake. Yet if
you wiggle free of those rules you find you're paralyzed, since you're
unaccustomed to moving by yourself. To date, only a few individuals have
cultivated their own minds sufficiently to free themselves from management
by others.
By contrast, an entire community stands a better chance of enlightening
itself. In fact, if people are left free to work things out for themselves
in a spirit of solidarity, enlightenment is almost inevitable. Here's how
it works: even among the elite, there'll always be those few who do think
for themselves. Once they make the breakthrough to enlightenment, they can
start to spread the spirit of rational respect for personal value, for the
duty we all have to think for ourselves. Strangely, though, a public that's
been under the thumb of self-appointed guardians is likely to insist on
retaining the status quo. Numbing routines of thought finally avenge
themselves on the very people who first established the rules (or whose
predecessors did so). A community can only achieve enlightenment slowly,
working against this inertia.
A bloody revolution may well succeed in putting an end to autocratic
despotism, to rapacious or power-seeking oppression-but it can never
produce a true reform in ways of thinking. Instead, new knee-jerk habits,
no better than the ones they replaced, will emerge to control the
thoughtless majority.
For enlightenment, all that's needed is freedom of public speech, the most
innocuous form of all: freedom to make public use of your reason, whatever
the issue. Yet around the world we hear: Don't argue! The military roar:
Don't argue, get in line! The tax-official: Don't argue, pay up! The
clergyman, the rabbi, the mullah: Don't argue, trust in God! By contrast,
our own enlightenment culture says: Argue as much as you like and about
whatever you like, with one proviso: At the end of the arguments, obey the
law!
So there are restrictions on freedom everywhere. Yet while some
restrictions prevent enlightenment, others actually promote it. Here's the
paradox: the public use of reason must always be free, and by itself it can
bring about enlightenment. But private reasoning may quite often be very
narrowly restricted, without unduly hindering the progress of
enlightenment. The public use of your own reason is what we might call the
work of the public intellectual, addressing the community in informed
debate. What I've termed the private use of reason is the mental activity
required when you accept a task with which you're entrusted.
For example, it would be damaging if a military officer on duty quibbled
openly about the appropriateness or usefulness of an order. He must simply
obey his superior. But he can't reasonably be stopped from commenting on
any errors in the military service, even putting these criticisms forward
publicly for judgement. A citizen can't refuse to pay taxes levied on him,
but he doesn't contravene his civil obligations by publicly voicing
objections to the impropriety or even injustice of such taxes. A clergyman
is employed by a church on condition that he will instruct pupils and
congregation in accordance with its doctrines. But as a scholar, he is not
only completely free but also obliged to covey to the community his
carefully considered, well-intentioned thoughts on any mistaken aspects of
those doctrines, and to offer suggestions for a better arrangement of
religious and ecclesiastical affairs.
And there is nothing in this division of rights and responsibilities to
trouble the conscience. He'll say: Our church teaches the following
doctrine, using the following arguments. He then extracts as much practical
value as possible for his congregation even from precepts he harbors some
doubts about, but which he can nevertheless undertake to expound, since it
is not in fact wholly impossible that they may contain truth. Of course if
the clergyman found anything opposed to the essence of religion in them,
he'd have to resign his post rather than teach against his conscience.
Conversely, as a scholar addressing the world at large through his
writings, the clergyman making public use of his reason enjoys unlimited
freedom to use his own reason and to speak in his own person. Otherwise
there is no means to break free of error, an absurdity which amounts to
making absurdities permanent.
A social contract intended to prevent all further enlightenment of
humankind forever is absolutely null and void, however solemnly ratified.
One age cannot enter into an alliance on oath to put the next age in a
position where it would be impossible for it to extend and correct its
knowledge, particularly on such important matters, or to make any progress
whatsoever in enlightenment. This would be a crime against human nature,
whose original destiny lies precisely in such progress. Later generations
are thus perfectly entitled to dismiss these agreements as unauthorized and
criminal. To test whether any particular measure can be agreed upon as a
law for a people, we need only ask whether a people could justifiably
impose such a law upon itself. This might well be possible for a specified
short period as a means of introducing a certain order, pending, as it
were, a better solution. This would also mean that each citizen,
particularly the ethicist, would be given a free hand as a scholar to
comment publicly, that is, in writings, on the inadequacies of current
institutions. Meanwhile, the newly established order would continue to
exist, until public insight into the nature of such matters had progressed
and proved itself to the point where, by general (if not unanimous) consent
a proposal could be submitted to the lawmakers.
But it is absolutely impermissible to agree, even for a single lifetime,
to a permanent ethical constitution which no-one might publicly question.
For this would virtually nullify a phase in humanity's upward progress,
thus making it fruitless and even detrimental to subsequent generations.
For a limited period, you may ethically postpone enlightening yourself in
matters you ought to know about. But to renounce such enlightenment
completely, whether for yourself or even more so for later generations,
means violating and trampling underfoot the sacred rights of humankind.
But if people may not even impose such a restriction upon itself, still
less can it legitimately be imposed upon it by their leaders. Their
legislative authority depends precisely upon their role in uniting the
collective will of the people. So long as they see to it that all proposed
improvements are compatible with civil order, leaders can otherwise leave
the citizenry to do whatever we find necessary for our betterment, which is
our own business. The role of law-makers and enforcers is to stop anyone
forcibly hindering others from working as best they can to define and
promote their well-being
Do we yet live in an enlightened age? No, but we do live in an age of
enlightenment. As things stand at present, we still have a long way to go
before people generally are in a position (or can ever be put into a
position) of using their own understanding confidently and well in ethical
matters, without outside guidance. But there are distinct indications that
the way is now being cleared for the populace to work freely in this
direction, and that the obstacles to universal enlightenment, to our
emergence from his self-imposed submission, are gradually becoming fewer.
In this respect our age is the age of enlightenment, the century of access
to knowledge.
This spirit of freedom is also spreading globally, even where it has to
struggle with outward obstacles imposed by governments which misunderstand
their own function. For such governments now witness examples of how
freedom may exist without in the least jeopardizing public concord and the
unity of the commonwealth. Citizens will of their own accord gradually work
their way out of barbarism so long as artificial measures are not
deliberately adopted to keep them in it.
I have portrayed religious and ethical deliberation as the focal point of
enlightenment. Our political leaders have no interest in assuming the role
of guardians over their citizens in regard to the arts and sciences. But
the attitude of heads of state who favor freedom in the arts and sciences
extends even further, for they realize that there's no danger even to law
and order if the rest of us are permitted to make public use of our own
reason, even if this entails forthright criticism of current legislation.
It boils down to this, then: Argue as much as you like on any topic, but
obey the law! Considered in the widest sense, in human affairs nearly
everything is paradoxical. A high degree of civil freedom seems
advantageous to a people's intellectual freedom, yet it also sets up
insuperable barriers to it. Conversely, a lesser degree of civil freedom
gives intellectual freedom enough room to expand to its fullest extent.
What is special and singular in human nature, our inclination and vocation
to think freely, can develop inside these socially stabilizing constraints,
and gradually changes the way we view the world and our capacity to act in
it. Bit by bit, we become increasingly able to act freely. Eventually, even
governments learn that they can profit by treating men and women-who are
more than simple machines-in a manner appropriate to our dignity.
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