"Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" (), often referred to simply as "What Is Enlightenment?", is a 1784
essay
An essay ( ) is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a Letter (message), letter, a term paper, paper, an article (publishing), article, a pamphlet, and a s ...
by the
philosopher
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works ...
. 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 , 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.
See also
*
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment (also the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment) was a Europe, European Intellect, intellectual and Philosophy, philosophical movement active from the late 17th to early 19th century. Chiefly valuing knowledge gained th ...
*
Anti-intellectualism
Anti-intellectualism is hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism, commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature, history, and science as impractical, politica ...
*
Golden Age of Freethought
*
Higher criticism
Historical criticism (also known as the historical-critical method (HCM) or higher criticism, in contrast to lower criticism or textual criticism) is a branch of criticism that investigates the origins of ancient texts to understand "the world b ...
*
Natural philosophy
Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin ''philosophia naturalis'') is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe, while ignoring any supernatural influence. It was dominant before the develop ...
*
Public reason
*
Self-efficacy
In psychology, self-efficacy is an individual's belief in their capacity to act in the ways necessary to reach specific goals. The concept was originally proposed by the psychologist Albert Bandura in 1977.
Self-efficacy affects every area of hum ...
*
What Is Enlightenment? (Foucault)
References
Further reading
* English translation and commentary.
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External links
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.
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Philosophy essays
Age of Enlightenment
1784 essays
Essays by Immanuel Kant
Books about historiography
Enlightenment philosophy
Scientific Revolution
Works originally published in German magazines
German essays