Kant and the Culture of Enlightenment

Chapter 2. The Idea of a Culture of Enlightenment

Chapter 2
The Idea of a Culture of Enlightenment 1. Kant’s Answer to the Question, What Is Enlightenment? Kant’s essay “An Answer to the Question, What Is Enlightenment?” is often read as a loosely argued manifesto that defends the “original imperative” of the freedom of thought.1 My aim in this chapter is to show that Kant does much more in this short essay than merely restate this familiar Enlightenment topos. What he undertakes is nothing less than a critique of enlightenment through which he seeks to liberate the Enlightenment from the dogmatic certitudes of rationalism while offering a defense both of the legitimacy of the demand to think freely and of the rightful exercise of this freedom. Kant’s recasting of the intellectual aspirations of the Enlightenment within a critical and practical framework offers a plausible and attractive solution to the problems of rational criticism we have outlined in the previous chapter. The main task of this chapter is to reconstruct the steps through which this critique is accomplished. This will require that we examine the connections that Kant establishes between freedom of thought and public address, rational argument and social practice, and criticism and the authority of reason. Kant’s subtle reworking of the emancipatory message of the Enlightenment begins with his interpretation of the rationalist motto sapere aude. This phrase, which derives originally from Horace2 and which, translated literally, means “dare to know,” was adopted in 1736 as the motto of the newly formed Wolffian “Society of the Friends of the Truth.” By translating it as “have the courage to use your own understanding!” (VIII:35, WE 54), Kant effectively replaces 55 the search for knowledge with the search for intellectual independence. Enlightenment does not signify acquisition of knowledge or skills, as it does in Reinhold’s and Mendelssohn’s interpretations, but rather the capacity to abandon the state of “self-incurred immaturity.” Still, this is not a straightforward call for intellectual emancipation. Rather, and here lies the originality of Kant’s argument, what is required in order to throw off the yoke of immaturity is the freedom to make public use of one’s reason, where “public” signifies a publicly conducted argument in which all can participate. With the introduction of the idea of the public use of one’s reason, Kant transforms the debate about the meaning and limits of enlightenment in several ways. First, by interpreting enlightenment in terms of a form of argument in which, as we shall see, the actual participation of others is vital, he challenges the adequacy of the introspective model and dissociates enlightenment from theoria, the rational intuition of “distinct” concepts. Secondly, and as a direct result of the prioritization of argument over knowledge seeking, he shifts the terms of validation of this kind of intellectual exercise. At a single stroke, he renders irrelevant the highly problematic attempts to show that the theoretical gains of enlightenment are ultimately conducive to happiness and to virtue. With a new conception of enlightenment, a new kind of justification is called for. This justification, I will argue, forms part of the reflective examination and identification of the commitments attendant to the use of one’s own reason. Thirdly, following from this, the complexion of the question of the limits of enlightenment also changes. One can no longer argue that while the search after truth and knowledge is a valuable end in itself, in view of the potentially socially disruptive effects of this pursuit, it should be limited to a few phronimoi scholars. This is because Kant interprets enlightenment already in terms of public argument. In this way, he dispenses with the notion that enlightenment must be implemented from above, and, at least in principle, opens it up to the hitherto excluded “common mass of people.” Fully to appreciate the significance of these transformations, it is important to reacquaint ourselves with the questions that are raised by Kant’s answer to the question, what is enlightenment? which, as Michel Foucault points out, ”beneath its appearance of simplicity, it is rather complex.”3 Foucault’s own analysis of these complexities is especially useful because it focuses precisely on those features of the essay that account for the originality of Kant’s argument. Foucault begins by pointing at the peculiar historical horizon, or rather lack of it, of Kant’s essay: 56 KANT AND THE CULTURE OF ENLIGHTENMENT Aufklärung is neither...