In 1784, the Berlin journal Berlinische Monatsschrift published two answers to a question about enlightenment. Moses Mendelssohn considered what kinds of knowledge people need and how widely that knowledge is shared. Immanuel Kant asked what lets people reason for themselves in public. Reading the essays together shows a debate within the European Enlightenment about education, religious authority and the conditions of public discussion. Moses Mendelssohn, What Does It Mean to Enlighten? (1784) · Immanuel Kant, What Is Enlightenment? (1784)
Mendelssohn asks how knowledge reaches people
Mendelssohn starts with the words Aufklärung, Kultur and Bildung. He observes that the terms were new to many German speakers, while the practices they describe could already exist. He uses Bildung for a broad process of human cultivation. Culture concerns practical matters such as skill in a craft, the arts and habits of social life. Enlightenment concerns understanding and the ability to reflect on questions that matter to human beings. Moses Mendelssohn, What Does It Mean to Enlighten? (1784) · Berlinische Monatsschrift, Mendelssohn’s original pages
For Mendelssohn, the enlightenment of a society depends on more than the amount of knowledge it has. He asks how important that knowledge is, how widely it reaches people in different social positions and how it relates to their occupations. He also considers a difficult case. A useful truth might be so bound up with existing religious or moral convictions that trying to uproot a prejudice could also dislodge something valuable. In that case he urges care in how enlightenment is pursued. Moses Mendelssohn, What Does It Mean to Enlighten? (1784)
Kant asks who is free to reason in public
Kant describes enlightenment as emerging from dependence on other people’s judgment. He argues that public reasoning must be free. By public use of reason he means addressing a general audience as a scholar or writer. His private use of reason is what a person does while acting in an appointed role, even if that role involves speaking to a large audience. The terms distinguish whom the person is speaking for and whom they are addressing. Immanuel Kant, What Is Enlightenment? (1784)
Kant gives the example of a clergyman. When he teaches a congregation in his official capacity, he presents the doctrines he has undertaken to teach. When he writes as a scholar, Kant says he must be free to examine those doctrines and propose changes. Kant also rejects the idea that church authorities could bind future generations to a confession that can never be reconsidered. The example puts religious institutions inside the debate over enlightenment and identifies a way their teachings could be discussed openly. Immanuel Kant, What Is Enlightenment? (1784)
Conclusion
Mendelssohn asks how important knowledge becomes accessible across society and how it can be shared with care. Kant asks how people can question received teachings in public while holding roles that carry duties. Both make enlightenment a matter of social conditions as well as individual thought. Their essays show what a debate over reason looks like when it turns to concrete questions about who teaches, who can publish criticism and who has access to knowledge.
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