What Is Enlightenment?

Kant’s conception of freedom is much narrower than the contemporary understanding of freedom as the absence of constraints on one’s actions. Simply being able to do whatever one wants would actually not be freedom from Kant’s perspective, as it would involve being a servant to one’s inclinations, desires, and impulses rather than being one’s own master. For Kant, freedom is autonomy in the sense that derives from the word’s Greek origins: giving the law to oneself. Furthermore, while Kant argues for free thought and expression in “What Is Enlightenment?”—i.e., Freedom of the Pen—he accepts many restrictions on the freedom of private citizens.

The German term Kant uses here is Unmündigkeit, which means basically “non-adulthood” and is sometimes translated as “tutelage”—i.e., the state of still being a student. The implication is that until people stop relying on external authorities to tell them what to do, what to believe, and how to live their lives, they have not fully developed into the adults that they could be. Kant sees the fully developed human as rational and autonomous, and the project of enlightenment is to achieve this state and to leave self-imposed immaturity behind.