26 pages • 52 minutes read
What Is Enlightenment?
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Literary Devices
Metaphor
Metaphor (the description of an object as some other object that is not literally the same) plays several roles and takes several forms in Kant’s essay. The overall effect is to make Kant’s points more vivid and powerful via negative or positive connotations. On the negative side, Kant describes the unenlightened as livestock at the beginning of the essay and machines at the end, while the authorities that discourage Thinking for Oneself are guardians, and the shortcuts people take to make reasoning easier are “shackles of a permanent immaturity” (41, 8:36). In a positive twist, though, humanity’s capacity to reason is a “kernel” ready to break out of its “hard shell” (45-46, 8:41).
Parallelism
Kant sets out the parallelism of his trio of examples (the member of the military, the tax-paying citizen, and the clergyman) when he first introduces them: “The officer says, ‘Do not argue, drill!’ The taxman says, ‘Do not argue, pay!’ The pastor says, ‘Do not argue, believe!’” (42, 8:36-37). The repeated “Do not argue” construction, in addition to being rhetorically forceful, seeks to cement the trio in the mind of the reader so that they can more easily follow Kant’s later lines of argument. He lists the pastor last so that he can go on at most length about this key example without it seeming like a digression.
Hypophora
The use of hypophora involves posing a question for the purpose of immediately answering it. It demonstrates that the writer has the reader’s potential objections or questions already in mind and is prepared to answer, thereby strengthening the reader’s impression of the writer’s authority and reliability. The title of “What Is Enlightenment?” is itself an instance of hypophora, with the entire essay providing the answer to the question. Kant also uses it in two key spots within the text. First, he anticipates the question of whether a society of religious leaders could preclude enlightenment for future generations in order to reject this possibility forcefully (43, 8:38-39). Second, he asks, “Do we presently live in an enlightened age?” to set up the apparently paradoxical answer: “No, but we do live in an age of enlightenment” (44, 8:40).
Paradox
Kant invokes paradoxes (apparently self-contradicting ideas) throughout “What Is Enlightenment?” to subvert readers’ expectations and soften the blow of some of his stronger claims. From the outset, for instance, he emphasizes the difficulty of individuals attaining enlightenment to the point that it seems an impossible ideal, only to shift the focus: “But that the public should enlighten itself is more likely; indeed, if it is only allowed freedom, enlightenment is almost inevitable” (41-42, 8:36). On the surface, this is a strange claim, as Kant has not yet explained how people who cannot even become enlightened themselves could enlighten one another. The nature of the freedom in question in turn points to the essay’s deepest paradox: While enlightenment means attaining some form of autonomy, civil and political freedom are not the mechanisms for achieving it and could in fact get in the way: “Here as elsewhere, when things are considered in broad perspective, a strange, unexpected pattern in human affairs reveals itself, one in which almost everything is paradoxical” (45, 8:41).
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By Immanuel Kant
