On the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

Mendelssohn's answer to "what is enlightenment?" — distinguishing enlightenment from culture, and warning it can go too far — printed months before Kant's famous reply.

by Moses Mendelssohn12 passages held

German, the original language

Original title: Über die Frage: was heißt aufklären?
First published: 1784(aged 55)
Original language: German

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Overview

Two answers to one question ran in the same Berlin monthly within months of each other in 1784. One became the most quoted essay of the German Enlightenment; this is the other. The question itself came from a footnote: Johann Friedrich Zöllner, arguing against civil marriage, had asked almost in passing what enlightenment even was, and noted that no one had defined it though everyone was busy doing it. The Berlin Wednesday Society, a private circle of officials and writers to which Mendelssohn belonged, took the challenge up, and he read his reply to them in May and printed it that September in the Berlinische Monatsschrift. Kant's answer appeared in the same journal in December; he remarked that he had not seen Mendelssohn's when he wrote his own. Mendelssohn's essay draws distinctions Kant's does not. Enlightenment, the cultivation of reason and knowledge, is only one strand of a people's education; culture, the practical and social arts, is another, and the two can grow unevenly. He adds a warning his reputation for optimism tends to hide: enlightenment can be pushed too far, colliding with the beliefs that hold a civic order together, and a people can be harmed by its misuse. For a century Kant's version so overshadowed it that the essay was read, when read at all, as a lesser draft. It is now reprinted beside Kant's as the debate's other founding text, its distinctions weighed again on their own terms.

Key concepts

What does Mendelssohn mean by enlightenment?

Enlightenment, for Mendelssohn, is the cultivation of reason and theoretical knowledge — a people's capacity to think clearly and judge rationally about matters of truth. It is one strand of a nation's education, concerned with insight rather than conduct. Crucially he treats it as measurable on its own, so a society can be enlightened in this narrow sense while remaining underdeveloped in the practical, social side of life.

What does he mean by culture, alongside enlightenment?

Culture is the other strand of education: the practical and social arts — refinement in manners, work, craft and civic life. Together, enlightenment and culture make up what Mendelssohn calls a people's education, or Bildung. The point of naming both is that they can grow unevenly, so measuring a society's progress means asking after each separately rather than assuming one implies the other.

How does his answer differ from Kant's?

Kant's more famous essay defines enlightenment as humanity's release from self-imposed immaturity, a single call to think for oneself. Mendelssohn instead analyses the concept, splitting enlightenment from culture and warning it can be overdone. His is the more cautious, distinction-drawing reply; Kant's the more stirring. For a century Kant's overshadowed it, and it is now reprinted beside Kant's as the debate's other founding text.

What is his warning that enlightenment can go too far?

Mendelssohn cautions that enlightenment pursued without limit can collide with the beliefs that hold a civic order together, so that a people may be harmed by its misuse. He is not defending ignorance but urging prudence: theoretical truth and social stability can pull against each other, and reckless zeal for the first may damage the second. The warning tempers his reputation for uncomplicated optimism about progress.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Enlightenment is not the whole of education

Is becoming enlightened the same as becoming cultivated? Mendelssohn pulls the two apart: knowledge and the practical arts of living are separate strands, and they can grow at different rates.

Mendelssohn's short essay draws a distinction Kant's famous answer does not. Enlightenment, the cultivation of reason and theoretical knowledge, is only one strand of a people's education; culture, the practical and social arts, is another. The two need not advance together — a nation can be learned yet unpolished, or skilled yet unreflective. This refinement resists the idea of a single measure of progress, and it makes education a balance of two things rather than the simple spread of reason. It is the analytic core of his contribution, distinguishing where Kant unifies, and it is why the essay is now read beside Kant's on its own terms.

enlightenment
culture
education
citizenship
language
human nature
conflict of duties

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Enlightenment can go too far

Can there be too much of it? Against his own reputation for optimism, Mendelssohn warns that enlightenment misused can collide with the beliefs a civic order rests on, and harm a people.

Mendelssohn adds a caution his image as an optimist tends to hide: enlightenment can be pushed too far. When the spread of reason collides with the shared beliefs that hold a civic order together, a people can be harmed by its misuse rather than helped. This is not a defence of ignorance but a plea for prudence — a recognition that theoretical truth and social stability can pull against each other, and that unmeasured zeal for the first can wound the second. The warning gives his essay a sober edge absent from the more confident Enlightenment texts, and it is part of why later readers have returned to it.

enlightenment
corruption
human rights
hypocrisy
knowledge
morality
national happiness
political order

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Within this work

passages held: 12
distinct concepts: 40
by passages held, corpus-wide: #285

What this book thinks together

Every arc around the wheel is one concept in this book. A ribbon joins two the text reaches for together, and its width is how many of its passages hold both. Strongest: culture with enlightenment.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 4 concepts, joined by 2 pairings. 5 shared passages in all.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
culture	enlightenment	3
practice	theory	2

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1767 Phadon, or On the Immortality of the Soul (Phaedon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele)
The bestseller that made Mendelssohn "the German Socrates" — a rational defence of the soul's immortality, modelled on Plato, that Kant would later single out to refute.
DE
1783 Jerusalem, or On Religious Power and Judaism (Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judenthum)
Mendelssohn's answer to a pamphlet daring him to square his liberalism with his Judaism — a plea for freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state that Kant called irrefutable.
DE
1784 On the Question: What Is Enlightenment? (Über die Frage: was heißt aufklären?) you are here DE

— or open another of their works