ENLIGHTENMENT IS man’s release form his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! “Have courage to use your own reason!”–that is the motto of enlightenment.
Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a portion of mankind, after nature has long since discharged them from external direction (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless remains under lifelong tutelage, and why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so easy not to be of age. If I have a book which understand for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself, I need not think, if I can only pay–others will readily undertake the irksome work for me.
That the step to competence is held to be very dangerous by the far greater portion of mankind (and by the entire fair sex)–quite apart from its being arduous–is seen by those guardians who have so kindly assumed superintendence over them. After the guardians have first made their domestic cattle dumb and have made sure that these placid creatures will not dare take a single step without the harness of the cart to which they are tethered, the guardians then show them the danger which threatens if they try to go alone. Actually, however, this danger is not so great, for by falling a few times they would finally learn to walk alone. But an example of this failure makes them timid and ordinarily frightens them away from further trials.
For any single individual to work himself out of the life under tutelage with has become almost his nature is very difficult. He has come to be fond of this state, and he is for the present really incapable of making use of his reason, for no one has ever let him try it out. Statutes and formulas, those mechanical tools of the rational employment or rather misemployment of his natural gifts, are the fetters of an everlasting tutelage. Whoever throws them off makes only an uncertain leap over the narrowest ditch because he is not accustomed to that kind of free motion. Therefore, there are few who have succeeded by their own exercise of mind both in freeing themselves from incompetence and in achieving a steady pace.
But that the public should enlighten itself is more possible indeed, if only freedom is granted, enlightenment is almost sure to follow. Fore there will always be some independent thinkers, even among established guardians of the great masses, who, after throwing off the yoke of tutelage from their own shoulders, will disseminate the spirit of the rational appreciation of both their own worth and every man’s vocation for thinking for himself. But be it noted that the public, which has first been brought under this yoke bound when it is incited to do so by some of the guardians who are themselves capable of some enlightenment–so harmful is it to implant prejudices, for they later take vengeance on their cultivators or on their decedents. Thus the public can only slowly attain enlightenment. Perhaps a fall of personal despotism or of avaricious or tyrannical oppression may be accomplished by revolution, but never a true reform in ways of thinking. Rather, new prejudices will serve as well as old ones to harness the great unthinking mass.
For this enlightenment, however, nothing is required by freedom, and indeed the most harmless among all the things to which this term can be properly applied. It is the freedom to make public one’s use of reason at every point. But I hear on all sides, “Do not argue!” The officer says: “Do not argue but drill!” The tax collector: “Do not argue but pay!” The cleric: “Do not argue but believe!” Only one prince in the world says, “Argue as much as you will and about what you will, but obey!” Everywhere there is restriction on freedom. ~ Immanuel Kant
The above is after the introduction by John Rajchman from the book THE POLITICS OF TRUTH by Michel Foucault.
...do you know up to what point you can know? Reason as much as you want, but do you really know up to what point you can reason without it becoming dangerous? ~ Michel Foucault
Enjoy and please do think. ~ Maggie ~ May 26, 2010 @ 8:36 PM
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