Western Civilization II / Unit 6 WC2 0530 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Reading Kant's "What Is Enlightenment?"
The idea
The exam quotes a passage and asks its author or its meaning. Kant's essay of seventeen eighty-four is the type, and it makes three moves: a definition, a diagnosis, and a limit. The text read is Fordham's Modern History Sourcebook.
In practice
The definition: enlightenment is man's release from self-incurred tutelage, the inability to use one's understanding without direction from another, and the motto is Sapere aude, have courage to use your own reason. The diagnosis: laziness and cowardice keep most of mankind under guardians, because it is so easy not to be of age when a book understands for you, a pastor has a conscience for you, and a physician decides your diet. The limit, which the anchor stresses: Kant distinguishes the public use of reason, which must always be free, from the private use in an office, where one obeys, and he can praise a king whose motto is argue as much as you like, but obey. Read together, the moves make enlightenment a habit of mind compatible with obedience to an enlightened monarch.
Where people slip
The trap is to read Kant as a revolutionary. His essay is the Enlightenment's self-portrait as the anchor describes it: bold in thought, muted in politics, at home with a despot who let it think. A passage about courage to use one's reason is Kant; a passage about the general will is Rousseau.
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