1 Introduction: What Is Studying?

Abstract

“Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own reason! is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.” With these words, Kant draws the opening paragraph of his famous text An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? to a close.1 The essay was an intervention in an ongoing debate about the precise meaning of enlightenment, at a moment when the notion began to pick up speed in intellectual discourses of the time. The debate was initially sparked by the theologian and educational reformer Johann Friedrich Zöllner who in the December 1783 edition of the Berlinische Monatschrift critically observed that “under the name of enlightenment the hearts and minds of men are bewildered,” while raising the very question “What is enlightenment?” in a footnote to the text.2 Within a year the journal had published the responses by Kant and Moses Mendelssohn and soon after many other writers started to contribute to the discussion. The author of an anonymous article published in 1790 remarked that the debate had turned into “a war of all against all” in which several intellectuals tried to lay claim on the precise meaning of enlightenment, and the author went on to distinguish twenty-one interpretations that the concept had already received.3 Even today, philosophers continue to reinterpret the notion of enlightenment, imbuing it with a new meaning every time.4