ABSTRACT
"What Is Enlightenment?" was originally written in 1784. This translation comes from Immanuel Kant’s Political Writings. Enlightenment is man’s release from 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 it cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. For any single individual to work himself out of the life under tutelage which 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. For this enlightenment, however, nothing is required but freedom, and indeed the most harmless among all the things to which this term can properly be applied.
