Kant's 'What is Enlightenment?'
1784 · Work
Answering a magazine's question, Kant gives the era its definition and its motto: enlightenment is 'man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity', and its demand is sapere aude — dare to know, think for yourself. Written under a king who tolerated argument so long as citizens obeyed, the essay is both the movement's manifesto and its epitaph, published five years before the Revolution tested it.
On these timelines: The Enlightenment, Arts and Thoughts, Master, Germany
More from The Enlightenment
- Age of Enlightenment (1685)
- Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)
- Locke's A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689)
- Voltaire's Treatise on Tolerance (1763)
- The Paris salons (1720)
- Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality (1755)
- Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary (1764)
- Voltaire and the Calas affair (1762)
Around 1784
- Seven Years' War (1756)
- Presidency of George Washington (1789)
- Industrial Revolution (1760)
- American Declaration of Independence (1776)
- American Revolution (1765)
- Greek War of Independence (1821)
- Haitian Revolution (1791)
- Jacobite rising of 1745 (1745)
- Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 (Choral) (1824)
- French Revolution (1789)