5 January 1983

Abstract

AFTER SOME GENERAL REMARKS on this text [concerning] Aufklärung, I would like to start a rather more precise analysis of at least some of its important points. I will leave aside a whole section of the text which refers specifically to problems of religious legislation which were being posed in Prussia at that time, in 1784. This is not because these are not interesting or even important, but it would be necessary to enter a domain of historical details and clarifications for which I have to confess straightaway I am not competent. So, we will leave this to one side. On the other hand, I will focus on some other theoretical points.

The idea of tutelage (minorité)*: neither natural powerlessnessnor authoritarian deprivation of rights.∽ Way out from the condition of tutelage and critical activity.∽The shadow of the three Critiques.∽The difficulty of mancipation: laziness and cowardice; the predicted failure of liberators.∽Motivations of the condition of tutelage: superimposition of obedience and absence of reasoning; confusion between the private and public use of reason.∽The problematic turn at the end of Kant’s text.