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1、What Is Enlightenment?(Was ist Aufklrung?)Michel Foucault, 1978translation by Mathew Henson, 1992Today when a periodical asks its readers a question, it does so in order to collect opinions on some subject about which everyone has an opinion already; there is not much likelihood of learning anything
2、 new. In the eighteenth century, editors preferred to question the public on problems that did not yet have solutions. I dont know whether or not that practice was more effective; it was unquestionably more entertaining.In any event, in line with this custom, in November 1784 a German periodical, Be
3、rlinische Monatschrift published a response to the question: Was ist Aufklrung? And the respondent was Kant.A minor text, perhaps. But it seems to me that it marks the discreet entrance into the history of thought of a question that modern philosophy has not been capable of answering, but that it ha
4、s never managed to get rid of, either. And one that has been repeated in various forms for two centuries now. From Hegel through Nietzsche or Max Weber to Horkheimer or Habermas, hardly any philosophy has failed to confront this same question, directly or indirectly. What, then, is this event that i
5、s called the Aufklrung and that has determined, at least in part, what we are, what we think, and what we do today? Let us imagine that the Berlinische Monatschrift still exists and that it is asking its readers the question: What is modern philosophy? Perhaps we could respond with an echo: modern p
6、hilosophy is the philosophy that is attempting to answer the question raised so imprudently two centuries ago: Was ist Aufklrung?Let us linger a few moments over Kants text. It merits attention for several reasons.To this same question, Moses Mendelssohn had also replied in the same journal, just tw
7、o months earlier. But Kant had not seen Mendelssohns text when he wrote his. To be sure, the encounter of the German philosophical movement with the new development of Jewish culture does not date from this precise moment. Mendelssohn had been at that crossroads for thirty years or so, in company wi
8、th Lessing. But up to this point it had been a matter of making a place for Jewish culture within German thought - which Lessing had tried to do in Die Juden - or else of identifying problems common to Jewish thought and to German philosophy; this is what Mendelssohn had done in his Phadon; oder, be
9、r die Unsterblichkeit der Seele. With the two texts published in the Berlinische Monatschrift the German Aufklrung and the Jewish Haskala recognize that they belong to the same history; they are seeking to identify the common processes from which they stem. And it is perhaps a way of announcing the
10、acceptance of a common destiny - we now know to what drama that was to lead.But there is more. In itself and within the Christian tradition, Kants text poses a new problem.It was certainly not the first time that philosophical thought had sought to reflect on its own present. But, speaking schematic
11、ally, we may say that this reflection had until then taken three main forms.The present may be represented as belonging to a certain era of the world, distinct from the others through some inherent characteristics, or separated from the others by some dramatic event. Thus, in Platos Statesman the in
12、terlocutors recognize that they belong to one of those revolutions of the world in which the world is turning backwards, with all the negative consequences that may ensue.The present may be interrogated in an attempt to decipher in it the heralding signs of a forthcoming event. Here we have the prin
13、ciple of a kind of historical hermeneutics of which Augustine might provide an example.The present may also be analyzed as a point of transition toward the dawning of a new world. That is what Vico describes in the last chapter of La Scienza Nuova; what he sees today is a complete humanity . spread
14、abroad through all nations, for a few great monarchs rule over this world of peoples; it is also Europe . radiant with such humanity that it abounds in all the good things that make for the happiness of human life. 1Now the way Kant poses the question of Aufklrung is entirely different: it is neithe
15、r a world era to which one belongs, nor an event whose signs are perceived, nor the dawning of an accomplishment. Kant defines Aufklrung in an almost entirely negative way, as an Ausgang, an exit, a way out. In his other texts on history, Kant occasionally raises questions of origin or defines the i
16、nternal teleology of a historical process. In the text on Aufklrung, he deals with the question of contemporary reality alone. He is not seeking to understand the present on the basis of a totality or of a future achievement. He is looking for a difference: What difference does today introduce with respect to yesterday?I shall not go into detail here concerning this text, which is not always very clear despi
