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ENLIGHTENMENT

"Enlightenment is the exit of man from his self-inflicted immaturity; Immaturity is the inability to use one's intellect without the guidance of another." (Immanuel Kant)

Enlightenment in German history and the world today

These two first sentences from Kant’s essay “Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?”, published in 1784, are said to be a classic definition of Enlightenment. The Enlightenment led to many important developments in Europe and northern America in the 18th century, for example the French Revolution. In this article, we want to concentrate on its impact on the German states and highlight a few enlightened thinkers of our country. At the end, we want to discuss whether a new enlightenment is necessary or not.

First for clearance: There was no “the Germany” back then. There were loosely connected states that unified in 1871 into one. The Enlightenment in the German states was mainly carried by the replacement of faith by reason. The freedom of will in the religious, monarchist systems was small. The "Gottesgnadentum", the concept that the nobility has the right to reign because “God had mercy on them” and so they were born into their positions, justified this without any logic, which was criticised by philosophers such as Leibniz and Wolff. And it was in this context that the young Immanuel Kant was coined. It is him in the picture we chose for this article because Kant was one, if not the most famous German enlightened thinker and played a central role in the Enlightenment through his essays on ethics and philosophy. Most of the Enlightenment philosophers in the German-speaking world had a mathematical background, be it as a professor at a university or as a polymath. Examples for this are the already mentioned Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Christian Wolff. This is due to the fact that most natural phenomena were explained in religious terms. When one began to argue mathematically and physically, the religion began to crumble, becoming with the years more and more overshadowed by science and logical analysis. With it, however, also the monarchy lost ground because it based its claims to power on just that refutable religion. Thus, the Enlightenment goes hand in hand with the emancipation of mathematics, whereby values such as "reason" and "self-determination" gained in importance. Although the Enlightenment threatened the rulers’ position, some ideas found their way to the royal courts. Frederick the Great reformed Prussia towards more human rights, freedom of religion and speech, practising something called “enlightened absolutism”.

Is a new Enlightenment necessary? Yes. Germany and most of Europe might be free, but there are always the enemies of democracy, trying to fight it with misinformation, lies and propaganda. If we listen to them, believe them without asking questions, we end up as their puppets. But if we research ourselves, question their paroles and motives, think for ourselves, we are able to recognise them and fight them.

As a conclusion, one could say that the impact the Enlightenment had on the German states is not comparable to other countries. And it is in some way true; neither did we decapitate our emperor nor did a colony declare its independence. But it led to the German people realising that the nobility is not irrefutable; that they can and should think for themselves. And even if it took a long time, they eventually got a constitution and later democracy. We all have the responsibility to protect this democracy, not only in Germany, everywhere, fight for it and we should all help the ones that do not have it to get it, because there is no greater good than freedom.