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What Is Enlightenment

Kant wrote in the opening paragraph:

Aufklärung ist der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbst verschuldeten Unmündigkeit. Unmündigkeit ist das Unvermögen, sich seines Verstandes ohne Leitung eines anderen zu bedienen. Selbstverschuldet ist diese Unmündigkeit, wenn die Ursache derselben nicht am Mangel des Verstandes, sondern der Entschließung and des Muthes liegt, sich seiner ohne Leitung eines andern zu bedienen. Sapere aude! Habe Muth dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen! ist also der Wahlspruch der Aufklärung.

• 1. Translation by an unknown author:
     
     Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!
     
     
  2. Translation by Lewis White Beck, from Immanuel Kant, On History, ed., with an introduction, by Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), p. 3:
     
     Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred Kansas State University
     
     Enlightenment is getting out of the childhood that you've kept yourself in. Mentally, you're still a minor if you can't use your mind without having someone else tell you what and how to think. This is your own fault if the problem is not that you have the bad luck to be retarded or brain-damaged, but that you just can't make up your own mind, and are afraid to use your brains without someone else dictating what you think. Sapere aude! Dare to know! "Have the guts to use your own wits," is thus the slogan of the Enlightenment.