On Enlightening the People
The responses offered by late eighteenth-century German Enlightenment thinkers to their own query, “What Is Enlightenment?” – are still relevant today, not only to satisfy one’s curiosity about a period of European history, but as an attempt to reveal what remains of the Enlightenment and what remains at stake when speaking of it. These responses are primarily seen as testimony of dilemmas regarding their “application”, testament to the problem of the (im)possibility and (un)desirability of “enlightening the people”. Texts by Johann Karl Wilhelm Möhsen, Moses Mendelssohn, and the surrounding discussions of other members of the Berlin “Wednesday Society” gathered in this volume, take up this question, guiding and directing the discussion in a directed and responsible way.
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