Michel Foucault (1984) What is

enlightenment - Summary
Summary: Perhaps modernity is less an era, and more of an attitude towards the
present, continuously struggling with countermodern attitudes. Modernity then is about
not just looking at particular things, but about really understanding the present, and
thereby transforming it into something else. And it is equally about constructing,
producing, and inventing ourselves. But we can not escape our reality towards utopia,
trying to do so will always be a fall back to dangerous traditions. We are not concerned
with a new human, but with small actual practical transformations, regarding authority,
sexism, illness, etc. Our experimental historico-critical attitude is looking at what the
historically contingent limits of the present are, and then tests itself in this present
against these limits: a practical critique as transgression. The enlightenment is the basis
for such an attitude of problematising, problematising our relationship to the present, our
historical mode of being, and ourselves as autonomous. In such problematisations we
can find the historical forms of general questions. This attitude looks at where change is
possible and where it is desirable. Our inquiry analyses humans by looking at what they
do and how they do it, and in three major areas or axes: relations of control over things
(knowledge), relations of action upon others (power), relation with oneself (ethics). What
is at stake is the following: “How can the growth of capabilities be disconnected from the
intensification of power relations?”

Source: Michel Foucault (1984) Qu'est-ce que les Lumières? Published in Rabinow
(1984) The Foucault Reader. New York: Pantheon, 1984.

(Full text at foucault.info, English and French side-by-side)

This summary is licensed CC:BY-SA.

Detailed Summary
1. Today publication ask their readers on topics everyone has already an opinion.
2. The 1700s were more entertaining in their idea of prize questions which do not
yet have answers.
3. In 1784, Kant published “Was ist Aufklärung?” [What is enlightenment?] as an
answer to such a question in “Berlinische Monatsschrift”.
4. It is the first of a line through Hegel, Nietzsche, Weber, Horkheimer, and
Habermas, answering this question.
5. Modern philosophy answers the question “Was ist Aufklärung?”
6. [1] Mendelssohn answered the question two months before.
7. Mendelssohn and Lessing had tried to find a place for Jewish culture within
German culture for the previous 30 years.
8. The German Aufklärung and the Jewish Haskala have a common history and a
common destiny.
9. [2] Before Kant reflections on the current moment showed it as part of an world
era, as an omen for a future event, or as a transition point to a new era.
10. Kant instead defines enlightenment negatively as an exit, looking for how today is
different from yesterday.
11. [3] The exit Kant takes about is an an ongoing process of leaving the state of
immaturity, that is of relying on authority instead of our own reason (a book, a
pastor, a doctor).
12. As humans are responsible for their immaturity, they have to change themselves.
13. The motto of the enlightenment is given as “Dare to know”.
14. Kant’s use of mankind can either suggest a universal historical change all over
the world, or a change in the quality of what humanity is.
15. Kant asks us to distinguish between a sphere of obedience and a sphere of
reason. Maturity comes from being told “Obey, and you may reason as much as
you like”: You have to pay your taxes, but you may complain about the taxload; a
pastor has to give sunday services, but may criticise dogmas.
16. This is not freedom of conscience, but more its opposite: In private one needs to
subjugate one’s reason to the ends of the roles one has to play, while in public
one is a rational member of humanity and has to freely reason.
17. In this Enlightenment reason is universal, free, and public.
18. Enlightenment is also the political problem of how to guarantee the public use of
reason. How can “Dare to know” be done in public?
19. If politics conforms to universal reason, people publicly and freely using reason
are guaranteed to obey.
20. This text of Kant is inadequate to show the actual change happening in the late
1700s.
21. Kant sees the moment in which his three critiques are both possible and needed,
as they show the conditions, limits, and autonomy of reason.
22. In his other historical texts, Kant looks at the teleology of history.
23. Kant is writing at this moment and for this moment, his text is both a reflection on
his present, and a motivation for doing his philosophy.
24. Perhaps modernity is less an era, and more of an attitude towards the present.
25. Looking at it this way, modernity is always at struggle with countermodern
attitudes.
26. [1] Baudelaire sees modernity as fleeting and contingent, but unlike fashion it
makes the present heroic, if in an ironic way.
27. Baudelaire looks at dark frock-coats and sees not uglyness, but political
universalism, and an obsession with death.
28. His attitude is: “You have no right to despise the present.”
29. [2] A flaneur just looks at particulars, modern people are searching for more
general insights.
30. Baudelaire sees in Constantin Guys a modern painter, someone able to visualise
the interaction of the real and of freedom.
31. Modernity is about really understanding the present, and thereby transforming it
into something else.
32. [3] Modern persons, in Baudelaires view, do not just find or discover themselves,
they construct, produce, invent themselves.
33. [4] For him, all of this can only take part in art, not in politics.
34. The enlightenment is the basis for an attitude of problematising, problematising
our relationship to the present, our historical mode of being, and ourselves as
autonomous.
35. [Negatively] [1] We have to reject authoritarian alternatives like “for” or “against”
the enlightenment, or for or against reason.
36. We, as autonomous subjects, are historically influenced by the Enlightenment.
37. [2] The enlightenment is a complex of many historical transformations at a point
in time, of which I have only highlighted a few.
38. Humanism, on the other hand, is a theme, that has been repeated in many
different historical eras, based on current ideas of what humans are.
39. Humanism and Enlightenment are and always were in tension, they are not
identical. The history of this tension is a worthy project of research.
40. [Positively] [1] Criticism deals with limits, with their analysis, reflection, critique.
But today we need a practical critique as transgression.
41. Our current criticism is archaelogical, not transcendental, as it historicises, not
universalises our discourse. It is genealogical, in that it looks at the freedom
contained within what made us, not the limits of what we can be.
42. [2] This experimental historico-critical attitude is both looking at history, and tests
itself in the present. It looks at where change is possible and where it is
desirable.
43. We can not escape our reality towards utopia, trying to do so will instead bring
back quite dangerous traditions. These programs for a new human are inferior to
small actual practical transformations, regarding authority, sexism, illness, etc.
44. We have to look at which of our limits we can transgress.
45. [3] We can never reach a point of clarity and complete knowledge regarding our
own limits.
46. [Stakes] There is a complicated relationship between capabilities and autonomy.
47. “How can the growth of capabilities be disconnected from the intensification of
power relations?”
48. [Homogeneity] We look at humans not from how they see themselves, or what
determines them, but from what they do and how.
49. People rationally organise their action within systems, react to others, even alter
the system’s rules.
50. [Systematicity] Three areas or axes: relations of control over things (knowledge),
relations of action upon others (power), relation with oneself (ethics).
51. [Generality] Even though these questions are always historically situated, they
recur again and again. In looking at problematisation, we “analyze questions of
general import in their historically unique form.”
52. The Enlightenment has not made us mature.
53. We have to contine this threefold attitude: of critique of what we are, analysis of
our historical limits, and practical experiments of transgression.
54. Methodology: We need to see practices as technological rationality and strategic
liberty at work simultaneously.
55. Theory: Historical forms of problematisation of our relations to things, others, and
ourselves.
56. Practice: Testing in concrete practice the results of our reflections.