What is Enlightenment?
I read Kant's essay on enlightenment today. It was actually better written than I expected (Kant is famous for obfuscation and such). The central thesis is that enlightenment, and therefore the Enlightenment, is intellectual independence in the public sphere, but not the private sphere. In other words, you're allowed to disagree with someone and state that disagreement in a public forum but not allowed to act on that disagreement: such as, a soldier has a right to disagree with an order but has to carry it out anyway. This idea comes from Frederick the (so-called) Great who is famous for saying something like "Argue! By all means argue with me, but obey."

What I found funny is that Kant saw Germany as the center of the Enlightenment, and claimed (not in that essay, but in another, called Eternal Peace) that France and England are only beginning to catch up. He also said nothing about America, which was the country founded on the ideas of the Enlightenment (and the essay was written in the 1790s, long after America proclaimed independence). I did like his insistance of freedom of speech, however. It was well needed back then.