True and False Political Enlightenment
In this essay, written in the shadow of the French Revolution, Moser argues that too much light in the wrong places can indeed be harmful. Enlightenment without religion would be pernicious, taking away the crutch and comfort that men need. Since the prevailing natural law theories are human inventions, Moser writes, they really leave men to live by their own passions and will end in war and the ruin of society. He also turns the word> fanaticism [Schwärmerei], often used by impious enlighteners to describe pietistic religion, against those enlighteners.
Moser was less sanguine about the compatibility of religion and radical enlightenment than Bahrdt and Riem but more so than Hamann. He makes it clear that he is seeking a middle way between radical enlightenment and reactionary conservatism. The motto of his journal, New Patriotic Archive, was “to light up, not to set on fire.”
Written by the emperor of Japan to the Wandsbeker Bothen; Asmus, fifth part, p. 95:
I would like to have an enlightenment, through which father and son, man and wife, lord and servant, etc., would become truer and more honest in themselves and for each other, and all my subjects would become better subjects and I would become a better ruler. And I am very curious to find out how far the European enlighteners have succeeded in these matters, and how they set about it.1
There is an intellectual [geistische] power that progresses in equal proportion to the oppression of a people, which in the growth and dissemination of its invisible power not only provides a strong counterweight to despotism with all its arts of seduction and delusion but, as time passes, also threatens more and more to win superiority and to shake and topple despotism's innermost foundations.
It always desires to do this, even if in this upheaval not only the lord of the house perishes but also the house with its inhabitants; even if because of its predominance the equilibrium is lost; even if the ills and evils which were abolished and destroyed are replaced by only a meager good, and empty truth is given instead of error.
First published as “Wahre und falsche politische Aufklärung” Neues Patriotisches Archiv für Deutschland 1 (1792): 527-536. “Written in January, 1792” appeared after the title of this piece in the table of contents for the issue.
Just as every forbidden, pernicious, and arbitrary authority is comprehended under the one word despotism, so the intellectual power standing and working against this despotism may be designated by the word enlightenment.
One would have liked to use the word philosophy instead, if she were still the pure, chaste daughter of the heavens, come from the hand of the Creator through the godly gift of reason. Here, however, there are distinctions, as in the whole empire of the intellect. There is a good and bad, and also (on closer examination this distinction is generally agreed on) a true and a false enlightenment.
The business of the former is light, truth, the growth and dissemination of both, harmony, order, quiet, and peace in and over the entire human race.
The business of the latter is delusion instead of illumination, deception instead of instruction, disruption and discord instead of harmony, insolence instead of freedom, the malignant confusion of minds and seduction of human hearts.
All times have had true and false prophets side by side. Truth has its followers, wisdom its students, and seducers their seduced and deceived. Likewise there are those who truly are enlighteners; and there are those who fancy themselves and pass themselves off as enlighteners.
The usual statement, common to both but uttered with very different intentions and applications, is: truth must be able to endure the light. Fine—but all good police regulations prevent and prohibit bringing an open flame into flammable places, into hay and straw lofts, into stables and the like. Because of the mortal danger, taking a candle into a room where gunpowder is stored is permitted nowhere. It would be criminal, on the pretext of providing light, to bring so many candles into a room and to place them in such a way that the whole house would catch fire. It would be foolish to light candles at bright midday, in order to make the sun shine brighter. It would be nonsense to place candles in the churchyard so that the dead could see in their graves. These are the operations of some of our modern enlighteners, candle bearers, and lantern carriers.
Of much the same substance and superficiality in its application is the excuse: only through the riskiest, wickedest teaching will the truth become more visible, more refined, and more secure. Will an honorable family allow their father to be called a swindler, in order to have the opportunity to defend his honesty? Will a subject be allowed to go around freely in a country inciting simple peasants to disobedience and rebellion, and persuading them that their lord is a false prince? Will a forger go unpunished because through his fraud he helps the warden of the mint to distinguish between good and fake coins?
If it were to become generally taken for granted that under the pretense of truth and freedom everything must and ought a priori to be investigated, then no king would be safe on his throne and no honest man would be safe in his bed.
Or, to give another example: if an Italian were to present himself in Berlin, or even better, in Sans Souci,2 and prove through experiments that he could make the true Aqua Tofana, 3 and if he sought an exclusive privilege for its sale in return for promising to instruct the court pharmacist, is it to be expected that his request would fare well? Or is it not more plausible that such an enemy of the human race and disturber of the peace and security of the household would be locked up, along with all his skills, in good custody, and thus prevented from causing harm? The latter is not only believable, but is what actually happened. In the 1750s, Count Christian Ernst zu Stollberg-Wernigerode4 had the good sense to send such a poison maker, who presented himself as an errant knight and proved the effectiveness of his art on an animal, to the late king of Prussia5 with an appropriate recommendation, and the artist was thrown into perpetual confinement. I have this story from the mouth of the honorable old count himself, who told it in public in the year 1756 at the table of Herr von Reineck6 in Frankfurt am Main. Now ask anyone, from the Prussian chief chancellor [Großkanzler] to the lowliest professor of law: Would someone who carries a poison around and offers it for sale go unpunished because he had not made the poison himself and had only intended to give others the opportunity to investigate the nature and power of this poison through antidotes?
Healthy minds and pure hearts agree on the essence, elements, application, utility, benefits, and blessings of true enlightenment in all areas and estates. The wise and good prince certainly is as delighted by it, and certainly recognizes its value as gratefully as the most enthusiastic friend of the people is able to extol its praise, and the prince does far more to spread its light.
However, day and night have not yet separated themselves to the extent that truth and deceit can be adequately distinguished from one another. Use and misuse, good and false coins, still lie too close together for there not to be suspicion of danger and deception, for there not to be fear where there is nothing to fear, or carelessness and indifference where vigilant wariness would be needed.
My short and candid avowal is this: all enlightenment that is not grounded in and supported by religion, all enlightenment that does not grow out of the dependence of the created on its Creator and on the goodness and care of the Creator for his human creations, all enlightenment that draws back from the duties of love, reverence, gratitude, and obedience to His will, His commandments, and the institutions of His great world government, all enlightenment that leaves man to his own willfulness, vanity, and passions and inspires him with Lucifer's pride to see himself as his sole, independent ruler and to make his own arbitrary natural law—all such enlightenment is not only the way to destruction, immorality, and depravity but also to the dissolution and ruin of all civil society, and to a war of the human race within itself, that begins with philosophy and ends with scalping and cannibalism.
Every enlightenment—theological, philosophical, and political—is suspect which, to say the least, does not go hand in hand with the temporal and eternal happiness of men. Any religious and political enlightenment that takes from man what he requires for comfort, light, support, and peace in the current state of education of this earthly life—or that wishes to give him more than he can use, employ, and manage according to his powers of intellect and understanding—is deception, fraud, fanaticism [Schwärmerei], treachery against man. It is surely not the action of a reasonable and righteous man and is just as evil and dangerous as superstition, unbelief, and despotism.
The truth lies in the middle: happy is he who finds this way, blessed is he who truly, rightly, and clearly shows it to him.
There are, in my opinion, rather more negative answers about what is not true enlightenment than general positive principles that can be put out as boundary stones as to how far and wide it may become light, where the day should cease and the night might begin and remain. We weak, shortsighted fragments of men! That which fifty, one hundred, two hundred years ago one could hardly suspect, hope for, wish for, hardly dare whisper, is now preached in all pulpits and from all roofs. That for which ten years ago one would have been fined for lèse majesté, and which would have forced others to shout “Flee! Flee!” as Hutten commanded Erasmus,7 is now affirmed from all university lecterns. It is printed under imperial and territorial rulers' privileges, and the heads of peoples themselves recognize, understand, praise, value, and, like it or not, act on it. We can well reckon when, where, how, and through whom light and illumination have begun. When, where, and how it will end we will be able to know only after the general transformation of all things.
Each century has its own wisdom and foolishness, its own truths and errors. One begins sometimes with the sale of a great truth and ends up with an even greater error. Often the converse also occurs: one learns to walk by falling and despite errors and guesses eventually finds the right way. So may it also happen with the pet ideas which clever and foolish humanity currently peddles on the great French national market, and which will be palmed off and pressed on their worshipers and blind adherents as philosophical-political paper money.8
NOTES
1. This passage is quoted from Matthias Claudius (1740-1815), ASMUS omnia sua SECUM por tans, oder Sämtliche Werke des Wandsbecker Bothen (Wandsbeck, 1789), 5th part, p. 59 (Moser reversed the order of the numerals in the page number).—TRANS.
2. Sans Souci was the name of Frederick the Great's palace in Potsdam.—TRANS.
3. A legendary poison.—TRANS.
4. Count Stollberg-Wernigerode (1691-1771) employed Moser's brother, William Gottfried Moser, as a forestry official.—TRANS.
5. Moser refers here to Frederick II (1712-1786), king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.—TRANS.
6. Friedrich Ludwig von Reineck (1707-1775), wine merchant in Frankfurt and host to Goethe, among others.—TRANS.
7. Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523) and Desiderius Erasmus (1469-1536). For the relationship between the two figures, see Hajo Holborn, Ulrich von Hutten and the German Reformation (New Haven, 1937).—TRANS.
8. The German word, Assignaten, refers to the paper money issued by the French revolutionary government, known as Assignats.—TRANS.