Guardians
According to Kant, guardians are authorities in society who tell people what to think and what to do. The guardians regard enlightenment as dangerous and therefore try to keep people in a state of immaturity. Kant compares the guardians to owners of domestic livestock, who keep their livestock ignorant and fearful of escaping captivity. Likewise, the guardians seek to make the public frightened of enlightenment by showing the dangers of it. This effort, along with people’s laziness, is the reason why enlightenment is difficult to achieve through personal effort. People can’t simply overcome these challenges by themselves.
Scholars
The status of scholar is not achieved through the award of titles, but only through practice. Anyone in society who practices their reason in the public space is a scholar. A scholar should have unlimited freedom to use their reason, regardless of their gender and occupation. Kant gives the example of a pastor. When the pastor is performing his duty, he may not disobey the church’s rules. However, when the pastor addresses a universal public beyond the congregation, in writing, he should be granted complete freedom to question the rules of the church. It is not as a functionary that the pastor is a scholar; he is such by using his reason in public, for the sake of reason only.
Frederick II (the Great) of Prussia
Frederick the Great, or Frederick II, ruled Prussia from 1740 to 1786. Born in 1712, the monarch expanded Prussia’s territories through many military campaigns. He allowed religious freedom in his kingdom and fostered unprecedented freedom of speech. His court attracted intellectuals such as Voltaire. He was an advocate of enlightened absolutism, maintaining absolute power while caring for the well-being of his subjects. Enlightened absolutism, as Kant understands it, means “Argue as much as you want and about what you want, but obey!” Promoting enlightened absolutism, Kant believes that the age of enlightenment is the age of Frederick.
