THE ENLIGHTENMENT
545
same time be deceptive, so that, thinking that one knows more now
that more
is
in clear light, one really knows less than before. All
this must be taken into careful consideration, but it does not alter
our first insight: enlightenment aims at discovering (uncovering)
the real, hence truth.
Disclosing,
unmasking,
disillusioning,
discovering are forms of
enlightenment. Enlightenment always has a polemic impulse, it pro–
ceeds against something or other. Here, together with the task, lies
another temptation. Not everything that seems to be a mask is a mask,
we may be dealing with a covering which is justifiable as a protection.
It is not an act of legitimate enlightenment to strip someone's clothes
off. But where someone or something is really masked, one may un–
mask; where there is real illusion, where someone really deludes
himself, one may disillusion. There are pleasant illusions and useful
illusions, useful to him who deludes or useful for him who is deluded.
Where such illusions are in question, enlightenment is a hardy under–
taking; it requires courage to unmask a faker, and it requires still
more courage to disillusion oneself, to look truth in the face.
Now truth, of course, is not only a relation to a state of fact,
but
also
a relation between men. There is a right to truth, but there
is
also
the other case- that someone has no right to the truth or to
the whole truth: that certain facts may remain hidden or even must
remain hidden. All false and premature sexual enlightenment, for
example, is a crime against the truth which is a relation between
men: the child at one time has a right that the facts of sex should
remain concealed from him, that he should be left in
his
childish
truth, and at another time that the same facts should be disclosed
to him. The Gestapo had no right to enlightenment. (But certainly
citizens had a right to be enlightened concerning the Gestapo.) From
this we deduce the pedagogical meaning and the pedagogical limits
of enlightenment.
Even from these simple com;iderations it appears that there is
no absolute enlightenment, no enlightenment at any cost. Enlighten–
ment (of others and of oneself) must be justified. To be sure, there
is a strong prepossession in favor of enlightenment- inasmuch as it
is
basically concerned with truth; but not even that justifies every
act of enlightenment without further consideration. Even though
deception and deliberate concealment almost always deserve to be
