在上一节的内容中，康德讲到“大众式的启蒙”是个体获得启蒙最有效的途径，即少数有良知、有智慧的学者告诉大众正确的思维模式，告诉他们正受困于思想的枷锁，从中可以看出康德非常重视社会环境对个体的影响。那么在什么样的情况下，学者可以对大众进行启蒙呢？在这一节中，我们将重点探讨这个问题。
But which sort of restriction prevents enlightenment, and which, instead of hindering it, can actually promote it? I reply: The public use of man's reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among men; the private use of reason may quite often be very narrowly restricted, however, without undue hindrance to the progress of enlightenment. But by the public use of one's own reason I mean that use which anyone may make of it as a man of learning addressing the entire reading public. What I term the private use of reason is that which a person may make of it in a particular civic post with which he is entrusted.
Now in some affairs which affect the interests of the community, we require a certain mechanism whereby some members of the community must behave purely passively, so that they may, by an artificial common agreement, be employed by the government for public ends (or at least deterred from vitiating them). Here arguing is not permitted: one must obey. But in so far as this or that individual who acts as part of the machine also considers himself as a member of a complete community or even of cosmopolitan society, and thence as a man of learning who may through his writings address a public, he may indeed argue, and the affairs with which he is associated in part as a passive member will not suffer.
▍生词好句
hinder: vt. 阻碍
promote: vt. 促进；提升
hindrance: n. 障碍；妨碍
address: vt. 对……说话；演说
particular: adj. 特定的
entrust: vt. 委任；委托
mechanism: n. 机制；原理
end: n. 目标
permit: vt. 允许；许可
cosmopolitan: adj. 世界性的
thence: adv. 因此；从那里
