Enlightenment for the common people? Frederick II and the philosophes on popular prejudice, deception and education

Journal article

Abstract:: Could the common people, including illiterate laborers, be enlightened? How should cultural elites and political leaders embark on the task? Frederick II, king of Prussia, discussed these issues in an extensive correspondence with Voltaire and d’Alembert in the 1760s and 1770s, exchanges that led to an infamous prize contest on the potentially useful deception of the people (Berlin, 1780). Analyzing this discussion in detail for the first time, the article situates it within contemporary and longer-term contexts. The result is a reassessment of the views of mainstream Enlightenment authors on the intellectual capacities of the populace, the function of religion in ethics and politics, and the positive role of prejudice (as distinct from superstition) in eighteenth-century discourse. This should nuance Hans-Georg Gadamer’s famous claim that the Enlightenment harboured a “prejudice against all prejudices.”

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Copyright holder:: Avi Lifschitz
Rights statement:: © The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that no alterations are made and the original article is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press or the rights holder(s) must be obtained prior to any commercial use and/or adaptation of the article.

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