“Is it useful for the people to be deceived?”

The 1780 Berlin Academy essay prize question brought to the fore the tension between truth and utility.​ While deception may appear antithetical to Enlightenment, many Enlightenment thinkers suggested that prejudices, superstitions, or even lies should be utilised for moral or political ends. The project, realised from 2025 to 2029, investigates the historical and intellectual currents behind this situation, which has echoes in the political cultures of today, from three perspectives.

Strand 1: Enlightenment examines how the prize question reshaped the concept of popular enlightenment, focusing on who was considered part of the public to be enlightened, what assumptions were involved, and what strategies were proposed.

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Strand 2: Publicity studies enlightenment and deception in political thought, through Immanuel Kant’s principle of publicity and its implications for reconciling political action with the public use of reason.

Strand 3: Religion analyses the religious dimension of deception by tracing Enlightenment debates on religion as useful illusion and by examining Kant’s concept of “historical faith” and its political significance.