FALLOUT FROM THE ENLIGHTENMENT

I just want to refer to what I call The Dark Side of the Enlightenment heritage.

 

Everyone is wringing their hands now over fake news, fake internet reports, false history, fake politics, fake journalism, junk science, fake science, commercial shams of all kinds, fake and counterfeit products such as those sold through Alibaba etc., lack of morals, cultural malaise, lack of faith, anarchism, feelings of emptiness and purposelessness, things like that.

 

I call this fallout from The Enlightenment, the dark side of the enlightenment.

 

One strand of the enlightenment claimed that human reason itself reflected the structure of reality itself.

 

The other strand, the dark strand, challenged this view, and claimed that there was no actual connection between reason and reality at all, but that the only connection humans had with reality, if any, and if what is called reality even actually exists, was through appearance.

 

The origins of the dark side of the enlightenment  go back even to The Sophists, in the Fifth Century in Greece.

 

Guthrie, in his great work on the history of Greek philosophy even called his great volume III, a must read, The Fifth Century Enlightenment. 

Of course, neither am I  a fan of Plato's metaphysics, epistemology, and politics, regarding the other strand. Who could be, who understands them?