Anti-enlightenment ideology unconsciously reveres what it seeks to destroy

Evidence

The Enlightenment’s focus on rationalism and science did the opposite of what might be expected, inspiring new legions of monsters in domestic and foreign spaces, rather than eradicating them. … All of this inspired new categories of monsters that emerged as a way for the imagination to express itself in socially acceptable ways that did not offend religious morals. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 352 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

In cleaning up this mess, analytic philosophy conceptualizes the behavior in the present technological organization of reality, but it also accepts the verdicts of this organization; the debunking of an old ideology becomes part of a new ideology. Not only the illusions are debunked but also the truth in those illusions. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 685 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

In philosophy, the Distinction, especially in its Is/Ought form, was perhaps the dominating problem in moral thought. As the philosopher Charles Taylor has asserted, “the fact/value split” has become “a dominant theme in our [twentieth] century” and has undergirded “a new understanding and valuation of freedom and dignity.” What needs to be said in addition is that it determined the entirety of our conception of reality, which Taylor appears to subsume under “freedom and dignity.” Powerfully expressed in the Kantian notion of autonomy, freedom ceases to denote God’s omnipotence and becomes instead an expression of man’s own natural powers of reasoning. Human reason becomes the sole arbiter in the project of objectifying the world, of submitting it to its own demands and will, which now have turned relentlessly instrumentalist. The pursuit of happiness, utility, and much else that is subservient to these imperatives—such as preservation of life and protection of private property—become natural rights derivable from the natural order by what is/was seen as far-sighted, calculating reason. Formerly restricted by the power of revelation as defined by the Catholic Church, reason now becomes, like a free market, free and unbound by any restricting consideration or enduring moral principle. It is reason on the loose. Yet, in the very outburst of Enlightenment reason against the absolutism of Church and monarch, precisely in its mighty reaction against such powers that had ruled over it with utterly free absolutism, Enlightenment reason’s distension and extension went the full circle of replicating the very tyranny that caused its rise in the first place, but this time it was not just people who were its subject of rule, but also nature and indeed the world in its entirety. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 182 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: enlightenment is indefatigably self-destructive in its own tendencies; Enlightenment rationalism generated new monsters instead of eradicating them — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 352; Totalitarianism expresses rather than repudiates Enlightenment’s inherent dynamic. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 786 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Enlightenment rationalism generated new monsters instead of eradicating them #exemplifies (0.90) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 352
• Debunking old illusions becomes a new ideology that destroys their truth. #exemplifies (0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 685
• Enlightenment reason replicated the tyranny it rebelled against, now over nature #exemplifies (0.80) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 182
• Totalitarianism expresses rather than repudiates Enlightenment’s inherent dynamic. #qualifies (0.75) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 786