enlightenment is indefatigably self-destructive in its own tendencies

Evidence

We are wholly convinced—and therein lies our petitio principii—that social freedom is inseparable from enlightened thought. Nevertheless, we believe that we have just as clearly recognized that the notion of this very way of thinking, no less than the actual historic forms—the social institutions—with which it is interwoven, already contains the seed of the reversal universally apparent today. If enlightenment does not accommodate reflection on this recidivist element, then it seals its own fate. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 21 (#corroborates, 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 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Anti-enlightenment ideology unconsciously reveres what it seeks to destroy; Enlightenment can be redeemed from blind domination by self-critique; Enlightenment regresses into the very myth it claimed to escape (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Enlightened thought itself contains the seed of its own reversal into domination #corroborates (0.95) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 21
• Enlightenment regresses into the very myth it claimed to escape #corroborates (0.92)
• Enlightenment reason replicated the tyranny it rebelled against, now over nature #expands (0.85) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 182
• Anti-enlightenment ideology unconsciously reveres what it seeks to destroy #corroborates (0.82)
• critical philosophy that becomes serviceable to power turns its own positives destructive #corroborates (0.80)
• Enlightenment can be redeemed from blind domination by self-critique #qualifies (0.75)
• The unconscious itself is exposed to irreversible destruction #expands (0.72) — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded, 1418