In Defence of the Enlightenment

In the age of the Enlightenment, the young, ascendant capitalist class began to stretch it's wings against the spiritual dictatorship of the church, and the feudal monarchies that they propped up.
Breaking the chains of obscurantist medieval dogma, bold thinkers and pioneers like Locke, Newton, Diderot and Rousseau fought for rationality and science and in so doing, theoretically cleared the ground for the great bourgeois revolutions.
Today, however, the capitalism is decrepit and dying and the ruling class has turned away from the reason of it's youth. In fact, the irrational capitalist system threatens to drag human society back to a new dark age.
In this episode, Ben Curry will discuss and defend the Enlightenment, which despite it's limits was an enormous conquest for human thought. We as Marxists lay claim to the bold materialism and clarity of thought which characterised the Enlightenment as theoretical armaments in our struggle against our own rotten ruling class.
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[@DracoseandCO]

Some really important lessons about the historically progressive role the Bourgeoisie has had in the past, and why our struggle today is inexorably tied to that of the Tiers-État... Thanks Ben !

[@wailinburnin]

Do you have a video that explains the RCP in Britain’s relationship with the “New Synthesis” and Bob Avakian in the USA?

[@subcitizen2012]

There are far too many whom misunderstand post modern philosophy, and this is very similar fruit. Postmodern philosophy is exactly what you are describing about scientific theories. Post modernism builds on modern enlightenment philosophy and critiques and corrects areas where it failed. It turns out humanity isn't all that rational, for example. That was a failure of enlightenment idealism, something leftists need to learn well, which you will never be able to do if you reject such figures as the Frankfurt school and Foucault. By all means, if you want to stay stuck in the 19th century, enjoy your book club, but if you want to move forward, you will have to peer into Nietzsche's abyss and realize it is within you. We are humans, as the enlightenment posits and affirms, but a massive oversight of that optimistic idealism is that we are also in fact animals. Aphex predators in fact, and we are our own favorite prey. Cooperation at scale isn't something that's going to happen naturally or any time soon. Communists know better than most that it can only be brought about at the barrel of a gun. I'd recommend diligently learning the lessons that the mid 20th century thinkers were forced to recon with as the aftermath of the enlightenment produced counterintuitive results, even as Marx anticipated.
"All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."

[@syourke3]

Yes, human beings are driven by instinct and emotion, but reason is important too.

[@abody499]

postmodernism commits the epistemic fallacy, and fails to address the limitations in modernist closed systems ontology