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Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

bullshit. you people have to remember that you are comparing Europe to Europe when you praise the so-called Enlightenment. How were the Enlightened? Did they find Love? Empathy? Integrity? Deep Cultural Awareness? Spirituality? Intelligence? fuck no! Only Europe entered the Dark Ages, the rest of the world was thriving, expanding, evolving, in a truthful and uplifting way. It was only the Europeans who came to encourage racist expansion and true imperial colonialism. they were the ones who invented the "chosen people" myths, and it is the Enlightenment that directly supported this racist philosophy, always the driving force. dont let the so-called history books fool you, look at the reality of things, not the stories.

well man you clearly have a point and i agree in part with it-- while europe was immersed in ignorance and pestilence, the muslim world was developing mathematics, philosophy, medicine, and the arts, and preserving the knowledge of antiquity (with the exception of the burning of the great library of alexandria-- what a shame).

the chosen people myth however stems from judaism & was kidnapped by christians.

the enlightenment was due in part to the absortion of these classical and muslim knowledge by way of the rennaissance. ***** averroes's work on aristotle for example. [edit sorry i put avicenna originally-- that was wrong]

however, racism was NOT an invention of the enlightenment. racism was an invention of the religious wars of the middle ages. the medieval impulses of the spanish reconquista not only expelled muslims and jews from spain but also forced those remaining ones to convert to christianity. from being a cradle of knowledge and science in the high middle ages, renaissance spain became a backwards theocracy, fostering the ideas of "purity of blood" agains "jewish contamination" and such other shit.

racism stems out of ignorance, not knowledge. and when reason was used to support racism it's because it was misused to rationalize ignorance. which brings me to my next point.

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

!@#$% it is indeed truth that the Enlightenment is the bedrock of racism and imperialistic colonialism. nothing good or truth came out. there is no such thing as democracy it is a fairy tale. We rasta deal with reality and we know the games behind the shitstem. it is all an illusion. the only truth is love, and no love came from the enlightenment, only slavery to the world, both mental and physical! Do you think it is coincidence that immediately following the so-called Enlightement was the beginning of modern warfare, and the first times that people came together to kill each other in their tens of thousands a day?

i would argue on the side of habermas (which i haven't properly read though) that the reason our world is still a fucked up one is because the enlightment project was left unfinished. the ideas of the enlightment are the tools we use to conquer our freedom-- in a european-ruled word, no doubt... that's a fact of history. but that's how--the chickens come home to roost, as malcom x used to say. the universal declaration of human rights is a product of the enlightenment. religious tolerance emerged during the enlightenment, as well as secularism. the transcendance of reason from... pure rationalism... is a product of the enlightenment as well. "sapere aude"--("dare to know")-- implies that knowledge is a work in progress, not a stagnant dogma. the liberation movements in south africa, india, and other countries, were in part based on local traditions but also in great part in the ideological heritage of the enlightment, which the european-educated natives absorbed (both mandela and gandhi got law degrees).

"liberte egalite fraternite" is still a work in progress (sorry french people but the accents are hard on my laptop).