The enlightenment project, with its emphasis on both rationalism and empiricism, sought to emancipate us from the tyranny of a handed-down orthodoxy. It sought to make the source of truth personal and independent rather than collective and contingent through the propagation and practice of foundationalist logic.

The major social product of this enterprise was democracy, a movement which became primarily understood as the emancipation of the masses from the rule of an unmeritorious aristocracy. However, this aristocracy has persisted within Modernity in the form of Facism. This plague has persisted well into the most matured states of Modernity. The conventional response to its presence has been to persist further into the Modern enterprise to ensure its final elimination.

I no longer buy this narrative and perceive it as merely the rhetoric of a philosophical dinosaur. Modernity is a marginal success and we need to accept it. We need to take its best attributes and move on. It is time to develop a new epistemology.