[flomble]

It's strangely refreshing to see this particular criticism of the Enlightenment; I'm much more accustomed to hearing criticisms from the postmodernist direction. I disagree with your statement in a previous post that their arguments are incoherent, particularly the early exponents like Foucault or some of the Frankfurt school. I'd also point out that much of the Enlightenment tradition is not ontologically materialistic; in particular, German Idealism embodied in Kant, Schopenhauer etc. stands against materialism.

Based on what you're saying here, are you arguing for a kind of Scholasticism?

Finally, your criticism of a "radically egalitarian" view is somewhat perplexing to me. Would you mind expanding on that point?

[yters]

In my opinion the idealistic variant of the enlightenment is conceptually not significantly different from materialism. The big thing is rejection of teleology, which also results in the radical egalitarianism since there is no longer a purposeful ordering to reality and no longer a natural law.

And yes, a teleological philosophy like scholasticism makes the most sense if we are trying to figure out the best way to live. Otherwise we just end up with the specious word game philosophy that everyone hates