The Enlightenment

[What people are calling "The Enlightenment"] is the exact opposite of the [E]nlightenment. Maybe we need a new [Enlightenment]? Don't you think?

[T]he introduction of Buddhism to the West is what caused it, like [one says] Nietzsche and Kant. The actual [E]nlightenment was what came before it. That's the beginning of Modernism what [they're] describing. 

Generally, The Enlightenment was established in the Philosophy of the Declaration of Independence, and based itself in reason and sound first principles. Fortunately, we still have its tradition preserved in the Constitution and Declaration, but in the phrase "We hold these truths to be self evident" [t]here's no admission of subjectivity, as "Self Evident" is not "Subjective" but rather based in first principles of something being of itself evident, which is how Geometry works. You read in Thomas Jefferson's letters, or Locke the cusp of the Enlightenment, which was philosophy based in sound and evident first principles, that were apparent to the learned, but maybe not the unlearned.

Descartes was famous for saying, "I think therefore I am" but the whole point of that, was to establish a true set of knowledge. Like Descartes was a Mathematician, and framed the Quadratic Equation in its modern incarnation. He was not afraid to claim there's objective knowledge. 

I'd actually say Nietzsche and Kant were the beginning of Modernism, as Modernism is the exact opposite of the Enlightenment, which it opposes that there's any true knowledge beyond the material. And Postmodernism objects to there being knowledge at all. 

The Enlightenment was man first discovering there was knowledge, and then giving that fire to the people, like Prometheus. I mean, the entire Enlightenment was of course created by the Masons, who founded that there was knowledge. That's why The French Revolution deified Reason. 

I don't know... something smells fishy about this.