The Third Enlightenment
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Source: Walter Truett Anderson (ed)(1996)
 The Fontana Post-Modernism Reader;
Fontana; ISBN 0006863701
"The proposition that the self is an illusion, a socially constructed reality - that there are quite different ways of thinking about personal identity - seems to contradict plain common sense. And even people who accept the idea in the abstract don't necessarily get it in a way that makes a difference to how they experience daily life.

You can still find plenty of hardy rationalists in relentless pursuit of objective and universally acceptable explanations for everything.
The concept of the self is not only close to the core of our personal beliefs; it is also the core - the secret heart - of Postmodern thought. It is the point at which it becomes most apparent that there is a very strong similarity between the ideas of Postmodern intellectuals and those that have been running through spiritual teaching for centuries. That other, much older enlightenment project - the one that we associate with the Buddhists and the Sufis - was also built around a radically different notion of personal identity, a quest for liberation from the ego." (p218)

A radically different notion of personal identity, a quest for liberation from the ego
"What we are seeing now is the emergence into the foreground - into the centre of our personal and public lives - of an ancient minor theme. As this becomes a part of general public discourse, it also calls for some rethinking of ideas about the course of history - about such things as progress ...

Our eternal truths now appear to be inseparable from the cultures that created them and the languages in which they are stated.
The Postmodern Enlightenment project involves learning about learning, discovering something new about our own reality. It is, for many, a discovery full of hope ...
... we have not one Enlightenment project but three: a Western one based on rational thought, an Eastern one based on seeing through the illusion of the Self, and a Postmodern one based on the concept of socially constructed reality. And despite their many differences, they share the common goal of liberation. Jean-Jacques Rousseau made the famous revolutionary pronouncement that:

"Men are born free, and everywhere are in chains."

A couple of centuries later that still holds truth for us, but now we see that

the strongest chains are symbolic ones, mind forged manacles." (p219)

See also: Finding mental space for movement (sister site)

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