Thus the fork of the Enlightenment has two tines — rationalisation and demystification: on the one hand there is the inexorable progression toward the consummate autonomy of the explanatory potency of reason (which finds its ultimate form in scientific positivism and global technological industrialisation), and, on the other, the cessation of dependence on supernatural, mythical, religious or metaphysical influence (which finds its ultimate form in global secularisation, existential Angst, atomisation and alienation).

Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy of the Future - Toward a Post-Kantian Theology of Knowledge: Walter Benjamin’s Erkenntniskritik of Kant by Kieran Cashell