How many times when you read the works of 18th or 19th century philosopher, you had thought: "Damn, this guy was so smart. If only his mind wasn't constrained so much by Euro-centrism/classism/sexism, imagine what fantastic depths of insight he could have reach..."
(stares intensely at John Stuart Mill, unblinkely) Honestly this is true of almost every major writer of the 18th or 19th century, like you have the occasional person like John Brown or Henri Gregoire but overall its actually one of the major reason why we need a major rethinking of the entire view of the Enlightenment, because a lot of these guys have pretty good ideas but just can't imagine
Liberalism in particular suffers from this the most ideologically, because a ton of its ideas are basically just...good ideas if only we actually applied them to all people. Like I really agree with a ton of what John Stuart Mill says about individual rights and personal liberties, but he literally says "This doesn't apply to native peoples or slaves, only people like me. oh or the poors, fuck the poors, i'm John Stuart Mill". Basically the entire enlightenment is fundamentally flawed.
