Chomsky's Position

Noam Chomsky connects himself overtly to the Enlightment, namely to "the left libertarian tradition" consisting such figures as progressive liberal John Dewey (whose educational books "Democracy and Education" and "Experience and Education" are yet to be translated in
Finnish!), independent socialist & philosopher Bertnard Russell, and the leading elements of the Marxist mainstream (mostly anti-Bolshevik), and, of course, libertarian socialist of various anarchist movements, not to speak of major parts of the labor movement and other popular sector.

It is worth to note, how Chomsky in his Democracy and Education connects the philosophical questions of empiricism (manifestated as a postulation of ‘empty organism’) versus rationalism (manifestated as a postulation of ‘innately creative organism’) to the issues of politics, moral judgment, and human freedom. He refers Ellen Wood, who, in turn, goes to Kant’s critique of empiricism, and interprets it as not only an epistemological quibble but also “a far-reaching argument about the nature of human freedom.” Thus, from the point of social choices, human freedom, and ultimately, reasonable society at large, it is not unimportant “whether the human mind is ‘a responsive cog in the mechanism of nature,’ as in empiricist doctrine, or ‘a creative, determinative force.’" (Otero 2003, 10.)