Common philosophers manufacture for themselves principles according to their fancy

From The Portable Enlightenment Reader, edited by Isaac Kramnick.  This is Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz responding in 1696 to John Locke's Essays on Human Understanding.  In New Essays on Human Understanding, Leibnitz disagreed with Lock.  Locke felt like all knowledge originated through experiences through the senses.  Leibnitz felt that there were innate ideas or dispositions and that therefore not all knowledge was an accumulation through the senses.  

We now know that while both Leibnitz and Locke were right about many things, on this subject, the better argument ws Leibnitz's.  In the past twenty years, we have been astonished at just how much is encoded through our DNA.  Not just primitive responses such as an innate fear of snakes, but far more complex issues such as predispositions towards certain behaviors or actions.  

What struck me in this passage, however, was Leibnitz's description of an issue still with us today.  The inclination of some to make up ideas from whole cloth and to pretend that those beliefs have inherent merit.  

Of all researches, there is none of greater importance, since it is the key to all others. The first book considers chiefly the principles said to be born with us. Mr. Locke does not admit them, any more than he admits innate ideas. He has doubtless had good reasons for opposing himself on this point to ordinary prejudices, for the name of ideas and principles is greatly abused. Common philosophers manufacture for themselves principles according to their fancy; and the Cartesians, who profess greater accuracy, do not cease to intrench themselves behind so-called ideas of extension, of matter, and of the soul, desiring to avoid thereby the necessity of proving what they advance, on the pretext that those who will meditate on these ideas will discover in them the same thing as they; that is to say, that those who will accustom themselves to their jargon and mode of thought will have the same prepossessions, which is very true.

Critical Race Theory, Social Justice Theory, ESG, DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) - all derivative from Marxism but all constituting a belief system unmoored to empirical reality.  It is common to describe them as religions, which, clearly, for some, is true.  More strictly, they are belief systems entirely based on belief and conviction, unimpeded by logic, reason, or empirical reality.  

A plight evident in 1696 as much as it is today in 2022.