Reg Naulty responds to the latest book by philosopher Steven Pinker

Enlightenment now

Reg Naulty responds to the latest book by philosopher Steven Pinker

by Reg Naulty 8th June 2018

Steven Pinker’s latest book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress, is an amiable, good-natured book. Reasonable optimism breaks out everywhere. The title, though, is a little misleading. It brings to mind someone like Buddha and his kind of enlightenment. It isn’t about that, it’s about the historical Enlightenment and its values: reason, science, humanism and progress. ‘The Enlightenment, after all,’ writes Steven Pinker, was ‘humankind’s emergence from its self- incurred immaturity’. If anyone suspects a hint of anti-religious polemic in that, they are right.