Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

As the title Enlightenment Now suggests, Pinker’s work celebrates and advocates for the reason, science, and humanism rooted in the Enlightenment period of late 17th-century Europe. The most famous philosophers of this era include David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Adam Smith, Mary Astell, and Baruch Spinoza. While these thinkers’ interests varied, they agreed on the main points, which Pinker generalizes as “Enlightenment thinking.” He explains, “The era was a cornucopia of ideas, some of them contradictory, but four themes tie them together: reason, science, humanism, and progress” (8).

As Pinker explains, in 1600s Europe, countries were governed by monarchies, and the church held enormous influence over cultural norms and politics. Europeans had established the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and devastating poverty was the norm for most Europeans. People had very little medical knowledge and therefore few ways to effectively treat the many illnesses circulating at the time. Infant and maternal mortality rates were high. Moreover, the few rights that common men had weren’t usually afforded to women, who were generally perceived as the property of their husbands or fathers. Most children were expected to work, and very few received an education. Enlightenment thinkers questioned all these norms, instead favoring emancipation, the separation of church and state, more democratic institutions, rights for women, a sacralization of childhood, and other progressive ideas.