4 ms·

The way I read it, Pinker wasn't adamant about these values being determinate and shared. Quite the opposite, he was aware that there was disagreement and that

The way I read it, Pinker wasn't adamant about these values being determinate and shared. Quite the opposite, he was aware that there was disagreement and that things were messy. From the first chapter of the book: > What is the Enlightenment? There is no official answer, because the era named by Kant’s essay was never demarcated by opening and closing ceremonies like the Olympics, nor are its tenets stipulated in an oath or creed… The era was a cornucopia of ideas, some of them contradictory, but four themes tie them together: reason, science, humanism and progress. In other words, the themes are of Pinker's own determining, with the benefit of hindsight. More importantly, this is not a book about the history of the Enlightenment. Out of the many thousands of paragraphs in this book, Pinker only devotes a small handful to discussing the source of the values/themes he defends. I don't think it's accurate to refer to their origin as the argument Pinker makes in the book. It would be more accurate to say that this is merely one supplemental point he makes in the book, and that it's largely irrelevant to his central thesis.

zasz 9y ago
The thing is, how can you trust Pinker's interpretation of the Enlightenment? Pinker thinks the Enlightenment was an important engine of 'progress,' but John Locke was a tremendously influential Enlightenment thinker who argued in defense of slavery, who owned shares in a slave-trading company. (http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0090591713485446?journalCode=ptxa http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0090591713485446...) Locke was also responsible for many of the ideas surrounding natural rights that are now enshrined in the American Constitution, but from the perspective of an African slave, Locke was not progressive. Thomas Hobbes was even more illiberal than Locke. He didn't even believe in natural rights at all, and he would have hated democracy. Pinker's getting a lot wrong that he can't cover for just by making a token nod to the vagueness of exactly when the Enlightenment started. His poor understanding of what the Enlightenment was, who was in it, and what they actually believed means that whatever story he tells of human progress is going to be fundamentally flawed.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- csallen 9y ago
  Again, the point of the book is not to cover the history of the Enlightenment, to praise or judge the Enlightenment thinkers themselves, or to defend some "correct" interpretation or definition of what the Enlightenment entailed. You're arguing against a strawman. The point of the book is that reason, science, and humanism are valuable ideas that have helped us progress as a species since the Enlightenment, and that they continue to drive progress today.
  - FranzFerdiNaN 9y ago
    If he simply ignores everything he doesn't like about the thinkers he writes about, his book is useless. His earlier book, Better Angels Of Our Nature, was also terribly wrong in presenting the hunter-gatherer state of humans as being much more violent than archeologists and anthropologists think, just to present his case that civilization is a good thing. So I don't have much faith in this book, as he clearly starts with a certain idea (civilization is needed because the human being is inherently violent) and looks for arguments to support it instead of the other way around. He should probably stick to his own field of psychology.
    - csallen 9y ago
      > If he simply ignores everything he doesn't like about the thinkers he writes about, his book is useless. This makes zero sense. If I write a guide about how to use red paint to create beautiful paintings, is my guide useless if it fails to acknowledge the atrocities that may or may not have been committed by the inventor of red paint? Of course not. > Better Angels Of Our Nature, was also terribly wrong in presenting the hunter-gatherer state of humans as being much more violent than archeologists and anthropologists think He supported his position with loads of strong evidence. Your counterargument, however, presents no evidence.

zasz 9y ago

The thing is, how can you trust Pinker's interpretation of the Enlightenment? Pinker thinks the Enlightenment was an important engine of 'progress,' but John Locke was a tremendously influential Enlightenment thinker who argued in defense of slavery, who owned shares in a slave-trading company. (http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0090591713485446?journalCode=ptxa http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0090591713485446...) Locke was also responsible for many of the ideas surrounding natural rights that are now enshrined in the American Constitution, but from the perspective of an African slave, Locke was not progressive. Thomas Hobbes was even more illiberal than Locke. He didn't even believe in natural rights at all, and he would have hated democracy. Pinker's getting a lot wrong that he can't cover for just by making a token nod to the vagueness of exactly when the Enlightenment started. His poor understanding of what the Enlightenment was, who was in it, and what they actually believed means that whatever story he tells of human progress is going to be fundamentally flawed.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
csallen 9y ago
Again, the point of the book is not to cover the history of the Enlightenment, to praise or judge the Enlightenment thinkers themselves, or to defend some "correct" interpretation or definition of what the Enlightenment entailed. You're arguing against a strawman. The point of the book is that reason, science, and humanism are valuable ideas that have helped us progress as a species since the Enlightenment, and that they continue to drive progress today.
- FranzFerdiNaN 9y ago
  If he simply ignores everything he doesn't like about the thinkers he writes about, his book is useless. His earlier book, Better Angels Of Our Nature, was also terribly wrong in presenting the hunter-gatherer state of humans as being much more violent than archeologists and anthropologists think, just to present his case that civilization is a good thing. So I don't have much faith in this book, as he clearly starts with a certain idea (civilization is needed because the human being is inherently violent) and looks for arguments to support it instead of the other way around. He should probably stick to his own field of psychology.
  - csallen 9y ago
    > If he simply ignores everything he doesn't like about the thinkers he writes about, his book is useless. This makes zero sense. If I write a guide about how to use red paint to create beautiful paintings, is my guide useless if it fails to acknowledge the atrocities that may or may not have been committed by the inventor of red paint? Of course not. > Better Angels Of Our Nature, was also terribly wrong in presenting the hunter-gatherer state of humans as being much more violent than archeologists and anthropologists think He supported his position with loads of strong evidence. Your counterargument, however, presents no evidence.