Steven Pinker and the New Enlightenment

摘要

Can humanity save itself? Steven Pinker wrote Enlightenment Now to prove that the industrial and scientific revolutions have enormously speeded up the rate of social change since the middle of the nineteenth century. We are in fact experiencing a new enlightenment now. He writes about Enlightenment thinkers of the eighteenth century who valued reason, science, humanism, prosperity and peace above all else. In emphasizing that the innate human capacity of sympathy for others can allow us to embrace all humanity, not just one's tribe, village, ethnicity, state, or small part of the planet, they recognized the possibility of the universal improvement of life. In spite of this, Enlightenment thinkers could be racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, or slaveholders. But today, as Pinker writes, what we know about humanity makes this impossible for humane thinkers.