Sadly, history and current events remind us otherwise. One might view reason, science, and humanism to be self-evident. Following the staggering optimism of the book’s second part, Pinker places his defense of Enlightenment ideals in the third, cautioning us that progress will not continue inevitably-it is contingent on the ideals that underlie it. One of the book’s most impressive features is that Pinker’s arguments are not only made in his usual wit and multitude of cultural and intellectual references but also come with a rather impressive wealth of data and historical trends, be those the global decline in extreme poverty and war or the global increase of life expectancy, knowledge, equality, and happiness.

In the second part, he embarks on a tour de force through fields as diverse as happiness, war, and knowledge to show how, over the last centuries, humans have evoked Enlightenment ideals to bring about substantial progress in each of them. Pinker divides his book into three parts, using the first to set out what enlightenment is he identifies humanism-the striving for the flourishing of all humans-as setting its goal and reason and science as guiding its methodology. It is a stalwart defense of the ideals of the Enlightenment, recasting them “in the language and concepts of the twenty-first century.” The “Now” in the title and the timing of the book’s publication are by no means coincidental- Enlightenment Now appears both universally applicable as well as acutely relevant in today’s global sociopolitical climate. The heart of Steven Pinker’s important new book is in its title: Enlightenment Now.

Steven pinker now