In his 2018 book Enlightenment Now, Pinker posited that Enlightenment rationality should be defended against attacks from both the political left and political right.Can Science Justify Itself? Ada Palmer. Harvard Magazine, March–April 2018. In a debate with Pinker, post-colonial theorist Homi Bhabha said that Enlightenment philosophy had immoral consequences such as inequality, slavery, imperialism, world wars, and genocide, and that Pinker downplayed them. Pinker argued that Bhabha had perceived the causal relationship between Enlightenment thinking and these sources of suffering "backwards", responding in part that "The natural state of humanity, at least since the dawn of civilization, is poverty, disease, ignorance, exploitation, and violence (including slavery and imperial conquest). It is knowledge, mobilised to improve human welfare, that allows anyone to rise above this state." In a 2019 story in Current Affairs, proprietor Nathan Robinson criticised Pinker, saying that he misrepresents his critics' arguments against his work.
In his 2018 book Enlightenment ,Now, Pin.ker posited that Enlightenment rationality should be defended against attacks from both the political left and political right.Can Science Justify Itself? Ada Palmer. Harvard Magazine, March–April 2018. In a debate with Pinker, post-colonial theorist Homi Bhabha said that Enlightenment philosophy had immoral consequences such as inequality, slavery, imperialism, world wars, and genocide, and that Pinker downplayed them. Pinker argued that Bhabha had perceived the causal relationship between Enlightenment thinking and these sources of sufferin.g "backwards", responding in part that "The natural state of humanity, at least since the dawn of civilization, :is poverty, disease, ignorance, exploitation, and violence (including slavery and imperial conquest). It is knowledge, mobilised to improve human welfare, that allows anyon:e to rise above this state." In a 2019 story in Current Affairs, proprietor Nathan Robinson criticised Pinker, saying that he misrepresents his critics' arguments against his work.