In the memories of many readers of this book-and in the experience of those in less fortunate parts of the world-war, scarcity, disease, ignorance, and lethal menace are a natural part of existence. We take its gifts for granted: newborns who will live more than eight decades, markets overflowing with food, clean water that appears at the flick of a finger and waste that disappears with another, pills that erase a painful infection, sons who are not sent off to war, daughters who can walk the streets in safety, critics of the powerful who are not jailed or shot, the world’s knowledge and culture available in a shirt pocket.īut these are human accomplishments, not cosmic birthrights. More than ever, the ideals of reason, science, humanism, and progress need a wholehearted defense. I wrote this book because I have come to realise that it is not. Steven Pinker : ''The Enlightenment principle that we can apply reason and sympathy to enhance human flourishing may seem obvious, trite, old-fashioned. We asked the two luminaries to engage in a written dialogue about the good, the bad and the ugly of the Enlightenment in the twenty-first century, starting from an extract from Pinker's book Enlightenment Now. ![]() While Pinker focuses on the merits of the Enlightenment, Bhabha outlines its complicated and dual reverberations. ![]() ![]() Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker and postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha, both professors at Harvard University, participated at our festival HowTheLightGetsIn London on 22-23 September at Kenwood House.
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