Steven Pinker and Whig History

In his book, Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker makes two basic claims; firstly, that the world is a better place than it used to be by reference to various metrics such as quality of life, hunger, poverty, violence etc; secondly, that the reason for this improvement is enlightenment values such as reason, science, progress and humanism.

It is very hard to deny that he has a point in relation to the first claim, though there may be arguments to be made that this is a qualitative question in addition to just being a quantitative one. We will return to this at a later point.

In relation to the second claim, Pinker's approach is nakedly ideological if not embarrassingly naive. In the Whig Interpretation of History, Herbert Butterfield wrote about a tendency among historians to attribute the rise of modern British liberal democracy to a sort of instinct towards progress, a will to progress even, that had its roots in the Reformation. Whig historians saw history as a struggle between the progressive instinct and the reactionary reflex.

Pinker is very clear that when he speaks of progress, he is not referring to any metaphysical teleological force. That is, it has happened because of human action and will only continue to happen if humans make it so. There is no inevitability to it - it is contingent rather than necessary.

Like the Whigs though, Pinker still sees the modern world as being a tug of war between two broad sets of values. He sets up a binary opposition of Enlightenment versus Counter-Enlightenment. All of the good progress is down to Enlightenment values and has happened in spite of the counter-enlightenment. If we can just concentrate on the former, the world will get better.

And like any true ideologue, certain concepts and events, regardless of their occurrence in time and space, are put into the Enlightenment category with the contra being put into the other.

So, for example, humanism, science and reason are all put into the Enlightenment category. Unreason, exemplified by religion, is a counter-Enlightenment phenomenon. The same goes for anti-humanism, again exemplified by religion's pro-occupation with soul, but also nationalism's subordination of the individual to the tribe. (And Pinker makes it clear that he includes nationalisms "fused with Marxist Liberation movements").

In the second decade of the 21st century, he speaks of populist movements that are "tribal rather than cosmopolitan, authoritarian rather than democratic, contemptuous of experts rather than respectful of knowledge, and nostalgic for an idyllic past rather than hopeful for a better future." (p29) He attributes this general counter-enlightenment to the Romantic movement of the early 19th century that "pushed back hard against Enlightenment ideals". (p30)

Unfortunately for Pinker this thesis is full of holes, big and small.

1. First of all, there are the usual tricks with time and space you get with ideologues. He lists Rousseau and Herder amongst the romanticists, even though they were clearly active before the romantic period and are much closer in time and actual relation to the Enlightenment. He suggests that fundamentalist religion is part of the counter-enlightenment, even though that has its origins in the Reformation which predates it by a couple of hundred years. He claims science for the Enlightenment even though the scientific revolution took place in the 17th century, and arguably had its roots in medieval times as historians of science now accept.

It could be argued that Enlightenment is a state of mind rather than a specific event, but then we are in the realms of Whiggish-style teleology, where events are explained by reference to later events or timeless concepts. 

The same point can be made about reason more generally. Thomas Aquinas, the medieval philosopher, insisted on the importance of reason in the field of theology. Not content to depend on revelation alone, Aquinas felt that any truth must also be supportable by rational argument. The British philosopher, Bertrand Russell, criticised Aquinas' approach to reasoning, arguing that it was not conducted in the spirit of free inquiry, with a willingness to follow it wherever it lead, but with the intention of only using to arrive at a pre-conceived conclusion, and to fall back on revelation in any case should the argument fail. Russell's critique of Aquinas is adequately dismantled here. The fact is that it is very questionable whether any reasoning is conducted in a truly free spirit that is independent of any belief systems or value assumptions. More importantly, though, it doesn't matter because the reasoning will stand or fall on its own merits anyway. The takeaway is that Aquinas, and other medieval thinkers, placed a clear emphasis on reasoning which could only have served to increase its value. 

2. Secondly, we have lazy mischaracterisations, such as the idea that romanticism was anti-humanist or anti-individual. Romanticism was a very broad and complex movement. It took place against the backdrop of political, social and economic upheaval. Certain elements of romanticism certainly sought to re-discover and re-empower the individual in a quickly changing world. The same goes for nationalism, which played an important role in the rise of modern democracy in the 19th century and formation of the nation-state as we know it. Nationalism was the key ingredient in conferring political and popular legitimacy on newly expanding states and economies.

After designating nationalism as a bad concept, he writes that it should not be confused with "civic values, public spirit, social responsibility, or cultural pride". (p31) Of course, this sophistic sleight of hand misses the point, namely that the whole utility of nationalism is that it has provided, historically, an emotional imperative to do these very things. It cultivates practical patriotism. It's like saying, love of your town should not be confused with having an anti-litter ethic; but loving your town will give you more motivation not to litter.

Furthermore, nationalism or at least the rise of the nation-state was a key vehicle by which the power of the Catholic church had been pushed back in the centuries preceding the Enlightenment. This is rather inconvenient for Pinker's thesis as it disrupts the idea that nationalism and religion are cosy bedfellows with regards to the values that the Enlightenment is supposed to own. A local example also supports the point; the Catholic Church in Ireland generally opposed all Irish nationalism throughout the 19th century, whether it be expressed constitutionally or otherwise. Only with liberation theology in South America in the 20th century did we see any kind of meaningful partnership between the Catholic Church on some clerical level and nationalist movements. 

3. This leads us nicely onto another set of holes, namely Pinker's selection bias. He is keen to point out the Enlightenment's first and proudest offspring, the American revolution and speak about the enlightened nature of both its founding documents and fathers. In relation to its second, but not so proud, offspring - the French revolution - he is unsurprisingly a little quieter. Suffice to say, the French revolution exalted reason as a virtue and brought that logic to its very violent and bloody conclusion. Not that the American revolution is completely clean from Pinker's point of view either. At the time, it had a clear nationalist component to it, and one that was clearly more tribal (i.e. anti-British, if not other ethnicities too) than the dispassionate social contract he approves of.

Another blatant case of elision is his favourably citing of David Hume and Immanuel Kant in defence of reason. Hume famously said that reason is the slave of the passions and that it cannot give rise to moral motivation. This is a direct contradiction of what Pinker is calling for - the prioritisation of reason as a virtue as opposed to just a tool. Kant was influenced by Hume and also warned about the limits of reason. Pinker claims to follow the example of Hume and Adam Smith by saying he starts with an honest appraisal of human nature and goes from there. But in bluntly dismissing romanticism, nationalism and religion (on faulty grounds) he really isn't. There's no real attempt to marry human nature with the principles he advocates in a practical way. Instead he just ignores that point, doubling down on the point about needing reason, science, humanism. Ironically, he advocates humanism yet seems distinctly uninterested in humanising these subjects.

His discussions on humanism and religion also elide the important role of Quakers in the abolition of slavery.

In summary, Pinker has failed to make the case that reason, science or humanism are direct products of the Enlightenment. They have disparate roots. In his book, Butterfield argued that British liberal democracy was the accidental outcome of the clash of Catholicism and Protestantism. Its the same story here. The modern world, good and bad, is a product of the clash of many intellectual strands and traditions. Democracy and freedom owe as much to romantics and religion as they do to the enlightenment thinkers. This also causes him to go wrong in his belief that science, reason, humanism on their own can be of benefit to us.

In this area, Pinker has all the hallmarks of someone who has stepped out of his academic comfort zone and has found himself out of his depth. He still refers to the Dark Ages, a term that is now largely discredited amongst historians. He cites the case of Galileo as an example of religion's incompatibility with science, totally ignorant to the nuances of that case and the other elements it involved. I think Pinker will come to be seen as a very overrated and over-achieving public intellectual in time.