'Reason is non-negotiable': Steven Pinker on the Enlightenment (The Guardian, extract from Enlightenment Now)

Steven Pinker · 11 Feb 2018

Steven Pinker did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
Reason is non-negotiable: arguing that others should share your beliefs commits you to it

Their wordsReason is non-negotiable. As soon as you show up to discuss the question of what we should believe (or any other question), as long as you insist that your answers, whatever they are, are reasonable or justified or true and that therefore other people ought to believe them too, then you have committed yourself to reason, and to holding your beliefs accountable to objective standards.
Our reading
If abolishing slavery and cruel punishment is not progress, nothing is

Their wordsIf the abolition of slavery and cruel punishment is not progress, nothing is, which brings us to the fourth Enlightenment ideal.
Our reading
Progress unguided by humanism is not progress

Their wordsThough these developments were sometimes linked to the word progress, the usage was ironic: “progress” unguided by humanism is not progress.
Our reading
Exchange can make a society nicer as well as richer, because in a market buying is cheaper than stealing

Their wordsExchange can make an entire society not just richer but nicer, because in an effective market it is cheaper to buy things than to steal them and other people are more valuable to you alive than dead.
Our reading
If you extol reason, what matters is the integrity of the thoughts, not the personalities of the thinkers

Their wordsIf you extol reason, then what matters is the integrity of the thoughts, not the personalities of the thinkers.

Keep reading

The other pieces are the ones whose claims are worded most like this one's. That measures language, not agreement: they may argue the opposite.