## Definition **Critiques of the Enlightenment**, as mapped by Steven Pinker in *Enlightenment Now* (2018), are the family of intellectual and political movements that, from the late 18th century to the present, have rejected or subverted the Enlightenment ideals of Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. Pinker identifies these as not merely academic disagreements but active forces that, where they have achieved power, have reversed progress and caused measurable human suffering. He groups them under the label **counter-Enlightenment**, and distinguishes several recurring strands. ## Romanticism (the First Counter-Enlightenment) Romanticism emerged almost simultaneously with the Enlightenment itself as an aesthetic and philosophical reaction against reason and science. Romantics prized feeling over analysis, organic community over individual rights, and the authentic past over the calculated future. Pinker treats Romanticism as the prototype of all subsequent counter-Enlightenment movements: it supplied the aesthetic grammar — nostalgia for an idealised past, suspicion of expertise, celebration of the irrational — that later movements inherited. ## Nietzsche and Romantic Heroism Friedrich Nietzsche is Pinker's central antagonist. Nietzsche despised both Christian "slave morality" and Enlightenment rationalism, and celebrated the *Übermensch* — the superior individual who transcends ordinary morality through heroic will. He denied that facts exist independently of interpretation ("There are no facts, only interpretations"), a move Pinker traces directly to 20th-century relativism. Pinker argues that Nietzsche's ideas contributed to: - The **romantic militarism** that produced World War I. - The **fascism** of World War II, which extended Nietzsche's "stronger man" logic to the "stronger nation." - The **postmodern intellectual tradition** — existentialism, Critical Theory, post-structuralism, deconstruction — which inherited Nietzsche's hostility to science and objectivity. Figures in this lineage include Heidegger, Sartre, Derrida, and Foucault. ## Authoritarian Populism The most contemporary manifestation of the counter-Enlightenment is what Pinker calls **authoritarian populism**, which he characterises as: > "Tribalist rather than cosmopolitan, authoritarian rather than democratic, dismissive of experts rather than respectful of knowledge, nostalgic for an idealised past rather than hopeful of a better future." Authoritarian populism can be understood as the reassertion of elements of human nature — tribalism, authoritarianism, zero-sum thinking, demonisation of out-groups — that Enlightenment institutions were designed to constrain. By denying the value of expertise, denigrating knowledge institutions, and concentrating power in a charismatic leader, populism dismantles the corrective machinery that makes collective rational inquiry possible. ## Declinism **Declinism** is the intellectual tendency to interpret the present as a moment of unique cultural or civilisational decay. Pinker identifies it as a persistent bias across the political spectrum: conservatives lament the erosion of tradition and moral community; progressives lament inequality, exploitation, and environmental destruction. Both narratives share the structural feature that "things are getting worse," which Pinker argues is empirically false on almost every measurable dimension but psychologically compelling because of negativity bias and media amplification. Declinism is not the same as identifying real problems (climate change, nuclear risk are genuine). It is the categorical claim that the overall trajectory of human affairs is downward — a claim that, according to Pinker's data, is false. ## Religious Fundamentalism Pinker also identifies **religious fundamentalism** (especially the persistence of literal scriptural interpretation) as a counter-Enlightenment force where it prevents the adoption of humanist and scientific norms. He is careful to distinguish religion per se from fundamentalism, and notes that the historical progress of Enlightenment values in the West required the gradual institutional separation of church and state. ## The Intellectual Responsibility Pinker argues that media and intellectuals have been complicit in amplifying counter-Enlightenment narratives by describing modern liberal societies as so unjust and dysfunctional that radical change is warranted. He insists this is not only empirically misleading but politically dangerous: the historical record of revolutionary regimes (Nazi Germany, Maoist China, contemporary Venezuela) shows that dismantling institutions "from the ground up" produces enormous human suffering. ## Related - [[The Four Enlightenment Ideals (Pinker)]] - [[Humanism (Pinker)]] - [[Progress as Empirically Measurable (Pinker)]] ## Sources - [[Enlightenment Now (Pinker 2018)]]