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ABSTRACT
The paper examines the normative content of Steven Pinker’s account of the relationship between the supposed civilizing tendencies of Enlightenment humanism and the spread of global peace. I argue that Pinker’s position is problematic because: a) it ignores historical counter-evidence about the more peaceful conditions of early human societies and b) it also ignores the contradictions implicit in liberal-humanist values. I conclude that the goodness or badness of social institutions comes down to how well they actually enable people to satisfy their needs and realize those capacities in non-destructive, mutually valuable, and ecologically sustainable ways. Creating those sorts of institutions demands struggle against existing liberal-capitalist state forms, an implication which Pinker’s ideological view overlooks.
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Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on Contributor
Jeff Noonan is Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Windsor. He is the author of Critical Humanism and the Politics of Difference (2003), Democratic Society and Human Needs (2006), Materialist Ethics and Life-Value (2012), Embodiment and the Meaning of Life (2018) and The Troubles with Democracy (2019), as well more than 50 articles in journals such as Res Publica, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Philosophy Today, Re-thinking Marxism and Dialogue.
Notes
1 Michael Mann (Citation2018) provides a concise history of liberal optimism about the decline of war.
2 Since I am focussing on the relationship between liberal-democratic-capitalist values, the causes of war, and the conditions of peace, I will concentrate on The Better Angels of Our Nature (Pinker Citation2011), as its express purpose is to prove that there is an epochal reduction of armed violence under way.
3 On the relationship between Locke, colonialism, and the slave trade, see Jahn (Citation2012). For Locke’s position of Catholics and atheists, see Locke (Citation1983, 50–51).
4 For a more detailed critique of Kant on this issue see Noonan (Citation2012, 145–149).
5 As Marx said about the “primitive accumulation” of capital: it is “written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire” (Marx Citation1986, 669).
6 For a discussion of the deep economic drivers of contemporary imperialism see Foster (Citation2002).
7 I cannot provide the detailed historical evidence required to fully support this claim here. The basic argument is nicely encapsulated in Roediger (Citation2017, 101–115, “Removing Indians, Managing Slaves, and Justifying Slavery: The Case for Intersectionality”). The political economic dynamics of colonialism and imperialism as resting upon forms of “accumulation by dispossession,” is explained in Harvey (Citation2003, 137–182).
8 On the issue of liberal justifications of war generally, see Neu (Citation2017, 75–96).
9 Struggle as proof of the humanity of the oppressed is the central theme of Frantz Fanon’s classic, The Wretched of the Earth (Citation1963, esp. p. 43).
10 See for example Howard (Citation2018), on the opposition between traditional culture and human rights.
11 To be fair, Marx eventually re-thought his position on India, and colonialism generally. For a detailed discussion of the changes to this position that Marx ultimately considered, see Anderson (Citation2016).
12 For an astute explanation of the problems that imposed liberal, human rights norms have caused in Africa, see Mutua (Citation2002).
13 See the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. “Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action.” Accessed October 10, 2018. http://nctr.ca/assets/reports/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf.
14 For a more complete explication of the connection between embodiment and good human lives, see Noonan (Citation2018).
15 The most recent example of this opposition occurred in Columbia in January, when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested fourteen members of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation who had erected a blockade to prevent the construction of a natural gas pipeline through their traditional territory (see, https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/gidimten-wetsuweten-unistoten-rcmp-injunction-1.4971999. Accessed January 12, 2019).
16 For a fuller discussion, see Noonan (Citation2012, 197–205).
17 Global military spending reached 1.76 trillion dollars in 2016 (Brown Citation2018).