Steven Pinker interview: Western intellectuals and journalists must promote liberal values

Rumours of the death of Western liberalism have been cruelly exaggerated, according to Steven Pinker. The Harvard psychology professor spoke to me on the eve of a lecture he is due to give at the New College of the Humanities on the workings of the human brain and we were supposed to be talking about that. But given the parlous state of the world, I was more anxious to speak about The Better Angels of Our Nature, his relentlessly optimistic book about the history of violence. In that 834-page magnum opus, he argues that violence has been in almost continuous decline for the last 2,000 years and that the present is probably the most peaceful time in our history.

Has he had cause to revise that view in light of the civil wars that have broken out in Syria, Yemen, South Sudan and Libya since the book’s publication in 2011, as well as the rise of Islamic State?

‘It is true that there has been a change in direction when it comes to civil wars,’ he says.