Yet another well-researched, intelligent offering from 'Elle Beau'. I hope I might be permitted a rather lengthy comment that rebuts some of the negatives associated with the 'Enlightenment'.

First of all, no idea or set of ideas can be blamed for the actions some people might undertake 'in the name of' said idea(s). Also, all human beings are only human, and all people are products of their age. To have any significant thought that transcends the culture into which a person was born is a major accomplishment, however imperfectly that thinker might realize its implications, even in one's own life.

Pinker (who I have not read) apparently equates the 'Enlightenment' with philosophical Liberalism, the meta-ideology that has equality and liberty as 'the twin pillars of justice'. The big mistake of the 'Enlightenment' was to equate 'secular' with rational (a mistake postmodernists have perpetuated). There are such things as secular beliefs (such as a belief in equality and 'Natural Rights', including a ‘Right’ to liberty) that are no more rational than any sacral belief is.

Differing beliefs drive "contests of power" (Foucault) that are not amenable to compromise. Beliefs therefore have an inherent tendency towards totalitarianism, inevitably enforced by violence. (Since liberty requires constraints of some kind, those constraints, based on belief — secular or sacral — can even lead to a totalitarian regime said to be based on ‘liberty’.)

One thing the Enlightenment thinkers got totally right is that justice requires universality. It is that relation of universality to justice, however, that provided the impetus to remove color of skin ('race'), gender, national origin, etc. as restrictions on political rights (and, less successfully, barriers to the protections of legal rights). None of those can be universal; the only indisputably universal restriction on any political right is age (as a proxy, however imperfect, for maturity).

Beliefs of any kind cannot yield the commonality of knowledge (a more conceptually rigorous term than 'universality' is) that justice requires. Fortunately, an ethic for governing governance that is imbued with a sufficient commonality of knowledge does (now) exist: mutual respect in effecting choices. It can be thought of as an other-centered individualism. It represents the realization of that most important insight informing the ‘Enlightenment’. As the saying goes, ‘if you want peace, work for justice’.

if curious: "Alright, Already" (here in Medium, but not behind the paywall)