Peter Thiel on the Failure of the Enlightenment: Why Humans No Longer Trust Reason

Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University (2019)

Thiel asserts that:
• The Enlightenment was a retreat, avoiding moral and metaphysical questions to escape religious conflict.
• Faith and reason were severed, creating a shallow, mechanistic view of intellect.
• Modern rationalism is an illusion of thought without moral grounding.
• Society now trusts willpower and emotion over intellect, choosing peace over truth.
• People delegate thinking to machines and algorithms, reflecting a loss of confidence in human reason.
• Thiel frames this as a civilizational wound. Modernity’s comfort has come at the expense of genuine understanding.