Outline of the April 18th Lecture / A. Ersoy

The Cult of Progress

“Progress” as a historically constituted, modern construct – A legacy of the Enlightenment informing modern conceptions of time (as continuous, linear, open-ended and directional development / as forward movement and improvement).

Advent of modern consciousness 18th and 19th centuries – profound reversal in the hierarchy of time – the future (rather than the past as tradition) becoming the center of authority and legitimation

Firm belief in the virtues of the future informed by an acute sense of change and rupture with the past (as organic continuities are irreversably severed with the rising prestige of secularized, rational knowledge)

Drastic change in the status and significance of Man – his traditional primacy as the center (and purpose) of the universe annihilated by a cold, impersonal Newtonian universe governed by overpowering cosmic forces – Man reduced to being a species.

Alternative models and strategies of thought that attempted to endow history with a new sense of purpose, continuity and directionality – now attuned to the premises of secularized knowledge. This new and secular vision of historical purpose and continuity is hinged upon the very idea of progress.

A new teleology emerged (a purposeful movement towards a predestined end): what moves and animates history is man himself (rather than a divine plan and authority). With his superior capacity of rational knowledge and reason, man takes destiny in his hands, and transforms the world around him towards greater perfection, towards a better and more sophisticated future. The modern narrative of progress becomes almost a secular religion or a cult; a grand explanatory model for every possible action and event.

By the nineteenth century, firmly entrenched as a concept, progress engendered diverse models and narratives of change: Friedrich Hegel’s (1770-1831) “historical philosophy” – Historical change as the story of the fulfillment of the “spiritual aim,” which is “complete freedom.”

Hegel’s three stages of the progressive unfolding of the spirit (based on the level of freedom achieved): The “Ancient world,” (which also encompasses the contemporary Orient) where only the tyrants are free, the “Medieval world,” where only a few (the nobility) enjoy freedom, and the “modern order,” where everybody enjoys freedom, made possible within what Hegel considers to be the most sophisticated form of social and political organization: the nation state.

The lasting legacy of Hegel’s theory: progress realized with the “dialectic movement of opposites,” where “conflict,” lies at the very center of change and improvement. Here, every force is coupled by its opposition, and every “thesis” at any point is matched by an “antithesis,” the clash of the thesis and the antithesis resolved by a stage of “synthesis.” History regarded as an open ended process of continuous “becoming,” a gradual, synthetic movement towards more articulate ideas and formulations that shape and animate the world.

Hegelian determinism and dialectics constitutes a lasting contribution to human thought, informing many theories of change, as well as agendas of national, political progress, emancipation and superiority: Marxist vision of history, the positivistic philosophy of A. Comte (1798-1857), who, like Hegel, proposed a three-stage model of historical progress that culminated with the “positive stage of thought”.

In the area of natural sciences, it was the idea of progress that made possible the emergence of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Following the publication of the Origin of the Species in 1859, Darwin’s views on evolution, natural selection, and “the survival of the fittest” were taken out of context by policy makers (for instance in the colonies) and appropriated into myriad theories of “social Darwinism.”

In all, the modern vision of time, based on the idea of progress (with its open ended, anti-establishment drive favoring open-ended, forward movement), carried a critical and emancipatory potential, and had imprints on many “progressive” movements throughout the modern era, such as the French Revolution, the civil rights and feminist movements or anti-colonialism.

Yet, it was also the “grand narratives of progress” (and their accompanying social projects) that harnessed utterly catastrophic, oppressive or violent results for the world (ecological disasters) and humanity (the idea of total war, the Holocaust).