Progress: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 07:34, 15 October 2006

Revision as of 15:33, 26 October 2006

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'''Social progress''' is defined as a [[progress]] of [[society]], which makes the society better in the general view of those who cause it. The concept of social progress was introduced in the early, [[19th century]] [[social theory | social theories]], especially those of [[social evolutionists]] like [[August Comte]] and [[Herbert Spencer]]. It was however already present in the [[Age of Enlightenment |Enlightenment]]'s [[philosophy of history | philosophies of history]].

At the time [[special interest groups]] conceived the notion of social progress, it was extremely [[Radicalism (historical)|radical]]. The reason is that before that time, people viewed the [[social order]] as unchangeable and immutable, often [[divine]]ly ordained. In other words, ultimately [[Godgods]] had created the [[social system]], and that system as well as the place people had in that system was eternal, constant and permanent (but cyclical, like the seasons). Nothing really changed, and the more it changed, the more it stayed the same; the emphasis was on seeing the constant, [[eternal]] aspects in human life. This interpretation of society was very [[conservatism|conservative]], because even if [[social change | change]] occurred, this was merely a [[superficial]] aspect of an underlying social order which was eternal. In turn, this way of seeing things was based on a way of life in which very little changed (except seasonally, as with the weather, or ''the stages of a man's life''). People stuck to their station in life, not having or ''expecting'' the option or chance of moving out of it to a different station in life.

==Enlightenment==

The big breakthrough to a new idea in [[Europe]] came with the [[Age of Enlightenment | Enlightenment]], when [[social commentary | social commentators]] and [[philosopher]]s began to realize that people ''themselves'' could change society and change their way of life. Instead of being made completely by Godgods, there was increasing room for the idea that people themselves ''made their own society'' - and not only that, as [[Giambattista Vico]] argued, ''because'' people practically made their own society, they could also fully comprehend it. This gave rise to new sciences, or [[proto-science]]s, which claimed to provide new scientific knowledge about what society was like, and how it one may change it for the better.

In turn, this gave rise to [[progressivism|progressive]] opinion, in contrast with conservativeconservational opinion. The conservativessocial conservationists were skeptical, critical, and cynical about [[panacea]]s for social progress. According to ultra-conservatives, it was impossible to change human circumstances. They reasoned that the more things appeared to change, the more they stayed the same. The only progress there could be, is if people could only understand the eternal conditions of human life, and stopped fighting against that reality.

By contrast, the progressives focused on real changes actually occurring, and introduced the concept of [[choice]]. Life did not have to happen in a pre-ordained way; people surprisingly could actually make choices, and based on those choices, amazingly there would be different outcomes. Ethically, this implied a human [[Moral responsibility|responsibility]] for what happened to people, rather than seeing it just as Godthe gods's will.

==The notion of freedom==

This new idea implied a new concept of human [[Freedom (philosophy)|freedom]], i.e. people independently making their own lives using their own good judgment. Initially, this concept appeared rather paradoxical; thus, [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau]] wrote, "People are born free, but are everywhere in chains". A big breakthrough was the [[French Revolution]] of 1789, which inspired a lot of new philosophical thought. In the philosophy of the German thinker [[Hegel]], history radically recasts itself as the continual development of humanity towards ever-greater freedom, continually extending the limits of freedom. This philosophy is still religious and mystical however, insofar as Hegel sees history as culminating in the unity of God with the world, but at the same time, Hegel also affirmed and imputed a [[Logos]] or [[teleology]] to human history, and fully recognized that both evolutionary and revolutionary transformations took place in history. This was a [[hope]]ful philosophy, which in a [[rational]] way sees real progress occurring in history.

It was possible to detect human advances, as well as human regressions to an earlier state. In Hegel’s view, if something existed, it was rational. If it passed out of existence, that was because it had become irrational. This contained a very important idea, however poorly expressed, namely that history was not a fluke of fate (a [[kismet]]) but that it could be ''rationally understood ,’’ at least in principle.

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"The [[bourgeoisie]] cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty, and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all which is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind."

The [[capitalism | capitalist]] era in history is understood here very radically as a process of "continual change," in which the growth of markets dissolve all fixities in human life. This is an almost absolute rejection of the conservative ethos, according to which nothing really changes in human life. [[Marxism]] further states that capitalism, in its quest for higher profits and new markets, will inevitably sow the seeds of its own destruction. Marxists believe that, in the future, capitalism will be replaced by [[socialism]] and eventually [[communism]].

==Modernism==