Progress E-Book

Peter Wagner

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 257

Beschreibung

The idea of progress guided human expectations and actions for over two centuries. From the Enlightenment onwards, it was widely believed that the condition of humankind could be radically improved. History had embarked on an unstoppable forward trajectory, realizing the promise of freedom and reason. The scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, and the French Revolution, in some views also the socialist revolution, were milestones on this march of progress. But since the late twentieth century the idea of progress has largely disappeared from public debate. Sometimes it has been explicitly declared dead. The wide horizon of future possibilities has closed. The best we can hope for, some say, is to avoid regress. What happened to progress? Why did we stop believing in it, if indeed we did? This book offers answers to these questions. It reviews both the conceptual history of progress and the social and political experiences with progress over the past two centuries, and it comes to a surprising conclusion: The idea of progress was misconceived from its beginnings, and the failure of progress in practice was a result of this flawed conception. The experiences of the past half century, in turn, has allowed us to rethink progress in a more adequate way. Rather than the end of progress, they may herald the beginning of a new, reconstructed idea of progress.

Leseprobe

For Nathalie

Copyright page

Copyright © Peter Wagner 2016

The right of Peter Wagner to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2016 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

350 Main Street

Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-9099-5

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-9100-8(pb)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wagner, Peter, 1956 September 18–

    Progress: a reconstruction / Peter Wagner.

        pages cm

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    ISBN 978-0-7456-9099-5 (hardback: alk. paper) – ISBN 978-0-7456-9100-8 (pbk.: alk. paper)    1.  Progress.    2.  Social change.    I.  Title.

    HM891.W34 2015

    303.4–dc23

        2015017032

Typeset in 11 on 14 pt Sabon

by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited

Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY

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Foreword

In 1799, a decade after the French Revolution and the death of the enlightened monarch Carlos III, Francisco de Goya etched El sueño de la razon produce monstruos, reproduced on the cover of this book, as a part of his series Los caprichos. The etching can be interpreted as a commitment to the Enlightenment belief in reason: when reason sleeps, monsters will take over. But it can also be read more ambivalently: it is the dream of reason to create monsters that will rule the world.

One of the dreams of Enlightenment reason was that humankind would embark on a path of perpetual progress. More than two centuries later, we are not sure what to make of this dream. If we look at the current world, can we see it as the dream come true? A world of material abundance, of widespread commitment to freedom and human rights, and in a global process of democratization? Or did reason fall into deep slumber, dreamless or nightmarish, leaving us with poverty and violence and adding the destruction of the planet to the older evils of humankind?