progress?

I think it makes sense to think of "progress" as a relative term and to define it, in the first instance, within the boundaries (however conceptualized) of a "society"; in the second instance, one might talk about "progress" across societies. I'm comfortable with a "Weberian" (Max Weber) conception: each historical case is unique; it makes no sense to look for universal laws (such as a universal law of progress) that would apply to all cases; however, comparison is possible using "ideal types." The idea of "progress" might be an ideal type that has significance within a particular case, which, under particular circumstances, could come to have significance across many cases. But this ideal type should not be defined by the standards of any particular case.

I think Weber articulates this perspective well in the “introduction” to his essays on the sociology of religion (two of which are the essays that comprise The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. (NB. The translation of this introduction was appended to the Routledge translation by Parsons, but actually post-dates the original publication of the essays on protestantism).

"A product of modern European civilization, studying any problem of universal history, is bound to ask himself to what combination of circumstances the fact should be attributed that in Western civilization, and in Western civilization only, cultural phenomena have appeared which (as we like to think) lie in a line of development having universal significance and value." (2001: xxviii)

(Universalgeschichtliche Probleme wird der Sohn der modernen europäischen Kulturwelt unvermeidlicher- und berechtigerweise unter der Fragestellung behandeln: welche Verkettung von Umstanden hat dazu gefürht, daß gerade auf dem Boden des Okzidents, und nur hier, Kulturerscheinungen auftraten, welche doch – wie wenigstens wir uns gern vorstellen – in einer Entwicklungsrichtung von univeseller Bedeutung und Gültigkeit lagen? Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, p. 1)

Weber's interest is in the "universal significance" of "Occidental rationalism", represented in his time by the stage of development of science, rational techniques employed in the production of art and music, and, especially, capitalism ("the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous rational, capitalistic enterprise.” (2001: xxxi) (”…mit dem Streben nach Gewinn, im kontinuierlichen, rationalen kapitalistischen Betrieb: nach immer erneuntem Gewinn: nach ‘Rentabilität.’” p. 4)

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The idea of progress is complicated in two ways: (a) by the fact that whatever is defined as progress is highly susceptible to partiality derived from one’s particular standpoint in time and space; (b) by the fact that progress bears a distinct, and not necessarily universal, sense of historical time. The first point (the partiality of any definition of what progress is or means) is obvious; the second point, perhaps less so. Koselleck’s discussion of time consciousness is relevant regarding point (b). He argues that between 1500 and 1800 “there occurs a temporalization (Verzeitlichung) of history, at the end of which there is the peculiar form of acceleration which characterizes modernity.” Taking Altdorfer’s splendid Alexanderschlacht (1529) as a point of departure, Koselleck comments on the peculiar representation of temporality in the painting.

“Let us try to regard the picture with the eye of one of his contemporaries. For a Christian, the victory of Alexander over the Persians signifies the transition from the second to the third world empire, whereby the Holy Roman Empire constitutes the fourth and last… The battle, in which the Persian army was destined for defeat, was no ordinary one; rather, it was one of the few events between the beginning of the world and its end that also prefigured the fall of the Holy Roman Empire. Analogous events were expected to occur with the coming of the End of the World. Altdorfer’s image had, in other words, an eschatological status. The Alexanderschlacht was as timeless the prelude, figure, or archetype of the final struggle between Christ and Antichrist; those participating in it were contemporaries of those who lived in expectation of the Last Judgment.

Until well into the sixteenth century, the history of Christianity is a history of expectations, or more exactly, the constant anticipation of the End of the world on the one hand and the continual deferment of the End on the other.” (“Modernity and the planes of historicity,” Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, pp. 5-6).

In light of this sense of time, of timeless time, what would be called “progress”?

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Finally, I’ll mention briefly a discussion by Koselleck of the historicity of the concept of revolution (a concept that might intersect in ways with the idea of progress). Regarding the concept of revolution, which he argues is “a linguistic product of our modernity,” Koselleck makes the following point: “In 1842, a French scholar made a historically enlightening observation. Haréau recalled what had been forgotten at the time: that our expression actually signified a turning over, a return of the movement to the point of departure, as in the original Latin usage. A revolution initially signified, in keeping with its lexical sense, circulation. Haréau added that in the political sphere, this was understood as the circulation of constitutions taught by Aristotle, Polybius, and their successors but which since 1789 and through Condorcet’s influence was hardly comprehensible. According to ancient doctrine, there was only a limited number of constitutional forms, which dissolved and replaced each other but could not naturally be transgressed. These are the constitutional forms, together with their corruptions, which are still current today, succeeding each other with a certain inevitability. Haréau cited a forgotten principal witness of this past world, Louis LeRoy, who had argued that the first of all natural forms of rule was that of monarchy, which was replaced by aristocracy as soon as the former degenerated into tyranny. Then followed the well-known schema in which aristocracy was transformed into oligarchy, which was in turn displaced by democracy, which degenerated ultimately into ochlocracy, or mass rule. Here, in fact, no one ruled any longer, and the way to individual rule was open once more.” (“Historical criteria of the modern concept of revolution,” Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, p. 41).

What idea of progress, which is commonly ingrained in our affirmative understanding of “revolution,” is imaginable with this cyclical understanding of political events? Or consider the first two sentences of Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, which indicate a “repetitive” (and pessimistic) idea of the “progress” of historical events: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”

My point here is this: “progress” is a temporal sensibility that is, arguably, a product of historical consciousness as much as it is something “tangible”, that is, something measurable by things such as “quality of life” or level of technological development, etc.