An illusion with a future

Abstract

Questioning the idea of progress at the start of the twenty-½rst century is a bit like casting doubt on the existence of the Deity in Victorian times.The stock reaction is one of incredulity, followed by anger, then moral panic.It is not so much that belief in progress is unshakable as that we are terri½ed of losing it.The idea of progress embodies the faith-for it is a faith, not the result of any kind of empirical inquiry-that the advance that has occurred in science can be replicated in ethics and politics.The line of reasoning proceeds as follows: Science is a cumulative activity.Today we know more than any previous generation, and there is no obvious limit to what we may come to know in the future.In the same way, we can inde½nitely improve the human condition.Just as human knowledge continues to increase beyond anything dreamt of in earlier times, the human condition can be better in the future than it has ever been in the past.This is a very recent creed.Nothing like it existed before it emerged in Europe around two centuries ago.Yet today it seems to have become indispensable.No one imagines progress to be inevitable, but to deny that it is possible seems tantamount to snuf½ng out all hope.In terms of mass killing of humans by humans, the twentieth century was the worst in history; but surely-it will be objected-we must believe that such horrors can be avoided in the future. How else can we go on?To reject the very idea of progress must appear extreme, if not willfully perverse.Yet the idea is found in none of the world's religions and was unknown among the ancient philosophers.For Aristotle, history was a series of processes of growth and decline no more meaningful than those we observe in the lives of plants and animals.Early modern thinkers such as Machiavelli and some thinkers of the Enlightenment shared this view.David Hume believed that history is cyclical, with periods of peace and freedom being regularly followed by war and tyranny.For the great Scottish skeptic, the oscillation between civiliza- John Gray An illusion with a futureJohn Gray is professor of European thought at the London School of Economics.The author of many books on political theory, he is a regular contributor to "The New Statesman" and "The Independent."His most recent books are "Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals" (2002), "Al Qaeda and What It Means To Be Modern" (2003), and "Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions" (2004).

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 41 citations exist upstream.