Myth of Progress - Criticisms

Criticisms

In the 19th century Romantic critics charged that progress did not automatically better the human condition, and indeed in some ways it may make it worse.

Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) reacted against the concept of progress as set forth by William Godwin and Condorcet because he believed that inequality of conditions is 'the best calculated to develop the energies and faculties of man.' He said, 'Had population and food increased in the same ratio, it is probable that man might never have emerged from the savage state.' He argued that man's capacity for improvement has been demonstrated by the growth of his intellect, a form of progress which offsets the distresses engendered by the law of population.

A fierce opponent of the Idea of Progress was German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), who became the prophet of decadence, scorning the 'weakling's doctrines of optimism,' and in his diagnoses of the times undermining the pillars of modernism, including faith in progress, to allow the strong individual to stand with his radical value system above the plebeian masses. An important part of his radically critical thinking consists of the attempt to use the classical model of 'eternal recurrence of the same' to dislodge the Idea of Progress.

A cyclical theory of history was adopted by Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), a German historian who wrote a very influential pessimistic study of the end of progress called The Decline of the West (1920). The horrors of World War I challenged the unblinking optimism of the modernizers. Clearly progress would not be automatic, and the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century undercut the idea that technological improvement guaranteed democracy and moral advancement. Spengler was challenged by the optimism of British historian Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975), who felt that Christianity would help modern civilization overcome its challenges.

The strongest critics of the Idea of Progress complain that it remains a dominant idea in the 21st century, and shows no sign of diminished influence. As one fierce critic, British historian John Gray, concludes:

"Faith in the liberating power of knowledge is encrypted into modern life. Drawing on some of Europe's most ancient traditions, and daily reinforced by the quickening advance of science, it cannot be given up by an act of will. The interaction of quickening scientific advance with unchanging human needs is a fate that we may perhaps temper, but cannot overcome....Those who hold to the possibility of progress need not fear. The illusion that through science humans can remake the world is an integral part of the modern condition. Renewing the eschatological hopes of the past, progress is an illusion with a future."