Progress in World History. Has It Ever Really Happened?

Abstract

 This article studies the content of the concept of progress in connection with the emergence of negative attitudes towards it in scientific publications. The analysis is carried out by comparing progress with the concepts of evolution, practice, cognition, development and personality. The author reproduces the traditional criterion of progress, i.e. freedom, but considers it in two aspects: scientifictechnical and moral, basing his reasoning on the idea of the infinity of the historical process due to the infinity of practical transformative human activity. The paper clearly demonstrates progressive development of these two aspects in world history, paying attention to distinct changes in the manmade environment, and points out the existence of moral norms in various historically conditioned cultures. At the same time, the author reveals the dialectical nature of moral progress, thereby justifying the fundamental impossibility of absolute morality in history. However, this provision is interpreted here as the basis for the objectification of labour not only in material nature, but also in the sphere of morality. The struggle of good against evil is an endless exercise of labour aimed at overcoming egocentric aspirations. Further, the article identifies the reasons for the negative attitude to progress. They are seen, firstly, in the theoretical gap between the scientific-technical and moral progress in spite of their dialectical consideration and, secondly, in the unjustified application of the teleological principle to the concept of progress, this principle being in opposition to the phenomena of the scientific-technical progress and to the dialectical unity of good and evil. As a result, the author makes a conclusion about the progressiveness of world history and its immanent incompleteness and, consequently, the incompleteness of progress. This is the basis for the impossibility of absolute freedom in history.