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UDC 165:316.42 Ana BAZAC
THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL PROGRESS: AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL MOMENT
Abstract
Starting from some ontological premises of the concept of progress, the paper highlights the intertwining of the ideological paradigm and the epistemological paradigm in the understanding of social progress. The result of this intertwining is the relational and relative nature of the concept of progress. But the questioning of relativism leads to a fruitful though rapid analysis of criteria of progress measurement: because the relative nature of the concept of social progress doesn't mean ethical equivalence of different standpoints about the concept of social progress, and in no circumstances indifference towards the ordinary people, or towards the human values.
Keywords: progress, social progress, ideology, epistemology, criteria of the social progress.
1. Ontological premises for the concept of social progress
The first premise is that all things have their telos (Aristotle). The final cause/reason of everything is what pushes the intertwining of the material and formal causes, and the constitution of things as such, as a result of the efficient cause. The final reason reflects the functioning of things, and obviously the functioning itself implies its deployment without any brakes. The telos of things is just their betterment according to their reason to be.
The second premise is that the humans cannot be separated from the whole they have constituted within: and thus what they represent for them and for the whole is what their constitution and history has configured. The reason to be of the whole results from the constitution of this whole (from the intertwining of so many components and reactions): the cause of the humans was inside the whole, but the specific way they developed has given their own raison to be.
(Chapouthier 1995) This reason appears within the whole as the epistemogenesis - the birth of consciousness and knowledge – and what this epistemogenesis gave and gives to it (to the whole, this meaning how the humans interact and change the construction of the whole): the result of epistemogenesis on the humans and the whole is just their more rapid rhythm of evolution and change. (Kovac 2015: 26-27) The fact that the conscious and knowing beings have as main aim to avoid suffering and maximise the pleasure (hedonotaxis) (Kovac 2015: 62-66) is only a supplementary reason/factor of the functioning and change of humans and the whole.
The third premise - conclusion of the former - is that the humans change not only in order to keep their individual and collective onticity (thus, to last through neoteny (Morris 1967) and through giving birth to same living structures (Kovac 2015: 13)), but also to really or ideally improve their existence.
But since the interests and views of the human individuals reflect their experience, i.e. their
position within the existing whole - or, let say, nature and society - does it not result that there are many real and imaginary ways, means and ideas of betterment of the human condition?
2. Breakthrough - The Progress (I: history)
Letting aside some commonsensical observation and rapid notations of the ancient Greeks: 1) that the humans have evolved from their savage status to the civilisation of the polis, these let say optimist observations - transmitted us not only by Aeschyllus and Euripides, but also by philosophers (Aristotle Politics: 1252a), 2) or about the types of political regimes that change and transform into their decadent forms, thus suggesting rather regress (Plato Republic: VIII, 543a-576b) (somehow taking over the Hesiod's myth of the Five Ages), 3) or by those philosophers who devoted much time to understand the human knowledge and were rather optimists (Aristotle Soph. Ref. 183b29) (but other ones – pessimists), the concept of progress, having in its background a certain representation about history, its direction and scope, thus about future (Dodds 2001: 2), is recent. Because the above optimist ideas have not become prominent, and certainly did not lead to the concept of progress: and this because the concept of time assumed by the Greek culture was that of a) circular and cy-
1 The concept of emSoou;, coming from the verb տա.5ւ5աբւ (to give further, to add, to give in a generous way, thus to increase, to progress – but attention, in good or bad, although ճւճաբւ meant to give, to allow, and era. - ahead –) means action to trans-mit/give further, or adding, or increase, thus generosity, abundance, progress. It was used, for example by Aristotle discussing the development of knowledge.
The verb npoKdnxw, to launch oneself forward, to advance, to make progresses (npo before, for, instead of, and кбптш, to cut, to hit, to upset) has given the noun npoKonp, personal progress, in the Hellenistic period.
clical time, favouring rather the recurrent processes, b) emphasising the decay of things (see Bury 2010), c) and the inevitable datum resulted from the human and individual destiny. But the modern construction of the concept of progress does not exclude the ancient contradictry ideas about time in the myths, as well as the optimism of the pre-Socratics, as well as the optimism within the cyclical pattern in Aristotle, as well as the optimism of Christianity. (Burkert 1997)
And since the modern concept of progress cannot be separated from its preliminary history, one should once more remind the pattern that the Western Middle Ages have contoured. This pattern was configured by/constituted of two main ideas relating to time, or better – about the position of man within the divine/natural time: one idea was that the time was absolutely exterior to man, and thus did not/does not influence man at all, this one floating within the time as a fish in the space of an aquarium; the other idea was that nevertheless the course of man's life was prefigured by the unknown and incomprehensible destiny. Just the crossing of these ideas had allowed the continuity of the former Antiquity and the Middle Ages: because there were several notions of time – the first being the agricul-tural/rural time: of long term, and generating (ideas of) expectations, patience, permanence, resumption, slowness, resistance to change, and the non-event in front of the natural rhythm; other notions of time being those of the nobleman (a military time), or of the clergyman, or of the chroniclers who, all of them, have measured their time/history according to natural phenom-ena/events which always succeeded in an irredeemable rhythm – there were also several attitudes towards it. (Le Goff 1967: 227-232) And though from this analysis of Le Goff we can deduce not only the historical, but also the class character of the notion of time, we must not for-
get that the general impotent and indifferent attitudes towards time that could but observe the decay of the real things (mundus senescit etc.) in front of the ideal supply of furtherance in the Christian doctrine of salvation, have begun to change (the 14th century) when the social rhythm and transformation have become more and more radically modern.
3. Breakthrough - The Progress (II: epistemological deconstruction)
1. The modern judgement over the image of time took place within the development of rationalism. As we know, in the Christian ideology too, man needed reason (and was endowed with it) because he needed to know something about the miracles made by God. God as such did not need reason because He knew everything: but man did. And the understanding of the more and more cognisance and of means of knowledge has allowed to "applying" the Christian model of a doubly virtual evolution – of knowledge and of man's possible trajectory toward salvation – to the terrestrial things. These ones can be known – the new idea has stated – and in the process of knowledge one can detect not only a beginning and an end, but also their terrestrial reasons, the changes, the conditions, the rhythm of changes and their new and new transformations. Consequently, one can detect the direction of these transformations, and this direction – though there still are many unpleasant obstacles to knowledge and to clever actions – is that of the qualitative and quantitative acquisitions: of progress. (The 18th century was that of the constitution of this historical-genetic approach of the natural and social reality).
2. The concept of progress – as all the other ones/rather all the other scientific concepts – can, indeed, be explained through its historical
and logical aspects (and letting aside the justification made by epistemology about the discoveries of natural sciences, i.e. the different contexts of discovery and justification (Reichenbach 1938: 56). It can describe facts and its putting as a conclusion of these facts is historical. While the justification of this conclusion is a question of logic: namely, of forms and structures of arguments related to their elements. But, obviously, within a theory – and the scientific concepts are theories (as Carnap, Bachelard and Eco have showed) – as the concept of progress suggests one can see the logic of arguments (the justification) just arisen from/operated on the concrete facts/reasoning describing these concrete facts.
3. If social change is certainly not tantamount with its evaluation, because the social change has always Janus' conformation thus denying the legitimacy of the evaluation of the two faces as one and progressive (von Wright 1997), this doesn't mean that one cannot consider the concept as such. Not only for it would detect the relationship between different aspects of the same phenomenon having two faces/consequen-ces – as for instance, the development of science and technology raising the level of civilisation but at the same time the humans' dependency on the objects created by science and technology – i.e. the proportion of the positive and negative consequences, but also (or rather) the standpoints people speak from: the concept of progress, as that of regress, does not mean that people would be incapable to see the contradictory faces of phenomena and thus would reduce things only to an aspect, but simply that they feel the influence of every side of phenomena and that they assess these manifold influences.
4. As every concept, the progress too may be used as a myth, or unquestioned dogma. But from the modern times when people/thinkers have begun to speak in terms of time, interval,
progress, regress, rhythm, they have learned to understand all these concepts - and certainly that of progress - as reflecting not only the results of phenomena related to the time over them, but also that these results are not some exterior and fatal facts shaping their life but the intersection between the external conditions and their will and power to know and to act.
As every concept, the progress too is culturally constructed. But this does not mean it could not offer a certain certainty about the world: because it always is confronted with his world. The truth value of the concept of progress - in fact, its contents - lies within the concrete use/confrontation of this concept (see the tradition Marx-Lenin about practice, or Wittgenstein about the meaning as a result of the concrete functionality/operating of concepts).
5. If so, the concept of progress is not a simple question of faith (as von Wright 1997: 11 states), but of conscious appraisal of the objective conditions and people's life within these conditions. To consider that in a certain interval and from the standpoint of the material civilisation the development of science and technology has led to an improvement - that can be "meas-ured"/demonstrated - is not a fallacy. But, as Rousseau (1866) has showed, the objective conditions and people's life within these conditions could be contradictory, and in an insupportable way. Just this fact has led to the impression - that is the ideology of relativity of progress/of the inconsistent character of the concept of progress (progress as a faith).
6. As the concept of progress does not cover at all the belief of a continuous and without intermission advance, and as it supposes a permanent critique of its own premises/elements - differentiating between levels of reality - as it does not consider one single qualification for intervening in the real process. Therefore, the concept of
progress is highly operational, it I really an instrument of social action.
7. Finally, the concept of progress implies the idea of betterment - quantitatively and qualitatively measured - but this is not equivalent with one sidedness and the simple idea of necessity. (Nisbet 2009) Rather, the concept of progress puts to the test the functionality of betterment: in what measure the aspects qualified as improvements contribute to the fulfilment of the structures had in view. Anyway, the concept is both practical and (theoretically) teleological: not in an obsolete perspective when the (desired) final stage was already given and the end being known, this end would have prescribed the steps and the means, but in the state-of-the-art view, when every event/step/mean aims at improving, reacts in a creative way and thus creates and recreates the final end, always relatively final.
4. Epistemology of the ideological character of the express social progress
Then, social progress, what does this mean? Is it a legitimated concept or an automatic use of a habitual popular notion implemented by the modernity which hit the innocent soul of people? This epistemological doubt is not unprovoked: the more so as a strong idea of criticism of the Enlightenment spirit, as well as the politically rooted inertia of this criticism, have depreciated the concept of progress, i.e. the social progress.
Epistemologically analysed, this criticism arose from both the rejection of the possible unifying reductionism of the concept of the social and the bitter observation of the cruelty of wars and human destruction occurred just after the modern singing of progress.
Analysed from the standpoint of the history of ideas, the criticism was the result of both the rejection of the dogmatic euphoria of all kinds
(including, but not only, the liberal enthusiasm of the ceaseless development) and the counteroffensive of idealism and conservatism in the two emblematic moments of this recovery of reactionary thinking: the inter-war and the post 19681970 years till nowadays.
But as its etymology suggests2, the concept of progress refers to an appreciation, or even measurement of the performances in a certain domain - or even in the entire society as a whole -over time. One speaks about progress when in a certain moment the results in a domain are or are considered to be better/higher than in the previous intervals. From this standpoint, progress is not an abstract and vague concept, since it could be measured.
But still from an epistemological standpoint, some questions appear: from whose point of view, namely who is measuring? Consequently, these questions emphasise the two ontological approaches of progress: the first is the naive realistic approach, where progress is an objective feature of the social reality - because yes, progress is related only to the human things and ontology - as the advancement/increase/gain grasped by people, but somehow internal to the existence and presence of human facts, objects, relations, behaviours. The second is the relational approach, where progress is the result of the experience of people, i.e. the relationships between them and the social reality.
This last approach, critical to the first, shows that the human judgement is which gives to the human environment the characteristics of progress or regress, thus these characteristics are subjective, as a kind of "specific qualia"; but, and
The Latin progressio, -onis – development, growth, progress (as well as gradation, grade – in rhetoric) is the result of the verb progredtor, -edi, -essus sum – to go forward, to come to (pro – adverb and preposition – forward, before etc.)
opposite to the usually accepted concept of qu-alia — as reflecting individual mental states about the world via subjective sensation data/the world as it appears to everyone of us in my/his/her unique perceptions, and being un-communicable and un-comparable – the concept of progress corresponds to the rational level of man-world relationship (and not to the level of sensations-perceptions) and thus it is communicable and comparable: because it is a universal which reflects objective phenomena and overlooks their ineffable appearances in the human mind, it can be measured and "translated" into other logical characterisations of man and society.
The concept of progress, involved – as all the other ones – in the human experience about society, fuels it as an active factor, being its "conclusion" – as, again, all the other social concepts. Therefore, if we analyse this at the formal level, we could say that the concept of progress is fixed and unmoved, being an "objective" landmark of the human experiences related to the social evolution and change. But, since what really gives the cognitive relationships man-society is the content of concepts, namely the theories they imply, and since these theories relate each other, thus the content of a concept calling for another concept/other concepts, it results that the concept of (social) progress calls an entire set of theories related not only to evolution, regress, culture, development, growth etc., but also to the "subjective" points of view promoted by these theories.
Briefly, though the concept of (social) progress is not "subjective" in the sense of individual standpoints it reflects, it is subjective in the sense of its different contents reflecting the different social positions of the authors/people using it: being related to man and society, the concept of progress is ideological.
It is ideological because its content is different according to the social positions, thus standpoints, people occupy and share. Therefore, it is ideological in the sense of mature Marx (and not in the sense of first Marx: as false consciousness). People judge society in terms of progress, development or regress in different ways, arising from and leading to different views. Even having the same level of information, people's estimations regarding the acquisitions society won as against other intervals is not the same. Therefore, the epistemological relational viewpoint and the so-ciological/cultural viewpoint lead to the same conclusion: the relational and relative and, more concretely, ideological nature of the concept of progress. In this respect, the concept of progress is normative and axiological and has in its downstream philosophical assumptions or a worldview that is normative and axiological.
5. Methodological approach of the concept of social progress
In a scientific analysis of society, the objecti-vistic approach is sine qua non. In this approach, one sees many social domains - as well as scientific disciplines -, and every one may be appreciated according to the concept of progress. In every domain one may measure the specific progress according to specific criteria demonstrated and used in that domain and/or scientific/philosophi-cal discipline.
But the domains are so different and the results of the measurement of progress send to so different perspectives. More: there are different philosophical schools (sometimes even scientific schools) with different tenets which could measure the same data according to the criteria used by that school. Can they be reciprocally "translated" from each other? Or can the measurement from a domain be taken as the measurement
made in other domains? Or can it be for the entire society?
For example, though they do not use the concept of progress3, the mainstream economists consider that the betterment in a certain national economy, or even at the world level, would be the continuous economic growth measured with the known parameter, GDP. They do not consider the social costs - polarisation, poverty, Centre-Periphery overexploitation - or the ecological ones, which they simply externalise. On the contrary, heterodox Marxian and ecological economists criticise this "market economy"4 paradigm and demonstrate that only by considering the complex society-environment (or economy-ecology) without any externalisation of social or ecological impacts can one rightly measure mel-ioration/progress. Therefore, the different paradigms are not reciprocally translatable, one school of thinking cannot be taken as representative for the other and progress has not the same meaning for the mainstream or for the heterodox Marxian and ecological economists: because the ideological presumptions are opposed and so are the different criteria to measure progress.
Or: in economy progress is measured as above mentioned, while in demography it would be the maintaining of the pyramid of genera-
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Generally, in the present capitalist mainstream thinking, this concept itself is related only to knowledge, but at any rate "it is no longer fashionable". (This mainstream standpoint issues from the criticism against Enlightenment, made mostly in the post WWI crisis of thinking, but developed within the post WWII neo-liberal ideological pattern).
In fact, this is the capitalist economy. As it was explained not once, not any market relations suppose capitalism, and on the other hand, even the capitalist relations progress with the help of state, namely transgressing many supply-demand inputs.
tions5, in cultural studies — the maintaining of the genuine specific cultures6, in morals — the strengthen of the humanist, altruistic and Enlightenment universal values, or (according to the more or less sotto voce promoters of the theory of beneficial consequences of the selfish pursuing of private interests) the open showing of the elitist despise of the commons. And so on and so forth.
Or: there are domains, as the philosophical thinking, where is difficult to speak about progress: Hegel is not more valuable than Aristotle, and we may rightfully praise the acquisitions conquered over time only from the general standpoint of distinctness, of enthusiasm and lucidity of questions, and of dialectical complexity of answers.
The ideological character of appreciations and measurements is clear-cut. But just in order to cover this character, the mainstream ideologists reduce this socially depending feature to the individual relativism: "chi la vuole cotta e chi la vuole cruda"7, or de gustibus... It would seem that because the multiplicity of standpoints and criteria is evident, one cannot judge them.
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Leave here aside that the increase of life expectancy and the individualistic, or prudent, behavior of replacement level fertility invert the demographic pyramid: but these cause troubles only for a while, because the present level of science and technology within the capitalist framework does not need many workforce. Or leave here aside that the measurement of demographic progress in a certain period would be dependent on the economic and social problems of that country, thus it would consist in the planned inversion of the pyramid.
Or: the harmonious coexistence of these cultures and a universal set of values.
An Italian proverb (a kind of "some ones like it baked/ripe, some ones like it underdone/raw") corresponding to the English different strokes for different folks; or, to the Latin saying: de gustibus non dis-putandum, there is no disputing of taste.
Therefore, what would the social progress be in front of so many concepts of progress/so many measurements of progress? Would it be a permanent addition of new concepts/measure-ments of progress? Or: a synthesis of these concepts?
Obviously, it is not a simple sum, the more so as there are so many schools of thinking in so many domains. But what is a synthesis? It is a result of the judgement over these different solutions: lesser — a combination of these solutions; and more — a criticism over them.
But what is the result of this criticism? Godel has demonstrated that the ultimate explanation of a system is outside the system. That means here that: 1) the complex social whole cannot be explained through the criteria used in a science or another; or, to put it in a different way, the criteria used in a science cannot stand for the entire society; and 2) the entire society should be explained only with its specific criteria. And just this specific criteria is the means to judge some criteria of progress in economics, ethics etc.
This specificity exists: namely, despite all the partisan discourses which equate the power and wealth of the powerful with the future welfare of the many8, the criterion which corresponds to Godel's demonstration and summarises both the tendencies emphasised by different scientific analyses and the criticism over the particular criteria of sciences is: the social progress/the progress of society as a whole consists in the increased possibility of the individuals of a more and more larger part of society (Bazac 2013) to manifest their unique creativity. Or, formulated in
From more than 30 years, this equalization is even more liar than before, since the present capitalism does no longer need a welfare state: just on the contrary.
And yes, it is always about the promise of the "future realisation".
negative: the eradication of the socially induced suffering of individuals of a more and more larger part of society9. This requires material, spiritual, institutional and relational/organisational conditions. Because: the social progress does not consist only in material well-being10, or only in cultural freedom, or only in institutions of formal representative democracy, mimicking the sovereignty of the popular will but in fact annulling this sovereignty. This is the reason why we should not assume the method of reducing the criterion of the social progress to the criteria of Western type democratic progress etc. And this is the reason we can translate the above criterion of the social progress through Kant's categorical imperative: the progress of society as a whole manifests when the most of the humankind - and all and every member of it – is treated not only as a means of the others, but always as an end (Bazac 2016.) The intuitive common mutual functionality of things - systems, individuals, institutions -must be, and it was, deconstructed and verified.
This above-mentioned criterion bypasses the danger of relativism11. At the same time, it excludes the reduction to a deus ex machina model (Bazac 2012), and it gives room to the infinite manners to construct the possibility of the creativeness of the people (and of the peoples). By being an exterior standpoint towards different measurements of progress by the human and
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Indeed, here the whole and the part are epistemological landmarks: the well-being of citizens from a certain country should not be realised on the back of people from other countries. More: the development, namely the profit gained from certain activities - as the industry of armament or the extraction of shale gas - in a country should not jeopardise the life of present and future generations worldwide.
And certainly it does not consist in consumerism, specific to the capitalist logic and way of life. Relativism is thus first of all epistemological: only on this basis it is axiological.
social sciences, this criterion emphasises the method of analysis of these measurements and their corresponding concepts of progress; it is composed of: 1) the analysis of their presumptions and criteria, as they take place within concrete theoretical developments, as the upstream without which one cannot falsify (Popper) the theories, i.e. reveal their truth-value, and 2) the analysis of the consequences of the proposed concepts of progress, that is the downstream without which one cannot make the connexion between theory and practice and, again, one cannot falsify the theories, i.e. reveal their truth-value. Thus, the problem of reciprocal "translatability" of different estimations of progress may be solved as their verification through the relating to reality (the famous 'practice - the criterion of truth").
6. Philosophy of the measurement of the social progress
Philosophy is absolutely necessary in this endeavour. It is that which emphasises the method to judge the criteria of disciplines and to constitute the specific criteria - summarised here by a criterion - of the progress of society as a whole. It reveals the significances of the concepts and meanings involved in this process of quest for progress.
Focusing on the concept of social progress, philosophy is which tempers the ideological tendency of particular disciplines and measurements uncovering their image of their power as limitless. Philosophy is too which tempers its own imagination about a valid thinking separated from both the real social life and the world created by sciences. Philosophy looks with irony at the topical "civilizationing" projects induced by the mainstream ideology promoting illusions of "cultural" and religious revival of both communities and philosophy: as if culture and religion
would "compensate" the economic and social problems generated by an out-of-date system. Philosophy thus continues the standpoint of Marx and Nietzsche in the disenchantment of the world, by working on the enchantment created by the strong spiritualist tradition that aimed at diverting the human awareness concerning the unitary character of the complex social world.
Philosophy is that which points that there is a dialectic relation - a reciprocal subordination -between the ends and the means, and that no intermediary end/means ought to harm the betterment of the social system as a whole and thus of every human being.
Philosophy is the most serious of things, but then again is not all that serious, as Adorno (Negative Dialectics) has recalled. Linked to the problem of social progress, philosophy supplies the instruments of criticism over the presumptions and methods of sciences to conceive of their own progress and the human progress. In this way it constitutes itself not only as theory of knowledge, but also as ontology (sine qua non for the human and social disciplines). Nevertheless, not as metaphysics: because in its understanding of the "first principles", it starts always from "physics", i.e. from the real social world and the clash of the human mind with and within this world. Thereby, and the more so as it concerns the social progress, philosophy is always existentialist: the concrete social existence, the concrete existence of individuals in their social existence are which precede "the ineffable" essence. Consequently, this essence itself is not eternal and unchanged and consists in an historical concept of being as becoming.
Related to the problem of social progress, philosophy warns about the responsibility of every individual's attitude and action, since these actions influence not only people around him/her, but - as the butterfly from the chaos theory - the
entire world. By using the last scientific theories, philosophy emphasises that the present history is no longer the result of the exploits of "elites" or of leaders, and by using the most unconventional approaches of the human-nature-world system, it warns that the known model of progress - as an alternating of longer periods of relative stability, when acquisitions in different fields are added to the older acquisitions in a kind of normal state tableau, with shorter periods of relatively rapid change shaking the former equilibrium - does no longer work.
In this respect, philosophy continues its traditional theme of time and confronts the present people with the problem of present slender time. Philosophy is that asking the question whether we do have time or not to solve the big contradictions and crises which too have agglomerated as if meantime any progress in science, technology, art and human logic would not have existed. Today the common thinking, imbued by the mainstream ideology, still assume that humankind - countries, groups, institutions - yet has time to accumulate acquisitions and "to progress". But philosophy shows that we have to not waste our time, we have to be parsimonious with it: because it seems the time "has no more patience". But since the time is depending on ourselves: it results that both the concept of progress and the philosophical standpoint are subversive enough. But we cannot live without them.
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