Revisiting the Idea of Progress in History

September/October 2007 Historically Speaking 11 Moral Progress in History: A Forum IN THEJULY/AUGUST 2007 ISSUE WE PUBUSHED A FORUM on "British Abolitionism and Moral Progress" drawingfrom papersgiven at ajoint HistoricalSociety-John Templeton Foundation-sponsoredconference heldin London in April 2007. In this issue, we movefrom the abolitionism case study to explore the question of whether there is moralprogress in history. WilfredMcClayplaces the idea ofprogress in historicalcontext. PeterHarrison andJon Roberts look atthe idea of moralprogressfrom the vantagepoint of two distinctgroups : early modern naturalphilosophers andhte 19th- andearly 20th-century American liberalProtestants. Bruce Kuklick, whopersonally has serious doubts about progress in history, ends theforum by looking at the tensions inherent in the historical profession's views on the notion. Thisforum was supported by agrantfrom theJohn Templeton Foundation. Revisiting the Idea of Progress in History Wilfred M. McClay We have become uneasy with the very concept of progress. We are not prepared to give it up entirely; that would be nearly inconceivable. Scratch the ironic surface of even the most insouciant postmodern pose, and you find beneath it, emerging as startlingly as a ghost, some brightly colored and long-forgotten fresco, a gaudy metanarrative of progress still silendy at work, shaping our choices of ends and means and norms. There are many such hidden frescoes still at work today. The West is still remarkably committed to the idea of purposive action and resistant to the lure of fatalism, perhaps because rebellion against the binding power of necessity forms the very core of Western identity. A culture like ours has enormous progressive inertia , and it does not necessarily have to acknowledge the existence of its earlier commitments to be propelled or guided by them for a very long time. Nor is it possible to dispense with the frescoes without also dispensing with all of the surfaces that have been painted over them; and we have no intention of doing that. But we do not feel quite as ready as we once were to endorse the idea of progress, without always employing the protective mechanisms of qualifiers or sneer quotes. This is perhaps the most obvious evidence of the depth of our unease. If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we still believe implicidy in the possibility of something that one could legitimately call "progress." This is nigh unto inescapable. Even our occasional efforts to sound fatalistic in our speech betray all the things that such speeches silendy presume : that, as free and purposeful beings, we cannot help projecting certain ideals or goals, if even only short-range or proximate ones, into the inchoate future. This is particularly so in the United States, where every lamentation has a way of turning into a jeremiad, and thereby into a form of moral exhortation, the polar opposite of fatalism. The language of true fatalism would be silence, and that is not what we are hearing. But our compulsive belief in progress is being challenged constandy by the honesty of our unbelief. Hence when we speak of progress, it is so often "progress" that we speak of. The use of sneer quotes is often a way of pretending to be superior to the concept being quoted, and to those who would be so naive or mendacious It is my conviction that we believe in the idea ofprogressy and we need to he able to do so, and to do so more fully and confidently and unapologetically than we now do. as to use the words without critical distance. But their use may also be a way of frankly confessing one's inability to get beyond straddling an issue; a way of evading the law of noncontradiction by both asserting and not asserting something at the same time; a way of saying tacidy what was once said biblically: "Lord I believe; help thou my unbelief ." The idea of progress in history—the liberating song of the Enlightenment, the grand choral ode of the 19th century, the marching music central to the rise and dominance of the modern West—has gradually become problematic to us. The skepticism runs deep. Not only is it our faith in the inevitability of progress that we question, but the very...