A reflection on Enlightenment Ideas & Ideologies of Progress & Stability

8 October 2023

What follows are some unsystematic thoughts in defence of the Enlightenment idea of progress, not as a historical phenomenon, but as a political ideology we would do well to endorse. I use the word “progress” to designate the steady improvement of the human condition that is achieved when we cooperate as citizens to reform the institutions of our social organization through reason and compassion. This is how I believe the thinkers of the Enlightenment to have understood the term. And it is important to recognize why their usage was different from previous eras.

The Enlightenment - understood as a European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries principally concerned with rational inquiry, free from the interference of politics or religion - did not invent the concept of progress. I would argue progress is the most fundamental idea throughout Western intellectual history. All other contenders (reason, justice, liberty…) had their origins in some campaigner’s quest for progress. Simply stated, progress is the idea that humanity can advance – morally and physically – from the inferior to the superior. Understood in this way, progress is not only possible in a human society, progress is the raison d’etre of society. We form societies in order to progress. That understanding was axiomatic to the Republic of Plato and continues to be conceptually pre-requisite to progressive movements in our own day.

The Enlightenment theory of progress, however, differed from all previous incarnations of the concept because the philosophes consciously separated their political thinking from theology. Until the 17th century, progress was always understood in the context of a religious narrative. The institutions of human society were purpose-built to prepare one for the next life, not to improve one’s circumstances in this life. But after the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and a century of nonstop holy wars across Europe, that religious context was seen as dubious at best. Many thinkers even saw it as the root of a Christian authoritarianism that made true progress – the kind I defined above – impossible. 

It is for this reason that works like John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration initiated what I call the Enlightenment theory of progress. A preliminary articulation of that theory is as follows: through the collective use of reason and the protection of certain rights (such as freedom of conscience, speech, and assembly), a society will come to enjoy a higher quality of moral and physical well-being here on earth. In order to understand such a theory, however, it must be differentiated from what I call the Enlightenment dogma of progress.

A belief in progress becomes dogmatic when a society ceases to understand reform as a moral imperative and comes to believe instead that progress is an inexorable law of history. We hear echoes of this belief in our own day whenever a reformer accuses a political opponent of being “on the wrong side of history.” The implication is that human history is subject to some sort of natural process of development toward progress that takes place independently of the will and actions of any particular human being. When such a belief takes hold, reformers no longer seek to improve the well-being of their fellow citizens simply because that is what a just society ought to do. The reformers instead become the self-selected enactors of the progressive historical process, a law of history that exists solely by the decree of the reformers themselves.

Thus, those who oppose the reform agenda are no longer seen as fellow citizens voicing democratic opposition but are instead perceived to be regressive forces obstructing humanity’s evolution from barbarism to enlightenment. Such opponents can therefore be excluded from the progressive society through political neutralization and may perhaps even need to be physically exterminated, as in the extreme examples of Nazi Germany and Soviet Communism. The dogma of progress thus excludes those who do not fall into line. This is why a society that considers itself progressive can appear so obviously unfair to those outside of it. It also explains why historically there have been many societies that preach liberty, tolerance, and democracy but practice patriarchy, slavery, and colonialism.

In our own time, I see a new iteration of the dogma of progress in the form of apologists for the status quo such as Stephen Pinker. I must confess that I have long been familiar with his work and have developed a strong bias against him. However, I will ignore the usual objections to his book, Enlightenment Now, such as his dubious use of statistics and wholesale ignoring of climate change. I disagree with Pinker’s “everything-is-the-best-it-has-ever-been-and-if you-feel-otherwise-that’s-because-the-news-media-have-brainwashed-you-with-negativity” worldview not due to any of the common arguments that are levelled against him, but because I believe he is guilty of the same mistake that all dogmatic advocates for progress have been guilty of: they naively assume a background of political stability.

My lay reading of history inclines me to the conviction that lasting political stability is essential to progress. If the human condition is to be improved, progressive political actors must believe that the institutions they seek to reform will endure into the future; it would be futile, for example, to seek legal reforms in a state so insecure that the authorities can no longer enforce the rule of law. An edifice of progress can only be built upon a foundation of permanence. Naïve optimists like Pinker – who want to assure the rest of us that the people in charge of society are doing a swell job and everything sure is great – ignore how politically unstable our world has become. I believe this is the newest version of the dogma of progress, and it is the most insidious because it is so hard to detect. It is propaganda for those who benefit from existing power relations.

Pinker’s use of intellectual mumbo jumbo to dupe the rest of us into passively accepting unjust power structures is by no means original. The Western intellectual tradition has produced several such strategies to achieve political stability. In the example I cited earlier, Plato argued that a just society would necessarily need to be founded on a “noble lie.” Thomas Hobbes insisted on an absolute monarch who rules by divine right. However, unlike Pinker’s view, such positions were at least intellectually honest enough to acknowledge the primacy of a functional political order if progress is to be possible. (Recall Hobbes’s famous description of social life before the Leviathan comes to power.) Pinker makes no such acknowledgment, I assume because he thinks none is needed.

The political status quo that Pinker defends entrenches gross inequalities between societies and within societies. One of the consequences of that inequality is an intense political turmoil that undermines the very progress Pinker champions. Stated as simply as possible, there is no point in arguing that a society has “progressed” according to numerous metrics if the political organization of that society creates vast numbers of disenfranchised citizens. Eventually, those citizens will revolt against the very political order that has created the supposed progress.

My own view is that humanity in the 21st century is confronted with a seemingly irresolvable contradiction at the heart of the progressive society. That contradiction was articulated by Machiavelli. He saw that a progressive society could only be built by a stable government, but a stable government could only built by those willing to commit violence and deception to establish and maintain that political stability. Thus, any society able to embody and act upon progressive values owes its existence to unjust power relations. Machiavelli, of course, is famous for accepting this reality and advocating that a political leader must do whatever is necessary to seize power and then maintain a progressive society, regardless if doing so would violate the very progressive principles he was seeking to implement.

In Canada, we see this historical reality manifesting itself in the nation’s struggle to reconcile with the First Nations. The fact that such a political struggle is called “Truth and Reconciliation” highlights the contradiction I am referring to. Canada considers itself, and is often considered by the international community, to be a fair country. However, there can never be a fair explanation for the history of how Canada came to be a country. Colonial settlers stole the land from its aboriginal inhabitants. That will always be the case, no matter how progressive Canadian society goes on to be. 

How a nation-state reconciles its progressive present with its unethical past appears to me an impossible political question, at least right now. I am still convinced that the Enlightenment theory of progress is responsible for more justice, creativity, welfare, and understanding than any other idea that has ever motivated human action. However, as a political ideology, I am not convinced it can overcome the contradiction that Machiavelli identified at the heart of a stable society. The existence of a progressive society seems to be its own worst enemy.