A Critique of the Idea of Progress: Ethics, Knowledge & Evolution

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It is therefore not surprising that the Wealth of Nations , the work on economic growth for which he is best known, has a deeper philosophical resonance. Smith's central observation is that, in economic life, it often happens that individuals in pursuit of their self-interest nevertheless contribute to the common good , — Humans engage in this activity for self-interested reasons. But growth in the productivity of labor in a society is largely due to a greater division of labor 3. It is because of a greater division of labor, Smith contends, that the poorest members of European countries are richer than the richest members of societies in other parts of the world Failure to see the work of the invisible hand will lead to unwise policies.

Smith says that, in the absence of government intervention, self-interest leads each nation to produce only the goods in which it has a comparative advantage. Self-interested behavior in the presence of government attempts to support domestic industries actually results in a worse outcome. One goal of the book is admittedly practical: Mercantilism holds that aggressive government intervention is the key to increasing national wealth.

Accordingly, during this time, the governments of Europe attempted to steer and promote domestic industries, most notably by placing high tariffs on foreign imports Palmer , Smith argues against these policies. He writes that tariffs on imports harm the nation as a whole, by misdirecting its resources , — In general, he says, the government should play a circumscribed role in the economic life of a country, confining itself to the protection of property rights, the support of a national defense force, and the provision of a few other key public goods Smith's emphasis on spontaneous improvement in economic life warrants treating him as a theorist of progress.

But, given his worries about mercantilism, it is clear he thinks that this type of development is fragile. Nations will not maximize their wealth unless they have the wisdom to allow spontaneous growth to occur. Smith intends the Wealth of Nations to help policy makers recognize the phenomena that he believes to have correctly identified. The thinkers of the Scottish and French Enlightenment authors are empiricists.

Unlike them, the German Enlightenment figure Immanuel Kant — reasons in an a priori manner to the conclusion that humanity is progressing. Kant remarks that certain trends are compatible with progress, but cautions that no trajectory can be inferred with certainty from the facts , His a priori argument begins with the premise that all animals have natural faculties. If nature is not to be in vain, we must assume that the faculties of an animal can be developed. Unlike other animals, the human being cannot develop all of its faculties in a lifetime.

If the faculties given to humans are not to be considered useless, then the only other possibility is that the human race as a whole, over time, will develop all the human faculties , 42— The progress from one era to another is measured by the development of human faculties during that time. Kant thinks that human faculties can reach their fullest expression only in free and peaceful circumstances , 50 , which in turn require a particular set of institutions. A federation of republics will mark the final stage of human development.

A republic is a state based on the rule of law whose members are free and equal citizens , A federation is a group of nations who have agreed to observe rules of peaceful conduct in their mutual relations , 98ff. Kant argues that the domestic and international features of this institutional constellation will reinforce each other. Republics will not go to war with each other because a declaration of war requires the consent of the public, who are reluctant to pay a war's price , In turn, domestic conditions will be improved in the absence of a state's constant involvement in wars , The details of the development toward the peaceful federation are given by Kant's universal history.

This narrative is presented as, at best, consistent with empirical evidence. Kant argues that, for the most part, human psychology and the natural environment, rather than human reason, could have driven the human race forward. Humans are social because they cannot develop their capabilities in isolation. Yet they are unsocial because they always want to get their own way. These associations are the seeds of republics.

But progressive human activity need not be lacking in awareness. Kant maintains that a philosophy of progress can accelerate progress , The 19th-century writers on progress took up and elaborated the notion that conflict is an essential part of a progressive narrative. Hegel — is an example of such a writer.

Hegel does not give a straightforward account of human progress. But he puts a version of universal history at the center of his metaphysics, from which a narrative of progress can be derived. According to Hegel, the world as a whole is in the process of development through conflict. Part of the world's development is the self-realization of its spiritual aspect, known simply as Geist , or Spirit. The freedom of Spirit is achieved through the achievement of free social institutions and free human beings. So, we look to human history to understand the realization of Spirit.

Conversely we recognize that the self-realization of Spirit, an entity not reducible to humanity, is the true meaning of human history.

The state is crucial to Hegel's philosophy of history. At any point in time, a state or group of states represent the highest point achieved by humanity thus far. Hegel thinks that at the time of his writing, the states of Western Europe play this role. In the Philosophy of Right , he argues that these states, however imperfectly, combine individual freedom with social unity into one enduring whole.

The political constitution of the society he describes is a constitutional monarchy. It approximates the never-adopted constitution that Prussian reformers drew up in Wood , History, according to Hegel's metaphysical account, is driven by ideological development. Ideological—and therefore historical—change occurs when a new idea is nurtured in the environment of the old one, and eventually overtakes it.

Thus development necessarily involves periods of conflict when the old and new ideas clash. A second account of change is contained in the master-slave dialectic of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit , —; — Certain forms of social hierarchy are intrinsically unstable.

The human desire for recognition drives social development, which consists of repeated struggles for recognition, until it reaches the liberal solution. In the liberal state, slave and masters are abolished, and all recognize all as free and equal. This arrangement lacks the contradictions inherent in previous social forms.

According to Hegel, conflict occurs within and between states. These great men are often motivated by narrow, personal goals. Hegel's justification of war and destruction in the name of progress reflects his overall philosophy. He holds that we can be reconciled to negative elements by seeing their place within a larger pattern. In the Phenomenology of Spirit , he summarizes his thesis in the following slogan: Finally, in contrast to Kant, Hegel thinks that war is more than an engine of progress.

Hegel argues that, without war, individuals in liberal societies become self-absorbed and weak, unwilling to work for the common good. There is moreover no outlet for human aggression. For these reasons, war is ineliminable. It will be a feature even of the rational system of states that marks the end of historical development. Over the long run, the productive forces determine other aspects of the society, starting with the relations of production, the informal and formal rules that define and regulate property , Marx builds on these assumptions to define capitalism and communism and to predict the former's eventual transformation into the latter.

Like Hegel, Marx asserts that conflict drives historical development. But in Marx's account, conflict occurs when the productive forces outgrow the relations of production , A different class of society represents each side of the conflict. The class that benefits from the outmoded relations of production seeks to maintain them, while the losing class seeks to destroy them and replace them. For instance, capitalism emerged from feudal aristocracy when the merchants, through revolution, rewrote the laws in their favor , —8, Capitalism is a system in which land and labor are commodities able to be bought and sold on the free market.

Marx predicts that communism will emerge from capitalism because the productive forces developed within a capitalist society will eventually make capitalist property rights unworkable , At this point, the working class, or proletariat, will successfully overthrow the old order , —2. Marx's philosophy of history can seem like a deterministic materialism that ignores ideas and passes no judgment on the change it describes. However, this picture is incomplete. First of all, Marx thinks that consciousness of historical trends will guide at least some of the future revolutionaries , Second, Marx clearly thinks that communism is superior to capitalism because it eliminates barriers to freedom such as alienation and exploitation and replaces them with a community of free producers , Marx's early writings—published after his death—show that the value of freedom was as central a concern for him as it was for Kant or Hegel.

Among 19th-century thinkers, the French sociologist Auguste Comte — puts relatively little emphasis on violence and struggle as a source of change. Comte saw himself as giving sociology its content in addition to its name. But many of his arguments are not particularly original, including his most fundamental claim, that intellectual improvement drives progress v. His real contribution is to claim that intellectual development should be understood as change in the form of explanation employed by individuals seeking to understand the world.

The form of explanation effects social life insofar as it corresponds to a way of predicting and manipulating events. It is true that this argument is implicit in the writings of earlier thinkers such as Turgot and Condorcet. But, unlike his predecessors, Comte works it out systematically.

Comte's main sociological law is that every science goes through three stages, which he terms the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive , v. In the theological stage, scientific explanation is governed by the assumption that natural events are caused by divinities. In turn, humans attempt to affect natural outcomes by appealing directly to the gods or God to take action. The metaphysical stage follows, in which phenomena are explained by referring to the abstract essences that entities are supposed to possess.

The third phase, the positive phase, explains phenomena by formulating scientific laws and then subsuming individual phenomena under them 2. Humans cannot change these laws, but they can use their knowledge of them to predict and shape events. The positive stage is the most modest in its epistemological aspirations. Unlike the other two, it organizes appearances rather than looking beyond them v. However, it is the most successful of the three stages in guiding human intervention into nature. This is no accident, since the same practical concerns that motivate scientific activity drive scientific development.

For Comte, the ultimate motivation for scientific activity is practical: While Comte holds that the driving force of human progress is intellectual development, he asserts that progress itself consists in moral improvement. Comte refrains from claiming that humans are becoming subjectively happier , v. Instead, despite his rejection of Aristotelian metaphysics, Comte invokes a form of human flourishing akin to Aristotle's in the Nicomachean Ethics b22—a Comte claims that human excellence is exercising the uniquely human capacity for reason.

The human race is progressing because humans are becoming more rational and less emotional v. In the final part of his career, Comte turned his attention to political theory. In System of Positive Polity , he envisions a socialist society governed by a few unelected officials, who are in turn educated and advised by an elite priesthood of social scientists 51 , Guided by the principle that the temporal and spiritual powers of society should be separate, Comte emphasizes that the priests of positivism should not exercise political leadership themselves Comte appeals to the same principle to justify the exclusion of women from public life He explains that women wield spiritual power as mothers and wives —1 , and their spiritual authority would be jeopardized if they were to pursue a vocation outside the family.

John Stuart Mill — , Comte's contemporary, admired his progressive philosophy of history Mill , and shared his respect for scientific expertise But Mill was disappointed by Comte's basic distaste for democratic freedom and individuality Mill , Unlike Comte, Mill thought that a strong, scientifically oriented society could be a liberal democracy. Such a society would best maintain the gains already achieved and nurture further improvement. Mill articulates his twin commitment to progress and liberal democracy in his major writings, including A System of Logic , Utilitarianism , On Liberty , and On Representative Government Mill's writings establish connections among utility, liberty, and political institutions.

Utility, or aggregate pleasure b, , provides the ultimate standard for comparing two historical eras or two contemporaneous societies.

The claim that humanity is progressing means that utility is increasing over time. Then, in A System of Logic , Mill, following Comte , argues that the development of ideas drives the development of society as a whole Finally, in On Liberty and On Representative Government , Mill considers how a society's institutions can retard or accelerate ideological development.

Mill thinks that it is impossible to find a single set of institutions that is progressive for all times and places. The most that we can do is to specify what institutions are best for societies at a given level of civilization. But Mill argues that in more advanced societies, free institutions promote further progress. They do so by allowing ideological conflict, which is a powerful engine of ideological development. Mill worries about the transition from one set of institutions to another. Civilizations can reach a certain level of development and then stagnate because they do not undergo institutional change a, —5.

Despite his reputation as a classic Victorian progressive, Mill is more cautious and less deterministic than the other 19th-century writers treated by this essay. He believes that continued improvement is possible, but not by any means inevitable. Progress in Europe will come to a halt if institutions silence society's creative members , 80— Mill's works derive their urgency from the fact that he clearly thinks they can make a real difference. On Liberty focuses on the argument for government non-interference. On Representative Government discusses some of the ways that democratic institutions could be reformed to promote different points of view actively.

A fellow Victorian philosopher, Herbert Spencer — is much more deterministic than Mill. Spencer views human progress as one aspect of a universe in perpetual development. Spencer constructs his explanatory framework from materials from the biological sciences. He is keenly interested in theories of biological evolution, both Lamarckian and then Darwinian. Understanding Spencer's theoretical orientation requires some background in 19th-century biology.

Darwin's theory of evolution was not the first modern attempt to account for diversity of life on the planet without invoking an act of divine creation Levins and Lewontin, , 27— Jean-Baptiste Lamarck — explained the apparent match between each animal species and its environment by positing that individual animals could acquire and pass on adaptive characteristics. This explanation requires, first of all, that animals strive to adapt to their environment.

Second, it requires that the animals change physically as a result of their efforts, and third, that they pass on their acquired characteristics to their offspring Levins and Lewontin, In contrast, Darwin hypothesized that randomly occurring variation among individual organisms could be preserved or destroyed in the population of organisms through differential reproductive success.

That is, he conjectured that some characteristics are correlated with the ability to produce a greater number of offspring. These characteristics will tend to increase in a population over time. Darwin called this mechanism natural selection. Natural selection bypasses the problematic assumption that individual organisms could alter themselves through deliberate effort.

Yet it can still explain why organisms seem to fit into their natural environment so well Levins and Lewontin, , 31— In Social Statics , Spencer asserts that evil is never permanent He reasons to this conclusion from two premises. Second, he claims that all living beings gradually change to fit into their environment 59— He lists a great number of natural phenomena that supposedly illustrate this law At the point of writing, Spencer was a Lamarckian, but he later maintained essentially this argument as a proponent of Darwinism. Evil in the human sense exists because human beings, by virtue of their selfishness, are unsuited to social living.

But this variety of evil, like all evil, will pass away as humans adapt to their circumstances. He defines progress as the evolution of humans from selfishness to selflessness , Spencer claims that all phenomena exhibit the same development from the simple to the complex for this same reason. He finds evidence for progress in astronomy 10—11 , geology 12—13 , and linguistics 23—4.

The modern literature on progress generally argues that European science, culture, and institutions are the best in the world at the time the author is writing. But claims or insinuations that Europeans are biologically superior are rarer. Turgot, as we have seen, states that individual genius occurs as frequently among non-Europeans as among Europeans. Nor do Mill's claims for European superiority rest on biological arguments , In other words, the paradigmatic progress narrative shows Europeans setting the standards and then the rest of the world catching up until everyone is a full participant in an enlightened order.

The introduction of biological evolution into writings on progress enabled a new form of Eurocentrism, one founded on biological racism. Spencer enlists evolutionary theory to claim that different races of human beings exist and form a clear hierarchy: This includes mental characteristics: Spencer's racism is central to his view of humans as a group and of human potential. Ultimately it calls into question whether he can be said truly to propose an account of progress.

If the 19th century is the high water mark of progress narratives, the following period is the era of critics. In general, criticisms of the doctrine of progress fall into two categories.

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The first category contains straightforward denials of the claim that the human condition is improving. The second category consists of condemnations of the doctrine of progress on skeptical grounds. Consider the first group of criticisms. If the human condition is not improving, either circumstances are getting worse, or they are fluctuating between some upper and lower bound. Each alternative is certainly arguable. Horrific human catastrophes, such as the genocides, wars, and environmental destruction of the 20th century, can bolster the argument that things are getting worse.

But less dramatic evidence, like increasing alienation in industrialized societies, could be cited in support of the same claim. Then there are those who emphasize that natural limits will keep the human condition within certain bounds. Either the natural environment or human nature could place limits on improvement and, for that matter, on deterioration. The previous criticisms take for granted that it makes sense to speak of the human condition as improving or declining. But one can question whether these statements are truly coherent.

To vindicate such sweeping claims, it must be possible to construct an ordering of past, present, and future states of affairs. But, in reality, it is sometimes difficult even in the case of individuals to say whether changes have been improvements or not. Consider the person who is forced to reflect and regroup after a mild setback. In the period immediately after the setback, the person is less content but acting with greater autonomy.

To evaluate the change in the person's state, we must treat the values of being content and being autonomous as commensurable, and some will argue that they are not. Evaluating a change in an entire society involves the same kinds of difficult comparisons, plus a whole collection of additional ones based on distributive concerns. For instance, if a society becomes wealthier and less egalitarian over time, is this an improvement or not? Finally, even if we think a complete ordering of states of affairs is achievable, we might question the use of dialectical accounts to justify violence and catastrophes.

Why should we be reconciled to a violent war just because it set the stage for institutional improvement? Other skeptical arguments point to the difficulty of inferring broad historical laws from available evidence. In pursuit of a universal history, most theorists refuse to create a priori accounts and instead rely on empirical inferences. It is possible to attack the grounds on which theorists infer trends from past and present social phenomena. For instance, it is a mistake to equate temporal and spatial distance. Theorists sometimes use contemporary reports of America or Africa to draw conclusions about an earlier time in Europe.

Finally, even if one accurately captures a trend, it is difficult to extrapolate into the future. If we view humans as free, as long as institutional arrangements leave room for choice, the future is not entirely predictable. All these arguments appear in the writings of critics of progress.

Providing a comprehensive survey of the critics is beyond the scope of this article. Instead, the next section will treat a few important authors who reject the doctrine of progress, as well as one who attempts to revive it. Not all of the critics considered are pessimists.

One may point out the possibility of a bright future while emphasizing that it is up to humans to choose it. Some of the deepest criticisms of progress were produced during and after the catastrophes and upheavals of the 20th century. This work addresses a variety of interlocking topics relating to fascism, capitalism, and the war.

Given his intellectual background as a scholar of Hegel and Marx, this confrontation takes the shape of a critique of Hegel's philosophy of history. Recall that Hegel claims that a reflective individual who surveys the course of history will be reconciled to tragedies when he understands their contribution to progress overall. Adorno is viscerally repulsed by this notion.

He notes with indignation: Adorno attacks Hegel from two directions. First Adorno is simply skeptical that fascism and the Holocaust can be part of any upward historical trend 55—6. Second, he points to a tension in Hegel's own thought. However, Adorno says, in practice Hegel often moves past human evils and individual fates in a cursory fashion , 16—17 , hurrying toward the stage of reconcilation.

Adorno proposes a new method of examining history for meaning, exemplified by Minima Moralia , that dwells on individual experience and catastrophe. In Minima Moralia , Adorno mentions that the writings of Walter Benjamin — are an inspiration to him. The ninth thesis perhaps speaks for itself:. Decolonization presented a second occasion for rethinking the concept of progress.

In the twenty years after World War II, the European powers relinquished the vast majority of the non-European colonies still in their possession Hunt et. Scholars from the former European colonies, reflecting on the colonial past, have noted that European apologists for colonialism claimed that it modernized the supposedly backward non-European world. In other words, the apologists situated colonialism in a progress narrative. Implicitly or explicitly, postcolonial critics hold that this use of the concept of progress calls it into question.

Beyond this common core, the criticisms offered vary. For instance, Samir Amin's study Eurocentrism is concerned to criticize a particular conception of progress. This conception, which he terms Eurocentrism, characterizes all major historical innovations as European. It also views capitalist democracy as the ideal social system and colonialism as instrumental in spreading it throughout the world Amin , Finally, Eurocentricism holds that current global economic inequality is caused by internal features of individual countries 77 and is in principle eliminable Now, Amin does not reject the project of identifying macro-historical movements.

His reasoning is, in fact, influenced by Marxism. He seeks only to replace Eurocentrism with a truer account. To do so, he first presents an alternate sketch of historical development that shines light on non-European contributions.

He next argues that current global inequality is produced by international capitalism and cannot be eradicated without dismantling that system — He ends by stating that some form of socialism is the only stable and humane political system, although it is far from inevitable Postmodern postcolonial theorists offer a more radical critique of European progress narratives than Amin does.

Michel Foucault, the French historian of ideas, is a major influence on the school. Foucault holds that discourses are what constitute and empower the subjects that make history. Thus he takes discourses as the fundamental objects of historical study. In Orientalism, Edward Said — applies Foucault's method of discourse analysis to 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century writings about the Middle East by British and French novelists, travelers, and academics Said , At the heart of the discourse of Orientalism is the conviction that the countries of the Middle East lag behind those of Europe and can only improve under the tutelage of Europeans , — Said argues that the discourse of Orientalism laid the foundation for the colonial project and supported it once it was underway In addition to Said, the historians of the subaltern studies movement have adapted a Foucauldian view of history, in their case to analyze Indian colonial history Prakash , Although at odds in many ways, both discourses drew heavily from progress narratives In general, postmodern postcolonialists aim to show that the typical universal history is one discourse among many incommensurable discourses, none of which are without inconsistencies.

So far, we have seen how the events of the 20th century provoked criticisms of the typical European progress narrative. In contrast, the collapse of communism inspired a minor revival of the traditional progress narrative. For Fukuyama, Hegel at once offers an idealist theory of social change and champions liberal democracy. Fukuyama argues that, according to Hegel, history entered its final phase when the principles of liberal democracy first motivated a world historical event, namely the French Revolution , xvii; After that crucial point, no more major developments were in store, but instead the gradual spread and realization of the liberal democratic ideal.

Of course, this argument was seriously challenged by the rise of fascism and communism in the 20th century and the conflicts that ensued. But Fukuyama in was maximally situated to defend Hegel and to argue that these ideological alternatives to liberal democracy were essentially deviations from deeper trends. According to Fukuyama, fascism clearly failed by the mid-century and now, with the fall of the Soviet Union, it was evident that communism was also a dead end. Fukuyama states that the proximate cause of the Soviet regime's fall was its lack of legitimacy with the governing elite 30—1.

The elite lost faith in the regime because they saw that it was ideologically bankrupt According to Fukuyama, liberalism's great ideological rivals failed in the long term for two reasons. First of all, communism has the wrong theory of economic management 40, 93—95 , and could not provide long-term economic prosperity 28— Thus Marx's claim that capitalism was materially unstable proved true of communism instead. So writes Gray in Straw Dogs , and in this claim we can see at least two key aspects to his understanding of humanity. By extension, in denying the very existence of this body, Gray simultaneously rejects that it can have either a single past or a single future.

Therefore, it would seem that denying the idea that history is a narrative of human progress begins with rejecting the existence of humanity. According to Gray, to do otherwise is to commit the same mistakes of the earliest Christian preachers, whose faith not only led them to elevate the human species to an unparalleled position of dignity, but to believe that there was a story of mankind, a narrative of progression, of tale of redemption from the sins of the past. Yet for Gray this faith not only continued, but was perhaps even amplified in the Enlightenment theories of progress, such as those of the French Positivists, who in their rejection of God elevated mankind even further, to master of its own destiny, as the creator of a new world based on reason and science — truths upon which a better world might converge See Gray, With their emphasis on the unique ability of the human species to shape its own destiny, they attempted to create a new religion which recognised man, and not God, as the Supreme Being.

In his text Mill on Liberty: Such advance, Gray surmised, is not necessary on the count that the principles of liberalism demand justification by reference to scientific laws, but that the adoption of liberal moral precepts occurs as human knowledge grows Gray, []: We might recall that this philosophy of history stands greatly at odds with that expressed by Gray, and indeed, it is within his later works , , , [] that we find its explicit rejection. In contemporary thought, for example, Gray takes particular aim at the liberalism of John Rawls , whose work sought to formulate principles of justice which could be universally applied Gray, Indeed, this not only figured as part of his critique of Christianity, but also of Enlightenment theories of progress, and most notably those expressed by the French Positivists.

On the one hand, Gray makes a clear effort not to overstate the relationship between these Enlightenment theories of progress and the content of liberal values , not least because there we many intellectual traditions which, whilst believing in progress, were by no means liberal. On the other hand, however, Gray is equally clear that the Enlightenment and Positivist ideas of progress have been central to informing those which can be found in liberalism. Certainly, despite the internal contradictions of liberalism Gray, b: For Gray, however, the falsehoods to which these liberal theories are committed are twofold.

In the first instance, they embody a fallacious and Eurocentric idea of modernisation, which assumes that as non-Occidental nations adopt knowledge produced by the West — whether in science, technology, economics, literacy or numeracy — they will automatically assent to Western values and institutions, such as those of liberal democracy Gray, []: Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, they assume that there can be a rational agreement on the best form of life.

Indeed, whereas liberal theorists of all creeds believe there to be an ideal form of life, for Gray the opposite is true. Rather than embodying the best form of life, then, the life idealised within liberal thought is only one amongst many, each arising from a diversity of historical inheritances. Moreover, in drawing upon the value-pluralism of those such as Isaiah Berlin See Gray, With conflicting needs and values, there are no means through which the demands of every human can be reconciled within one system, and no grounds upon which one system can claim authority over others: In an important addition, however, Gray distinguishes this position from one of moral relativism.

These are what might be referred to generic evils, and it is only in their presence that one way of life can be judged in respect to others. Among them, Gray includes the subjection of individuals or groups to enduring poverty, preventable disease, persecution, torture and genocide Gray, b: For Gray, history is a cycle between civilisation and barbarism, and whilst some evils may be held back for a time, these gains are never cumulative, guaranteed or absolute.

Let us briefly retrace our steps.

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For Gray, however, claims to this effect are grounded on a number of flawed assumptions. Thirdly, they sustain the Eurocentric ideology of modernisation, which not only assumes that the advance of human knowledge enforces the authority of Western liberal values, but that there can be rational agreement on a single way of life. In short, Gray argues that these assumptions ignore the enduring realities of the human species.

Humanity cannot progress because humanity does not exist; there are only humans, driven by conflicting needs and incommensurable definitions of the best way of life. The advance of human knowledge will not bring about convergence on an ideal form of life, and will not precipitate gains in ethics and politics, as history is an unending cycle. For Gray, this is the world as history has shown it to exist, not the utopian illusion which history has failed to deliver. Both the force and intent with which Gray distinguishes between progress in human knowledge and progress in human affairs is clear.

However, to what extent have we grasped the very concepts under examination? Indeed, Gray refers to the idea that the human animal has a unique destiny, in which it can make permanent and incremental improvements to its general condition, ridding itself of the conflicts and generic evils which have hitherto defined its existence. Thus, it seems pertinent to question whether such diffuse bodies of knowledge can be spoken of in the same terms, as a coherent entity which either does or does not bring about progress in human affairs.

To illustrate this point, he has observed how the adoption of capitalism by non-Occidental countries has not, contrary to speculation, initiated a convergence on the values of the Western liberal nations from which the capitalist doctrines emerged. Again, those that suggest otherwise not only perpetuate the Eurocentric ideology of modernisation, but they also assume that a rational consensus is possible on the best way of life.

Thus, in contradistinction to what he views as unfounded myths of human convergence, Gray has observed the opposite trends. Rather than the adoption capitalism transforming human values, human values have transformed the manner in which capitalism has been adopted.

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More concretely, Gray has argued that whilst Asian nations have successfully applied the economic models of capitalism, each has done so whilst retaining and expressing the values of their historical and cultural inheritances Gray, As another branch of human knowledge, it would not be erroneous to discuss scientific and technological advances in a similar fashion — as a story of evolving technologies interacting with the unalterable human animal Gray, Indeed, whilst denying the possibility of cumulative gains in ethics and politics, Gray has consistently emphasised that such gains in science are not only possible, but they are demonstrably real.

For Gray, the falsehood is to assume that such advance can precipitate gains in humans affairs:. The accelerating advance of scientific knowledge fuels technical innovation, producing an incessant stream of new inventions; it lies behind the enormous increase in human numbers over the past few hundred years. Post-modern thinkers may call into question scientific progress, but it is undoubtedly real. And of course, at the heart of ethical and political life is the human species, intractably divided on questions of value and definitions of the best regime.

As we have seen, Gray tells us that there are at least two key features in this regard. Firstly, he argues that the human species does not constitute a collective body, and to this extent, does not have a collective future or destiny. However, might we not begin to see a tension existing between these two positions? Instead, Gray has consistently supported the view that history is an unending cycle, wherein that which is gained in ethics and politics is neither cumulative or permanent. For Gray, as for the ancient Greeks and Romans to whom he referred, the future is a return to the past.

What is fainted to continue is the reality that humanity does not exist and thus cannot progress. What is fated to endure is the return of history, not the arrival of the future — a cycle which Gray does not believe will ever come to an end Gray, a: Of course, in giving this account Gray has undoubtedly provided his own form of narrative, but only in the sense that history is depicted as a continuous cycle of human advance and regression, not one of cumulative progress.

To this end, the real tension exists between Gray and the advocates of progress, whose Enlightenment ideologies maintained that fundamental alterations to the human condition could be made, and that the discoveries of science and technology can create a new future, a future in which the condition of the human species in fundamentally different from the past. In short, the tension is between Gray and those who link the advance of science and technology with gains in ethics and politics.

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