The Problem of Progress from a Spiritual Perspective
Today, when the idea of human progress is suffering a crisis, it is essential to analyse the reasons for this state of affairs and to understand the perspectives for social development.
The idea of progress, which became fundamental to the concept of the development of the modern world during the Age of Enlightenment, has enraptured the minds of people for three hundred years; it has influenced the course of history and shaped European life, as well as defined modern society’s socio-economic path of development. However, it is worth noting that the problematic of progressive social development is a “transhistorical” topic, i.e. one which passes through virtually all the stages of humankind’s cultural development, originating in antiquity. Thus a regressive line of political development (timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and tyranny) is discussed by Plato in his Republic, and precisely in opposition to regression the philosopher creates his renowned concept of the “ideal society.” Aristotle considers a historical principle in his understanding of the Polis (city-state). Furthermore, fundamental to this idea is the supposition of not only a simple passage from one sociopolitical form of human society to another, based on previous social forms such as the family and the village, but also the idea of a social transformation to more perfect states. The possibility of reaching these states Aristotle asserts by opposing monarchy to tyranny, aristocracy to oligarchy, politeia to democracy. As early as these examples, the first theoretical approaches to an understanding of society laid the foundation for a logical interpretation of the concept of progress (from the Latin progressus: forward movement, success), reflecting an aim towards the future, a social state elevated in terms of development and perfection.
One cannot overlook the fact that the idea of historical development, in its ideological foundation, was based on religion. In the Gospel, Jesus Christ calls upon his disciples to strive for perfection; here one can see an imperative to historical development. The example of the Apostle Thomas shows us how Jesus does not judge Thomas for his doubt, but allows and invites his disciple to gain empirical evidence of his resurrection from the dead; in this one can see a sanctioning of a spiritual understanding of reality via scientific discovery. As a result, the idea of progress, based on the Church's eschatological teaching of Divine Providence, was armed with rationalism as the all-powerful and unmitigated force for social transformation. This position became stronger during the Age of Enlightenment. A precise assessment of the situation which took hold of the European tradition of social philosophy is given, in our opinion, by the Russian philosopher Pavel Novgorodtsev (1866-1924), in his work entitled "On the Social Ideals" (the first publication of this work in book form occurred in the ever so critical year for Russian history of 1917). The manner of thought and the nature of the convictions of the Enlightenment thinkers, as presented by the philosopher, remain valid for the present analysis of the “enlightened” philosophical history. Novgorodtsev (1991) writes:
Nowhere can it be found that Rousseau definitively said that better times for mankind lie in the future. Nevertheless, he is among those thinkers most influential in the general affirmation of this belief. The fiery enthusiasm of the preacher and the prophet inspired the thought that a new gospel, a new “message of hope”, was to be found in the fervent works of Rousseau, which was meant to save people from the bonds of falsehood and slavery. (p. 23)
According to Pavel Novgorodtsev the Enlightenment thinkers are united to the pleiad of original thinkers which followed, such as Kant and Hegel, as well as Comte, Spencer and Marx, by the conviction that paradise on earth, as an “era of bliss” for human existence, is possible and that they know a “salutary truth” capable of leading people onto the path towards a better future.
Based on the presumption that there was no higher authority above reason, the philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment avoided placing any doubts on reason in their criticism. However, they considered that reason was itself shaped through experience. They elevated the affirmation that reason was identical throughout the ages to the level of dogma. In addition, they affirmed that the culture of rational knowledge, morality and religion, created by reason, were, regardless of place or time, equal and unchangeable for all people. At the same time, the Enlightenment thinkers believed in progress, in society’s gradual movement towards perfection (for the good of man!). The belief in the infallibility of reason allowed the Enlightenment philosophers to suppose that reason was capable of absolute knowledge, beyond the boundaries of knowledge which had been manifested in previous generations. Furthermore, they believed that humankind was capable of pursuing a path of unlimited development through time. Thus, the idea of progress was fundamentally based on the postulates of rationalism and, in its historical perspective, was optimistic in nature (Tatarkiewicz, 1999).
The religious and philosophical aspects mentioned above, about the conception of progress from a historical point of view, intertwined in a contradictory fashion. Taking into consideration the fact that the idea of progress was first realised by a representative of the Roman Church, the abbot Charles Saint Pierre, i.e. based on religious thought, it is essential to note that, as a result of the efforts of thinkers of the French Enlightenment in particular, this idea gradually lost its belief in the supernatural, in that which cannot be fully explained by human experience. Thus, Voltaire, representing the older generation of Enlightenment thinkers, in his struggle against “supernaturalism” aimed to overcome dualism, characteristic of the religious worldview, which divided the universe into the material-perceptible and the supernatural. And at the same time, the Enlightenment thinkers were convinced that the metaphysics of their time, mainly established by Rene Descartes, was essentially the same metaphysics of the Middle Ages, i.e. born out of Christianity (Tatarkiewicz, 1999). For Voltaire, not only was the division of the universe into natural and supernatural unacceptable, but he also refuted the division of the human being into body and soul. In Christian thought this idea was put forth very early on, in the teachings of Irenaeus of Lyon (early 2nd century). He affirmed that the true man is composed of spirit, soul and body, that in the absence of any one of these three elements it is impossible to be truly man, just as it is impossible for him to exist if a spiritual beginning is absent in his life. (Meyendorf, n.d.).
Divergences in thought are seen in other questions as well. In Voltaire’s opinion, the Christian conception of history placed the purpose of human existence outside of earthly reality, which made its goals both erroneous and harmful. This lead to the emergence of fiction which essentially devalued life itself, giving rise to a tragic worldview. In this way, the ideas of one the most influential ideologists of the French Enlightenment laid the foundation for the atheism and materialism which were received by his successors, namely the encyclopédistes - Diderot, Marquis de Condorcet, d’Alembert, Rousseau, Turgot, Helvetius and others. The conceptualisation of society, social institutions, man himself, centered around the idea that nothing existed outside of nature. Hence, in the culture of the Enlightenment, God is rejected because he does not manifest in nature. According to their understanding of the laws of social development, outside of nature one could only find the sources of evil and human suffering. Speculative philosophy held little significance in comparison with science, the discoveries and achievements of which philosophy was merely supposed to explain rather than the contrary (Tatarkiewicz, 1999). Julien Offray de La Mettrie expressed a position which well represents these sentiments. The idea, expressed earlier by Rene Descartes, that animals are machines, deprived of a rational soul, was applied by La Mettrie to humans. Basing his arguments on the view that man is principally body, and secondarily soul, La Mettrie equated the human world to the animal world, the human world differing from the latter only in terms of its capacity for language. However, La Mettrie neglected even this difference, considering that one day apes would learn to speak and create their own culture (La Mettrie, n.d.). On the whole, La Mettrie, following the established materialistic views, considered that the world was governed by the law of necessity. Therefore, social morality was relativistic in nature, while religion, which blocked man’s path to happiness, needed to be eradicated.
The very popular current of sensualism in the Age of Enlightenment, in conjunction with panpsychist materialism, served not only as the theoretical basis for hedonism as a philosophical current on its own, but also for the formation of atheistic society. The ethics of Helvetius, who described man as being motivated principally by self-interest, played an important role in this process. Helvetius said that "Just as the physical world is driven by the laws of motion, the world of morality is driven by the laws of self-interest” (Tatarkiewicz, 1999, p. 185). Aided by this approach, the principle of social well-being received an ethical criteria; whereby social evil, according to Helvetius, was not defined by breaking traditional moral principles, but rather by man concerning himself exclusively with his own well-being. In contrast, the person able to combine his own self-interested pursuits with the service of his fellow man was considered to be virtuous. Having presumed that man’s ideas and behaviour were not inherent, but rather nurtured, the philosopher came to the conclusion that it was possible for man to acquire good qualities. Thus, according to Helvetius, everything that did not have a practical aspect, possessing neither personal nor social utility, was just as useless as the innocence of the virgins or the asceticism of the faquirs (Tatarkiewicz, 1999).
Overall, the spirit of the times, which relied on the historically optimistic ideas of reason, progress and humanism, was expressed by Kant (1784) with these famous lines:
Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another… Sapere aude! - [Latin translated: Dare to know]. Have courage to use your own mind! Thus is the motto of Enlightenment. (p. 2)
In the 20th century the Age of Enlightenment was strongly criticised, as was the entire modernist culture, the development and fortification of which took place from the 17th to the 19th century. However, this criticism came from a variety of sources, differing in ideology and worldview.
Among the first intellectuals to engage in the process of rethinking the Enlightenment and its ideals were the Russian philosophers of the late 19th and early 20th century. This period is most commonly referred to in the history of philosophy as the "Russian Religious-Philosophical Renaissance." One of the most important figures of the period is Semyon Lyudvigovich Frank. In his analysis of the established humanistic model of the world, Semyon Frank focuses mainly on its historical break with the Church. In his opinion, this rupture occurred owing to a shift from the Christian platonism of Nicolas of Cusa to the anti-religious philosophy of his follower Giordano Bruno who placed man on the same level as God. Semyon Frank calls the historical rise of humanism a deadly battle between faith in God and faith in man (Frank, 2010). Humanism was already related to the idea of progress before becoming firmly established in the Age of Enlightenment which followed. Humanism brushed aside the supernatural world, acknowledging the material world as the solely existing one. This position lead to the belief in the absolute beauty of man, that is in the omnipotence of oneself. [In his criticism] Semyon Frank was speaking essentially of a blind, light-hearted optimism, of a faith in a persistent intellectual and moral progress, in the possibility of easily bringing forth a kingdom of reason, truth and goodness.
In revealing the utopian nature of this belief, Frank emphasized that the goal of realising the religious idea of a “Kingdom of Heaven” on earth lacked foundation. He used examples from history to illustrate this point. In part, the events surrounding the French Revolution demonstrated the first collapse of Enlightenment ideals. It showed how quickly and easily a kingdom of liberty, equality and fraternity can become a bloodthirsty mob. One can apply a similar logic to the unfolding of events in Russian history during the revolution of the 20th century. It is also worth noting that the utopian socio-philosophical ideas, born out of the Age of Enlightenment, were commented upon by the Russian lawyer and philosopher Pavel Novgorodtsev (1991), who considered the critical reason for the crisis in modern Philosophy to be:
... the collapse of a single belief, - of the belief in the possibility of paradise on earth. Earlier social philosophy saw its uttermost limit in this idea, by which they confirmed the strength of their predictions and the firmness of their dreams. And now this idea has been taken away from it: the clear goal of its pursuits has been removed, and the nearby shore, which had been within reach, is now lost from view. (p. 22)
According to the ideologists of progress, man is in and of himself a rational being and, therefore, good. Consequently, he cannot desire or do anything bad. However, the historical collisions in modern times have shown that elevating man to the rank of “divinity” leads to amoralism, both collective and individual. In the first case, the will of the individual must unequivocally yield to the demands of the mass; in the second case, the mass itself, having ignored the reality of a unique, individual personality, must yield to the will of one - to the “leader”. Thus, upon rejecting traditional morality, progress, as it is realised in the life of society, sanctions a natural element of human existence, presenting it as something sacred and deifying it. Semyon Frank represents the realisation on earth of the resulting kingdom of the collective man as an earthly Israel, where the will of the mass is the supreme court judge in an unappealable court, the absolute measure of good [and evil]. In other words, such a society offers the individual person as a sacrifice to Moloch, the false god of the collective man who has been transformed into an ant. That is, man is deified in his earthly hypostase (mode of existence), along with his earthly passions, which are not viewed as shortcomings, but rather as potentially creative forces. This version of historical development, guided by an atheistic interpretation of social progress, in the opinion of Semyon Frank (2010), shows that an irreligious society, while deifying the human personality as the bearer of spiritual and moral principle, in reality degenerates into a demonic deification of a soulless and faceless mass.
Contemporary thinkers have also become particularly interested in the topic of Enlightenment ideology. We will now look at some of their criticism. In the opinion of Boris Kapustin (2004), the Age of Enlightenment was the attempt at carrying out a project of an independent, rationally based morality, however, it did not attain a positive result. In contrast to Kant (1784), who considered the Enlightenment to be man's emergence from immaturity to his ability to live according to reason - "Saper aude!" (p. 2), Kapustin (2005), citing Alasdair MacIntyre, considers the "Enlightenment project" as being unsuccessful from the start, although its failure became apparent only much later in history. Today, when the social crisis is becoming more and more apparent, the transformations laid down by the Enlightenment "programme" for progress are being actively reevaluated. The writer and philosopher Umberto Eco (2007) speaks of an "apocalypse" of modernity in the form of ecological catastrophe and social unrest in the lives of most of the world's population. He sees the end of history taking place in a general ataraxy [complacency], and qualifies the general state as being incapable of stopping the tragedy of the world's destruction.
The views of Jürgen Habermas occupy a special place in the modern criticism of the Enlightenment project. His philosophical position is determined by the view that the modernist version of the universalization of the foundation of existence based on rationalism, while having shown itself to be unfounded in history, has not lead to the abolition of the Enlightenment goals. Hence, according to his conception of society, communication plays a major role, serving as the universal basis for social unity. The latter is achieved according to the principle of respect for one another, and, therefore, dialogue becomes the source of forming political will and the condition for social accord. Communication presupposes the “equal respect to each individual and general solidarity in assuming responsibility for one another” (Habermas, 2001, p. 47). Whilst criticising postmodern skepticism regarding universality, Habermas calls for the formation of another sort of universality which takes into account “the structure of the relationship between diversity and difference, the principle of “including the other”, which means that “the boundaries of community are open to all - including those people who are foreign to one another and wish to remain so” (Habermas, 2001, p. 47). Therefore, Habermas believes that despite the crises which mankind has seen throughout its historical development, the Enlightenment project with its main point of engendering qualitative social change can still find its place in history (Farman, 1999, p. 21). This, of course, is only possible given the condition that unity is found amongst different communities, traditions, cultures, personalities types, etc.
In the context of the Russian tradition, philosophers have also sought their own, unique variant of universality, based largely on an orthodox religious worldview. Turning towards that treasure of philosophy - "The Russian Religious-Philosophical Renaissance", we will highlight its most original aspect, namely, in the unique joining of philosophical and scientific knowledge with a perspective based on the spiritual teachings of the Church and its acute sensitivity to and participation in spiritual life. That is to say, this philosophical movement was not born out of academic reflection, but rather out of a living experience of coming to know God. In the opinion of the writers of the anthology “Vekhi” [Foundations] (1909), philosophy of the 19th cent. was influenced by spirituality, which lead thinkers to cultivate a populist view of justice (notably in the Slavophile school), a view deeply rooted in the Christian theology of salvation. Philosophers of this era, while selectively referring to Western sources, sought to solve social problems from the viewpoint of Christian theology.
Russian religious thinkers, such as Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov, Vasily Zenkovsky, Semyon Frank and others, were interested in and accepted the idea of progress, still popular in the early 20th century. Their goal was to gain a deeper understanding of the established modernist conception of socio-cultural development. Father Sergei Bulgakov, who for up to a certain time was a decided atheist and follower of Marxist social theory, eventually confessed a completely different viewpoint. Although his contemporaries accused him of a lack of sympathy in regards to the transformations in his worldview, it must be noted that all the tragedy of taking part in history and the consequences thereafter, of which Bulgakov wrote in the anthology “Vekhi” (1909), were in time manifested in the life and spiritual struggles of the thinker as a pastor of the Church. In his theoretical discourse about progress, Sergei Bulgakov emphasised the inadequacy, and even the harmfulness, of Auguste Comte’s three successive stages of human development: the theological, metaphysical and scientific stages. The problem seen by Bulgakov lies in the neglect for the needs of the spirit, the realm of ideas and feelings which never disappear, regardless of positivist scientific development. Bulgakov notes that scientific knowledge, metaphysical thought and religion respond to the fundamental spiritual needs of man; they are common to all of humankind throughout its history and comprise the spiritual force as opposed to the animal force. The synthesis of knowledge and faith as a unified entity was discussed earlier by Vladimir Solovyov who spurred the growth of the “Russian Religious-Philosophical Renaissance”. In speaking on the aforementioned topic, Solovyov asserted that the world’s historical development moves in two fundamental directions, from which a third is synthesised.
In the teachings of Karl Marx, Bulgakov faultlessly perceived the consequences of a universal socialisation of a godless mankind; eventually the process of socialisation lead to a totalitarian state, despite the promises and historic expectations of socialists who spoke of the extinction of the state and the realisation of the idea of a classless society based on freedom. Bulgakov believed that Marx’s socialism was a millerian teaching about 1000 years of prosperity, whereas Christianity was an eschatological teaching. If the goals of millenarianism are to instill material and social prosperity on earth, the eschatological goals of Christianity, contrastly, go beyond the boundaries of the perceivable world. Christianity did not enter this world via earthly means, therefore, Bulgakov attributes a special cultural-historic force to Christianity, capable not only of modifying history but also of going beyond its limits (Galtseva & Rodnianskaia, 2012).
Therefore, while the Enlightenment thinkers viewed progress as something dependant on the inevitable historical development of material itself, which was reflected in advances in scientific knowledge and its application in the interests of the greater social good, in Russian religious thought we find another interpretation of the idea of social development and its related historical objectives (Bulgakov, 2008). In the philosophical tradition of the latter, overall progress should be based, in the words of Vladimir Solovyov, on an unequivocally moral foundation. The process of progress is inevitable, as an imperative given in Scripture and in Christian culture. In this regard, according to the American philosopher G. Patnem, Russian religious thought, which is essentially very closely linked to Church discipline, is the development of an alternative social model of the future (Galtseva & Rodnianskaia, 2012). It is being received more and more by not only religious, but by secular institutions as well. In our time, when the world remains ignorant about its path in history, the Church maintains in the core of its teaching the signposts for moral norms and values, it is their guardsman, carrying out the objective given to it at the time of its emergence - to save humankind from its errors and its spiritual degeneration, to enlighten the mind for continual creativity and growth, to give spiritual meaning to man’s life and activity. In an interview, the Holy Patriarch of Russia Kirill (2011) said:
With the arrival of Pope Benedict the XVI much has changed for the better. His public statements concerning family values, problems in international relations [...] correspond to our understanding of morality. When the Orthodox Church upholds one position or another in forums such as the UN, the EU or the Council of Europe, its voice is accepted as the voice of the East… When we are able to find accord with the Catholic Church and make public announcements together, it is a strong signal to secular society that Christians of both East and West have the same point of view concerning one problem or another… We should cherish these common points of view in our understanding of problems and work together to develop a general testimony of Christian values in the face of modern irreligious society (p. 165).
Thus, when summing up the concepts of progress in the history of philosophy and in the modern view, one can assert that the Enlightenment idea of progress, while focusing principally on development in the intellectual sphere, possesses the idea of renewal and, therefore, continues to be important. However, the problem lies in determining the bases by which social transformation can be achieved. Society’s intellectual culture of recent history has displayed “false consciousness” and shown itself to be a “technocratic universe” (Farman, 1999, p. 27). In this environment, one is forced to consider that the current situation of social development is in a state of crisis. The Russian religious philosophers, with their creative, elevated thought, pursued a path of criticism with regard to modernist philosophy, evaluating the knowledge acquired by man through the prism of their spiritual values. Based on a reinterpretation of traditional religious, Christian values, such a path opens up new, yet to be realised possibilities for surmounting utopian projects about a “golden age”.
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Information about the author:
Stokalich, Igor Sviatoslavovich - PhD candidate at the Center for Humanitarian Education of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kiev.
