Excellent work done in HIS 101

Dynamic changes in the relations between the economic classes within society, and on a larger scale, between the East and the West influenced the form of interpretation progress undertook in a given historical period. In “Essaie de Philosophie Critique”, Étienne Vacherot wrote that “to speak of progress without defining it is to utter a word which covers as many errors as truths and which can therefore be denied or affirmed or discussed interminably”.[1] Progress generally represents the idea that the history of mankind is moving towards a certain goal, but this abstract notion has led to the development of shifting interpretations of it. During the seventeenth century, Kant proclaimed that humanity, as whole, was gradually progressing towards enlightenment. In the eighteenth century, Hegel asserted that progress ended at his present Prussian monarchy and he described progress as man’s increasing awareness of his freedom. In the nineteenth century, Marx introduced the idea that the production relations of the economic classes progressed towards an ideal stage of communism. Kant, Hegel and Marx provided definable goals that history progressed towards. During the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century, intellectuals asserted that progress in history was to the worse; and this was manifested in works on colonialism and on the decline of the West which also questioned the linear progression of history. Although I would like to believe that the petals of the flower of history will always unfurl to a season of spring, this is a naïve outlook; as is the idea that the future of humanity is doomed. The vines of history will twist and turn into new directions, and the nature of its progression becomes apparent only as it unfolds.

            Both Hegel and Kant believed in the positive progression of history, and to good reason considering the historical circumstances at the time. With the greater segregation of the economic classes observed in the nineteenth century, a new interpretation of progress in history took shape: Marxism. Unlike Hegel who believed that ‘world spirit’, that is the mind or specifically reason, is the force that drives history forward, Marx believed that class struggles over material production are the agents of social change in history.[16] Marx’s interpretation of progress is more practical and realistic than either Kant or Hegel, and the patterns of class struggles can be observed within the development of all civilizations. For example, in Sophocles’s “Oedipus Rex”, Sophocles used the fact that Oedipus was an aristocrat to demonstrate the fallibility of the upper class.[17] The downfall of Oedipus and the uptake of power by Creon also demonstrate that as one man of power steps down, his place is seized by another; which can be applied as an analogy to the shifts in power between the economic classes. The class which owns the means of production is the upper class and the oppressed class consists of the workers: the bourgeoisie and the proletarians in the nineteenth century, respectively. Marx observed that exploitation of the proletarians by the bourgeoisie was increasing under capitalism. Therefore, in contrast to Hegel and Kant, Marx asserted that history was progressing towards the worse. As a result, Marx provided a course of action that would offset the doom of society. Marx believed that a revolution stirred in the interest of the majority would cause a reformation of the production relations and liberate the members of the society from the constraints of class barriers. A consistent pattern has emerged from the interpretation of progress in history that Kant, Hegel and Marx pioneer: ultimate freedom is an essential component of the goal of progress in history. Marx advocated for communism because the means of production are owned by the people themselves, and class struggles seize to be.[18] Reaching the communist stage of history means that all progress would seize; a halt in the development of humanity would occur as all individuals would be equal; but this is essentially equivalent to the decay of humanity. On the other hand, the end product of progress in history that Kant described will not involve decay of humanity because an enlightened humanity would presumably flourish in its expression in the arts, sciences and other fields of expression of human talents. Despite his good intentions, the ideal communistic society Marx proposed did not grant the positive results he anticipated (as manifested by its major shortcomings in the USSR during the twentieth century). Like Hegel’s ideal society, the Marxism ideal society failed to bring about freedom and be the end product of the development of humanity. Like Kant and unlike Hegel, Marx advocated for the equality of all members of society and he incorporated all in his interpretation of progress. This is important because all individuals and all societies have a past, and therefore history transcends social classes, and racial and gender barriers.

It could be said that progress of humanity during the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century was to the worse, as Marx anticipated. The two World Wars and subsequent wars and other violent conflicts that were partly a consequence of colonialism by European powers, mostly British and French, and most recently, by the United States of America, all contributed to the negative progression of history that many intellectuals have embraced. In “Discourse on Colonialism”, Aimé Césaire argues that that each brutal measure the West applies in its quest of colonization contributes to the West’s de-civilization.[19] Césaire’s work illustrates that the present influences which direction of progress one embraces. The division of power between the East and the West, led to their treatment as separate ontological categories in history: the Orient and the Occident, respectively.[20] According to Edward Said in Orientalism, the Western domination led to a consistency of ideas that are presented in history texts about the Orient; the Orient is labeled as a demonized ‘Other’.[21] The Orientals are supposed to be lagging behind the Western societies in the chain of progress and development in all fields of human talents.[22] The Eurocentric view can be observed in earlier works; for example Kant and Hegel asserted that universal history is supposed to have begun in Europe; and as discussed above, Hegel ends progress in European Prussia. An application of this Eurocentric view is the emergence of “a third world woman” as a single monotheistic category in some recent Western feminist texts.[23] This bias which is based on race is comparative to the bias found in historical texts the upper class records about themselves and about the lower class. For example, as Guha explains in “Prose in Counter-Insurgency”, her analysis of the historical documents that were recorded by the upper Indian class about the Indian peasant rebellions showed there was a controlled representation of the peasants.[24] Therefore, class, gender, and race play a role in indirectly or directly determining the stage of progression that society or a civilization has reached.

The grouping of people according to their class, gender and race is a man-made categorization which is subject to change. Nonetheless, the divisions in power will always deliver bias in the accounts produced by the more powerful group. The group, that is, the class or the race, which is more powerful (power often defined by having the economic and military means) is supposed to have developed more, or is at a greater stage in the road of progression, than the less powerful group. The powerful groups change throughout history and from this argument Oswald Spengler in “the Decline of the West” derived a (relatively) new interpretation of the concept of progress in history: the idea of cyclical progression, in contrast with the Heglian linear progression.[25] Spengler argues that cultures arise suddenly, flourish for a period of time, and subsequently vanish.[26] The study of history shows that Spengler’s idea of progression is more evident than Hegel’s or Kant’s ideas of continuous positive progression. There are periods of positive progression confined to a certain race or class or civilization followed by a period of relative quiet, or in the most dramatic case, a period of regression; while another race, class or civilization experiences a period of positive progression. For example, a few centuries ago, Baghdad which was the capital of the Islamic empire under the Abbassids Caliphate was the center of cosmopolitan development in the world; it was the site of progress of humanity.[27] After the Mongol invasion, many of the libraries were damaged, much knowledge was lost and a progressive Classical (Caliphate) era ended.[28] Since then, the Middle East has undergone several transitional periods. Today, Baghdad is torn in the chaos associated with it being on the brink of a civil war and the site of the expression of the American military dominance. However, “out of a bitter clash of ambitions and resentments, a new order emerges”.[29] Therefore, it seems that the East and the West are undergoing a period of change but are not necessarily progressing to the worse.

            The end product of progress in history Hegel and Marx proposed failed to fulfill its purpose and Kant’s end product of progress in history is unlikely to extend to all of humanity. In response, Walter Benjamin in his “Theses on the Philosophy of History” refuted the idea that progress in history has a teleological goal:
“The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair, to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm.”[30]
History will progress in the course that it will take, and its product will unfold as it occurs. Progress in history will never meet a defined end because it constantly turns and twists into new directions. Whether the directions history take are positive or negative will be determined in the future of the occurrence as a historian develops an interpretation of it with respect to his present. For example, the use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima can be interpreted in two contradictory ways in terms of the direction of progress: it is negative because it killed so many people in a tragic manner; or it is positive because it ended the Second World War and so reduced the number of causalities had the war continued.

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Carr, D.H. “History as Progress,” in What is History? (London: Penguin, 1987), 109-132.
Carr, D.H. “Widening the Horizon,” In What is History? (London: Penguin, 1987), 133- 156.
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