The Myth of Progress? Critical Theory and the Debate Over Progress

Philosophy as a discipline has generally claimed that human beings have a capacity called practical reason that allows us to address moral-practical questions. Applied to historical change, this yields an account of progress as a process of rationalization. The 20^th century has produced a long line of radical critiques of this idea of progress. My central aim is to defend contemporary critical theory’s reliance on the idea of progress as an emancipatory process of rationalization. Because she engages deeply and directly with the accounts of progress I seek to defend, my focus is on Amy Allen’s critique and an array of closely allied recent criticism. I address Allen’s two general objections to progress as a fact, one political and the other epistemological. Against contemporary critical theory, I maintain, neither objection gains traction, since no truly emancipatory project can succeed once the idea of progress has been abandoned, both as a goal and a fact about our past.