The International Panel on Social Progress is an independent association of top research scholars with the goal of assessing methods for improving the main institutions of modern societies. The IPSP has produced a report consisting of twenty-two chapters in three volumes that distills the research of these scholars and outlines what the best social science has to say about positive social change. Written in accessible language by scholars across the social sciences and humanities, these volumes assess the achievements (...) of world societies in past centuries, the current trends, the dangers that we are now facing, and the possible futures in the twenty-first century. It covers the main socio-economic, political, and cultural dimensions of social progress, global as well as regional issues, and the diversity of challenges and their interplay around the world. The authors offer a cautious optimistic conclusion: multiple ideas for social progress and better policies are already available and deserve to be tested and implemented. (shrink)

This is the first of three volumes containing a report from the International Panel on Social Progress. The IPSP is an independent association of top research scholars with the goal of assessing methods for improving the main institutions of modern societies. Written in accessible language by scholars across the social sciences and humanities, these volumes assess the achievements of world societies in past centuries, the current trends, the dangers that we are now facing, and the possible futures in (...) the twenty-first century. It covers the main socio-economic, political, and cultural dimensions of social progress, global as well as regional issues, and the diversity of challenges and their interplay around the world. This particular volume covers topics such as economic inequality and growth, finance and corporations, labor, capitalism, and social justice. (shrink)

This is the third of three volumes containing a report from the International Panel on Social Progress. The IPSP is an independent association of top research scholars with the goal of assessing methods for improving the main institutions of modern societies. Written in accessible language by scholars across the social sciences and humanities, these volumes assess the achievements of world societies in past centuries, the current trends, the dangers that we are now facing, and the possible futures in (...) the twenty-first century. It covers the main socio-economic, political, and cultural dimensions of social progress, global as well as regional issues, and the diversity of challenges and their interplay around the world. This particular volume covers topics such as world cultures and religions, families, global health, education, and the contributions of social sciences to institutional change. (shrink)

The concept of “progress” in evolutionary theory and its relationship to a putative notion of “Progress” in a global, normatively loaded sense of “change for the better” have been the subject of debate since Darwin admonished himself in a marginal note to avoid using the terms ‘higher’ and ‘lower.’ While an increase in some kind of complexity in the natural world might seem self-evident, efforts to explicate this trend meet notorious philosophical difficulties. Numerous historians pin the Modern (...) Synthesis as a pivotal moment in this history; Michael Ruse even provocatively hypothesizes that Ernst Mayr and other “architects” of the Synthesis worked actively to eliminate Progress from evolutionary biology’s scientific purview. I evaluate these claims here with a textual analysis of the journals _Evolution_ and _Proceedings of the Royal Society B_ (a corpus of 27,762 documents), using a dynamic topic modeling approach to track the fate of the term ‘progress’ across the Modern Synthesis. The claim that this term declines in importance for evolutionary theorizing over this period can, indeed, be supported; more tentative evidence is also provided that the discussion of ‘progress’ is largely absent from the British context, emphasizing the role of American paleontology in the rise and fall of ‘progress’ in 20th-century evolutionary biology. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show the peculiarities of modernity in a peripheral capitalist country like Brazil. To do this, our understanding of modernity and its relationship with capitalist progress will be explained. Subsequently, the particular character of capitalism in peripheral regions, with an emphasis on the Brazilian experience, will be analysed. More specifically, we shall explore the meaning of capitalist progress in Brazil in the last two decades, underlining Brazil’s role as an international platform for (...) financial valorization and the retrocession of the country’s industrial production in a context of monetary stability. These observations on a peripheral economy and its historical trajectory will allow us, in a third step, to analyse the particularity of Brazilian modernity today. Finally, we shall discuss the role of compensatory income programs and the rise of the so-called ‘new middle class’ in this scenario. (shrink)

The concept of “progress” in evolutionary theory and its relationship to a putative notion of “Progress” in a global, normatively loaded sense of “change for the better” have been the subject of debate since Darwin admonished himself in a marginal note to avoid using the terms ‘higher’ and ‘lower.’ While an increase in some kind of complexity in the natural world might seem self-evident, efforts to explicate this trend meet notorious philosophical difficulties. Numerous historians pin the Modern (...) Synthesis as a pivotal moment in this history; Michael Ruse even provocatively hypothesizes that Ernst Mayr and other “architects” of the Synthesis worked actively to eliminate Progress from evolutionary biology’s scientific purview. I evaluate these claims here with a textual analysis of the journals Evolution and Proceedings of the Royal Society B (a corpus of 27,762 documents), using a dynamic topic modeling approach to track the fate of the term ‘progress’ across the Modern Synthesis. The claim that this term declines in importance for evolutionary theorizing over this period can, indeed, be supported; more tentative evidence is also provided that the discussion of ‘progress’ is largely absent from the British context, emphasizing the role of American paleontology in the rise and fall of ‘progress’ in 20th-century evolutionary biology. (shrink)

The progressive art guide - an entirely new method of self-instruction on modern arts, shown in their progressive stages of completion is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1888. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques (...) only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future. (shrink)

Georg Henrik von Wright was not only the first interpreter of Wittgenstein, who argued that Spengler’s work had reinforced and helped Wittgenstein to articulate his view of life, but also the first to consider seriously that Wittgenstein’s attitude to his times makes him unique among the great philosophers, that the philosophical problems which Wittgenstein was struggling, indeed his view of the nature of philosophy, were somehow connected with features of our culture or civilization. -/- In this paper I draw inspiration (...) and courage from Von Wright’s insistence that trying to understand Wittgenstein in relation to his times is a philosophic task in its own right in order to probe into a relatively obscure region in Wittgenstein’s thought: his relation to the music of his times. It is a topic, on which Von Wright, and most other prominent Wittgenstein scholars, have said very little, but it is also one, which Wittgenstein himself attested was so important to him that he felt without it he was sure to be misunderstood. -/- I offer textual and historical evidence in support of my claim that, parallel to Wittgenstein’s exposure to Spengler’s Decline of the West in 1930, he was also introduced to the music theory of Heinrich Schenker, which helped him to articulate, partly by way of critique, a complex and unique position concerning the modern music of his times, which exhibits his rejection of what Von Wright later dubbed ‘the myth of progress’. As Von Wright observed in other regions of Wittgenstein’s work, he believed also with regards to the arts and to music in particular, neither in a brilliant future nor in the good old days. -/- I argue that Wittgenstein actually made a distinction between three kinds of modern music: (a) bad modern music, which is clearly a case of confusing means for ends, the hallmark of the myth of progress, as Von Wright observed; (b) vacuous modern music, which embodies some sort of diffidence, a difficulty to see through the omnipresence of what Von Wright called (following Habermas) a ‘colonialization’ of reified measures of progress; (c) good modern music, a paradoxical notion for Wittgenstein, which betokens the unlikely yet possible striving to penetrate through what appears as dissolution of the resemblances which unite this culture’s ways of life by rendering this condition as expressible and intransitively understandable. In the context of this third category, I offer an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s complex remarks on the music of Gustav Mahler, which palpably show that the problem of good modern music and the problem of philosophizing in the time of civilization were one and the same in Wittgenstein’s mind. -/- I conclude that, with regards to Von Wright’s own critical view of the modern myth of progress, we can learn from Wittgenstein that progress in the realm of art is closely aligned with the ideal of the perfection of man, yet transcending a social or political context. It is the ideal of cultural cohesion: affinity that the arts show to other human practices and cultural artifacts of its period. Wittgenstein’s tentative notion of good modern music (and its circumscription by his notion of the music of the future) may show its true colors when viewed in the context of Von Wright’s plea not to abandon work for progress as a critical task. (shrink)

While there had been much radical thought before John Stuart Mill, Joseph Persky argues it was Mill, as he moved to the left, who provided the radical wing of liberalism with its first serious analytical foundation, a political economy of progress that still echoes today. A rereading of Mill's mature work suggests his theoretical understanding of accumulation led him to see laissez-faire capitalism as a transitional system. Deeply committed to the egalitarian precepts of the Enlightenment, Mill advocated gradualism and (...) rejected revolutionary expropriation on utilitarian grounds: gradualism, not expropriation, promised meaningful long-term gains for the working classes. He endorsed laissez-faire capitalism because his theory of accumulation saw that system approaching a stationary state characterized by a great reduction in inequality and an expansion of cooperative production. These tendencies, in combination with an aggressive reform agenda made possible by the extension of the franchise, promised to provide a material base for social progress and individual development.The Political Economy of Progress goes on to claim that Mill's radical political economy anticipated more than a little of Marx's analysis of capitalism and laid a foundation for the work of Fabians and other gradualist radicals in the 20th century. More recently, modern philosophic radicals, such as Rawls, have deep links to this Millean political economy. These links are still worthy of development. In particular, a politically meaningful acceptance of Rawls's radical liberalism waits on a movement capable of re-engineering the workplace in a manner consistent with Mill's endorsement of worker management. (shrink)

Superficially, the proximity of Wittgenstein's work and its undisputed influence by Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas and concepts suggests that there are also overlaps in the large and in Nietzsche's work decisive field of progress and criticism of progress. The article tries to show that this is not the case. Despite all the overlaps that may exist between Friedrich Nietzsche and Ludwig Wittgenstein, these do not come to light in the concept of progress and the critique of progress. (...) Both thinkers pursue a very different movement of thought; Wittgenstein sees Nietzsche's focus on the "idea of great progress" as a "delusion", which he does not consider to be expedient. Ludwig Wittgenstein explicitly distances himself here from the spirit that defined the prevailing European and American civilization in the 1930s. He does not succumb to the delusions of grandeur of new, higher-level civilization, but leaves progress as the constantly progressing background noise of any civilization. (shrink)

조선 및 근대 여성들의 여권사상은 남성중심 이데올로기와 가부장적 가족시스템 속에서 여성의 정체성과 주체적 권리영역을 확보하고자하는 진취성을 띠고 있다. 동시에 이들의 고안한 정체성과 권리의 영역은 시대적 한계와 이에 대한 저항이 내적갈등을 하는 가운데, 가부장적 구조의 틈새에서 발견한 제한된 영역에 머문다는 수동적 성격을 띠고 있다. 『내훈』은 음양의 이분법을 수용하는 가운데 ‘건’의 존재인 남성과 ‘곤’의 존재인 여성은 서로 동등한 존재이지만 각자의 정체성에 의해 서로 다른 도와 그에 따른 역할을 가지고 있을 뿐이라고 주장하면서 여성의 독자적 영역을 확보하였다. 그러나 이분화된 관념체계 속에서 수동성을 상징하는 영역을 (...) 여성의 정체성으로 설정함으로서 결국 여성의 정체성을 수동적인 것에 머물게 하였다. 근대 자유주의 신여성의 경우 여성에게 일방적으로 강요되던 정조 관념에 반기를 들고 자유연애를 주창하였다. 그러나 여성을 정실부인-첩・기생으로 분류했던 가족시스템 속에서 결국 후자의 위치로 흡수되어버렸다. 사회주의 신여성은 무산여성을 억압하는 자본주의와 가부장제라는 이중권력이 타파된 여성해방을 주장하였다. 이들은 역사발전 법칙에 따라 그러한 사회가 필연적으로 올 것이라고 보았는데, 이때 실제적인 사회변혁의 주역은 역사이며 여성의 역할은 역사 발전을 보조하는 역할에 그치게 된다. 조선 및 근대 여권사상들은 여성을 억압하는 전통적 이데올로기에 대한 반발로 나타났다. 비록 당시의 억압적 사회시스템이 매우 공고한 것이라 그 자체를 근본적으로 문제 삼거나 현실적으로 극복해 나가는 운동으로 발전하지는 못했지만, 당시 여성이 당면한 문제를 인식하고 이를 해결하기 위한 주체적 영역을 확보하고자 했다는 점에서 의미를 지닌다. (shrink)

The Rhetorical Presidency places great importance on the transformative power of political ideas. For Tulis, Progressive ideas informed the rhetorical practices of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson—practices that reconstituted the American presidency. They did so, in part, by trading on the ambiguous nature of the concept of “publicity”—which at once evoked liberal ideals of public deliberation and transparency, and modern practices of manipulative communication. In turn, the new practices of publicity revolutionized not only the American presidency, but American politics (...) as a whole. (shrink)

This book argues that the superiority and potency of the modern mature civilized state stems from the multiple powers (often illiberal and undemocratic) that constitute it.

Troeltsch seeks to determine how much the ÒModern SpiritÓ of the early twentieth century actually owed to Protestantism. Troeltsch then proceeds to a comparison between the essential spirit of Protestantism and the Modern Spirit. The book focuses on the practical: ethical, political, and economic.

The meaning of "the modern world" -- The meaning of "Protestantism" -- Protestantism and the modern world : points of contrast -- Protestantism and politico-social institutions -- Protestantism and economic organisation, social developments, science and art -- Protestantism and modern religious feeling.

Human Progress is often understood to be a rather natural and obvious truth of human existence. That this is not necessarily so, is indicative of the pervasive social, psychological, and educational inculcation that sustains its ubiquitous acceptance. Moreover, the uncritical and ill‐informed understanding of Progress as an unquestioned expression of human beneficence has serious consequences for those concerned with the health and welfare of people. It is argued in this paper that, much of what we might consider deleterious (...) in the socio‐political milieu that now confronts us is, to a significant extent, a matter of progressive ideological epistemology and its ensuing manner of human institutionalization. Part one contends that the current socio‐political structure of the current postmodern affairs is in reality that of a pervasive postmodern economic ideology. Part two provides a brief overview of the historical and philosophical development of Progress as an idea, including some of the profound effects wrought by it on human affairs in the contemporary world. Finally, Part three presents a discussion of the influential effects of the philosophy of Progress on the epistemology of human health and welfare intervention, specifically that of nursing and its claim to a holistic ethic of Caring. (shrink)

This book presents three of the works of Abdu'l-Bahá, son of the founder of the Bahá'i Faith, dealing with social and political issues.00In 'The Secret of Divine Civilization' (1875) Abdu'l-Bahá supports the administrative and broader social reforms of Mirzá Hosayn Khán, but looks mainly for organic reform through the efforts of Iranian intellectuals to waken and educate the masses. In this work, Abdu'l-Bahá gives virtuous and progressive Islamic clerics a leading role among these intellectuals, indeed most of his appeals are (...) directed specifically to them. 'A Traveller's Narrative' (1889/90) is an authoritative statement of the broad lines of Bahá'i social and political thinking. 'The Art of Governance' (1892/93) was written as Iran entered a pre-revolutionary phase, and ideas that we recognise today as the precursors of political Islam were spreading. It sets out the principles underlying the ideal relationship between religion and politics and between the government and the people.00In addition to presenting the first parallel text translations of these works, the Persian texts incorporate notes on variants in the early published sources. An introduction outlines the intellectual and political landscape from which Abdu'l-Bahá wrote, and in which his expected readers lived. (shrink)

In The Political Economy of Progress, Joseph Persky argues for seeing John Stuart Mill as a consistent ‘radical’ with much to offer modern ‘radical’ political discourse. In this article, I further this claim with consideration of Mill's political philosophy, as well as his political economy. Exploring Mill's commitment to radical reordering of the economy, as well as emphasizing his commitment to egalitarianism; his historically nuanced view of ‘the progress of justice’; and his desire for a transformation of (...) social relations allows us to see more clearly how Mill's radicalism was a specific species of socialism. That is, Mill's early radical enthusiasm for the ideals of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ is also to be seen in his later socialism. Recognizing his ‘radicalism’ as a species of socialism allows greater understanding of the depth, importance and ‘radicalism’ of Mill's desired socialist reforms. (shrink)

This article focuses on how early modern astronomers and historians conceptualised the course of the history of astronomy. The aim is to describe the transition from the idea of closed historical cycles to the theory of infinite progress in astronomy. The cyclical Renaissance concept of the history of astronomy is addressed, highlighting in particular the emphasis placed by Protestant astronomers on the reliance of the history of astronomy on God. This is followed by a discussion of the theory (...) of the origin of astronomy as proposed by 17th century astronomers; and then a clarification of the unusual combination of the cyclical and linear approaches, which emerged in the historiography of astronomy in the 17th century. The article concludes with a brief outline of the transition to the concept of infinite progress that occurred at the end of the 18th century. (shrink)

Abstract:The concept of social progress I hope to rehabilitate will be local, far from locally complete, and permit only modest extensions; it will be pragmatic rather than teleological. In this way, it will hope to avoid treating the multiplicity of goods as if there were always the possibility of comparing them on a single scale, to abandon the idea of a final state toward which history is tending or should tend, and to substitute piecemeal accomplishments for utopian ends. Its (...) emphasis on local comparisons will allow it to forgo sweeping historical comparisons, those juxtaposing the “enlightened” with “lesser breeds without the law,” or the “ancients” with the “moderns.” A restrained pragmatic concept of social progress honors the insights of critics of the notion of social progress, seeing them as questioning alleged presuppositions that can be given up. (shrink)

The nine original essays collected in this volume explore the themes of philosophical progress, ultimate explanation, the metaphysics of free will, and the relation of sciences and religion. These essays exemplify Nicholas Rescher's characteristic mode of combining historical perspectives with analytical elucidation on philosophically contested issues and utilize this methodology to address some of the salient problems of the field.

Historical progress is a core belief of the Enlightenment and modernity, also a spiritual catalyst of human emancipation in the past centuries. However, due to the naive understanding of scholars and its misuse by political power, the idea of progress has fallen from a realistic political belief in the pursuit of liberty and democracy to a metaphysical faith and a one-sided ideology. Instead of abandoning the concept itself, this paper will provide a new version for progress. In (...) this version, supported theoretically with ideas from a Marxian critique of the paradox of progress in capitalist society and a Habermasian reconstruction of social evolution and progress, progress shall not be understood as an intrinsic trend of history itself, but a “historical-practical project” of humanity. The intent of rewriting progress is to transcend the dilemma between progressivism and catastrophism while at the same time preserving its positive meaning. (shrink)

The institutional guarantees of modern labour law, that provide the keystone of progressive liberalism, are often only reactionary to the entrenched concepts of socialist law. Adoption of institutions of “workers rights”, and employment protection based upon contract, inevitably nullify the ideological promise of the inalienable “right to work”. China, among the last bastions of theoretical Marxist socialism, and among the first socialist countries ready to accept that it has been in desperate need of reforming uneconomical state enterprises, seems willing (...) to sacrifice ideological purity for economic development. Yet, if economic turnaround requires enterprise rationalisation in a market economy, it is understandable that Chinese labour requires the same kinds of protection against unbridled capitalism as progressive labour movements elsewhere. Doubtless, for those who have enjoyed no such institutional guarantees in the past, official commitment to improvement of labour conditions is better than no acknowledgment of need for reform of social policy whatever. Yet, the real question for students of social change is “Are these legislated reforms effective policy guides for local administration and the courts?”“|Or are they merely regulations for licensing compliance – primarily for foreign invested enterprises?”. In brief, “... to what extent are the new ‘workers’ rights’ realistically attainable sources of judicial remedies for individual workers?”. (shrink)

Through a reexamination of Immanuel Kant and his philosophical legacy, this volume explores the philosophic presuppositions of the possibility of progress and our belief in reason's capacity not only to improve the material well-being of humanity but also to promote our true vocation as moral beings.

The papers presented here derive from the 4th International Confe:--ence on History and Philosophy of Science held in Blacksburg, Virginia, U. S. A., November 2-6, 1982. The Conference was sponsored by the I nternational Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). Particular thanks go to L. Jonathan Cohen, Secretary of the Union, as well as to Dean Henry Bauer of the College of Arts & Sciences, Wilfred Jewkes and the Center for (...) Programs in the Humanities, Arthur Donovan and the Center for the Study of Science in Society and the Department of Philoso­ phy and Religion at Virginia Tech. Not only did they come through with the necessat"y funds, but they were all always ready with a helping hand when things got confusing. Two additional groups of individuals require a special note of thanks. First, considerable appreciation is due the mem­ bers of the Joint Commission of the I nternational Union of History and Philosophy of Science: Maurice Crosland, Risto Hilpinen and Vladimir Kirsanov. They were more than gen­ erous in thei r advice and co-operation. The Local Organizing Committee (Kenneth Alpern, Roger Ariew, Arthur Donovan, Larry Laudan, Ann La Berge, Duncan Porter, Eleonore Stump and Dennis Welch) not only demon­ strated efficiency and insured a pleasant stay for' all participants, but also went out of their way on numerous occasions to make everyone feel at home. (shrink)

Volume 17 of Progress in Self Psychology, _The Narcissistic Patient Revisited_, begins with the next installment of Strozier's "From the Kohut Archives": first publication of a fragment by Kohut on social class and self-formation and of four letters from his final decade. Taken together, Hazel Ipp's richly textured "Case of Gayle" and the commentaries that it elicits amount to a searching reexamination of narcissistic pathology and the therapeutic process. This illuminating reprise on the clinical phenomenology Kohut associated with "narcissistic (...) personality disorder" accounts for the volume title. The ability of modern self psychology to integrate central concepts from other theories gains expression in Teicholz's proposal for a two-tiered theory of intersubjectivity, in Brownlow's examination of the fear of intimacy, and in Garfield's model for the treatment of psychosis. The social relevance of self psychology comes to the fore in an examination of the experience of adopted children and an inquiry into the roots of mystical experience, both of which concern the ubiquity of the human longing for an idealized parent imago. Among contributions that bring self-psychological ideas to bear on the arts, Frank Lachmann's provocative "Words and Music," which links the history of music to the history of psychoanalytic thought in the quest for universal substrata of psychological experience, deserves special mention. Annette Lachmann's consideration of empathic failure among the characters in Shakespeare's _Othello_ and Silverstein's reflections on Schubert's self-states and selfobject needs in relation to the specific poems set to music in his Lieder round out a collection as richly broad based as the field of self psychology itself. (shrink)

Most histories of psychology weave a story around the rise of objective methods of investigation and the decline of subjective introspection. This paper sidesteps such disciplinary stories by describing self-scrutiny as a practice that moved through a variety of cultural, social and technological contexts in early twentieth-century America. Edmund Jacobson's technique of 'progressive relaxation' is offered as a case in point. Jacobson, a Chicago clinician, developed this cure for nervousness out of his earlier research under E. B. Titchener, an experimental (...) psychologist at Cornell University. Like Titchener's method of 'experimental introspection ', progressive relaxation was a laboratory-based activity designed to transform the practitioner's sensibilities through the fastidious repetition of simple tasks. But while experimental psychologists ultimately rejected introspection as the core of their disciplinary project, the American public embraced progressive relaxation as a practical technique for mastering the new conditions of modernity. (shrink)

Modern biology is ambivalent about the notion of evolutionary progress. Although most evolutionists imply in their writings that they still understand large-scale macroevolution as a somewhat progressive process, the use of the term “progress” is increasingly criticized and avoided. The paper shows that this ambivalence has a long history and results mainly from three problems: (1) The term “progress” carries historical, theoretical and social implications which are not congruent with modern knowledge of the course of (...) evolution; (2) An incongruence exists between the notion of progress and Darwin’s theory of selection; (3) It is still not possible to give more than a rudimentary definition of the general patterns that were generated during the macroevolution of organisms. The paper consists of two parts: the first is a historical overview of the roots of the term “progress” in evolutionary biology, the second discusses epistemological, ontological and empirical problems. It is stated that the term has so far served as a metaphor for general patterns generated amongst organisms during evolution. It is proposed that a reformulation is needed to eliminate historically imported implications and that it is necessary to develop a concept for an appropriate empirical description of macroevolutionary patterns. This is the third way between, on the one hand, using the term indiscriminately and, on the other hand, ignoring the general patterns that evolution has produced. (shrink)

The idea of modernity is closely associated with the expectation of progress. In Europe, the combination of Enlightenment thought, French Revolution and Industrial Revolution is often seen to spell the onset of modernity; and the new society that was emerging would leave all limitations of the past behind and open up towards the wide horizon of a future of steady improvement in the human condition. This enthusiasm about the future was generated by the possibilities that would emerge with freedom: (...) freedom as self-realization in personal terms and freedom as political self-determination in collective terms. Increase in the possibilities for personal self-realization will here be understood as social progress; and increase in the possibilities for collective self-determination as political progress. In this light, the purpose of this article is to review the connection between modernity and progress through freedom, a connection that is much more complicated than often assumed because the meaning of freedom has always been contested and different interpretations of the concept have been and keep being proposed. That is why the article proceeds by diachronically contextualizing interpretations of freedom and, by implication, analyzing the ways in which realizations of freedom are seen as constituting social and political progress. In other words, it looks at transformations of modernity from the angle of possible progress achieved through the increase of freedom, of some kind or other. (shrink)

The Statistical Mind in Modern Society: The Netherlands, 1850–1940. Volume 1: Official Statistics, Social Progress, and Modern Enterprise. Volume 2: Statistics and Scientific Work by Jacques G. S. J. van Maarseveen; Paul M. M. Klep; Ida H. Stamhuis.

The nineteenth century is a very important period from our contemporary point of view. It is then that many socio-political ideas were born and have affected our social and individual life until now. It is in the nineteenth century that humankind sought to reflect on freedom, individualism and progress, and often paid dearly for any utopian misinterpretations in this area. Last but not least, in the nineteenth century the modern philosophical perception clashed with Christianity. The paper sought to (...) show this intellectual turmoil by focussing on the main adherents of reconciling new ideas with religion. This reconciliation could be effected with an integral view of the human being in mind. The integral human being, advocated by Newman and Acton, can manage to abide by timehonoured traditions and assimilate whatever there is of positive value in civilization.Le 19ème siècle est une période riche en enseignements pour notre réflexion contemporaine. C'est durant ce siècle que nombre d'idées sociopolitiques ayant influé jusqu'à présent sur notre vie individuelle et sociale sont nées. C'est au 19ème siècle que l'humanité chercha à réfléchir sur la liberté, l'individualisme et le progrès, et elle paya au prix fort les erreurs d'interprétation utopiste commises dans ces domaines. Aussi, et non des moindres, c'est au 19ème siècle que la perception philosophique moderne entra en conflit avec le christianisme. L'article vise à dépeindre cette agitation intellectuelle en mettant l'accent sur les principaux tenants de la réconciliation des nouvelles idées avec la religion. Cette réconciliation peut se faire si on a à l'esprit une vision complète de l'être humain. Cet être humain complet, tel que défendu par Newman et Acton, possède les qualités suffisantes pour respecter les traditions ancestrales et assimiler ce qu'il y a de valeureux dans la civilisation. (shrink)