From Development to Revolution: Hume, Kant and the Critical Turn in the Concept of Progress

The concept of progress constitutes one of the most controversial philosophical legacies of the Enlightenment, especially for the tradition of critical theory. Re¬cently, Jaeggi has vindicated its validity as a thick, normative-descriptive concept and suggested that progress had been developed in these terms in the philosophies of history of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. In the essay, I take up this insight and ask when this became so, tracing the birth of the critical force of the concept of progress in the transition between Hume’s and Kant’s different accounts of how history unfolds. Using Habermas deconstructionism/reconstructionism dis¬tinction as a framework, I argue that Hume presents a primarily descriptive and naturalistic account of social development where critique plays a negative role. Conversely, Kant distinguishes civilisation from moralisation, identifying a norma¬tive gap within history itself. From this perspective, progress becomes a practical idea, and critique takes a more directive role: social agents consciously act toward the progressive moralisation of history through their critical capacities.