L'idée du progrès : une brève histoire (document en anglais)

The Idea of Progress: A Brief History

The Idea of Progress may be defined as the belief that, in general, history proceeds in the direction of improved material conditions and a better (i.e., healthier, happier, more secure, more comfortable) life for more and more people. More simply: In the long run, most things get better.

And while this idea hardly seems brand new or original (it is by now nearly four centuries old and a widely shared commonplace), it is still, when measured on a 10,000-year world historical scale, not much more than a cultural infant newly out of its cradle.

The idea that civilization "progresses"--that nations or generations get better--was largely foreign to the ancient world. In fact a majority of ancient authorities took just the opposite view. According to classical legend, for example, the world began in a state of primal perfection--the mythical Golden Age--and things have been running downhill (Silver, Bronze, etc.) ever since. (As late as the early 17th century, the English poet and clergyman John Donne lamented that the "Age is Iron, and Rusty too.") Greek legends spoke of ancient giants and heroes and of the greatness and colossal achievements of bygone civilizations (e.g., the myth of Atlantis). The historian Herodotus stood in awe as he reviewed the peerless accomplishments and almost unimaginable antiquity of Egypt. For him and for the Greeks of the classical age in general, the contemporary world was fallen and dwarfish; grandeur and glory resided in the past.

Even in the view of Aristotle, who recognized distinct stages in the development of a civilization, history was not progressive, but cyclical. Like plants and animals, cities and empires emerged, grew, ripened, decayed, died. Something like a rising "progress" might occur for a generation or two; but as with the similar movement of the sun across the sky, each zenith was inevitably followed by a westward descent, a final steep and darkening decline. This Aristotelian view of cyclical growth and decay echoes a similar theme in ancient Judaism. "There is nothing new under the sun," declares the author of Ecclesiastes, offering a vision of history as a perpetual replay, a saga of eternal recurrence and return.

The imperial Romans conceived of their own history as a purposeful development guided by a divine fate or providential destiny. However, this movement was "progressive" only up to the point of the founding of the empire. Once imperial power is established, history becomes essentially static. What follows is merely the endless dominance of Rome, the urbs aeterna. (In this respect, the Romans were not unlike their 20th-century admirers, the visionaries of Nazi Germany whose dream of an invincible and totalistic Superstate--a Reich that would last a thousand years--was closely patterned after the imperial model.) After the sack of Rome by Alaric's Goths in 410 AD, St. Augustine effectively demolished the myth of Roman supremacy, along with the whole idea of worldly progress, in his City of God.

However, while denying the validity of secular triumph (in effect arguing that the only true progress is personal and spiritual), Augustine and other early Christian writers fully accepted the Judeo-Roman idea that history is purposeful and providential. The script

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