After Progress: Finding the Old Way Forward($33.78Value)

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An important, bold challenge to our attitude toward progress. As we stand on the brink of the third millennium, we are very much in thrall to the idea that civilization is moving forward in a progressive direction, and that overall in the world things are getting better. In After Progress , philosopher Anthony O'Hear argues that we need to temper our optimism and self-assurance, that progress has not been attained without some loss. The gains of the past two or three centuries, particularly in the fields of science and democratic politics, have resulted in losses in areas once thought of as allied to religion, such as art, education, morality and philosophy. O'Hear asks the basic question: why does it seem there are more unhappy people today in the US and in Britain when we are living in a time of unprecedented individual affluence, health and human rights? O'Hear sets out to find out how we might re-examine our lives of progress by looking back on what we have learned from the great philosophers, scientists, and thinkers of the past. After Progress serves as an introduction to the ideas of major thinkers from Plato to Wittgenstein, as well as providing a new way to think about the present, by not ignoring the lessons from the past. Anthony O'Hear does not mince words: he believes we live in a time of spiritual and aesthetic barrenness, and he does not expect this to improve in the near future. The triumph of the Enlightenment and our anthropocentric faith in reason have, he argues, largely stripped our lives of meaning. Though we continue to struggle to answer the big questions, in O'Hear's assessment, "the meaning of life is just the little matter on which our official ideology of scientific enlightenment and liberal politics studiously refuses to pronounce; in place of anything like that, what we are offered are material prosperity, formal equality and political participation, and when these are not enough, drugs or therapy or yet more unrealizable political promises." In essence, the ideology of progress is a false mistress, and the good that is worth striving for is being steadily eroded by poststructuralism, deconstructionism, modern art, and the like. Whether you agree with him or not, O'Hear is always opinionated and informed, leaving the reader with much to ponder. He dismisses environmentalism, decries the liberalization of sexual morality (which has made women more "vulnerable" in his analysis), criticizes psychotherapy as pointless self-absorption, and regards equality as a misleading ruse: "Individuals, meanwhile, who for one reason or another cannot compete in society but who are fed on a half-understood diet of equality and human rights, become increasingly resentful and violent when they realize that they are never going to make the grade socially or economically." A provocative assessment of the religious, philosophical, and moral costs of the recent leaps in science and technology, After Progress is a passionate book on a timely topic. --J.R. A dissertation that explores the astonishing gains in science and politics during the past two or three centuries, arguing that such progress brought a simultaneous decline in traditional values such as religion, art, education, morality, and philosophy. OHear (Philosophy/Univ. of Bradford) writes of the tensions between the apostles of Enlightenment materialism and progress versus people who have a strong respect for tradition, order, local roots, and religious beliefs. The Enlightenments fundamental themes of the pursuit of pleasure and elimination of pain have dominated the thinking of recent centuries. OHear views Socrates as an Enlightenment philosopher who questioned the Athenian culture so strongly that the Olympian gods could not survive. He reviews the opinions of philosophers of the Enlightenment and looks at the famous rationalists (Darwin, Marx, and Freud) as false gods hiding behind pseudoscientific facades. He supports the position of Darwins contemporary Wallace that our rationality, pursuit of knowledge, moral and religious sense, and love of beauty could not possibly be explained in terms of survival theory. Wallace found Darwins conclusions unconvincing and not remotely plausible, and OHear rejects the idea that humans are mere gene-survival machines or proven decedents of lower forms. He sees Marxist materialism as a crude and dishonest interpretation of history and capital, and he considers centralized planning to be one of the worst legacies of Enlightenment thinking still remaining in the politics of today. Freud purported to offer a scientific explanation for human behavior in his speculation that we are subject to strong, hidden psychic pressures that must be released. This theory allows little room for free will and civilized restraint. OHear concludes that religious optimism (of the sort offered by the Judeo-Christian tradition) gives hope and urges the maintenance of tested old values such as honor, virtue, reli