I have read and written quite a bit about “the idea of progress” the last 8 months and here it is in a new form: moral progress.
The “idea of progress” literature is about whether progress is a thing. Time passes, our civilization is doing stuff, but are we making progress? You could say “yes of course! look at global health and the improvements in prosperity across the board”. You could also say “no! the threat of annihilation through nuclear or biological disaster never before existed at this scale”. I think are are making progress though.
Technology people often think we are making progress.
Ok maybe technology is not itself progress, and maybe economic development growth is not itself progress.
Sure the even bigger stuff, bigger than a computer, like Enlightenment ideas or the Age of Exploration advance the quality of life for people in the world. But are they moral progress?
Freedom is an Enlightenment idea. Free people are better off. Adam Smith is an enlightenment thinker.
Amartya Sen’s “Development as Freedom” is an argument that economic systems make people free to exchange, and then also free to pursue a valuable life. He got the Nobel prize for that argument. That economics is moral.
Environmentalism is one of the ideologies created in the 20th century that was entirely novel and has had lasting impact. A moral theory of human context in the world.
So is there moral progress? Are we better in our dealings with ourselves and others now than in the past? I think we are — moral progress.