Social progress is part of our life. The world around us is constantly changing: new industrial solutions, home appliances and machines are no longer the same as they were 20-30 years ago. Those past things seem primitive and useless. Sometimes you think about how it used to be possible to live without mobile phones, automation, built-in wardrobes, supermarkets, credit cards, etc. In addition, we have no idea what innovations will be in demand in the next two decades. But we know that in years to come, we will also sometimes wonder how primitive and uncomfortable life was then, in 2013…
And at the same time, trying to calculate the optimal scenarios for the future, we must first decide on what parameters we will measure this future. The question then arises as to what are the criteria for social progress in philosophy. If we can understand their essence, then it will be possible to outline at least the general contours of the coming changes and mentally prepare for them.
Criteria for the progress of society:
- Changing moral principles and ethical standards. Each era, if not each generation, creates for itself an invisible code of conduct, according to which it tries tolive. With a change in the economic and political situation, the norms are also being transformed, the understanding of good and bad is changing, but the general rules and principles are laid down for a long time. And as a result, they serve as a kind of foundation for legal regulators that determine the criteria for progress in politics, economics, and social life.
- The priority of human rights and freedoms over the rights of the master and the state. The principles of political development, defined by T. Hobbes in the 17th century, remain relevant in our century. No one has canceled the criteria for the progress of society. And first of all, I mean the development of freedom.
- Expanded understanding of freedom. Ancient man was completely subject to the master, freedom was seen in democracy - in the principles of political participation, which helped him determine the boundaries of his own world. With the fall of the Greek polis, freedom moved into the world of Roman law. Thus, it became obvious that numerous internal ethical norms regulating the requirements of the state are more significant than moral norms. Christian ethics set the precedent for a monocratic and theocratic society inseparable from the state. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment in this regard are just a return to the priority of law over religion. And only the era of modernity demonstrated that the criteria for progress lie in the plane of personal freedom. A person is absolute autonomy, not subject to any external influence.
- Scientifictechnological progress, which frees a person from the obligation to be part of a common machine - social, state, corporate, etc. Hence the changes in the principles of relations around property. From a slave position, when a person is a thing of the master, bypassing the status of a physical continuation of the machine (according to Marx), to the master of his life. Today, when the service sector becomes the mainstay of any economy, the criteria for progress are concentrated around one's own knowledge, skills and ability to promote one's product. Personal success depends on the individual himself. A person is freed from external regulatory actions at the social and economic levels. The state with its laws is needed only to streamline the Brownian economic movement. And this, probably, is the main criteria for the progress of modern society.
