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A Road to Nowhere: The Idea of Progress and Its Critics
Since the Enlightenment, the idea of progress has spanned right- and left-wing politics, secular and spiritual philosophy, and most every school of art or culture. The belief that humans are capable of making lasting improvements—intellectual, scientific, material, moral, and cultural—continues to be a commonplace of our age. However, events of the preceding century, including but not limited to two world wars, conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, the spread of communism across Eastern Europe and parts of Asia, violent nationalism in the Balkans, and genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda, have called into question this faith in the continued advancement of humankind.
In A Road to Nowhere , Matthew W. Slaboch argues that political theorists should entertain the possibility that long-term, continued progress may be more fiction than reality. He examines the work of German philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer and Oswald Spengler, Russian novelists Leo Tolstoy and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and American historians Henry Adams and Christopher Lasch—rare skeptics of the idea of progress who have much to engage political theory, a field dominated by historical optimists. Looking at the figures of Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, and Adams, Slaboch considers the ways in which they defined progress and their reasons for doubting that their cultures, or the world, were progressing. He compares Germany, Russia, and the United States to illustrate how these nineteenth-century critics of the idea of progress contributed to or helped forestall the emergence of forms of government that came to be associated with each fascism, communism, and democratic capitalism, respectively.
Turning to Spengler, Solzhenitsyn, and Lasch, Slaboch explores the contemporary relevance of the critique of progress and the arguments for and against political engagement in the face of uncertain improvement, one-way inevitable decline, or unending cycles of advancement and decay. A Road to Nowhere concludes that these notable naysayers were not mere defeatists and presents their varied prescriptions for individual and social action.
In A Road to Nowhere , Matthew W. Slaboch argues that political theorists should entertain the possibility that long-term, continued progress may be more fiction than reality. He examines the work of German philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer and Oswald Spengler, Russian novelists Leo Tolstoy and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and American historians Henry Adams and Christopher Lasch—rare skeptics of the idea of progress who have much to engage political theory, a field dominated by historical optimists. Looking at the figures of Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, and Adams, Slaboch considers the ways in which they defined progress and their reasons for doubting that their cultures, or the world, were progressing. He compares Germany, Russia, and the United States to illustrate how these nineteenth-century critics of the idea of progress contributed to or helped forestall the emergence of forms of government that came to be associated with each fascism, communism, and democratic capitalism, respectively.
Turning to Spengler, Solzhenitsyn, and Lasch, Slaboch explores the contemporary relevance of the critique of progress and the arguments for and against political engagement in the face of uncertain improvement, one-way inevitable decline, or unending cycles of advancement and decay. A Road to Nowhere concludes that these notable naysayers were not mere defeatists and presents their varied prescriptions for individual and social action.
208 pages, Hardcover
Published December 11, 2017
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About the author
Matthew W. Slaboch
1 book15 followersGreetings, readers!
If you are interested in A ROAD TO NOWHERE: The Idea of Progress and Its Critics, please request that your local or university library purchase a copy. Make that request now, so that when you've worked your way through your "to-read" list and are ready to give it a look, the book is available to you.
Thanks, and happy reading!
—Matthew Slaboch
Matthew W. Slaboch is an assistant professor in the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. Previous academic appointments include a postdoctoral research fellowship at the James Madison Program in the Department of Politics at Princeton University and a visiting appointment at Denison University.
If you are interested in A ROAD TO NOWHERE: The Idea of Progress and Its Critics, please request that your local or university library purchase a copy. Make that request now, so that when you've worked your way through your "to-read" list and are ready to give it a look, the book is available to you.
Thanks, and happy reading!
—Matthew Slaboch
Matthew W. Slaboch is an assistant professor in the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. Previous academic appointments include a postdoctoral research fellowship at the James Madison Program in the Department of Politics at Princeton University and a visiting appointment at Denison University.
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September 15, 2023
Introduction to critics of the idea of progress. This stimulated my curiosity and made me aware of the fact that there's ... "a split among these thinkers that is based not on nationality, but on whether the authors in question view history as a bumpy but straight road to nowhere (or worse, to hell), or whether they discern in the passing of time a pattern of recurring hills and dales. Writers of the first sort tend to be critics of politics, while cyclical theorists are receptive to grand political projects, especially in the international arena."
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