The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity

by Ludwig Edelstein

Originally published in 1967. Ludwig Edelstein characterizes the idea of progress in Greek and Roman times. He analyzes the ancients' belief in a tendency inherent in nature or in man to pass through a regular sequence of stages of development in past, present, and future, the latter stages being--with perhaps occasional retardations or minor regressions--superior to the earlier. Edelstein's contemporaries asserted that the Greeks and Romans were entirely ignorant of a belief in progress in this sense of the term. In arguing against this dominant thesis, Edelstein draws from the conclusions of scholars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and discusses ideas of Auguste Comte and Wilhelm Dilthey.

Genres: History, Philosophy

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

Reviews

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an important corrective to Bury, who (though himself an ancient historian) missed much of the relevant evidence from Antiquity. The idea of progress first appears, in fact, in Xenophanes fr. 18, and was well-known to the Sophists and in the Hellenistic period.

Edelstein, who was at Hopkins for many years, was one of the great scholars of ancient thought. He wrote extensively on ancient medicine; his papers on various topics in ancient medicine and philosophy are often of major importance; and his book on Plato's Seventh Letter (proving that the Letter is spurious, and that therefore all the inferences drawn from it are of no value) is a model of scholarship and judgment.