Philosophy and Progress - Criteria of Improvement of Human Condition Versus Progressivism

Submissions of a long abstract (of no more than 1000 words) are due by June 30th, 2025.

All applicants must indicate the following details: name, paper title, institutional affiliation, and contact information. 

Successful applicants will be notified by July 15th, 2025. 

Topic Explanation:

Is a human being merely the object of the progress of the human world, a progress that seems to have a normative character, and that is so that the norm is represented through the record of the process we call progress. So, what is progress then? Norm itself? Explanatory horizon of the historical movement of humanity? Is progress a descriptive term for understanding humanity or a normative term in the sense of prescribing the purpose and direction of human society? If progress is the norm of the state of human existence, what is the legitimate reason for choosing such a norm?

On the other hand, as we are now witnessing, it seems that man is in the process of losing his humanity. It is the current situation to turn us to make a question about the nature of progress. That process supposedly began first of all as a loss of freedom in the name of freedom. Because progress concerns the acceptance of a global-epochal process of so-called human development as something that is beyond our control, lack of freedom is precisely reflected in the absence of the possibility of choice. Hence progress look like fate or dare.

Whether or not one will accept that any new outcome of that process should be accept as an improvement of human condition? Whether or not one will accept a new outcome of the process automatically as a well-being of humanity? Or is it so due to the lack of alternative.

Therefore, the question arises whether we will accept what appears through this process as new in the world, whether we will accept it as good because it is new and "progressive", or whether we will accept it due to the lack of possibility to reject?

But things can be turned around and it seems of great importance to distinguish ideological content of an idea of progress and the content which can be recognized as a contribution to the human development process. This is where the following questions arise: 

- Is progress in all its self-understanding, attractiveness and apparent good or value in itself, really something like that? 

- Is progress really a fatum under whose authority man finds himself, or is it a process of human, Western European origin, which is not independent of the kind of relationship we establish towards it?

- How can we recognize human well-being as a criterion for abstract process which is called progress?

- Is there still interest, nowadays, in reflecting on the difference between progress and emancipation of individuals and society? Is this a significant difference? And is it a reflection (and research) that can identify concrete, transformative solutions to the status quo?