A processual account of progress: On Rahel Jaeggi's Fortschritt und Regression

In her 2013 book Kritik von Lebensformen, Rahel Jaeggi, one of the most prominent exponents of the new German social philosophy, set out to offer a revision of critical theory centered on the notion of “forms of life.” This reconsideration, however, did not take the typical form of a new diagnosis of the times, comparable, for example, to the diagnoses of the reification of social relations (Suhrkamp Lukács, 2013), the one-dimensionality of consciousness (Marcuse, 2012), or the systemic colonization of the lebenswelt, or lifeworld (Habermas, 2014). Rather, Jaeggi was interested in developing a theoretical conception of how forms of life fail or succeed. We find a similar strategy, albeit oriented to a different theoretical object, in her earlier book, Entfremdung. Zur Aktualität eines sozialphilosophischen Problems. Here, again, the author did not articulate a diagnosis of the social causes of alienation, but rather a highly abstract theory of human subjectivity from which to offer a functional account of the concept of alienation (Jaeggi, 2005; Neuhouser, 2016). We again find this strategy in the formidable 2013 article “Was (wenn überhaupt etwas) ist falsch am Kapitalismus? Drei Wege der Kapitalismuskritik,” in which Jaeggi is not interested in advancing a concrete critique of capitalist societies, but rather in discussing the three most common forms of doing so (functional, moral, and ethical) in order to develop an integrative and complex approach (Jaeggi, 2013b).

If I understand it correctly, Jaeggi's latest book, published by Suhrkamp under the title Fortschritt und Regression (Jaeggi, 2023), follows the same strategy. Jaeggi does not aim to answer the question (of an empirical nature, of course) of the existence, or nonexistence, of progress in modern societies. Rather, her interest is, again, of a conceptual nature. Fortschritt und Regression offers an impressive analysis of the concepts of progress and regression as consistent criteria for criticisms of social development, and thus, as useful instruments for critical theory. Of course, this approach is not only legitimate, but also extremely useful in shedding light on some of the central concepts critical social theory is based on—sometimes in an insufficiently reflexive way. However, such a strategy, which is well suited to the category of a “critical theory of criticism” (Boltanski & Honneth, 2009; Celikates, 2006; Jaeggi & Wesche, 2009), should not, in my opinion, exhaust the tasks of social philosophy, lest we run the risk of critical theory of criticism ending up cornering social criticism itself. In order to do justice to both elements, in what follows I will proceed in two steps. First, I will offer a systematic reconstruction of Jaeggi's central theses concerning the concepts of progress and regression. Second, I will present some critical comments on her processual notion of progress and try to outline some ideas that may contribute to answering the question (I insist, of an empirical nature) as to the progressive or regressive nature of the modernization process.

Fortschritt und Regression should be read, as I understand her argument, as a continuation of the project initiated by Jaeggi (2013a) in her book Kritik von Lebensformen, in which the author asked herself the following question: “Can forms of life be criticized? That is, can they be diagnosed as good, successful or rational as forms of life?” (Jaeggi, 2013a). Consciously departing from the “liberal abstention” on the discussion of the ethical content of forms of life, an abstention represented in the political philosophy of John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, Jaeggi provided a criterion for determining when we can speak of successful or rational forms of life: forms of life are successful if they are the result of a process of learning and experimentation that, in the end, allows for further learning. Ten years later, Jaeggi has reformulated this thesis by referring to the notion of progress: rational forms of life are progressive forms of life, while irrational forms of life are regressive ones. What, then, is progress? Jaeggi opts, as we shall see, for a processual notion (Prozessbegriff) and not a substantial one.

What, in this sense, would a “substantial” notion of progress be? Such a notion, present in European Enlightenment thought, is comprised of four fundamental features: the presumably inviolable interrelation of various dimensions of progress, from technological innovations to moral-political and economic improvements; its alleged irresistibility, according to which progress is necessary; the thesis of an evolutionary logic, or logic of development, according to which progress is a normatively binding world-historical process that follows a unique pattern; and a confidence in a kind of accumulation without loss. In what sense can we still defend this strong notion of progress? Certainly, these four features of the progress narrative have been the subject of incisive criticism, which Jaeggi brings up here. First, faith in progress as a synthesis of advances running in parallel in every social sphere is too naïve, and today we know that techno-scientific advances do not always go hand in hand with moral progress. Second, the idea that progress is a necessary and inevitable historical movement is called into question in the light of the obvious episodes of regression and barbarism that have occurred in the meantime. Third, the thesis of a universalistic evolutionary pattern is today challenged by postcolonial studies (Quijano, 2000; Castro Gómez, 2017; Bhambra & Holmwood, 2021), which have shown with unusual force that this thesis serves the ideological purposes of a hierarchization of stages of development. Fourth, it is now very obvious to us that progress is not without ambivalence, such that some developments generate new types of problems and crises.

In the face of these suggestive criticisms, one might be tempted―and this has been the case in recent studies (Allen, 2017; Bhambra & Holmwood, 2021)―to discard the notion of progress as an ideological and outdated category. I believe one of the main merits of Jaeggi's book is to have shown that this abandonment turns out to be unsound. Although the thesis of an “unbreakable chain” is not very plausible today, equally implausible is the idea that progress in the different social spheres occurs in a completely independent, unassociated way. Although historical determinism and faith in progress as a necessary fact are outdated and unsustainable, changes in society cannot be interpreted simply from the perspective of a change in the mentality of individuals. Although the thesis of a universal pattern of development has served ideological functions, it is impossible to detach oneself completely from the idea that there are certain criteria or patterns through which we can identify social changes as progressive or regressive. Finally, although progress always occurs ambivalently and intermingled with processes of crisis, critical social philosophy cannot afford a kind of pure contextualism. Thus, instead of pursuing the path of a radical criticism of the notion of progress, Jaeggi sets herself a much more promising and fruitful goal for the purposes of critical theory: to offer a reformulation, in processual terms, of the notion of progress and its opposite, the notion of regression.

What, in processual terms, are progress and regression? Jaeggi comes up with a short and convincing formula: “progress is a cumulative process of problem solving and experimentation, while regression is a systematic blocking of this process” (Jaeggi, 2023, p. 11). In order to develop this formula, the work is structured into six fundamental stages, of which I would like to highlight some ideas below.

First, Jaeggi formulates and seeks to justify an apparently counterintuitive thesis, but one of the greatest relevance for designing a processual conception of progress: although, logically, progress consists in a change for the better, this change does not depend on a prior understanding of what is good or right; on the contrary, it is progress itself that helps to determine what is good or right. When we are confronted with changes that we consider “progressive,” such as the abolition of slavery, what we do is to interpret these changes positively. Likewise, when we are confronted with changes that we consider “regressive,” such as the disenfranchisement of marginalized minorities, we interpret such changes negatively. That is, we not only describe them, but also evaluate them. This means that progress is both a descriptive and a normative concept. Jaeggi argues that the separation of these two dimensions amounts to a “prioritization” of the normative over the descriptive. According to this prioritization, which she rejects, to speak of progress would require us to already have a normative notion of what “the good” means, a notion in contrast to which we could determine a particular social change to be progressive, if it accords with that notion, or regressive, if it conflicts with it. Jaeggi's thesis is that this approach loses the analytical richness of the concept of progress and its specific interpretive power, for it ultimately renders it a mere synonym for “the good.” Against this idea, Jaeggi believes that progress is a sui generis normative concept, a concept in which the normative and the descriptive appear dynamically intertwined. Thus, in contrast to the prioritization of the normative over the descriptive, Jaeggi considers it more fruitful to interpret progress as solutions to problems that society is facing. Under this processual model, progress does not imply the teleological approach to a goal determined in advance as “good,” but rather the progressive resolution of social problems.

Second, Jaeggi tackles the question, central to any theory of social evolution, of reform versus revolution. The question to be answered here could be formulated as follows: should processes of “change for the better,” which can now be interpreted as cumulative processes of problem-solving and experimentation, be understood as revolutionary ruptures, or rather as continuist reform measures that succeed in realizing already existing normative potentials? Jaeggi formulates a proposal that understands social progress as a problem-oriented cumulative process of experience. Such a process does not create normative principles out of nothing in a revolutionary way, but neither does it merely apply already existing principles. Rather, “progress occurs, in a Hegelian spirit, as a kind of continuity in discontinuity and discontinuity in continuity” (Jaeggi, 2023, p. 69). Jaeggi lucidly shows that social change, even during periods considered radically revolutionary, operates on the basis of the emergence of problems or crises that present themselves in accordance with the old social formation: “the new appears because the old no longer works.”

Third, Jaeggi is interested in analyzing the relationship between moral progress and social change. Her thesis here is that changes in the moral beliefs of individuals―regarding issues such as, for example, sexual orientations or gender relations―only occur in broader contexts. In these contexts, which we might call “ethicality,” other elements appear, such as institutions, cognitive beliefs (our knowledge of how the world works), ethical (sittliche) norms, and practices. In this sense, Jaeggi is not interested in the individual psychological question of the change of beliefs, but rather in the question of the social context in which such change takes place. As can be seen, this proposal is midway between purely moralistic theories of evolution, which make progress dependent on innovative moral intuitions, and purely materialistic theories of evolution, which neglect the role of the subject's action. In this sense, it is an unquestionable merit of Jaeggi's approach, as Neuhouser has pointed out in a recent comment (Neuhouser, 2023), that she avoids a simplistic voluntarism while preserving the space for human freedom.

Fourth, Jaeggi endeavors to capture the fractured logic (brüchige Logik) that characterizes her notion of progress. As we know, the driving force of social transformations, according to her processual theory of progress, are the problems, crises, and conflicts that arise in a given social formation. As it could be formulated in Marxist terms, new societies are already contained in the crises of old ones. This thesis allows us to rethink in processual terms the famous Marxian distinction between the passive or material element of social transformation and the active or revolutionary element: “social change,” says Jaeggi, “does not arise from a good idea, but is motivated by any form of dysfunctionality or obsolescence of the existing” (Jaeggi, 2023, p. 143). Forms of life, understood as sets of social practices, are entities that solve problems, and this is the basis for understanding their dynamics and the conditions of their possible transformation. However, the problems typically dealt with by forms of life have a specific form: they are second-order problems. That is, they are problems related to the conceptual and cultural resources available to a form of life to solve first-order problems. What role do individual and collective actors play in these second-order problem-solving processes? Although progress is indeed structurally dependent on the emergence of a “passive element,” namely some form of crisis or problem, it can succeed only if it is coordinated by collective actors, such as social movements, able to propose adequate solutions to such crises.

Fifth, Jaeggi thematizes more explicitly her definition of progress, arising from pragmatism, as a “cumulative process of learning and experience” (sich anreichernder Lern- und Erfahrungsprozess). This idea serves for her to differentiate progressive from regressive changes. Just as people's lives have no general direction toward which they tend, but rather develop along different paths according to new events and problems that arise, neither do societies pursue a specific goal. Progress is thus not a movement toward a place, but rather a movement from a place, motivated by the emergence of problems. If this is so, then the criterion for determining the progressive or regressive character of social dynamics derive not from how far they approach or depart from a normative end established in advance, but rather from the extent to which it enables or blocks learning processes.

Sixth, Jaeggi analyzes the idea of regression, which she characterizes, using an expression of Adorno's: as a “betrayal of the possible.” Regression is defined as a blockage in the learning processes and a deficient way of dealing with social crises. Using the categories offered by psychoanalysis, Jaeggi characterizes social regression as a process in which a social formation abandons an already achieved level of social evolution and returns to earlier and more primitive forms of problem solving. As can be seen, regression is not merely a conservative or nostalgic psychological disposition. There are cases in which the return to traditional forms of problem solving is even progressive, such as the current calls for local consumption aimed at resolving the ecological crisis. The defining feature of regression is that it thwarts learning processes that had already been achieved historically, and in this sense offers inadequate solutions to the problems or crises society is facing. Regression is, therefore, an inadequate response to a crisis or problem—in other words, a mode of unlearning.

This processual and pragmatist approach allows Jaeggi to weather criticisms of the substantial and teleological notion of progress without abandoning the notion of progress itself. This is, undoubtedly, a brilliant contribution to the contemporary debate. This approach, however, faces some challenges, which I would like to outline briefly.

First, if we claim that progress does not depend on a normatively fixed goal, but rather consists only in adequate solutions to problems that society confronts, we would have to be able to define what an “adequate solution” means. Indeed, Jaeggi recognizes that the burden of justification now falls on describing problem-solving processes in such a way that we can evaluate the quality of the problem-solving itself. And her answer is that these solutions that represent an experiential process (Erfahrungsprozess) of cumulative enrichment are adequate. Now, in what sense can one speak of a social cumulative enrichment without first having taken a position on what would be a socially desirable state of affairs, and, therefore without recourse to a normative notion of “the good” or “the right”? Let us think, for example, of the moral-political progress that the approval of same-sex marriage has brought about in most European countries. This situation can only be labeled as “progressive” to the extent that one has already “taken the side”¹ of a particular normative criterion, namely that of the progressive inclusion of all citizens in relations of legal recognition (Honneth, 2010). Unless one has some idea of what a desirable solution would be, the processual characterization seems insufficient. Neuhouser makes a similar observation when he questions Jaeggi's sharp distinction between the substantial and the procedural; that is, between the normative content of progress and its form (Neuhouser, 2023).

Second, Jaeggi's characterization of progress as a process always motivated by problem-solving fits perfectly with what we might call “techno-scientific progress,” but in my view it is more problematic with regard to moral-political progress. Certainly, in the scientific-technical sphere the new appears, as Jaeggi says, “because the old no longer works.” In this sense, the idea that progress does not advance toward an objective, but does so from a problematic situation, is highly enlightening. Now, is this how moral-political progress also works? Let us return to the example of the approval of same-sex marriage. It is difficult to see in what sense in this case progress was motivated by the existence of a problem definable in processual terms, unless we consider that the problem consists precisely in the fact that the normative conditions that we consider correct―namely, legal equality between persons, regardless of their sexual orientation―are not met.

Third, as we mentioned at the beginning, Jaeggi's work does not attempt to offer a concrete diagnosis of the times, but rather to philosophically characterize a theoretical figure with which critical social theory operates. Jaeggi openly refuses to answer the question of the existence or nonexistence of progress in modern society. Her reasons, of course, are compelling. What she is concerned with is offering a processual definition of progress that serves the interests of critical social theory. Given that, in my opinion, this goal is satisfactorily met, perhaps it would not be entirely useless to ask the question, present in critical theory from its very origins, as to the progressive or regressive nature of modernization (Romero-Cuevas, 2019). In my view, the answer to this question would have to be offered in the form of two alternative stories about the meaning of modernization, in the complementarity of which we could find a complex understanding. The first story, which I would call “a story of progress,” interprets modernization as a process of rationalization of the world. This account, present in the social theory of important authors like Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Habermas, can be explained by turning to Weber's considerations on the meaning of socio-cultural modernization. Weber studies cultural rationalization by addressing the process by which worldviews, or images of the world, transform. Modernization occurs with the transition from the ancient empires, which continue throughout the Middle Ages, to a kind of society in which religious/metaphysical images are replaced by a differentiation of cultural spheres of value, such as science, morality, law, and art. We are faced with the process of the European Enlightenment, which has to do with such heterogeneous elements as the mathematization of science, the universalization of morality and the appearance of new literary genres detached from sacred roots. This “spirit of the Enlightenment,” to use Todorov's expression, has to do with the pedagogical and literate vocation of philosophy, and with a stubborn critique (widely expanded in the public sphere through the popularization of magazines and newspapers) of unjustified forms of political and religious domination, and with the establishment of a rule of law in which citizens can assert their rights. It is difficult to deny that this process has constituted progress.

The second story, which we can call “a history of barbarism,” brings to bear some aspects traditionally absent from modern social theory, from Hobbes to Habermas, in order to form an account of “the hidden face of modernity.” There are four decisive elements of this alternative account. First, the scientific drive toward the objectification of the natural, in alliance with the new form of production as commodity production, has led to an instrumental treatment of nature, the most dramatic consequences of which we see today in the ecological disaster. Second, the various forms of material inequality resulting from an understanding of freedom and equality, tailored only to the capitalist market, call into question the emancipatory character of modern ideals. Third, the processes of colonization initiated at the end of the 15th century constitute the great original sin of the modern European project. Fourth and finally, the systematic exclusion of women from modern “public sphere” calls into question the allegedly universal nature of modern morality.

These brief notes can help us put together a complex story about the meaning of the modernization process. In this light, it is too ambitious to issue categorical pronouncements on the progressive or regressive nature of this process. Seen from a certain point of view, it is evident that modernity has constituted a gigantic cultural, political, and artistic synthesis that can only be considered “progressive.” Seen from a different point of view, however, these achievements can be interpreted as the visible face of a process of subjugation, domination, and exclusion that, until recently, was not the subject of social theory. Although Jaeggi offers good reasons for not thematizing this problem in Fortschritt und Regression, it is too tempting not to wonder what conclusions we would draw if we were to apply Jaeggi's eloquent processual definition to a historical analysis of the progress, or regression, that has actually occurred.

These three challenges (the apparent inevitability of normative determinations, the insufficiency of the notion of “problem-solving” to conceptualize moral/political progress, and the neglect of the historical study of the progressive or regressive nature of modernization) can help us to think further about a category—that of progress—that is essential to critical theory. It is to Jaeggi's credit that she has offered a renewed, profound and brilliant understanding of this notion. As she did in Entfremdung and Kritik von Lebensformen, Jaeggi once again demonstrates in Fortschritt und Regression her astonishing ability to guide and shape the most important debates in social philosophy. And this makes her, without any doubt, one of the most important representatives today of that venerable tradition of thought that we call “critical theory of society.”