The tragic destiny of progressivism
We should be skeptical of any political movement that sees those who stand in the way of the end of history as evil.
If progressivism has a foundational creed, an essence, an idea that stands at the core of its being, then it is what progressives often refer to as the “arc of history.” The phrase expresses the belief that history is the unfolding of a moral destiny in which man is moving inexorably toward a better world. As Barack Obama was fond of saying, “The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.”
This raises the question, however, of what this “justice” might look like. If history has what the ancient Greeks called a telos—the ultimate consummation of a thing’s inherent potential—then what is the nature of that telos? And what does this telos say about progressivism itself?
Something like an answer may be found in the origins of the progressive creed. While progressivism seems to be a profoundly modern movement, its origins are distinctly ancient. In particular, they are rooted deep in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
While the idea of history as the unfolding of a moral destiny has Jewish origins, progressivism is more or less wholly based on the idea’s Christian variation. As the philosopher John Gray has written, “The idea of progress is a secular version of the Christian belief in providence.”
Perhaps the best proof of this is that the very concept of “progress” was original to ancient Jewish monotheism. For most of human history, the idea of progress, let alone the belief that progress will result in an Edenic “end of history,” simply did not exist. Rather the opposite was the case. The pre-Christian pagan civilizations tended to believe that things were getting worse, not better.
This view was expressed most clearly in Hesiod’s Works and Days, which was second only to Homer’s epics as the foundational text of ancient Greek civilization. Hesiod divided human history into Five Ages of Man, beginning with a paradisiacal domain in which men “lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief.”
This “golden age” was followed by a long decline that ended in Hesiod’s time. Needless to say, this gave Hesiod no comfort. He wrote:
Would that I were not among the men of the fifth generation, but either had died before or been born afterward. For now truly is a race of iron, and men never rest from labor and sorrow by day, and from perishing by night; and the gods shall lay sore trouble upon them. … Strength will be right and reverence will cease to be; and the wicked will hurt the worthy man. … Bitter sorrows will be left for mortal men, and there will be no help against evil.
Hesiod’s declinist view of history was not universal among the Greeks, however. The philosophical tradition posited another possibility: that history was essentially cyclical. This theory was rooted in many philosophers’ understanding of the physical world itself, which they believed had no beginning and therefore, almost by definition, no end.
The great pre-Socratic thinker Heraclitus, for example, who believed fire was the foundational element of existence, stated, “This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever-living fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going out.” Diogenes Laertius wrote of Heraclitus that the philosopher believed “all that is, is limited and forms one world. And it is alternately born from fire and again resolved into fire in fixed cycles to all eternity.”
All things, in other words, emerge out of a primal element and then return to it in a continuing cycle that will go on forever. History has no telos. Things will not get better, but there is no reason to think they will get worse. Everything that is simply is.
Vestiges of the declinist and cyclical views of history survived into the Hebrew Bible, most obviously in the story of the fall of man and the musings of Ecclesiastes. These vestiges, however, did not define the Jewish and eventually the Christian view of history. The reason was the emergence of apocalyptic messianism, which first surfaced in the books of the prophets and took on its true form in the Second Temple period.
Along with monotheism, messianism may be Jewish civilization’s most original and far-reaching contribution to mankind. It posits that history is moving toward a redemptive end in which God and his messiah will establish God’s kingdom on earth, a paradisiacal utopia ruled with justice and righteousness. In its most intense forms, the messianic idea included such apocalyptic events as the resurrection of the dead, an epic battle against the forces of metaphysical evil, and the eternal punishment of the wicked.
Messianism gave man, for the first time, a sense that existence has a telos and history an end. Christianity did not simply adopt this messianic theology; it is this messianic theology. Even before Jesus of Nazareth came to be seen as divine and eventually as an incarnation of God himself, his followers appear to have concluded that he was the promised messiah and, with his coming, the world had entered the messianic age. Indeed, some of his followers seem to have believed that the end of history would come within their lifetimes.
The great Christian theologian Augustine would eventually codify this messianic ethos by dividing history into six ages. Augustine held that five of these ages had already passed and man was now entered upon the sixth: The age of the messiah that began with the coming of Jesus.
“With his coming the sixth age has entered on its process,” he wrote, “so that now the spiritual grace, which in previous times was known to a few patriarchs and prophets, may be made manifest to all nations.”
Progressivism essentially adopted a deracinated version of this Christian messianism. This is not a new insight. The historian Tom Holland, for example, gave an excellent overview of the phenomenon in his recent book Dominion. But it is worth pointing out again the extent to which progressivism retained not just the general idea of Christian messianism but also its specific details.
In essence, progressivism’s understanding of the consummation of Augustine’s “sixth age” is derived almost without change from the Beatitudes—a series of blessings spoken by Jesus and written down in slightly variant forms in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.
In the Gospel of Matthew, the Beatitudes appear as
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
The version given in Luke is shorter, but the ethos is largely the same. It states, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil because of the Son of Man.”
These predictions are not just akin to progressivism’s vision of the end of history; they are progressivism’s vision of the end of history: The distressed will no longer be distressed, the weak will be protected and empowered, the righteous will receive their just rewards, compassion and empathy will rule human affairs, peace will prevail on earth.
But there is a shadow side to this deracinated Christianity, because progressivism did not only adopt the benevolent aspects of Christian messianism. Some of the Beatitudes are so famous that it is often forgotten that, in the version given in the Gospel of Luke, the blessings are followed by a series of “woes” that are something akin to curses.
Jesus says, “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well-fed now, for you will hunger. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers treated the false prophets in the same way.”
Just as progressivism adopted the blessings of the Beatitudes, it also adopted the "woes": The curses upon the rich, the complacent, those who laugh and are happy, the vain, and those who ignore the great revelations. Where such sentiments can lead is obvious.
While Luke does not outline the punishments for these transgressions, early Christianity eventually did so in the form of the strangest and most disturbing book of the New Testament: The Book of Revelation, also known as the Apocalypse of John.
Revelation is a ferociously messianic vision of the end of history, describing the destruction of much of the world and the rise of hideous forces of supernatural evil. It ends with a prophecy of God’s victory over these forces and the establishment of “a new heaven and a new earth” in which “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
At the same time, however, the apocalypticist declares, “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable; as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars; their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
In Christian theology, this terrible, final, and eternal punishment can be avoided even by sinners, so long as they choose redemption through faith in the son of God. Unfortunately, this is not true of progressivism. By deracinating Christianity, it abandoned what perhaps defined Christianity from the very beginning: Its faith in the absolute centrality of the person of Jesus of Nazareth and the redemptive power of belief in his divinity.
Progressivism’s amputation of redemption from the messianic idea has led to one of the ugliest aspects of progressivism, which is its weakness for denunciation and condemnation. Today’s progressivism sees guilt and culpability as absolute. It believes in universal and perpetual crimes that can never be wiped away. Since no one is perfect, this means that we are all criminals. Thus, anyone can be punished at any time for a crime that need not be given a name.
One must wonder if this culture of condemnation is, in some ways, inevitable. That is, there may be something within progressivism that pushes it toward a kind of tyrannical moralism. Progressivism may be trapped forever between the Beatitudes and Revelation, but by deracinating its own Christian origins, progressivism tipped the scales in favor of Revelation, stripping out Jesus’s benevolent principles, leaving only punishment.
Progressives’ need to condemn those who sin against the messiah may ultimately stem from fear. That is to say, even the most fervent progressives may suspect that history has no moral weight whatsoever. This is indeed a terrifying thing, and to recoil from it into condemnatory politics is somewhat understandable. If the messiah tarries, it is easier to blame others for his absence than it is to contend with the implications of that absence. After all, to contend with it might lead one to conclude that perhaps the Greeks were right in their belief in the terrible arbitrary nature of fate.
The writer Douglas Murray once asked a Ukrainian museum director what she thought of Stalin, who even though he slaughtered millions of Ukrainians, also played an enormous role in defeating Hitler and Nazism. She replied: “Stalin was like a hurricane. He just happened.”
It is possible that in this statement, he just happened, lies history’s darkest secret, which is that history itself is like a hurricane. It sweeps through for no particular reason at all, driven by forces so complex we can never understand them, and leaves the wreckage of time in its wake. The implications of this are not that progress is impossible, but that progress is irrelevant. History is as indifferent as a natural disaster. It has no moral qualities whatsoever, because one cannot judge a hurricane. Or one can, but to do so is insane. It may be this particular derangement that often drives progressives into something far uglier than fallacy.
John Gray has written, “Christianity is not a religion that recognizes tragedy as an ultimate moral fact.” This too, progressivism adopted in a deracinated form. As a result, the possibility that man, history, and perhaps existence itself have a tragic destiny negates the essence of progressivism. It means that the arc of history, if it exists, does not bend toward justice, but toward Heraclitus’s ever-living fire. All things, it implies, end messy, unfinished, and sad.
To progressives, this means they must live without hope. Whether this is true or not is questionable. Certainly, many who have accepted a tragic destiny have not lived hopeless lives. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were the greatest exponents of tragedy, yet they kept writing and it may be that they ultimately died happy. This alone is a kind of hope, and perhaps a profound one.
Nonetheless, the human animal appears to have some deep, primal need for the end of history. We want to believe that things are going somewhere and that they are doing so for a reason. We want to know the beginning and the end. We want, above all, for the end to be better than the beginning. Perhaps this is a mere trick of time’s arrow. We know that, whatever happens, we cannot go backward. Therefore, since we are always going forward, we must be going toward something, and we would prefer to believe that this something will be better rather than worse.
It must be admitted that those who believe this may not be wrong. Certainly, the cosmologists tell us that existence as we know it had a beginning and will have something like an end, if only through dissipation. It is not impossible that this end will be better than the beginning.
We can say with certainty, however, that we cannot be sure. We are forced to remain agnostic. We can ask the question, but we have received no answer and may never receive one. Morally and spiritually, this uncertainty is perhaps sustainable. Politically, however, it has enormous and decisive implications.
It means that any movement fundamentally based on the idea that history is the unfolding of a moral destiny and that those who stand in the way of this destiny are not just mistaken but evil must be viewed with the greatest skepticism. Certainly, we should not accept its unreasonable demands, its condemnations, its admonitions, and its punishments without some measure of resistance.