Download b.the idea of a perfect social order

Progress and perfection
高永光 老師
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A.THE IDEA OF PROGRESS

No ideas ever are; but in the case of the
idea of progress, differences of view led
to a notable literary and philosophical
controversy, most strikingly in England
and France, which continued vigorously
for many years.

In England the controversy was referred
to, apparently with some irony, by the
title employed by Jonathan Swift, as ‘the
battle of the books.

The Renaissance era, as it rediscovered
the works of art, literature, and
philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome,
quite naturally found it difficult to believe
that those achievements could ever be
matched, let alone exceeded.

The contention that the 'ancients' were
superior to the “moderns” might be
argued even today if one were restricted
to comparing the arts. But there is at
least one area of human
accomplishment where such a view is
clearly untenable: knowledge of the laws
that govern the phenomena of nature.

From the sixteenth century on it was
becoming evident that men were
learning things about the natural world
that no one had known before. The
outstanding feature of this knowledge is
that it was cumulative, new discoveries
being added to the old, building a
structure that is the work of many minds
and is available to men of varied talents.

Isaac Newton, in a letter to Robert
Hooke, made the famous remark: “If I
have seen further, it is by standing on the
shoulders of giants”.

Newton was not noted for modesty, or for
generosity to other scientists, but in this
statement he captured the most
essential feature of progress: if it
depends on the appearance of superior
persons it may not be possible, but if it
depends on incremental cumulation,then
moderns can easily surpass the ancients.

The Renaissance, which could have
initiated a new period of stagnation in
Western civilization, became instead the
beginning of its most remarkable
development.

In this respect, a notable feature of
Western thought during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries was the growth
and spread of the idea of the worth of
mundane benefits: more food and
housing, better health and clothing, and
suchlike.

In addition, it is quite clear that the social
scientists were equally inspired by belief
in the possibility of social progress and
the hope that social scientific knowledge
could contribute to its promotion.

One of these streams of thought, whose
antecedents go back well before the rise
of the idea of progress in the
seventeenth century, is the discussion
not of progress itself but of its ultimate,
so to speak, the perfect society.
B.THE IDEA OF A PERFECT
SOCIAL ORDER

According to one prevalent point of view,
the notion of a perfect social state is a
necessary constituent of the idea of
social progress. Since the concept of
progress involves change or the better,
how can we know when a change
constitutes progress without judging it
according to some ideal?

In this view, a perfect social order must
be described by the social philosopher
for the pragmatic purpose of informing
our judgments, and perhaps also for
guiding our action, since if we know what
would be perfect we can try to propel the
course of change in the direction of the
ideal.

One encounters this view of the relation
between progress and perfection in very
diverse areas of social thought.

In Thomistic theology, for example, there
is the idea that the laws promulgated by
governments may be judged by
reference to a body of “natural law”
which God has established in the realm
of human relations and morals, just as
he has established the laws governing
physical phenomena.

One of the most important difficulties of
this view of the relation between
progress and perfection is that, when
used to make simple judgments of
particular changes, it implicitly assumes
that the imperfections of the real world
are independent, of one another.

If they are independent then we may be
certain that any change that improves a
particular feature of society by altering it
in .the direction of the ideal contributes to
general social improvement.

Another problem in the notion that one
must employ a conception of perfection
in order to determine whether a change
should be regarded as progress is that it
must assume that one thing at least is
unchanging: our conception of what
constitutes a perfect social order.

One further complication must be noted.
A strong and recurring theme in the
literature of social thought is that change
is, itself, the desired state.

In Western civilization the earliest
delineation of the , characteristics and
conditions of a perfect social order is, of
course, the description of the Garden of
Eden in the Book of Genesis. Since then,
literally thousands of books have been
written for the purpose of describing
various visions of a perfect social order.

Some Utopians believed that the social
order of perfection had already been
established on the planet by a Christian
priest who had gone far away from
Western Europe to perform his mission.

The idea of a perfect social order took on
at once an air of practical possibility that
appealed to the Western European
empiricist outlook. Thomas More called
his imaginary society “Utopia”, meaning,
in Greek, “nowhere,” which suggests that
it does not exist in this our world.

In brief, the era that gave birth to the
disciplines we now group under the
general heading of “social science” was
also one that witnessed a reinvigoration
and modernization of ancient
speculations concerning the
characteristics of a perfect social order.

In the literature of the social order of
perfection there is some ambiguity
towards both ends, so to speak, of the
economic process: work and material
wealth. Many Utopias are pictured as
lands of such great material wealth that
all citizens live in a state of repletion, all
desires fulfilled.

On one important point with respect to
work there is a notable difference
between the orthodox strain of social
science and the perfectionist literature:
the question of division of labour.

Marx, and his collaborator Friedrich
Engels, said very little about the
characteristics of communism, the ideal
society that, in their view, was the natural
result of the laws of historical
development.

As we proceed with our history of social
science we shall see that the issue
individualism versus communalism
punctuates the scientific literature as it
has social philosophical thought
generally, since Plato and Aristotle.

The social order of perfection is
constructed without any constraints
imposed by empirical facts or laws of
nature. From the epistemological
standpoint this is the very opposite of a
scientific model.

The idea that the new social order of
perfection would be based on scientific
knowledge is traceable to Francis Bacon
(1561-1626). His associated idea, that
the new order would be under the
governance of scientists, can be traced
back to Plato, though, of course, Plato
placed “philosophers” at the top of the
hierarchy of the ideal community.