Progress and Its Critics: A Conservative Critique of the Myth of Progress

Pető, Zoltán (2025) Progress and Its Critics: A Conservative Critique of the Myth of Progress. HISTORIES, 6 (1). No. 3. ISSN 2409-9252

Preview

Text histories-06-00003.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (250kB) | Preview

Abstract

The idea of progress constitutes a foundational, self-justifying myth of modernity. This paper explores the conservative critique of this myth, tracing its intellectual history and diagnosing its contemporary consequences. It argues that the progressive narrative is not a scientific fact but a secularized eschatology that has evolved into a form of technocratic rationalism rooted in a materialist metaphysics. The analysis examines the culmination of this worldview in transhumanism and diagnoses it, following Martin Heidegger, as a symptom of the “forgetting of Being” (Seinsvergessenheit). In contrast, the paper outlines the conservative alternative, which is not a simple return to the past but a reorientation toward a “vertical” dimension of existence grounded in Tradition, the symbolic cosmos, and a transcendent order. Ultimately, the paper frames the conservative stance as a form of metaphysical guardianship—an existential practice of “remembrance of Being” that keeps open the possibility of transcendence in an age of ontological nihilism.

Actions (login required)

Edit Item