After progress - gains and losses

The gains of the past two or three centuries, particularly in science and democratic politics, have also brought about deep and significant losses in areas such as art, education, morality and philosophy.

So says the University's professor of philosophy, Anthony O'Hear, in his latest book, After Progress: Finding the Old Way Forward (Bloomsbury, 1999, £14.99).

Professor O'Hear, director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy and a contributor to the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and Daily Express, examines humanity's position at the dawn of the new millennium.

He investigates why the national and international celebrations of 1 January 2000 were often marked by hesitancy and even an embarrassment about what was being celebrated. He challenges the notion that history is moving forward in a desirable - or progressive - direction and argues that progress is not inevitable in any field, let alone over the whole of human life and experience. He questions whether we are now on the brink of anything remarkable or worthy of comparison with the achievements of the past.

Professor O'Hear - who served over seven years on bodies overseeing teacher training in Britain, the national curriculum and school examinations - believes that most people today have nothing worth striving for beyond individual comfort and happiness, yet happiness increasingly eludes the majority. Real happiness, he contends, comes from rediscovering truth and transcendence.

He argues that "there is still enough in human life and experience to afford grounds for real hope," but this will shine through only if we and our leaders can rid ourselves of the illusions to which we are "cripplingly and unthinkingly subject".

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University - Public Relations - Annual Reports - 2000 Contents - Research

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