THE CONCEPT OF PROGRESS IN SOCIAL THEORY
This article aims to show the central place that the concept of progress explicitly and implicitly occupies in social theory in relation to the theorizing and understanding of modernity. It also raises the question of whether, in a time when Eurocentrism, logocentrism, and almost any claim to superiority in general, is rightly viewed with suspicion, one can think of modernity without relying on any interpretation of the notion of progress. It can be argued that the theme of progress, together with the additional concept of decline, can be seen as a key component of discourses about modernity, playing a special role in the formation of social theory. Kont and Durkheim relied on the idea of progress in different ways, and the same can be said for Marxist explanations of social change. A little later, sociological theories began to address modernity in terms of progress, and Parsons is a prime example in this regard. Moreover, theoretical discourses that are critical or even hostile to the project of modernity often question the idea of progress, and are built around presenting modernity in terms of decline and regression. Perhaps the image of progress defines the distinction between society and community, which is also hidden behind Habermas's later theory of society, in terms of systems and life-worlds. The article uses general scientific methods, in particular, the method of analysis and generalization.