Successive Modernities and the Idea of Progress: A First Attempt

The idea that modern society is not a unique institutional arrangement, functionally and normatively superior to all others, but that plural forms of modernity may exist is by now rather widely accepted. Its implications for a social theory and political philosophy that keeps normative concerns alive and aims to articulate them with socio-political analysis, however, are often unclear. Embracing the concept of plural modernities is often seen to entail the abandoning of normative concerns that ultimately are universal and unique, not plural and particular. This article first briefly discusses one central strand of ongoing historico-sociological research, the ‘multiple modernities’ debate, and argues that normative concerns about relativism that emerged from this debate have not been conclusively addressed. Subsequently, it is shown that the plurality of modernity that results from historical transformations of modernity, from ‘successive modernities’ (Johann Arnason), is of a different kind. Concerns about progress can be more fruitfully addressed because the point of reference is ‘the same modernity’ that transforms in time through the structuring activities of its own members. The search for the dynamics of ‘succession’ within modernity leads to a re-assessment of the notions of crisis and critique and the link between them. Such re-connection is elaborated in more detail by using Axel Honneth's attempt at formulating a novel, empirically rich and historically situated theory of justice as the theoretical object against the backdrop of which a reconsideration of the idea of progress can take place with the insights from comparative-historical sociology in hand.