Criteria for the progress of society

Social progress is part of our life. The world around us is constantly changing: new industrial solutions, home appliances and machines are no longer those that were 20-30 years ago. Those, past things, seem primitive and useless. Sometimes you think about how you could live without mobile phones, automatics, built-in wardrobes, supermarkets, credit cards, etc. In addition, we do not know what innovations will be in demand in the next two decades. But we know: years later we will also sometimes wonder how primitive and inconvenient the life was then, in 2013 ...

And at the same time, trying to calculate the optimal scenarios of the future, it is first necessary to determine which parameters we will measure this future. Then the question arises: what are the criteria for social progress in philosophy. If we can understand their essence, then it will be possible to outline at least the general outlines of the coming changes and to prepare mentally for them.

Criteria for the progress of society:

- Changing moral principles and ethical norms. Each epoch, if not every generation, creates for itself an invisible code of conduct, in which it tries to live. With the change in the economic and political situation, the norms are also being transformed, and the understanding of the bad and good is changing, but the general rules and principles are laid for a long time. And in the end they serve as a kind of foundation for legal regulators, which determine the criteria for progress in politics, economy, and social life.

- Priority of human rights and freedoms over the rights of the master and the state. The principles of political development, defined still by T. Hobbes in the 17th century, remain relevant in our century. Nobody has canceled the criteria for the progress of society. And first of all, we mean the development of freedom.

- Expanded understanding of freedom. The ancient man was completely subordinate to the master, freedom was seen in democracy - in the principles of political participation, which helped him to determine the boundaries of his own world. With the fall of the Greek polis, freedom moved into the world of Roman law. Thus, it became apparent that the numerous internal ethical norms governing the requirements of the state are more significant than the norms of morality. Christian ethics created a precedent for a monocratic and theocratic society, inseparable from the state. Revival and Enlightenment in this regard are only a return to the priority of the right over religion. And only the era of modernity demonstrated that the criteria for progress lie in the plane of personal freedom. Man - absolute autonomy, not subject to any external influence.

- Scientific and technological progress that frees a person from the obligation to be part of a common machine - social, state, corporate, etc. Hence the changes in the principles of relations around property. From the slavish position, when a person is a thing of the master, bypassing the status of the physical continuation of the machine (according to Marx), to the master of his life. Today, when the sphere of services becomes the mainstay of any economy, the criteria for progress are concentrated around their own knowledge, skills and ability to promote their product. Personal success depends on the individual. A person is freed from external regulatory actions at the social and economic levels. The state with its laws is necessary only for the ordering of the Brownian economic movement. And this, probably, is the main criteria for the progress of modern society.