The Uniting Error of Philosophical Progressivism and Conservatism

Philosophical progressivism says that 1) History has an inevitable direction 2) the elites can know what that direction is, and 3) this direction is good. Philosophical conservatism only differs on the third, claiming that this direction is bad. None of these three propositions is justified. The idea that history has a direction is a religious/Hegelian claim, and unjustified on the scientific / secular grounds that its adherents claim to believe in. The idea that elites know the future is clearly wrong, given their long track record of failure in prediction, and the idea that whatever happens next is good is also unjustified (in 1930, Nazism was next, in 2015, Trumpism was next). We can’t look to a purported “direction” of history to know what’s good or bad because we can’t know that history has a direction, we can’t know what that direction is, and whether or not history was going somewhere would have no bearing on whether that “where” was good or bad. Far better than anchoring oneself to a “direction” is to anchor oneself in principles. In politics, that’s what classical liberalism does (equal rights under law) and why we should all be concerned about these principles coming under attack from those invoking a direction to history