Suchergebnisse
"Sebastian Suttner"
Titel: After Progress and Before: What Progress Could Be when Crises are Permanent
Autor: Sebastian Suttner
Seite: 289-307
This paper examines the shifting semantics of ‘progress’ and ‘crisis’ as key frameworks for modern society’s self-description. Drawing on Rahel Jaeggi’s functionalist conception of progress and placing it in dialogue with Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, it reconstructs how progress historically emerged as a synchronizing device under conditions of functional differentiation – particularly in science – before being gradually supplanted by crisis as a more inclusive semantic. By tracing the conceptual histories of both terms, the analysis reveals their roles in managing temporal complexity and societal coordination. While progress organizes change through asymmetrical inclusion, crisis flattens distinctions by encompassing all as affected, aligning more closely with the structural needs of a polycrisis-prone world society. The paper argues that any contemporary rehabilitation of progress must address its semantic selectivity, historical asymmetries, and the communicative functions it shares with the crisis narrative.