Today, the idea that there has been moral progress in human history is highly controversial and contested. Many intellectuals from various camps consider it impossible, if not immoral, to claim that there has been anything in the historical past that can be called an improvement in moral attitudes and the application of moral principles. The reasons for this strong rejection of the idea of moral progress are either empirical or normative: either it is claimed that the historical facts strongly contradict such progress, or that there is no sufficiently impartial perspective from which to judge such progress. This lecture will try to show that both objections can be refuted if one has a proper understanding of the perspective from which to claim a past process of moral progress; this perspective must not only be constantly self-critical, but must also construct the history to be told about the moral past very differently from all previous such narratives.
Professor Axel Honneth is Jack C. Weinstein Professor for the Humanities in the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University; director of the Institute for Social Research and C4-Professor of Social Philosophy at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main.
IWM Permanent Fellow Ivan Vejvoda will introduce the speaker and moderate the event.
