Technological Progress and Pious Modernity: Secular Liberals Fall Behind the Times

Abstract

Since the European Enlightenment, secular liberals have imagined themselves to be at the forefront of technological and social progress. Our celebration of improved human prospects, however, is often laced with ambivalence: we have acquired greater power to destroy one another and the natural environment, and to produce more inventive forms of oppression. Therefore, secular liberals have often been accused of being too optimistic about the technical progress that shapes modernity. Today’s political climate, however, undermines secular notions of progress in a different way. The continued dominance of business-class conservatism, often allied with religious movements, has given secular liberal aspirations a nostalgic edge. Conservative constituencies have a better claim to be shaping technological progress today. It has become increasingly doubtful whether secular liberals represent the cutting edge of modernity any more.