Theory of progress in social and political though of Russia the second half of the XIX century

Social progress problem is being met in work of many philosophers and thinkers from the XIX century. Auguste Comte, Georg Hegel and Karl Marx used this notion more than once. The general feature of many works of this time was an idea that freedoms level in society is the main criterion of social progress. However in future after Charles Darwin's discovery Social Darwinism, that maintains principle of identity of social and biological progress, became widely used. One of the most known supporters of this principle was Herbert Spencer. In Russia this theory was called in question by many representatives of the progressive intellectuals and other thinkers among which were Nikolay Mikhaylovsky, Pyotr Lavrov and Pyotr Tkachev. The first two investigators made an accent on the persons with critical thinking in history. Leo Metchnikoff had another point of view. He did not exaggerate importance of separate "heroes" in history. On the contrary, Metchnikoff thought that main creator of historical formations is not vivid persons but "work of many generations which lived before us". He saw the main progress criterion in the level of cooperation in society on early stages of history and in the deliberate solidarity of people as basis of future progress. Nominally he could be classified as supporter of the Environmental determinism. By his own definition he was considering influence of natural conditions on progress of society as "the correlation between environment and ability to cooperation and solidarity of people who lives in this environment". It's necessary to note this conception will be a part of the Civilization theory in future. The progress theory had supporters and opponents. The most telling criticism about this question was said by Russians orthodox philosophers. It's necessary to note that Leo Karsavin was one of them. He pointed out idealism of the progress theory and criticized its partisans for not enough using of scientific methods. Also Karsavin thought that at that moment no theory could be used without exceptions and distortions for a real historical material. As well he was noting some logical contradiction of the progress theory. However is it true that this criticism tell that creation of more or less objective progress theory is not possible at all? Not at all. It just means that this theory is not created yet. In this context, original but not popular solution of the problem, which Leo Metchnikoff described, is highly topical.

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