This paper aims to show the centrality the concept of progress occupies explicitly and implicitly in social theory, in relation to the theorization and understanding of modernity; it also raises the question whether in times where Eurocentrism, logocentrism, and indeed almost every claim of supremacy are rightly viewed with suspicion, it is possible to think of modernity without relying on some interpretation of the notion of progress. Arguably, the theme of progress, together with the complementary notion of decline, can be considered as a key-component of discourses concerning modernity and has played a major role in the shaping of social theory. Comte and Durkheim relied in different ways in the idea of progress and the same holds for Marxist accounts of social change. Even later, sociological theories address modernity from the perspective of progress, Parsons being exemplary in this respect. Moreover, theoretical discourses adopting a critical or even hostile attitude against the modern project often question the idea of progress and are woven around the representation of modernity in terms of decline and regression into unreason, as, e.g., Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enightment. Arguably, the imagery of progress informs the distinction between society and community, which is also hidden behind Habermas's more recent theorization of societies in terms of systems and lifeworlds. Finally, the question regarding the possibility of partially disentangling the theorization of modernity from the idea of progress is pursued via a critical assessment of Eisenstadt's multiple modernities and Wagner's theorization of modernity in terms of responses given to basic problématiques.

No abstract

This paper attempts to engage critically with Ricoeur's multifaceted and multilayered approach to history. Drawing on a vast number of philosophical, historical and sociological works, Ricoeur's hermeneutics develops as an invaluable corpus of writings on virtually all the aspects of history and historicity alike. This paper focuses primarily on Ricoeur's attempt to enrich further the interpretation of human historicity provided by the phenomenological-hermeneutic tradition and his consequent attempt to identify and indicate the liberating potential inherent in human action. Specific emphasis is placed in the role of body and of habitus in the very shaping of sociohistorical worlds, while the place of birth (natality), death ( finitude) and murder is also considered both in regard of their factual and ethical implications for human life. Correlative are the problems of self-identity, subjective and collective memory, subjective temporality and co-temporality, which are also in the centre of Ricoeur's meditations on history and thus of great importance for the purposes of the present work. At the same time, this paper touches on epistemological issues, as it examines the intricate ties that bind together understanding and explanation, structure and event, fiction and historical narrative, reality and imagination, history and truth. Finally, history is always addressed from the perspective of action as responsibility and utopian promise.

This article explores the consecutive modifications that phenomenology underwent in the works of Heidegger and Levinas. In particular, it discusses their importance for contemporary attempts to expand -and transcend -phenomenology in philosophy and the social sciences. Heidegger and Levinas responded to the problem of subjectivity -and intersubjectivity -in diametrically opposed ways and consequently the exposition of their thoughts involves focusing on conceptual dichotomies like finitude and infinity, time and eternity. Ultimately, it is argued that the very conceptions of the human being that the two thinkers furnish under the guise of Dasein and Autrui reveal the impasses associated with western metaphysics and pave the path for the development of more adequate theorizations of subjectivity, radical otherness and communal being. KEYWORDS Dasein/Autrui • death/murder • finitude/infinity • time/eternityFor manifestly you have long been aware of what you mean when you use the expression 'being'. We, however, who used to think we understood it, have now become perplexed.