Immanuel Kant, Moses Mendelssohn, and the Progress of Humanity — A Controversy

A controversy between Immanuel Kant and Moses Mendelssohn preoccupies me in terms of the concepts of innovation and progress. Why I believe in moral progress, you will learn in this text.

Since his book »Nachruf auf mich selbst« (Obituary for Myself) I consistently distinguish innovation from progress like Harald Welzer does. His argument remains too compelling, that innovation often lacks a normative core. Not every innovative idea is therefore progress. I follow him in this and, of course, he was not the first to engage with the clumsy negation of progress. It is important to remember that this phenomenon has not only existed since the larger technology waves, but that it has all been subject for the thinkers of the Enlightenment.

Therefore, this text is part of a reminder to confront the concept of progress once more.

Today, we mostly associate innovation with a technical sophistication that has the potential to amaze us, whether an innovation has the potential to actually change our reality. The Latin innovare (verb meaning “to make something new,” “to renew”) is frequently used synonymously where it should really be about progress…