The long-cherished idea of Progress, which was at the absolute centre of centuries of Western thought about a distinctively Modern history in an Age of Science, was in a parlous state as the 20th Century ended. Bizarrely, many intellectuals celebrated the 'Death of Progress', and disseminated to trusting students a melodramatic expiation of collective guilt over its role in a whole continuum of hubristic, Euro-Centric, colonialistic onslaughts. This book offers a passionate case for reviving a very simple and indispensable understanding of Progress: More of the Good, and it urges everyone to employ this powerful concept, the quintessential signifier of Modernity, in our literally endless evaluations of the Good - an inescapable human enterprise. "Acourt's main proposition to 'intellectual practice' is: to return to the idea of progress, though cleansed of 'progressivism'...This proposition is argued extensively and systematically...The book is thoroughly researched - virtually every position of relevance has been explored and critically assessed. The author feels totally at home in the...field, moves freely and with confidence.
The argument is consistent throughout and presented in clear and precise language purified of jargon. This is a remarkable book...work of a mature and highly original scholar with something important to say." ( Professor Zygmunt Bauman.) "The (book) presents a sustained and wide ranging argument to recuperate the concepts of utopia and progress...on the way Acourt engages with virtually all the major social theorists and the crucial intellectual movements of the twentieth century. The position Acourt adopts leads to a series of intriguing critical reviews based on extensive expositions (no 'quickies' tolerated here) of the establishment figures of modern and postmodern thought...I must say I have rarely enjoyed such a sustained intellectual exploration pursued with great courage and...enviable scholarship. I learned much from the book." ( Professor Basil Bernstein. )