The Arcades Project - Operi

late, and politics always needs to foresee, so to speak, the present;' Turgot,
Oeuvres, vol. 2 (Paris, 1844), p. 673 ("Pensees et fragments")." [N12a,1]
"The . .. radically altered landscape of the nineteenth century remains visible to
this day, at least in traces. It was shaped by the railroads . ... The focal points of
this historical landscape arc present wherever mountain and tunnel, canyon and
viaduct, torrent and funicular, river and iron bridge . .. reveal their kinship . ...
In all their singularity, these things announce that nature has not withdrawn, amid
the triumph of technological civilization, into the nameless and inchoate, that the
pure construction of bridge or tunnel did not in itself . .. usurp the landscape, hut
that river and mountain at once took their side, and not as subjugated adversaries
but as friendly powers . ... The iron iocomotive that disappears into the mountain
tunnel ... seems ... to be returning to its native element where the raw material
out of which it was made lies slumbering. H Dolf Sternberger, Panorama, ode,.
Ansichten VOIn 19. ]alu'hundert (Hamburg, 1938), 1'1'. 34-35. [N12a,2]
The concept of progress had to run counter to the critical theory of history from
the moment it ceased to be applied as a criterion to specific historical develop­
ments and instead was required to measure the span between a legendary incep­
tion and a legendary end of history. In other words: as soon as it becomes the
signature of historical process as a whole, the concept of progress bespeaks an
uncritical hypostatization rather than a critical interrogation. This latter may be
recognized, in the concrete exposition of history, from the fact that it outlines
regression at least as sharply as it brings any progress into view. (Thus Turgot,
Jochmann.) [N13,1]
Lotze as critic of the concept of progress: "In opposition to the readily accepted
doctrine that the progress of humanity is ever onward and upward, more cau­
tious reflection has been forced to make the discovery that the course of history
takes the form of spirals-some prefer to say epicycloids. In short, there has
never been a dearth of thoughtful but veiled acknowledgnlents that the impres­
sion produced by history on the whole, far from being one of unalloyed exulta­
tion, is preponderantly melancholy. Unprejudiced consideration will always
lanlent and wonder to see how many advantages of civilization and special
charms of life are lost, never to reappear in their integrity;' Hermann Lotze,
Mikrokosmos, vol. 3 (Leipzig, 1864), p. 21.36 [N13,2]
Lotze as critic of the concept of progress: "It is not . . . clear how we are to
imagine one course of education as applying to successive generations of men,
allowing the later of these to partake of the fruits produced by the unrewarded
efforts and often by the misery of those who went before. To hold that the claims
of particular times and individual men may be scorned and all their misfortunes
disregarded if only mankind would improve overall is, though suggested by
noble feelings, merely enthusiastic thoughtlessness. . . . Nothing is progress
which does not mean an increase of happiness and perfection for those very souls