The Victorians, famously puritanical, are also famous for providing the template of modern pornography the words "Victorian classic" on a paperback have long meant a dirty book while on the other side of that earnest, progressive Victorian rationality are the mad leaps of Victorian irrationality.
Some philosophers use the concepts of progress and rationality as synonyms: progressive steps in science are precisely those that are based upon the scientists' rational choices.
In that prewar era, advocates of democratic radio were united by a progressive vision of pluralism and rationality; today, the question of how to fashion a democratic social media is one more front in our highly divisive culture wars.
The brief moment in late 2008 when 'hope' was more than just a slogan, when progressives believed that an irrefutable case could and would be made for progressive principles, when it appeared rationality would become a guiding force in American politics, is long gone.
Rousseau (1762a; 1762b) and Kant (1784 5; 1784–6) brought some of these assumptions about rationality and progress into their political philosophies, and Adam Smith embodies some of this optimism about the progressive effects of rationality in his account of the unfolding of the modern European economic system (1776).
Rather than continue to allow excessively pessimistic neoliberal rationality to define human possibility, progressives must seize the transformative demands of this historical juncture.
Yet, that is our current narrative as we continue to unwaveringly trust in the theory of economic rationality and economic stewardship as the progressive way to move society forward, compelled by the inevitability of global economic and technological forces.
On the contrary, we reject both alternatives and embrace instead a path that is both pro-science and rationality as well as pro-spiritual consciousness, God, and progressive forms (but not reactionary versions of) religion.
About 1925, a new rationality began in furniture design, stimulated by the emergence of progressive experiments typified in the works and theories of the Bauhaus, a revolutionary German school of arts and crafts established in 1919 and staffed by leading architects, designers, and painters until Hitler closed it in 1933.
Its emphasis and belief on human rationality rather than instinct logically lead it to being more fluid and progressive.
