Hubris and Progress
This book explores the ancient question of why man seeks to go beyond his limits. A presumptuous tendency known by the ancient Greeks as hubris and believed to be punished by the gods, it developed from a need for our survival to a habit, as humanity has subdued animals, dominated nature, increased knowledge and sought even to overcome death. It also lies behind the crisis of our time, as the values of democracy, freedom, equality and progress have been weakened – sacrificed to excess, as we live in an eternal present, dominated by greed and indifference regarding the future. Addressing this crisis of our interregnum period, in which faith has been lost in the former certainties of modernity, such as science, progress and the idea of a better world, the author considers whether redemption for humanity might lie in our hubristic tendencies, as these give us scope to deviate from the existing path and find new ways forward.
Carlo Bordoni is a sociologist and journalist, and former lecturer at the University of Florence, Italy. He writes for the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera and its literary supplement, la Lettura, as well as for the quarterly journal Prometeo. He is co-author (with Zygmunt Bauman) of State of Crisis (2014), and the author of Interregnum: Beyond Liquid Modernity (2016), The End of Equality (2017) and State of Fear in a Liquid World (2017).