Despite widespread technological innovation, scientific and medical breakthroughs, and strides toward gender and racial equity, few believe that humanity is on the road of progress. Indeed, many are increasingly skeptical of the very notion of progress, seeing it as the stuff of hollow political speeches. Nevertheless, in her new book Progress and Regression (Harvard UP 2025), Rahel Jaeggi argues that we are lost without a shared idea of progress. In the tradition of critical theory, she defends a vision of progress that avoids Eurocentric and teleological distortions. Progress here is not an inevitable developmental trend but a kind of compass directing society’s never-ending journey toward emancipation. A nimble practitioner of dialectical reasoning, Jaeggi revitalizes progress by confronting its opposite: regression. Her analysis reckons with the myriad signs of regression today, including growing inequality, ecological destruction, and above all the assault on educational institutions, critical thinking, and reason itself.

Rahel Jaeggi is Professor of Practical Philosophy with an emphasis on Social and Political Philosophy and Director of the Center for Humanities and Social Change at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She is the author of Critique of Forms of Life, Alienation, and, with Nancy Fraser, Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory.