ABSTRACT
Enlightenment thought had a specific ontology, epistemology, and telos. Ontologically, in opposition to religious authorities, who insisted that reality or nature was the work of divine enchantment, Enlightenment thinkers practised disenchantment. The presence of a certain ontological mysticism among some postmodernist anthropologists offers an answer to the question: why are they not slaves to any concept of progress? The analysis suggests that anthropology's engagement with progress might involve the enactment of a four-point program. The four-point program just proposed might be seen as both synthesizing and building upon the Enlightenment and anthropological approaches to progress. From the Enlightenment comes the view that the idea of Kantian progress is a fine telos. From Kant's perspective on the Enlightenment comes the suggestion that progress might be judged in terms of the practical imperative. The chapter explores four different schools of Anglo-American anthropology vis-a-vis their positions on progress.
