ABSTRACT
To select an indicator of progress and to use it as a yardstick to measure the amount of progress in different cultures means to vindicate for ourselves the position of the absolute; of God. In so doing we place ourselves outside history, although we have no right to do so because we are history. This holds equally true with regard to the indicators of regress and of eternal repetition. When Kierke gaard turned away from the Hegelian concept of world-spirit and conceived of history as a puppet theatre where the strings directing the actor-puppets are pulled by God, he rejected the in fluence of his great antagonist to a far lesser extent than he himself thought.
