ABSTRACT
The idea that society could have goals of any sort is a fairly modern one. I am not familiar with any intensive study of the history of the idea, and it is far beyond the scope of this paper to produce one. The rise of social self-consciousness and the idea that society itself might have an image of the future into which it could proceed is unfamiliar in classical civilization. For the Greeks, the future was in the hands of essentially random fates, and the idea that the society could decide what it was going to be like in 100 years would have been thought of as outrageous hubris, certain to call down almost immediate retribution from the gods.
