ABSTRACT
The Idea of Progress, a French invention and a treasured American possession, lies at the very heart of the American Dream and the ethic of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. In The Illusions of Progress, first published in France in 1908, Georges Sorel used the method of ideology to debunk the myth of progress. It is no wonder that what moved our grandfathers to heroic achievements is paralyzing those of our children who are not engaged either in revolutionary action or the making of new and countercultural myths. The idea of secular progress was of course antipathetical to the traditional tenets of Catholicism. Sorel very perceptively shows how the French idea of progress can be traced back to the 17th century. The faith in progress rather than Christianity, at first limited to the members of a decadent ruling class, eventually became the central myth of the whole bourgeois civilization in the 19th century.
