The Articulation of Social Being: Towards a New Ontology of Progress

Abstract

This article aims to provide an ontological reconceptualization of the idea of progress, which finds itself in a profound crisis in light of the empirical catastrophes of the 20th–21st centuries and its radical philosophical critique. The author's hypothesis proposes to abandon traditional evaluative and teleological approaches and defines progress as a process of articulation – an immanent law of the transformation of social being. This process consists in a fundamental shift in the basic ontological model: from the redundant, duplicated, and highly adaptive "living tissue" of archaic societies to the unique, specialized, and fundamentally fragile "construction" of the late modern era. To operationalize this model, the concept of the "articulus" is introduced – a critically important, functionally unique, and irreplaceable node of the system. Based on a detailed analysis of the spheres of political power, economic exchange, knowledge production, and social communication, the article demonstrates that fragility is not a byproduct or "price" of development. On the contrary, its production, concentration, and monopolization appear as the immanent goal and driving force of progress. It is precisely the fragility of articuli that creates possibilities for new forms of concentrated power, the capitalization of risk, and the maintenance of a regime of permanent historical acceleration fueled by the fear of dependence. Thus, progress is revealed as a dialectically self-destructive program leading civilization toward a "singularity of fragility" – a state of absolute efficiency and total vulnerability. As a way out of this impasse, the author justifies the necessity of a paradigm shift and the development of an "ethics and politics of redundancy" – the conscious, strategic implementation of reserving and duplication as the highest form of responsibility for the future of the whole.