In this book, Hans Blumenberg disputes the view that the modern idea of progress represents a secularization of religious belief in some divine intervention (the coming of the Messiah, the end of the world) which consummates human history from outside. Drawing from sources ranging from Aristotle and Augustine to Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, and Kuhn - with an impressive number of stops between - he argues that progress always implies a process at work within history, a process that ultimately expresses human choices, human self-assertion, and man's responsibility for his own fate.Hans Blumenberg has been associated with Kiel University in Hamburg since 1947. The book is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought.