What is moral progress? Are we striving for moral progress when we seek to ‘make the world a better place’? What connects the different ways in which moral agents, their actions, and the world can become morally better? This book proposes an explication of the abstract concept of moral progress and explores its relation to our moral lives. Integrating the perspectives of rival normative theories, it draws a clear distinction between ethical and moral progress and makes the case that moral progress can neither happen merely in theory, nor come about by a fluke. Still, the ideal of moral progress as a deliberate improvement in practices with a positive impact on the world is but one of several types of moral progress, relating in different ways to the theoretical and practical capacities of moral agents. No elevated level of sophistication in these capacities is required for moral progress to be possible, and the abstract idea of moral progress need not be on moral agents’ minds in the pursuit of the morally better. However, a desire for impactful moral progress, far from being a moral fetish, marks a particularly valuable moral outlook.

What is moral progress? Are we striving for moral progress when we seek to ‘make the world a better place’? What connects the different ways in which moral agents, their actions, and the world can become morally better? This book proposes an explication of the abstract concept of moral progress and explores its relation to our moral lives. Integrating the perspectives of rival normative theories, it draws a clear distinction between ethical and moral progress and makes the case that moral progress can neither happen merely in theory, nor come about by a fluke. Still, the ideal of moral progress as a deliberate improvement in practices with a positive impact on the world is but one of several types of moral progress, relating in different ways to the theoretical and practical capacities of moral agents. No elevated level of sophistication in these capacities is required for moral progress to be possible, and the abstract idea of moral progress need not be on moral agents’ minds in the pursuit of the morally better. However, a desire for impactful moral progress, far from being a moral fetish, marks a particularly valuable moral outlook.