<p>This essay places the origins and success of the social sciences with the Western university tradition inherited from Classical Antiquity, and in particular the metaphysical and epistemic pillars undergirding them. It then sketches out the history of the “critical-turn” and the Critical Perspective now hegemonic in the social sciences. In so doing it describes how this transition is rooted in a replacement of the traditional with the Critical metaphysical and epistemic pillars. Finally, it argues that a post-progressive social sciences must more precisely be a post-critical social sciences, one that involves a conscious, confident and explicit commitment to the foundational pillars of the knowledge system that emerged out of antiquity and through the traditional Western university.</p>