Hegel's Views on Progress

What strikes me as different about Hegel from many thinkers was that he saw things as progressing to a better state. Now I don't know if everybody feels that way today certainly lots of philosophers more pessimistic about the idea of progress. Kierkegaard famously writes a book called Either or which is precisely going back to what I was saying earlier about Hegel's view of the understanding which he could be got beyond in reason.