False necessity

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False necessity, or anti-necessitarian social theory, is a contemporary social theory that argues for the plasticity of social organizations and their potential to be shaped in new ways. The theory rejects the assumption that laws of change govern the history of human societies and limit human freedom. [1] It is a critique of "necessitarian" thought in conventional social theories (like liberalism or Marxism) which hold that parts of the social order are necessary or the result of the natural flow of history. The theory rejects the idea that human societies must be organized in a certain way (for example, liberal democracy) and that human activity will adhere to certain forms (for example if people were only motivated by rational self-interest).

Contents

False necessity uses structural analysis to understand sociopolitical arrangements, but discards the tendency to assemble indivisible categories and to create law-like explanations. It aims to liberate human activity from necessary arrangements and limitations, and to open up a world without constraints where the possible becomes actual. [2]

Background

Modern social theory contains a tension between the realization of human freedom and the necessity of social rules. [3] Liberal political theorists of the seventeenth century, such as Hobbes and Locke, saw the issue as one of sacrificing some individual freedoms in order to gain others. They understood social rules as enabling constraints—necessary impositions that limited activity in some spheres in order to expand it in others. In the sociopolitical realm, these early liberal thinkers argued that citizens agree to surrender their freedom for political authority in order to gain greater freedom from a state of nature. The sovereign authority is a constraint, but it allows freedom from the constraints that other individuals might impose upon us. In this way, rules are always seen as a means of increasing freedom rather than rescinding it.

These early Enlightenment thinkers opposed existing religious, aristocratic, and absolutist institutions and organizations as the natural state of the world. They did not argue for the absolute freedom of the individual outside of any constraining rules. For them, human activity was still subject to certain types of social arrangements that followed a historical necessity.

Inspired by Kant's thesis of human freedom, which argued that there is no evidence to disprove man's absolute freedom or capacity to resist external domination, thinkers at the end of the 18th century addressed how human freedoms were constrained by social institutions. Thinkers like Fichte, Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel argued that those institutions that constrain human freedom and subject the individual to fear and prejudice insult human dignity and deny the individual his autonomy. But they attempted to formulate universal laws, which in turn led to deterministic social and political arrangements. Marx, for example, put humanity at the mercy of historical and institutional necessity.

The contemporary theory of false necessity attempts to realize this idea in its entirety, and to escape the limitations of liberal and Marxist theories. It aims to realize social plasticity by decoupling human freedom from any necessary social rules or historical trajectory. The theory recognizes the need for social rules, but also affirms the human potential to transcend them. Humanity need not be constrained by any structure.

Development and content

The development of the theory is credited to philosopher and politician Roberto Mangabeira Unger. His main book on the thesis, False Necessity: Anti-necessitarian social theory in the service of radical democracy, was first published in 1987 by Cambridge University Press, and reissued in 2004 by Verso with a new 124 page introduction, and a new appendix, "Five theses on the relation of religion to politics, illustrated by allusions to Brazilian experience." [4]

The theory of false necessity attempts to understand humans and human history without making its theorists objects of a law-giving fate. It rejects the assumption that certain and necessary laws of organization and change govern the social, political, and economic institutions of human activity and thereby limit human freedom. It holds that the problem with traditional deep structure theory, such as Marxism, is that it couples the distinction of deep structure and routine practice with both indivisible types of social organization, and deep seated constraints and developmental laws. The theory rejects the constraints and focuses on how human behavior is shaped by the deep structures of these institutions, and how they can be remade at will, either in whole or in part. The aim is to rescue social theory and recreate the project of self-affirmation and society. [1]

Rather than "enabling constraint" or "universal structure", the theory advocates "structure-denying structures"—that is, structures that enable their own dissolution and remaking. Since these structures normally constrain human activity, this would increase freedom. [5]

Sources of entrapment and emancipation

The problem of false necessity arises due to the failure of transformative practice to realize its stated aim. This can take form in three different scenarios: [6]

Unger points to mass politics as a means to counter oligarchy and group identity. If these forms are only disturbed and not destroyed, democracy is limited and becomes a quarrel about forms of power and seizing advantage. Likewise, enlarged economic rationality provides another source of emancipation by shifting economic and social relations in the ability to constantly innovate and renew. [6]

Radical project

The theory of false necessity develops the idea that the organization of society is made and can be remade—people can rebel against the worlds they have built; they can interrupt their rebellions and establish themselves in any of those worlds. By emphasizing the disembodiment of institutional and social structures, the theory provides a basis to explain societies without using necessitarian thought or predetermined institutional arrangements. [1]

At the extreme, the theory of false necessity criticizes and thus unifies strands of the radical tradition. It frees leftist and liberal ideals from institutional fetishism, and emancipates modernist ideals from structural fetishism. The theory further detaches the radical commitment from utopian claims and provides a theoretical basis for transformative action. [7] That transformative action, Unger believes, does not have to be a complete overhaul or total revolution, but rather is "a piecemeal but cumulative change in the organization of society". [8] The key to the project, in the words of one critic, "is to complete the rebellion against the naturalistic fallacy (that is, the confusion of accident with essence and contingency with necessity) and to effect an irrevocable emancipation from false necessity". [9]

Thinkers and opinions

Contemporary[ when? ] political thinkers and philosophers have developed and advocated the theory of false necessity. Roberto Mangabeira Unger has employed the theory in developing social, political, and economic alternatives, [10] [11] [12] [13] as well as in his political activism and appointments in Brazilian politics. [14] [15] Richard Rorty compared the theory's move toward greater liberalism with Jürgen Habermas, and called it a powerful alternative to the postmodern "School of Resentment". [16] Other thinkers have said the theory is "a challenge that the social disciplines can ignore only at their peril". [17] Bernard Yack wrote that it contributed to "a new left Kantian approach to the problem of realizing human freedom in our social institutions". [18]

See also

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roberto Mangabeira Unger</span> Brazilian philosopher and politician

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cui Zhiyuan</span> Chinese economist and philosopher (1963–)

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Articles in social and political philosophy include:

<i>Passion: An Essay on Personality</i> Book by Roberto Mangabeira Unger

Passion: An Essay on Personality is a philosophical inquiry into human nature by Brazilian philosopher and politician Roberto Mangabeira Unger. The book explores the individual and his relation to society, asking how one comes to an understanding of self and others. Unger here sees the root human predicament as the need to establish oneself as a unique individual in the world but at the same time to find commonality and solidarity with others. This exploration is grounded in what Unger calls a modernist image of the human being as one who lives in context but is not bound by context.

Empowered democracy is a form of social-democratic arrangements developed by Brazilian philosopher and politician Roberto Mangabeira Unger, who first published his theories in 1987. Theorized in response to the repressiveness and rigidity of contemporary liberal democratic society, the theory of empowered democracy envisions a more open and more plastic set of social institutions through which individuals and groups can interact, propose change, and effectively empower themselves to transform social, economic, and political structures. The key strategy is to combine freedom of commerce and governance at the local level with the ability of political parties at the central level to promote radical social experiments that would bring about decisive change in social and political institutions.

<i>Knowledge and Politics</i> Book by Roberto Mangabeira Unger

Knowledge and Politics is a 1975 book by philosopher and politician Roberto Mangabeira Unger. In it, Unger criticizes classical liberal doctrine, which originated with European social theorists in the mid-17th century and continues to exercise a tight grip over contemporary thought, as an untenable system of ideas, resulting in contradictions in solving the problems that liberal doctrine itself identifies as fundamental to human experience. Liberal doctrine, according to Unger, is an ideological prison-house that condemns people living under its spell to lives of resignation and disintegration. In its place, Unger proposes an alternative to liberal doctrine that he calls the "theory of organic groups," elements of which he finds emergent in partial form in the welfare-corporate state and the socialist state. The theory of organic groups, Unger contends, offers a way to overcome the divisions in human experience that make liberalism fatally flawed. The theory of organic groups shows how to revise society so that all people can live in a way that is more hospitable to the flourishing of human nature as it is developing in history, particularly in allowing people to integrate their private and social natures, achieving a wholeness in life that has previously been limited to the experience of a small elite of geniuses and visionaries.

<i>The Critical Legal Studies Movement</i>

The Critical Legal Studies Movement is a book by the philosopher and politician Roberto Mangabeira Unger. First published in 1983 as an article in the Harvard Law Review, published in book form in 1986, and reissued with a new introduction in 2015, The Critical Legal Studies Movement is a principal document of the American critical legal studies movement that supplied the book with its title. In the book, Unger argues that law and legal thought offers unrealized possibilities for the self-construction of a more democratic society, and that many lawyers and legal theorists have uncritically surrendered to constraints that undermine their ability to make use of law's transformative potential. Unger explains how the critical legal studies movement has refined and reformulated the major themes of leftist and progressive legal theorists, namely the critique of formalism and objectivism in legal doctrine, and the purely instrumental use of legal practice and doctrine to advance leftist aims, and in doing so, has identified elements of a constructive program for the reconstruction of society.

<i>What Should Legal Analysis Become?</i> 1996 book by Roberto Mangabeira Unger

What Should Legal Analysis Become? is a book by philosopher and politician Roberto Mangabeira Unger. First published in 1996, the book germinated from lectures Unger gave at Yale Law School, Columbia Law School, and the London School of Economics. In the book, Unger argues that in order to transform society to be more radically democratic, it is necessary to penetrate the specialized professions so that we can talk about, and imagine, institutions effectively. Unger focuses on the legal profession in this book, setting forth a vision of law as "institutional imagination." He presents a program for changing the nature of the legal profession so that less power is vested in legal professionals and institutions, and legal analysis is reoriented to be more egalitarian and advance more effectively the democratic project.

<i>The Religion of the Future</i>

The Religion of the Future is a book by the philosopher and politician Roberto Mangabeira Unger. In the book, he argues that humanity is in need of a religious revolution that dispenses with the concept of God and elements of the supernatural, a revolution that expands individual and collective human empowerment by fostering a condition he calls "deep freedom"—a life of creativity, risk, experiment, and meaningful personal connection—protected by structure-revising social and political structures of an empowered democracy hospitable to the context-breaking capacities inherent in human life.

<i>Democracy Realized</i> 1998 book by Roberto Mangabeira Unger

Democracy Realized: The Progressive Alternative is a 1998 book by philosopher and politician Roberto Mangabeira Unger. In the book, Unger sets forth a program of "democratic experimentalism" that challenges and defies the neoliberal consensus that there are few alternatives for the progressive reform of democratic and market structures.

<i>The Self Awakened</i>

The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound is a 2007 book by philosopher and politician Roberto Mangabeira Unger. In the book, Unger sets forth a theory of human nature, a philosophical view of time, nature and reality, and a proposal for changes to social and political institutions so that they best nourish the context-transcending quality that Unger sees at the core of human existence. Written in a prophetic and poetic manner that drew comparison with the work of Whitman and Emerson, and delving into issues of humankind's existential predicament in a manner that one critic found evocative of Sartre, The Self Awakened also serves as a summation of many of the core principles of Unger's work.

<i>Law in Modern Society</i>

Law in Modern Society: Toward a Criticism of Social Theory is a 1976 book by philosopher and politician Roberto Mangabeira Unger. In the book, Unger uses the rise and decline of the rule of law as a vehicle to explore certain problems in social theory. According to Unger, problems that were central concerns of classical social theorists like Marx, Durkheim, and Weber—the problems of explanation, order, and modernity—remain unsolved. Unger contends that the failure of classical social theory to solve these dilemmas can be traced to the way in which it asserted its independence from the ancient political philosophers, namely in its denial of a supra-historical human nature and in its insistence upon the contrast of fact and value. Unger argues that a radical reorientation of social theory is needed to solve the problems it faces. "To carry out its own program," Unger writes, "social theory must destroy itself." The rise and decline of the rule of law, and the dilemmas of social theory, converge in the need to be able to compare and criticize different forms of society, in order to be able to more effectively submit the organization of society to the human will.

<i>Politics: A Work in Constructive Social Theory</i>

Politics: A Work in Constructive Social Theory is a 1987 book by Brazilian philosopher and politician Roberto Mangabeira Unger. In the book, Unger sets out a theory of society as artifact, attempting to complete what he describes as an unfinished revolution, begun by classic social theories such as Marxism, against the naturalistic premise in the understanding of human life and society. Politics was published in three volumes: False Necessity: Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy, the longest volume, is an explanatory and programmatic argument of how society might be transformed to be more in keeping with the context-smashing potential of the human imagination; Social Theory: Its Situation and Its Task, is a "critical introduction" that delves into issues of social science underpinning Unger's project; and Plasticity Into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success, is a collection of three historical essays illuminating the theoretical points Unger advanced in the first two volumes. In 1997, an abridged, one-volume edition of Politics was issued as Politics, The Central Texts, edited by Zhiyuan Cui.

<i>The Left Alternative</i> 2009 book by Roberto Mangabeira Unger

The Left Alternative is a 2009 book by philosopher and politician Roberto Mangabeira Unger. In the book, Unger identifies problems with contemporary leftism and proposes a way to achieve the goals that he believes should be central to the progressive cause: inclusive economic growth through the heating up of politics and democratizing the market economy, a relentless process of institutional innovation that depends less upon crisis for change, and depends more on shortening the distance between context-preserving and context-transforming moves. The Left Alternative was first published in 2006 as What Should the Left Propose?

References

  1. 1 2 3 Unger, Robero Mangabeira, False necessity: anti-necessitarian social theory in the service of radical democracy: from Politics, a work in constructive social theory (London: Verso, 2004), xvii.
  2. ↑ See Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. 1987. Social Theory: Its Situation and Its Task. Politics 2. New York: Verso; Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. 1987. False Necessity: Anti-necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy. Politics, a Work in Constructive Social Theory. London: Verso; Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. 1987. Plasticity into Power: Comparative-historical Studies of the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  3. ↑ This background is drawn from Ian Shapiro, "Review: Constructing Politics," Political Theory 17, no. 3 (1989): 475-482, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Social Theory: Its Situation and its Task, Politics 2 (New York: Verso, 1987), Bernard Yack, The longing for total revolution: philosophic sources of social discontent from Rousseau to Marx and Nietzsche (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1986), Bernard Yack, "Review: Toward a Free Marketplace of Social Institutions: Roberto Unger's 'Super-Liberal' Theory of Emancipation," Harvard Law Review 101, no. 8 (June 1, 1988): 1961-1977.
  4. ↑ Unger, Roberto Mangabeira, False necessity: anti-necessitarian social theory in the service of radical democracy: from Politics, a work in constructive social theory, second edition (London: Verso, 2004).
  5. ↑ Collins, Hugh. 1987. "Roberto Unger and the Critical Legal Studies Movement." Journal of Law and Society 14.
  6. 1 2 Unger, Roberto Mangabeira, Social Theory: Its Situation and its Task, Politics 2 (New York: Verso, 1987), chapter 5.
  7. ↑ Unger, Roberto Mangabeira, Social Theory: Its Situation and its Task, Politics 2 (New York: Verso, 1987), chapter 7.
  8. ↑ Unger, Robero Mangabeira, False necessity: anti-necessitarian social theory in the service of radical democracy: from Politics, a work in constructive social theory (London: Verso, 2004), xix.
  9. ↑ Hutchinson, Allan C. "Review: A Poetic Champion Composes: Unger (Not) on Ecology and Women." The University of Toronto Law Journal 40, no. 2 (April 1, 1990): 275.
  10. ↑ Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. Democracy realized: the progressive alternative. London: Verso, 1998
  11. ↑ Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. Free trade reimagined: the world division of labor and the method of economics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007
  12. ↑ Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. The future of American progressivism: an initiative for political and economic reform. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998
  13. ↑ Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. The left alternative. London: Verso, 2009.
  14. ↑ Press, Eyal (March 1999). "The Passion of Roberto Unger". Lingua Franca. Retrieved 4 July 2011.
  15. ↑ Barrionuevo, Alexei (2008-02-02). "'Minister of Ideas' Tries to Put Brazil's Future in Focus". The New York Times . Retrieved 2008-02-02.
  16. ↑ Rorty, Richard. "Unger, Castoriadis, and the Romance of a National Future." Northwestern University Law Review 82 (1988 1987).
  17. ↑ Trubek, David M. "Radical Theory and Programmatic Thought." American Journal of Sociology 95, no. 2 (1989): 447.
  18. ↑ Yack, Bernard. "Review: Toward a Free Marketplace of Social Institutions: Roberto Unger's 'Super-Liberal' Theory of Emancipation." Harvard Law Review 101, no. 8 (June 1, 1988): 1973.

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