In The World and Us, Roberto Mangabeira Unger sets out to reinvent philosophy. His central theme is our transcendence - everything in our existence points beyond itself - and its relation to our finitude: everything that surrounds us, and we ourselves, are flawed and ephemeral. He asks how we can live so that we die only once, instead of dying many small deaths; how we can breathe new life and new meaning into the revolutionary movement that has aroused humanity for the last three centuries, but that is now weakened and disoriented; and how we can make sense of ourselves without claiming for human beings a miraculous exception to the general regime of nature. For Unger, philosophy must be the mind on fire, insisting on our prerogative to speak to what matters most.
From this perspective, he redefines each of the traditional parts of philosophy, from ontology and epistemology to ethics and politics. He turns moral philosophy into an exploration of the contest between the two most powerful contemporary moral visions: an ethic of self-fashioning and non-conformity, and an ethic of human connection and responsibility. And he turns political philosophy into a program of deep freedom, showing how to democratize the market economy, energize democratic politics, and give the individual worker and citizen the means to flourish amid permanent innovation.
By:
Roberto Mangabeira Unger
Imprint: Verso Books
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 153mm,
Spine: 47mm
Weight: 830g
ISBN: 9781804292655
ISBN 10: 1804292656
Pages: 640
Publication Date: 27 February 2024
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Prologue: Finitude and Transcendence in Human Experience Our Dreamlike and Vertiginous Existence Philosophy This Book: Its Scope, Plan, and Character 1. Ontology (as Natural Philosophy and Social Theory) The Study of What the World Is Like The Rejection of Metaphysical Rationalism The Philosophy of Deep Structure and Its Afterlife in Natural Science The Philosophy of the Timeless One Temporal Naturalism Mathematics: The World Emptied Out of Time and Phenomenal Particularity Causality and Time No Kingdom within a Kingdom: Deep Structure, Dualism, and Temporal Naturalism The Human Difference, without Dualism The Message of This Ontology 2. Epistemology (as Inquiry into Inquiry) Epistemology and Its Discontents The Denial of Finitude and Transcendence in Epistemology The Mistakes of Epistemology Further Examined The Agent of Inquiry and His Capabilities The Idea of a Program of Inquiry The First Crisis: Fundamental Physics and Its Denial of Time, Change, and Causality The Second Crisis: The Social Sciences and the Suppression of Structural Vision The Intellectual Division of Labor and the Marriage of Method to Subject Matter Implications for Natural Science Implications for the Social Sciences, the Normative Public Disciplines, and the Humanities Genius Reimagined A Coda to Epistemology: Art 3. The Human Condition: Becoming More Human by Becoming More Godlike The Hinge of Philosophy Impenetrable Darkness: The Amazing Situation Finitude: Groundlessness Finitude: Mortality Transcendence: Desire Transcendence: Imagination Transcendence: Refusal of Belittlement Finitude and Transcendence as Connecting Threads in the Human Condition Finitude and Transcendence Reinterpreted: The Semitic Monotheisms and Their Narrative of Redemption Finitude and Transcendence Reinterpreted: The Idea of One and the Timeless One The Contradictory Requirements for Sustaining a Self 4. Ethics (as Clarity about the Conduct of Life) Ethics and Its Work The Christian Faith and the Conduct of Life The Secular Romance The School Philosophy Finding a Point of Departure in a Contemporary Contest of Moral Visions 5. Two Ways To Die Only Once The Ethic of Self-fashioning and Non-conformity The Ethic of Connection and Responsibility 6. The Unresolved Contest Between the Ethics of Self-Fashioning and of Connection The Dust of History: The United States, China, and the Two Ethics The Twin Functional Imperatives of the Advanced Societies The Impossible Synthesis between the Two Ethics A Duality in Our Moral Consciousness 7. Politics (as Struggle over the Future of Society) Finitude and Transcendence in Politics Our Moment in History and World Revolution The Theory of Regimes: Imagining the Structure of a Society Sources of a Direction A Direction: From Shallow Equality to Deep Freedom A Direction: Deep Freedom and Practical Empowerment in History A Direction: Deep Freedom and the Contradictions of the Self The Haven and the Storm 8. Politics: The Program of Deep Freedom The Idea of an Institutional Program Democratizing the Market Economy Deepening Democracy Cohesion and Freedom: The Self-Organization of Civil Society Education: Capability and Prophecy Deep Freedom and World Order Epilogue Index of Proper Names and Works Index of Subjects
Roberto Mangabeira Unger is one of the leading philosophers and social thinkers in the world today. He is active in Brazilian public life and has served twice as Brazil's Minister of Strategic Affairs, charged with developing initiatives that signal a direction for his country. A polymath, he has written widely in legal, political, economic, and moral theory as well as in natural philosophy. Among his major writings are Passion: An Essay on Personality, a modernist view of human nature; False Necessity, a radical alternative to Marxist social theory; and, most recently, The Knowledge Economy, a study of the unrealized potential of the new vanguard of production. The World and Us is the capstone of his lifework.
Reviews for The World and Us
Unger insists on the need to refocus on what really matters, the human spirit. -- John Paul Rathbone * Financial Times * A restless visionary. -- William Connolly * New York Times * One of the few living philosophers whose thinking has the range of the great philosophers of the past. * Times Higher Education * Brazil's answer to John Stuart Mill. A political philosopher extraordinaire. * Chronicle of Higher Education *
