False necessity: Difference between revisions

''False necessity'' uses [[Structuralism|structural analysis]] to understand socio-politicalsociopolitical 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.<ref>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.</ref>

Modern social theory contains a tension between the realization of human freedom and the necessity of social rules.<ref>This background is drawn from Ian Shapiro, “Review"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"Review: Toward a Free Marketplace of Social Institutions: Roberto Unger’sUnger's ‘Super'Super-Liberal’Liberal' Theory of Emancipation,”" Harvard Law Review 101, no. 8 (June 1, 1988): 1961-1977.

</ref> [[Classical_liberalismClassical liberalism#Intellectual_sourcesIntellectual sources|Liberal political theorists]] of the seventeenth century, such as [[Hobbes]] and [[John Locke|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. (For example, traffic laws compel us to drive on one side of the road but allow us to travel more freely than if we were constantly assailed by oncoming traffic.) In the socio-politicalsociopolitical realm, these early liberal thinkers argued that wecitizens agree to surrender ourtheir 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 [[Age of Enlightenment#Important intellectuals|Enlightenment thinkers]] opposed existing religious, aristocratic, and absolutist institutions and organizations as the natural state of the world. However, theyThey 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 [[Immanuel Kant|Kant]]'s thesis of [[Immanuel Kant#IdeaThe idea of freedom|human freedom]], which argued that there is no evidence to disprove ourman's absolute freedom or capacity to resist external domination, thinkers at the end of the eighteenth18th century addressed how human freedoms were constrained by social institutions. Thinkers like [[Fichte]], [[Schiller]], [[Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling|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 theory of ''false necessity'' attempts to understand humans and human history without making ourselvesits thetheorists objectobjects 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.<ref name= "fn xvii"/>

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 ourhuman activitiesactivity, this would increase our freedom.<ref>Collins, Hugh. 1987. "Roberto Unger and the Critical Legal Studies Movement." Journal of Law and Society 14.</ref>

Unger points to mass politics as a means to counter oligarchy and group identity. However, ifIf 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.<ref name="Social Theory 5"/>

==The radicalRadical project==

The theory of ''false necessity'' develops the idea that the organization of society is made and can be remade — weremade—people can rebel against the worlds wethey have built; wethey can interrupt ourtheir rebellions and establish ourselvesthemselves in any of those worlds. By emphasizing the disembodiment of institutional and social structures, the theory provides a basis to explain ourselves and our worldsocieties without using necessitarian thought or predetermined institutional arrangements.<ref name= "fn xvii"/>

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.<ref>Unger, Roberto Mangabeira, ''Social Theory: Its Situation and its Task, Politics 2'' (New York: Verso, 1987), chapter 7.</ref> 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.".<ref>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.</ref> 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.".<ref>Hutchinson, Allan C. “Review"Review: A Poetic Champion Composes: Unger (Not) on Ecology and Women.”" The University of Toronto Law Journal 40, no. 2 (April 1, 1990): 275.</ref>

Contemporary{{when|date=September 2014}} 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,<ref>Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. ''Democracy realized: the progressive alternative.'' London: Verso, 1998</ref><ref>Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. ''Free trade reimagined: the world division of labor and the method of economics.'' Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007</ref><ref>Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. ''The future of American progressivism: an initiative for political and economic reform.'' Boston: Beacon Press, 1998</ref><ref>Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. ''The left alternative.'' London: Verso, 2009.</ref> as well as in his political activism and appointments in Brazilian politics.<ref>{{cite web|last=Press|first=Eyal|title=The Passion of Roberto Unger|url=http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9903/unger.html|publisher=Lingua Franca|accessdate=4 July 2011|date=March 1999}}</ref><ref>{{cite news | last = Barrionuevo | first = Alexei | title = ‘Minister'Minister of Ideas’Ideas' Tries to Put Brazil's Future in Focus | publisherwork = [[The New York Times]] | date = 2008-02-02 | url = https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/world/americas/02unger.html?_r=2&ref=world&oref=slogin&oref=slogin | accessdate = 2008-02-02}}</ref> [[Richard Rorty]] compared the theory's move towardstoward greater liberalism with [[Jürgen Habermas]], and called it a powerful alternative to the postmodern "[[School of Resentment]].".<ref>Rorty, Richard. “Unger"Unger, Castoriadis, and the Romance of a National Future.”" ''Northwestern University Law Review'' 82 (1988 1987).</ref> Other thinkers have said the theory is "a challenge that the social disciplines can ignore only at their peril.".<ref>Trubek, David M. “Radical"Radical Theory and Programmatic Thought.”" ''American Journal of Sociology'' 95, no. 2 (1989): 447.</ref> [[Bernard Yack]] wrote that it contributed to "a new left Kantian approach to the problem of realizing human freedom in our social institutions.".<ref>Yack, Bernard. “Review"Review: Toward a Free Marketplace of Social Institutions: Roberto Unger’sUnger's ‘Super'Super-Liberal’Liberal' Theory of Emancipation.”" ''Harvard Law Review'' 101, no. 8 (June 1, 1988): 1973.</ref>