False necessity: Difference between revisions

'''False necessity,''' or "anti-necessitarian social theory," is a contemporary social theory that champions the plasticity of society and the unlimited potential for transformation. It is foremost a critique of necessitarian thought in conventional social theory, which holds that parts of the social order are necessary and the result of the natural flow of history, e.g. [[liberalism]] or [[Marxism]]. It develops a full attack on the idea that human societies must be organized in a certain way, e.g. [[liberal democracy]], and that human activity will adhere to certain forms, e.g. [[homo economicus]]. As a theory, ''false necessity'' embraces deep-structure analysis to understand socio-political arrangements, but discards the tendency to assemble indivisible categories and to create law-like explanations. In action, it aims to liberates human activity from necessary arrangements and limitations, and to open up a world without constraints where the possible becomes actual.▼

Contemporary political thinkers and philosophers have championed ''false necessity.'' [[Roberto Mangabeira Unger]] has employed the theory most forcefully 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|month=March|year=1999}}</ref><ref>{{cite news | last = Barrionuevo | first = Alexei | title = ‘Minister of Ideas’ Tries to Put Brazil's Future in Focus | publisher = [[The New York Times]] | date = 2008-02-02 | url = http://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 towards greater liberalism with [[Jürgen Habermas]], and called it a powerful alternative to the postmodern "[[School of Resentment]]."<ref>Rorty, Richard. “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 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: 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.</ref>▼

==Background==▼

Modern social theory is haunted by a tension between the realization of human freedom and the necessity of a social context.<ref>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.▼

</ref> 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 context as an enabling constraint--a necessary imposition that limited activity in some spheres in order to expand it in others. (Good examples of this might be language, which limits certain expressions while also providing the very conduit by which to make them; or traffic laws, which compel us to drive on one side of the road but make possible the ability to travel more freely than if we were constantly assailed by oncoming traffic.) In the socio-political realm, these early liberal thinkers argued that we agree to surrender our 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 constraint that other individuals might impose upon us. In this way, context is always seen as a means of increasing freedom rather than rescinding it. ▼

These early [[Age of Enlightenment#Important intellectuals|Enlightenment thinkers]] did much to break down the notion that religious, aristocratic, or absolutist institutions and organizations represented the natural state of the world. What these thinkers did not do, was confirm the absolute freedom of the individual as liberated from any type of constraining context. They had shown that there are necessary contexts placed upon our selves and our activity, and while this might embody a rejection of aristocratic privilege or monarchical domination, it did not liberate humanity from social necessity. Furthermore, such ideas only worked to entrench domination by giving license for some to rule and others to be ruled. ▼

Inspired by [[Kant]]'s thesis of [[Kant#Idea of freedom|human freedom]], which argued that there is no evidence to disprove our absolute freedom or capacity to resist external domination, thinkers at the end of the eighteenth 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. They thus sought to transform the external constraints of social institutions into something that would embody freedom from necessity. They sought to overcome the dehumanization of the world--one that stripped us of our humanity--caused by our failure to realize our own humanity and the essence of the human being. ▼

Coupled with these Enlightenment thinkers' ideal of human freedom was the aspiration for universal law. Thinkers aimed to liberate humanity from the chains of social necessity, and to also put in place the structures to allow each to realize his own freedom. But they worked to do so deterministically. Marx, for example, for all his efforts of human liberation from domination, still put us at the mercy of historical and institutional necessity. Although modern social theory was born out of the rejection of naturalism and social necessity, the rebellion was only half complete. ▼