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False necessity

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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,[1][2][3][4] as well as in his political activism and appointments in Brazilian politics.[5][6] 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."[7] Other thinkers have said the theory is "a challenge that the social disciplines can ignore only at their peril."[8] Bernard Yack wrote that it contributed to "a new left Kantian approach to the problem of realizing human freedom in our social institutions."[9]


Background

Modern social theory is haunted by a tension between the realization of human freedom and the necessity of a social context.[10] 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 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 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 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, 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.

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 placticity by decoupling human freedom from any necessary social context or historical trajectory. The theory recognizes the need for social context, but also affirms the human potential to transcend any context. We need not be constrained by any structure.

The Theory of False Necessity

The theory in its full expression is credited to Harvard law faculty and social theorist 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."[11]

The theory of false necessity develops an understanding of human beings and our history without making ourselves the object 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 points out 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. By embracing the former and discarding the later, the theory focuses on an analysis of how human behavior is shaped by the deep structures of these institutions, and that 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.[12]

Rather than "enabling constraint" or "universal structure," the theory advocates structure-denying structures--that is, structures that enable their own dissolution and remaking. This would increase our freedom by loosening the hold on the activities that those structures govern.

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:[13]

  • the ideals fought for (democracy, decentralization, technical coordination, etc.) result in the development of rigid institutions
  • an oligarchy effect in which groups and rulers clash at the summit of power and drum up popular support
  • the survival effect in which there is a fear of disturbance of contemporary arrangements.

Unger points to mass politics as a means to counter oligarchy and group identity. However, as long as these forms are only disturbed and not destroyed, democracy is limited and becomes a quarrel about forms of power and seizing advantage advantage. Likewise, enlarged economic rationality provides another source of emancipation by shifting economic and social relations in the ability to constantly innovate and renew.[13]

The Radical Project

The theory of false necessity carries to the hilt the idea that the organization of society is made and can be remade—we can rebel against the worlds we have built; we can interrupt our rebellions and establish ourselves in any of those worlds. By emphasizing the disembodiment of institutional and social structures, the theory provides a basis to explain ourselves and our world without surrendering to the illusions of necessitarian thought and predetermined institutional arrangements.[12]

At the extreme, the theory of false necessity contributes to the radical project by criticizing and thus unifying 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 real transformative action.[14] 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."[15] 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."[16]

See also

References

  1. ^ Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. Democracy realized: the progressive alternative. London: Verso, 1998
  2. ^ Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. Free trade reimagined: the world division of labor and the method of economics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007
  3. ^ Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. The future of American progressivism: an initiative for political and economic reform. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998
  4. ^ Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. The left alternative. London: Verso, 2009.
  5. ^ Press, Eyal (1999). "The Passion of Roberto Unger". Lingua Franca. Retrieved 4 July 2011. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  6. ^ Barrionuevo, Alexei (2008-02-02). "'Minister of Ideas' Tries to Put Brazil's Future in Focus". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-02-02.
  7. ^ Rorty, Richard. “Unger, Castoriadis, and the Romance of a National Future.” Northwestern University Law Review 82 (1988 1987).
  8. ^ Trubek, David M. “Radical Theory and Programmatic Thought.” American Journal of Sociology 95, no. 2 (1989): 447.
  9. ^ 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.
  10. ^ 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.
  11. ^ 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).
  12. ^ a b 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.
  13. ^ a b Unger, Roberto Mangabeira, Social Theory: Its Situation and its Task, Politics 2 (New York: Verso, 1987), chapter 5.
  14. ^ Unger, Roberto Mangabeira, Social Theory: Its Situation and its Task, Politics 2 (New York: Verso, 1987), chapter 7.
  15. ^ 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.
  16. ^ 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.

Further reading

  • Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. False necessity: anti-necessitarian social theory in the service of radical democracy: from Politics, a work in constructive social theory. London: Verso, 2004.
  • Unger, Roberto Mangabeira. Social Theory: Its Situation and its Task. Politics 2. New York: Verso, 1987.
  • Yack, Bernard. The longing for total revolution: philosophic sources of social discontent from Rousseau to Marx and Nietzsche. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1986.
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