World and Us

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.

• Prologue: Finitude and Transcendence in Human ExperienceOur Dreamlike and Vertiginous ExistencePhilosophyThis Book: Its Scope, Plan, and Character1. Ontology (as Natural Philosophy and Social Theory)The Study of What the World Is LikeThe Rejection of Metaphysical RationalismThe Philosophy of Deep Structure and Its Afterlife in Natural ScienceThe Philosophy of the Timeless OneTemporal NaturalismMathematics: The World Emptied Out of Time and Phenomenal ParticularityCausality and TimeNo Kingdom within a Kingdom: Deep Structure, Dualism, and Temporal NaturalismThe Human Difference, without DualismThe Message of This Ontology2. Epistemology (as Inquiry into Inquiry)Epistemology and Its DiscontentsThe Denial of Finitude and Transcendence in EpistemologyThe Mistakes of Epistemology Further ExaminedThe Agent of Inquiry and His CapabilitiesThe Idea of a Program of InquiryThe First Crisis: Fundamental Physics and Its Denial of Time, Change, and CausalityThe Second Crisis: The Social Sciences and the Suppression of Structural VisionThe Intellectual Division of Labor and the Marriage of Method to Subject MatterImplications for Natural ScienceImplications for the Social Sciences, the Normative Public Disciplines, and the HumanitiesGenius ReimaginedA Coda to Epistemology: Art3. The Human Condition: Becoming MoreHuman by Becoming More GodlikeThe Hinge of PhilosophyImpenetrable Darkness: The Amazing SituationFinitude: GroundlessnessFinitude: MortalityTranscendence: DesireTranscendence: ImaginationTranscendence: Refusal of BelittlementFinitude and Transcendence as Connecting Threads in the Human ConditionFinitude and Transcendence Reinterpreted: The Semitic Monotheisms and Their Narrative of RedemptionFinitude and Transcendence Reinterpreted: The Idea of One and the Timeless OneThe Contradictory Requirements for Sustaining a Self4. Ethics (as Clarity about the Conduct of Life)Ethics and Its WorkThe Christian Faith and the Conduct of LifeThe Secular RomanceThe School PhilosophyFinding a Point of Departure in a Contemporary Contest of Moral Visions5. Two Ways To Die Only OnceThe Ethic of Self-fashioning and Non-conformityThe Ethic of Connection and Responsibility6. The Unresolved Contest Between the Ethics of Self-Fashioning and of ConnectionThe Dust of History: The United States, China, and the Two EthicsThe Twin Functional Imperatives of the Advanced SocietiesThe Impossible Synthesis between the Two EthicsA Duality in Our Moral Consciousness7. Politics (as Struggle over the Future of Society)Finitude and Transcendence in PoliticsOur Moment in History and World RevolutionThe Theory of Regimes: Imagining the Structure of a SocietySources of a DirectionA Direction: From Shallow Equality to Deep FreedomA Direction: Deep Freedom and Practical Empowerment in HistoryA Direction: Deep Freedom and the Contradictions of the SelfThe Haven and the Storm8. Politics: The Program of Deep FreedomThe Idea of an Institutional ProgramDemocratizing the Market EconomyDeepening DemocracyCohesion and Freedom: The Self-Organization of Civil SocietyEducation: Capability and ProphecyDeep Freedom and World OrderEpilogueIndex of Proper Names and WorksIndex of Subjects

A restless visionary striving to realize the highest aspirations of modernity itself