Faculty Bibliography

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.

The world does not need a world government to govern itself. Roberto Mangabeira Unger argues that there is an alternative: to build cooperation among countries to advance their shared interests. We urgently need to avert war between the United States and China, catastrophic climate change, and other global public harms. We must do so, however, in a world in which sovereign states remain in command. The opportunity for self-interested cooperation among nations is immense. Unger shows how different types of coalitions among states can seize on this opportunity and avoid the greatest dangers that we face. Unger offers a way of thinking about international relations as well as a transformative program: a realism with hope and a way to develop the international diversity that we want without the international anarchy that we fear. His ideas challenge the disillusionment and fatalism that threaten to overwhelm us.

O texto é a parte de um conteúdo conferência Conferência ministrada em 7 de dezembro de 2016 no IV Fórum Nacional de Direito e Infraestrutura, realizado pelo Instituto Brasileiro de Estudos Jurídicos da Infraestrutura (IBEJI), em parceria com o Conselho Regional de Engenharia e Agronomia do Estado de São Paulo (CREA-SP). Examinam-se as estratégias de desenvolvimento ocorridas na história do nosso país para mostrar que precisamos organizar uma nova estratégia, condição vital para resolver a questão da infraestrutura. Assim, delineia-se um método para esta nova estratégia, juntamente com a descrição das condições sociais, políticas e intelectuais para a sua criação. São propostas várias ideias, como a criação de uma “produtividade inclusiva” e a qualificação e democratização da economia em relação à produção e à oferta, aliada a uma revolução na natureza da educação. Além disso, explicam-se as qualidades necessárias a uma política de infraestrutura: agnosticismo em relação aos setores da economia, capilaridade social e fortalecimento da federação. Por fim, mas não menos importante, delineiam-se os componentes necessários para o encaminhamento de uma estratégia nacional de desenvolvimento: forte investimento público, cooperação e coordenação entre os estados e o setor privado, e o papel fundamental dos juízes para fazer o detalhamento jurídico dos modelos necessários à organização. esta nova política de infraestrutura (imaginação institucional).

Interview given by Professor Dr. Roberto Mangabeira Unger to Revista de Ciências do Estado.

The fundamental reason for the productivity slowdown in the richest part of the world is that science and technology-intensive production devoted to permanent innovation - which we call the knowledge or innovation economy - remains confined in every sector; from product design and advanced manufacturing to precision agriculture, to fringes that exclude the overwhelming maj ority of workers and businesses. The timehonoured shortcut to economic growth - conventional industry: the mass production of standardised goods and services, on the basis of rigid machines, semi-skilled labour, and extreme job specialisation, as in an oldfashioned automobile plant or steel mill - has stopped working, as one country after another has deindustrialised. Some European countries, especially Germany and Switzerland, retain a large and vital manufacturing base, which they are now struggling to convert into its more advanced knowledge-intensive equivalent. The vast majority of activity in the UK’s service economy, meanwhile, remains confined to personal care, bricks-and-mortar retail, or iqth-century-style professions and trades, such as the plumbing, electrical, and building trades, disconnected from the front line of production.

Having left the EU, the United Kingdom must embark on a national programme of self-renewal.

This essay explores the contradictory coexistence between two approaches to law that have been dominant in all major legal traditions: law as the normative order chosen by the legitimate and effective holders of power in the state and law ...

The knowledge economy is today’s road to greater and more inclusive prosperity.

Adam Smith and Karl Marx recognized that the best way to understand the economy is to study the most advanced practice of production. Today that practice is no longer conventional manufacturing: it is the radically innovative vanguard known as the knowledge economy. In every part of the production system it remains a fringe excluding the vast majority of workers and businesses. This book explores the hidden nature of the knowledge economy and its possible futures. The confinement of the knowledge economy to these insular vanguards has become a driver of economic stagnation and inequality throughout the world. Traditional mass production has stopped working as a shortcut to economic growth. But the alternative—a deepened and socially inclusive form of the knowledge economy—continues to lie beyond reach in even the richest countries. The shape of contemporary politics on both the left and the right reflects a failure to come to terms with this dilemma and to overcome it. Unger explains the knowledge economy in the truncated and confined form that it has today and proposes the way to a knowledge economy for the many: changes not just in economic institutions but also in education, culture, and politics. Just as Smith and Marx did in their time, he uses an understanding of the most advanced practice of production to rethink both economics and the economy as a whole.

Surge nas principais economias do mundo nova vanguarda da produção, a economia do conhecimento. Em cada setor da economia, porém, aparece como franja que exclui a grande maioria de trabalhadores e empresas. O resultado da exclusão é deprimir o crescimento e agravar a desigualdade. Seguindo o exemplo de Adam Smith e Karl Marx, para quem a melhor maneira de compreender o regime econômico e suas possibilidades de transformação é estudar a produção mais avançada da época, Roberto Mangabeira Unger analisa o que a economia do conhecimento é e o que ela pode vir a ser. Para Mangabeira, o aprofundamento das produção de vanguarda e sua disseminação – o vanguardismo includente ― são obras gêmeas. Juntas, têm potencial revolucionário: acelerar o crescimento, reverter a desigualdade e empoderar todos os participantes no processo produtivo. Para operar esta transformação, é preciso mudar não apenas práticas produtivas e instituições econômicas, mas também a educação, a cultura e a política. É preciso também contar com ideias que a teoria econômica estabelecida não fornece. Mangabeira esboça as grandes linhas destas alternativas de organização social e de pensamento econômico.

Critical legal studies is the most important development in progressive thinking about law of the past half century. It has inspired the practice of legal analysis as institutional imagination, exploring, with the materials of the law, alternatives for society. The Critical Legal Studies Movement was written as the manifesto of the movement by its central figure. This new edition includes a revised version of the original text, preceded by an extended essay in which its author discusses what is happening now and what should happen next in legal thought.

Cosmology is in crisis. The more we discover, the more puzzling the universe appears to be. How and why are the laws of nature what they are? A philosopher and a physicist, world-renowned for their radical ideas in their fields, argue for a revolution. To keep cosmology scientific, we must replace the old view in which the universe is governed by immutable laws by a new one in which laws evolve. Then we can hope to explain them. The revolution that Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin propose relies on three central ideas. There is only one universe at a time. Time is real: everything in the structure and regularities of nature changes sooner or later. Mathematics, which has trouble with time, is not the oracle of nature and the prophet of science; it is simply a tool with great power and immense limitations. The argument is readily accessible to non-scientists as well as to the physicists and cosmologists whom it challenges.

How can we live in such a way that we die only once? How can we organize a society that gives us a better chance to be fully alive? How can we reinvent religion so that it liberates us instead of consoling us? These questions stand at the center of Roberto Mangabeira Unger’s The Religion of the Future. Both a book about religion and a religious work in its own right, it proposes the content of a religion that can survive faith in a transcendent God and in life after death. According to this religion—the religion of the future—human beings can be more human by becoming more godlike, not just later, in another life or another time, but right now, on Earth and in their own lives. Unger begins by facing the irreparable flaws in the human condition: our mortality, groundlessness, and insatiability. He goes on to discuss the conflicting approaches to existence that have dominated the last 2,500 years of the history of religion. Turning next to the religious revolution that we now require, he explores the political ideal of this revolution, an idea of deep freedom. And he develops its moral vision, focused on a refusal to squander life. The Religion of the Future advances Unger’s philosophical program: a philosophy for which history is open, the new can happen, and belittlement need not be our fate.

The left will only renew itself, argues Roberto Mangabeira Unger, if it gives up on equality and champions instead the cause of ‘deep freedom’ and permanent institutional innovation.

España es hoy un país sin un proyecto que aproveche su potencial. Existe un proyecto dominante en España: se trata de un proyecto, articulado por las elites y por los partidos, que no sirve, en la medida en que no establece una relación íntima con las características más importantes y fecundas de la sociedad española. España, un país relativamente pequeño, se está convirtiendo, debido a la escasa imaginación de los que detentan el poder, en un país simplemente pequeño. Es un país que, al dejar de hablar con voz propia dentro de Europa, está perdiendo contacto con las fuentes de su propia originalidad. España podría ser un gran país. Se lo permitiría un proyecto alternativo que aprovechara, tanto desde el punto de vista práctico como moral, aquello que distingue a su sociedad y a su cultura. Lejos de contradecir su compromiso con Europa, ese proyecto ofrecería una alternativa a todos los europeos y permitiría a los españoles transformar en fuerza contemporánea la personalidad histórica de la nación.

Este artigo, transcrição de uma palestra, analisa e critica a tradição constitucional brasileira como resultado de duas tradições maiores: o constitucionalismo protodemocrátcio dos Estados Unidos e o weimarismo tardio, característico das constituições europeias do século XX, com sua dedicação a direitos econômicos e sociais, desfalcados de instrumentos de efetivação, e com sua ambivalência em relação ao poder político. Argumenta que as ideias institucionais destas tradições não servem para aprofundar a democracia nas sociedades contemporâneas. Denuncia a falta de realismo e de imaginação em nossa doutrinação constitucional, quase toda ela dedicada à imitação e à mistura das constituições adotadas nos países do Atlântico Norte. Propõe outro rumo. Exemplifica a prática do pensamento jurídico como exercício da imaginação institucional. This article, the transcript of a lecture, analyzes and criticizes the Brazilian constitutional traditional as the outcome of two major traditions: the proto- democratic constitutionalism of the United States and the constitutionalism of Europe in the twentieth century (“belated Weimarism”), with its confused devotion to social and economic rights, unsupported by institutions capable of implementing them, and with its ambivalence to political power. It argues that the institutional ideas of these traditions do not help deepen democracy in contemporary societies. It denounces the lack of realism and of imagination in Brazilian constitutional thinking, almost invariably attached to the imitation and to the blending of the constitutions adopted in North-Atlantic countries. It proposes another way. It exemplifies the practice of legal thought as an exercise of institutional imagination.

Free Trade Reimagined begins with a sustained criticism of the heart of the emerging world economy, the theory and practice of free trade. Roberto Mangabeira Unger does not, however, defend protectionism against free trade. Instead, he attacks and revises the terms on which the traditional debate between free traders and protectionists has been joined. Unger’s intervention in this major contemporary debate serves as a point of departure for a proposal to rethink the basic ideas with which we explain economic activity. He suggests, by example as well as by theory, a way of understanding contemporary economies that is both more realistic and more revealing of hidden possibilities for transformation than are the established forms of economics. One message of the book is that we need not choose between accepting and rejecting globalization; we can have a different globalization. Traditional free trade doctrine rests on shaky empirical and theoretical ground. Unger takes a new approach to show when international trade is likely to be useful or harmful to the socially inclusive economic growth that every nation wants. Another message is that the movement of people and ideas is more important than the movement of things and money, and that freedom to change the institutions defining a market economy is just as important as freedom to exchange goods on the basis of those institutions. Free Trade Reimagined ranges broadly within and outside economics. Presenting technical issues in plain language, it appeals to the general reader. It puts a disciplined imagination in the service of rebellion against the dictatorship of no alternatives that characterizes life and thought today.

In what kind of world and for what kind of thought is time real, history open, and novelty possible? In what kind of world and for what kind of thought does it make sense for a human being to look for trouble rather than to stay out of trouble? In this long-awaited work of general philosophy, Roberto Mangabeira Unger proposes a radical reorientation of established ideas about nature, mind, society, politics, and religion. He shows how we have to change our beliefs if we are to succeed in doing justice to our most distinctive contemporary experiences, discoveries, and ideals. The Self Awakened mobilizes the resources of several philosophical traditions, and develops the unrecognized revolutionary implications of the most influential of these traditions today—pragmatism. Avoiding technical jargon and needless complication, this book makes a case for philosophy as the supreme activity of the intellect at war, insisting on its power to deal with what matters most.

A manifesto that engages a vital question: where should the Left go from here? Confronting the major debates in the world today—about national alternatives and alternative globalizations—Unger shows that there is a set of initiatives that we can begin to develop with the materials at hand. Fully updated with a new preface, The Left Alternative equips the Left with the ideas that it needs to overthrow the dictatorship of no alternatives.

Europeans must reject the choice between a humane belittlement of their focus in peace and a savage broadening of their sights in war. They must take it as a principle in every area of society and culture to shorten the distance between the ordinary moves made within the established social and cultural order and the extraordinary moves by which pieces of this order may be changed. They must develop a politics that moves outside the two historical categories of a mobilising politics of energised majorities, led or misled by the marriage of leaders and catastrophes into the reconstruction of social life, and a demobilised politics of deals and disenchantment.

Aus dem Amerikanischen von Matthias Wolf. Ein dringlicher Appell an den Gestaltungswillen einer in politischer Duldungsstarre verharrenden Linken: Wenn es um nationale Alleingänge oder globale Lösungen für aktuelle Probleme geht, betonen die Politiker gern, dass ihnen aufgrund der wirtschaftlichen Gegebenheiten die Hände gebunden seien. Der Politikwissenschaftler Robert Mangabeira Unger weist nach, dass Alternativen oft erst gar nicht gedacht werden und beschreibt in seinem Buch, wie es im Dialog mit den Bürgern gelingen kann, neue Ideen zu entwickeln und neue Handlungsspielräume zu eröffnen. Vor allem den europäischen Sozialdemokraten wirft er vor, unter dem vermeintlichen Diktat des Sachzwangs linke Positionen in einem unheilvollen Wettbewerb mit ihren konservativen und neoliberalen Konkurrenten aufgegeben zu haben.

What Should the Left Propose? is a manifesto that engages a vital issue of our time: the program for which Leftists should stand, now that the ideological proposals of the past two hundred years are exhausted. Confronting the major debates in the world today — about national alternatives and alternative globalizations — Unger shows that there is a set of national and global alternatives that we can begin to develop with the materials at hand: opportunities available to us only if we learn to recognize them. These alternatives would, over time, vastly enhance our practical capabilities. They would also give greater reality to the central teaching of democracy: faith in the constructive genius of ordinary men and women. For Unger, a programmatic argument is not a blueprint; it marks a direction and explores next steps. He explores the form this direction could take in the European social democracies, in the United States, in the developing countries, and in the contest over the reform of globalization. He shows how the Left in power can do more than use compensatory redistribution to sugarcoat economic inequality, and how it can make good on its ideals without reaffirming a discredited commitment to governmental control of the economy.

False necessity is the central work in the three-volume series Politics. It presents both a way of explaining society and a program for changing it. The explanation develops a radical alternative to Marxism, showing how we can account for established social arrangements without denying their contingency or our freedom. The program offers a progressive alternative to the now-dominant ideological conceptions of neoliberalism and social democracy: a set of institutional innovations that would democratize markets, deepen democracy and empower individuals.

Plasticity into Power works out, through historical examples, a major theme of Unger’s work—the relation between institutional and organizational flexibility and the development of our collective ability to produce or to destroy. The message of the book is that the practical success of a society depends on its capacity for permanent innovation. Certain practices and institutions—the history and content of which Unger explores—can nurture this capacity. Unger pursues this topic through wide-ranging historical inquiries into the European escape from the recurring crises that foreclosed political and economic breakthroughs in the great empires of the past; the invention of revolutionary approaches to the governmental protection of wealth; and the social conditions of military success, viewed as sources of insight into the social foundations of economic growth. Throughout, Plasticity into Power exemplifies a conception of the relation between theory and history that remains faithful to the surprising, open-ended quality of lived experience.

Social Theory: Its Situation and Its Task is an introduction both to Unger’s ideas and to the major debates of contemporary social, political and economic thought. Unger shows how the failures of social science and the criticism of such ambitious, deterministic theories as Marxism offer materials for an alternative practice of social understanding. This alternative severs, once and for all, the link between the explanation of social arrangements and the vindication of their necessity. Unger argues that the disappointment of so many liberal and socialist hopes coexists with unforeseen opportunities to advance progressive commitments. To seize such opportunities, however, we must rethink many of our basic beliefs about society about what it is and what it can become. Social Theory: Its Situation and Its Task shows that what at first seems a circumstance of intellectual and political paralysis turns out to be rich in unrecognized transformative possibility.

O direito e o futuro da democracia é ao mesmo tempo uma aplicação do pensamento de Roberto Mangabeira Unger a uma das mais importantes disciplinas sociais – o direito – e um esforço para converter o pensamento social e jurídico em instrumento de imaginação institucional. O livro parte da necessidade de superar o campo restrito do debate profissional, onde muitas vezes decisões essenciais para a sociedade são travadas apenas por especialistas. “O conflito sobre as condições básicas da vida em sociedade, tendo abandonado as antigas arenas da política e da filosofia, vive sob o disfarce e constrangimento nos debates mais estreitos e obscuros das profissões especializadas”, afirma Mangabeira na apresentação do livro. Principalmente no direito, que é “o lugar em que um ideal de civilização assume forma institucional detalhada”, segundo o autor. Por isso mesmo, o texto tem uma linguagem clara e não é destinado apenas aos profissionais da área. Neste livro, já publicado em muitos países, Mangabeira mostra que o pensamento jurídico de nosso tempo vem seguindo um rumo de idealização do direito, que deve ser interrompido e substituído. Em nome do esclarecimento das idéias, e em nome do aprofundamento da democracia. O autor aponta, então, para outro modo de encarar e de usar o direito e para a possibilidade de tomar as pequenas variações e os experimentos involuntários que proliferam no mundo atual como pontos de partida para transformações mais abrangentes. Para isso, mostra Mangabeira, é imprescindível uma reorientação radical da cultura jurídica. Escrito originalmente em inglês e traduzido com a consultoria do autor, o livro, embora de natureza mais abrangente, é oportuno no momento em que o país tem uma discussão estreita na grande imprensa entre a proposta do governo e as posições de setores dos magistrados em torno da Reforma do Judiciário.

A segunda via: presente e futuro do Brasil reúne os principais escritos programáticos de Roberto Mangabeira Unger sobre o Brasil, além de um ensaio inédito em que o autor explicita e aprofunda os temas centrais do livro. Antes de serem discutidos os rumos do país, é necessário que se inicie uma discussão aprofundada e se reflita sobre o tipo de debate que podemos e devemos ter.Este livro contribui de forma decisiva para formar no Brasil as bases para uma discussão que combine o consenso necessário com o contraste sadio de posições sobre o que nos falta. Consenso sobre estabilidade monetária, equilíbrio fiscal e integração na economia mundial. Contraste sobre a melhor maneira de combinar estas conquistas com a retomada do crescimento econômico, a ampliação das oportunidades e a capacitação dos brasileiros.A segunda via versa justamente sobre esta combinação de consensos e contrastes. Em linguagem simples, prática e polêmica, dá o ponto de partida para o debate que ainda falta - mas começa a haver - no Brasil.

In Democracy Realized Unger gives detailed content to a progressive and practical alternative to both neoliberalism and institutionally conservative social democracy. His efforts to inspire and develop this alternative have drawn increasing attention throughout the world as well as in his native Brazil.

The former president of Mexico and a Harvard law professor argue that the global capital market is not the savior it was said to be. The recent world financial crisis demonstrates that new strategies are needed.

Insisting that North Atlantic neoliberalism is the only way turns people into enemies of the market because they see markets as enemies of the people.

Returning to the most fundamental goal of democracy - the realization of the potential of all citizens - and drawing on the best of the American progressive tradition, the authors challenge the widely held assumption that it’s impossible to stimulate economic growth and at the same time guarantee opportunity and a minimum of resources for all citizens., Seizing the quintessentially American idea that everything is possible, Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Cornel West argue that we can use it to reinvent our public institutions. While they propose specific reforms in business, taxation, social security, and education, their program is an image of American political and civic life as a vital, evolving, and hopeful arena for solving our collective problems.

This paper introduces a distinction between two understandings of the pragmatic tradition: domesticated and radicalized pragmatism. The main difference between these two views concerns the feasibility and moral legitimacy of a radical critique of an existing practice such as science, politics, and so on. It is argued that domesticated pragmatism, with its emphasis on local rather than global perspective, has led to trivialization and degeneration of self-reflective critique. Without rejecting pragmatism as such, this paper urges a reinterpretation of this tradition so as to make room for more thorough forms of critique of both science and social practice.