The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time: A Proposal in Natural Philosophy. By Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2014; 566 pp.; ISBN-10: 1107074061, ISBN-13: 978-1107074064 (original) (raw)

Review of Peter Unger, All the Power in the World

TLS

Peter Unger has changed his views somewhat since he wrote three famous philosophical papers -"I do not exist", "Why there are no people" and "Why there are no ordinary things" -in 1979. He now thinks not only that there are people, that he does exist and that there are ordinary things, but also that any adequate philosophy -what he calls any "humanly realistic philosophy" -must begin by acknowledging these facts. Believers in ordinary things will be relieved. However, Unger now thinks that these ordinary truths are put under pressure by what he calls the "scientiphical metaphysic" which dominates contemporary philosophy. He labels this metaphysical view "scientiphicalism", because it is neither entirely scientific nor entirely philosophical, but some unholy blend of the two. The main burden of his long new book is to launch an attack on scientiphicalism.

A Note on Roberto Unger’s Style: The Task of Normative Thought Today

2011

In any investigation, we find that possible directions and conceptions of a solution to a problem are anticipated partly from the form the problem takes. We recognize that the way in which we pose the problem is crucially relevant. Of course, at the beginning of the investigation, we only have vague directions and conceptions in hand, but it is nevertheless true that once we have formulated a problem, the formulation will structure our thinking throughout the discussion. Thus, this introduction is to keep the author well aware of such structures that constrain and enable his thought in this essay. For a student who holds an interest in society, the single most important formulation has been, is, and will be, What possible forms of social life would realize human coexistence? Alternatively, What forms of social order make people happy or happier? Or simply put, What form should society take? Thus, the problem has to do with possible conditions or forms of human happiness, and therefore, its solution will be addressed in the direction toward visions of such forms. The distinctiveness of this direction will be clearer as the discussion deepens in this essay. It might be said that since the mid-twentieth century, several theoretical approaches such as theories of justice and philosophy of law have addressed the above problem deeply enough. Thus, one may suspect the problem to be out of date. However, one of the contentions in this essay is that, in fact, they have not. They have pursued a seemingly similar, but in fact, significantly different task and problem: the justification of the existing social order by resorting to a set of master principles. A large part of the discussion in this essay is spent for criticism of this predominant tendency. However, these approaches have posed and struggled with a legitimate question: How should

Review of Roberto Unger's "The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound"

According to a remark of Sartre's, the project of man-that peculiar mix of self-consciousness and brute givenness-is to become God. [1] That remark captures the organizing motif of Roberto Unger's latest volume, which in fact repeats the Sartrean formula close to a dozen times. The divinizing project is of course impossible-in Sartre's terms, this would require that the human "for itself" be also "in itself"-and Unger would not disagree. However, we can, according to Unger, strive for something second best: to become more "god-like." This would be to exercise our agential capacities for innovation ("context-transcending spirit," Unger calls it) in ways which make us less subject to natural and social necessities-to the fatefulness of nature, culture and social organization. In a word, it would be for us to be free.

Renewing Legal Theory: History and the Unity of Legal Things

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013

This is a comprehensive, speculative, non-naturalist and historicist framework of a theory of law. I address the relationship between nature and law in general; the nature of law; the nature and taxonomy of legal things; the effect of the Enlightenment on legal theory; the relationship between science and law, and between law and history; the poverty and dangers of both positivism and natural law theory; and I address several philosophical issues that are concomitant to an understanding of law in general, including the role of the universal, the centrality of the vision of life; the relationship between life and consciousness (critiquing Nagel’s new book in the process), consciousness and history, and history and law; sacrifice; evil, and the future, among other things. I explicitly place myself in the Aristotelian/Hegelian traditions. As a subtext, I grapple with containing the systematic problem science presents to legal/political order. By laying the groundwork for a renewal of legal theory outside of the constraints of positivism and natural law the framework also lays the groundwork for a reevaluation of the role science should play in the political/legal order, and therefore of science itself. The mechanism for these reevaluations is enabled by the specific grounding of the theory in the findings of neuroscience. Neuroscience teaches one of two irreconcilable things: either man has no free will; or there is a scope of free and real capacity for the mature human to make choices, to exercise free will (within constraints). The first of these two conclusions must be wrong because it contradicts not only experimental findings about man, but it contradicts the experience of every mature human. It is a philosophical conclusion based on Enlightenment metaphysics of science. If man has no free will, there is no basis for political order, for responsibility, etc., an argument we are familiar with but fail to understand and follow to its logical and historical implications, as now I do. I begin my argument with a theory of consciousness and freedom.

On Duverger and "Laws of Politics

Erik Weber argues that my claims about “laws of politics,” although grounded in an “impressive” “evidence base,” cannot be taken as such on two grounds. A key concept is unspecified and an adequate “strategy” is lacking. Here I respond to Professor Weber.