The World and Us
Roberto Mangabeira Unger author
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Verso Books
Published:27th Feb '24
Should be back in stock very soon
A radical re-envisioning of the human condition
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.
A restless visionary striving to realize the highest aspirations of modernity itself -- William Connolly * New York Times *
One of the few living philosophers whose thinking has the range of the great philosophers of the past. * Times Higher Education *
Unger stakes out new discursive space that is neither simply left nor liberal, Marxist nor Lockean, anarchist nor Kantian . . . an emancipatory experimentalism toward ever-increasing democracy and individual freedom -- Cornel West
Here something new has occurred: a philosophical mind out of the Third World turning the tables, to become synoptist and seer of the First. -- Perry Anderson
What makes Unger different is his orientation toward the future rather than the past-his hopefulness. -- Richard Rorty
Unger insists on the need to refocus on what really matters, the human spirit. -- John Paul Rathbone * Financial Times *
Brazil's answer to John Stuart Mill. A political philosopher extraordinaire. * Chronicle of Higher Education *
Through a 49-year career spanning politics, law, social and political theory and philosophy, Unger has put forward a collection of searching inquiries meant to pierce the liberal mythos of necessary progress. Across dozens of books, including the recently published metaphysical tome The World and Us, the Brazilian philosopher has tried to think beyond 20th-century categories through a series of questions. -- Samuel McIlhagga * UnHerd *
The World and Us ruminates deeply while maintaining a readability often lacking in specialized, academic philosophy. Unger has written a book for the rest of us, after all. If he seeks our understanding, it's only so we might enjoy a better life ahead. -- Michael Maiello * The Washington Independent Review of Books *
ISBN: 9781804292655
Dimensions: 234mm x 153mm x 47mm
Weight: 830g
640 pages