McGILL LAW JOURNAL
[Vol. 34
The Limits of Politics:
A Deep Ecological Critique of Roberto Unger
Howard Goldstein*
The author undertakes a critique of the theses
of Roberto Unger, which have as their pri-
mary purpose a critique of positivism in the
social sciences and the development of a so-
ciological anti-necessitarian theory. Although
Unger’s approach may be useful for purposes
of an institutional critique, it is less helpful
in an analysis of societal ethics, where his
theses inevitably lead to skepticism and anx-
iety. The philosophy of the “Deep Ecology”
movement responds to such deficiencies by
proposing a theory for action based on nat-
uralism, which permits a reconciliation be-
tween a critique of social institutions and a
viable ethics, while maintaining a continuity
with profound human values.
lEauteur amorge une critique des theses de
Roberto Unger, articul~es notamment autour
de la critique du positivisme dans les sciences
sociales et du drveloppement d’une th6orie
sociologique anti-drterministe. Si cette ap-
proche permet d’approfondir la critique des
institutions, il n’en va pas de m~me au ni-
veau de l’thique d’une socirt6, ofi les theses
de Unger ne peuvent que conduire au scep-
ticisme et a l’anxirt. Les points de vue ap-
portrs par le mouvement du <( Deep
Ecology > viennent rrpondre A ces lacunes en
proposant une thorie pour ‘action bas~e sur
un naturalisme, qui permet de r~eoncilier la
critique des institutions sociales et une
dthique viable, axee sur la continuit6 avec des
valeurs humaines profondes.
*LL.B., Osgoode Hall Law School, York University; M.E.S., York University; LL.M., Pending,
Osgoode Hall Law School, York University.
@McGill Law Journal 1989
Revue de droit de McGill
19891
I.
Introduction
NOTES
Since its publication last year, Roberto Mangabeira Unger’s three vol-
ume set Politics: A Work in Constructive Social Theory1 has been the subject
of a great deal of academic debate. While scholars have been unanimously
impressed by the ambitious nature of Unger’s undertaking, not all their
appraisals have been without reservation. Some critics have characterised
Unger’s theory as elitist,2 while others have charged that it betrays a mas-
culine bias. 3 Given the breadth of Politics’ theoretical vision –
the work
deals with a very broad range of issues in social and political theory, political
economy, history and philosophy –
it comes as no surprise that so many
have had so much to say about it.
Politics is a work that is difficult to characterise simply. The three books
lack a comprehensive preface which would enable the reader to see exactly
how Unger intended them to fit together. The first volume, Social Theory,
essentially consists of Unger’s critique of positivist social science and deep-
structure social theory. His criticism is that these modes of investigation
have a “built in propensity to take the existing framework of social life for
granted and thereby to lend it a semblance of necessity and authority. ‘4
Unger rejects the determinism inherent in such social theories and goes on
to develop a social theory which he feels “enables us to broaden and refine
our sense of the possible.” 5
In False Necessity Unger develops the concept of anti-necessitarian
social theory, which he introduces at the end of Social Theory. Unger offers
us his anti-necessitarian theory in order to equip our imagination for his
“program for social reconstruction.”‘6 After analysing reform cycles in both
democratic and communist settings, and showing the link between “insti-
tutional recombination” and increased “practical capability”, Unger pro-
ceeds to offer his own institutional program for empowered democracy (a
‘The three volumes that make up Politics, a Work in Constructive Social Theory [hereinafter
Politics] are: R.M. Unger, Social Theory: Its Situation and Its Task (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987) [hereinafter Social Theory]; False Necessity: Anti-Necessitarian Social
Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)
[hereinafter False Necessity]; Plasticity into Power: Comparative Historical Studies on the In-
stitutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987) [hereinafter Plasticity].
2E.g. M.S. Ball, “The City of Unger” (1987) 81 Nw. U. L.R. 625 at 641.
3Two articles which argue that Unger displays an overly masculine focus are: D. Cornell,
“Beyond Tragedy and Complacency” (1987) 81 Nw. U. L.R. 693 at 714 and C. West, “Between
Dewey and Gramsci: Ungers Emancipatory Experimentalism” (1987) 81 Nw. U. L.R. 941 at
950.
4Social Theory, supra, note 1 at 2.
5Ibid. at 3.
6False Necessity, supra, note 1 at 1.
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program which amounts to a more detailed and refined version of the in-
stitutional sketch offered in his often cited “Critical Legal Studies Move-
ment”). 7 Thus, False Necessity attempts to relate the explanatory or
theoretical points made in Social Theory to the very concrete task of in-
stitutional restructuring.
The final work in the set, Plasticity into Power, continues the investi-
gation of the relation between institutional flexibility and prosperity. Unger
romps through history (both Eastern and Western) in an attempt to show
that there can be no “tightly drawn correspondences between levels of de-
velopment of practical capability and particular institutional
arrangements.” 8
For the purposes of this comment I would like to focus on the key
methodological/epistemological point which Unger tries to make through-
out the three volumes –
that naturalism is a lie whose time to be exposed
has come, and that only an anti-necessitarian social theory can lead us
toward what he calls “empowered democracy.”
After briefly describing the concept of anti-necessitarianism (and the
related notion that Unger refers to as “false necessity”), I would like to show
how this approach is a constructive contribution to the ongoing theoretical
debate about institutional structuring. Following this, I wish to show that
the same constructive effect is not obtained when one applies an anti-
necessitarian approach to ethics and normative knowledge. My goal is to
show that the radical methodology of Unger’s social theory has value, but
it is a value limited to his theory of the flexible nature of institutions like
law and the market(s), and is not therefore as appropriately applicable to
fundamental normativity. Finally by way of a Deep Ecological critique, I
hope to show that Unger’s tacit ethical relativism is an extreme position
which hampers more than it enables.
II. Anti-Necessitarian and False Necessity
In The Use and Abuse of History,9 Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that
“[p]eople think nothing but this troublesome reality of ours is possible.”‘ 0
In many ways Nietzsche’s aversion to historical determinism captures much
of the anti-historical spirit of Politics. Nietzsche, it should be remembered,
did not think that historical inquiry was worthless, but he did feel that to
the extent to which history made persons “passive and retrospective””
7R.M. Unger, “The Critical Legal Studies Movement” (1983) 96 Har. L.R. 561.
8Plasticity, supra, note 1 at 1.
9F Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957).
0lbid. at 67.
“Ibid. at 49.
1989]
NOTES
(read: fatalistic), it hampered human possibility. This is very much Unger’s
position as well.
By looking back at the historic failures of diverse cultures –
from the
Mamluks to the Dutch 12 –
to mobilize and innovate in crucial situations,
Unger seeks to persuade us of the value of institutional openness to change
(what he refers to as “plasticity”). This is the sense in which history is
constructive: it allows us to see why past losers lost. Where Unger views
history as an impediment though is with respect to what he calls “mythical
history”.’ 3 It is mythical history, for instance, that informs us that
“[d]emocracies have never survived and cannot persist without [free] mar-
kets.”’14 Unger is not pleased by this kind of description. He feels that it
unnecessarily restricts possibility by the inappropriately authoritative tone
of its narrative. This, then, is the negative sense of history: when a sound
or unsound account of what was attempts to circumscribe what can be.
The history that Unger advocates is a fluid non-deterministic one. He
denounces formative contexts “that delude us into thinking that society and
history have a script.”’15 The history that Unger defends is a history without
a script; a history that is perpetually “up for grabs”. 16 “History really is
surprising”’17 he writes, attempting to counter the conservative, determin-
istic approach to historiography which dominates our culture.
On the basis of this fluid, possibility-filled notion of history, Unger
arrives at his anti-necessitarian social theory. Such a theory holds that though
particular frameworks and institutional schemes often seduce us into taking
them as necessary, such is not the case. Anti-necessitarian theory reminds
us that there are innumerable combinations and hybrids of frameworks and
institutions which could, at any moment, serve as viable alternatives to
existing structures.
Anti-necessitarian social theory, like many modern and so-called post-
modern theories, asserts that society is an artifact rather than the expression
of an underlying natural order. As Unger puts it, “[n]o one has ever taken
the idea of society as artifact to the hilt.’ 8 This is his project or, as he
12Plasticity, supra, note 1, is filled with numerous examinations of cultural successes and
failures. The examination of the Dutch is at 132ff and that of the Mamluks is at 162ff.
13The two predominant passages which deal with Ungers notion of “mythical history” are
both in False Necessity, supra, note 1, at 174ff and 211ff.
14False Necessity, supra, note 1 at 212.
“sSocial Theory, supra, note 1 at 207.
16False Necessity, supra, note I at 1.
17Social Theory, supra, note I at 5.
88Ibid. at 1.
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frames it negatively, “the point of this book is to … take the antinaturalistic
idea of society to the extreme.”‘ 19
Unger postulates a world of only minimal constraints; a world in which
we are bound, for the most part, only by our imaginations. So long as we
do not dupe ourselves into the superstition of false necessity –
the mistaking
of “a particular formative context of social life for the inherent psycholog-
ical, organizational and economic imperatives of society” 20 –
history, and
all the prosperity that accompanies it, can be ours.
III. False Necessity and Institutional Structure
In 1982 the government of Canada, purportedly acting in the best in-
terests of all Canadians, entrenched the Canadian Charter of Rights and
Freedoms.21 Just why a group of modem social planners, faced with the task
of taking a “post-industrial” society into the twenty-first century, would
resort to a late 18th century prototype bill of rights (albeit an entrenched
one) is hard to fathom. R.A. Macdonald explains that the reason the Charter
was accepted with so few reservations was that it was seen as the “natural”
conclusion to the evolution of protected rights. As he put it at the time:
[I]t is as if the Charter represents the final synthesis in the inevitable
progression (in respect of the protection of human rights) from customary
origin, to contractual formulation, to judicial recognition, to legislative enun-
ciation to constitutional entrenchment.22
The phrase “inevitable progression” is the key to understanding why
such an arguably historically outdated approach to social ordering enjoyed
such enormous appeal. Committed as we are to a world-view of incremental
change, directed towards the ultimate control of institutional excesses,
through, ironically enough, institutional devices, it is not surprising that we
greeted the Charters arrival with open arms. The Charter had an air of
naturalness about it; it seemed like the next logical step in our necessity –
laden march towards institutional perfection.
But why in 1982 was the quality of the debate about possible forms of
institutional structure (particularly legal structure) so narrow and musty? It
is here that Unger’s social theory is most helpful. Unger wishes to alert us
to the fact that some social contexts are more imaginatively constraining
191bid. at 86.
20R. Unger, Passion: An Essay on Human Personality (New York: Free Press, 1984) at 14.
21Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982, being
Schedule B of the Canada Act 1982 (U.K.), 1982, c. 11 [hereinafter Charter].
22R.A. MacDonald, “Postscript and Prelude-The Jurisprudence of the Charter: Eight Theses”
(1982) 4 Sup. Ct L. Rev. 321 at 322.
1989]
NOTES
than others. Clearly Canada, of the late 20th century, is such a politically
undynamic context.
Unger refers to relatively stable social orders as “frozen politics”. 23 He
defines politics as being more than just a battle over the allocation of goods.
As he describes it:
Politics means conflict over the mastery and uses of governmental power.
But it also means struggle over the resources and arrangements that set the
basic terms of our practical and passionate relations. Preeminent among these
arrangements is the formative institutional and imaginative context of social
life.24
Politics, for Unger then, is about struggles for practical power, but it is also
about struggles over our most personal aspirations and senses of possibility.
This is Politics’ strongest insight, that the more entrenched a context
becomes, the less contingent it appears, and thus the more natural it seems.
Unger’s radical project involves a disentrenching of our formative context
or framework. It involves the exposing of all matters communal to political
conflict. Its goal is to increase both the quantity and quality of public debate
over every aspect of our communal relations. As our government prepares
to make decisions that will have a tremendous impact on Canada for years
to come (a free trade agreement with the U.S. and a billion dollar submarine
project being two noteworthy examples), one has to wonder where the sig-
nificant discussion is. Where are the competing alternative pictures of the
world?
For Unger there is no necessary institutional scheme – no arrangement
of economic and political institutions is necessarily superior to all others.
Unger finds both Liberals and Marxists oblivious to this message. In his
view, Marxists are no less guilty of succumbing to false necessity with respect
to the organization of economic and political institutions than Liberals. As
he describes it:
Liberals and Marxists differ only in how they propose to correct the defects
of the market system: by combining it with alternative forms of allocation
(planned social democracy) or by reducing it to a peripheral role. 25
Unger finds the old ideological frameworks lacking, primarily because
of the relatively constricting nature of those contexts. It is the closed nature
of existing contexts that needs to be attacked and opened up to political
conflict, as Unger feels that personal empowerment increases directly in
relation to the openness of a cultural context. By urging us to confront the
23False Necessity, supra, note 1 at 42.
24Social Theory, supra, note 1 at 145.
25False Necessity, supra, note 1 at 197.
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limitations of our cultural assumptions, Unger hopes we will enrich our
collective sense of possibility and ultimately become “architects … rather
than … puppets, of the social worlds in which we live.”’26
Unger’s application of anti-necessitarian theory to institutional orga-
nization is an important contribution to social theory. By means of Unger’s
theory we come to see that no particular institutional scheme need be re-
ligiously adhered to. Thoroughgoing debunkings of historical determinism
are very rarely taken seriously when considering institutional restructuring.
Unger’s call for an imaginative, genuinely democratic politics is a good one,
and we as Canadians would do well to heed it.
IV. False Necessity and Values
Whereas an anti-necessitarian approach to institutional arrangement
can be shown to be of great benefit, the benefits of such a theory are much
less clear for normative insight. Unger begins his look at normative com-
mitment by asserting that the traditional separation in ethics, of the de-
scriptive and the prescriptive, is a poor account of moral reasoning. In
Unger’s opinion:
[T]he relation between factual and normative issues is far more intimate
than any relation the mainstream of modem philosophy.., has been inclined
to allow.27
Unger’s observation that there is no unique, distinctive form of thought
or experience to which we can confidently append the label “normative
argument”, 2 8 suggests that normativity does not exist in some distinct do-
main. Culture generates values; therefore it is imperative that we construct
our imaginative frameworks well. We must then come to see that our beliefs
about ourselves and the world play a substantial role in determining the
values that we advocate. This too is a good point. But after contributing
this insight, the constructive nature of Unger’s project begins to wane.
Sprinkled sparingly throughout Politics are admissions that such a pro-
gram of perpetual conflict might lead to a situation that is worse than our
current context. Towards the end of False Necessity he points out that
“[t]here is no assurance that empowered democracy will provide adequate
safeguards”. 29 Still, at another juncture, this time at the conclusion of Social
’30 It is com-
Theory, he says that “[t]he radical project is morally perilous.
26Social Theory, supra, note I at 156.
27False Necessity, supra, note 1 at 13.
28Ibid. at 350.
29 Ibid. at 591-92.
30Social Theory, supra, note I at 214.
1989]
NOTES
ments like these which are indicative of the destructive potential inherent
in anti-necessitarian thought when it is taken to extremes.
In many ways the ethical position that Politics implies is a relativistic
one. Unger claims that there is no permanent form to normative argument;
our ethical views are as contextual and historically specific as our views
about optimal institutional structure. When one couples this observation
with Unger’s assertion “that one context is ultimately as groundless as an-
other”, 31 the result is moral despair. We are left asking ourselves if morality
can ever be given a trans-contextual grounding, or whether it is instead just
the product of our particular feelings or cultures. We have to wonder how
we can ever overcome the anxiety which accompanies such moral
uncertainty.
Unger, surprising though it may seem, does propose a way out of this
predicament. First, he acknowledges the integral role which commitment
plays in one’s acceptance of his program. Then he goes on to suggest, quite
cryptically, that through our practical activity our skepticism is dispelled.
In his words, we overcome the paralysis that accompanies groundlessness
by:
[Performing] the Humean operation of using an irresistible social engage-
ment to crowd out an irrefutable mental anxiety. (When I go out into the street,
my skepticism vanishes, driven out by involvements rather than by argu-
ments.)32
It is here that a Deep Ecological critique can help Unger, by asking just how
anti-necessitarian can we honestly be? (Particularly in respect to the for-
mulation of our values.)
Deep Ecology is a philosophical movement whose immediate origins
can be traced to the early 1970s. 33 As its adherents have multiplied it has
unfortunately become increasingly misunderstood. Essentially, Deep Ecol-
ogy is a response to the instrumental approach that we have to our world.
As environmental concern increases with each human-caused natural dis-
aster, a distinction is needed which will enable us to distinguish between
those who have a self-centered concern for the environment and those who
3’Ibid. at 212.
32False Necessity, supra, note 1 at 578.
33Since its birth in the early 1970s Deep Ecology has developed many different substreams,
each with its own particularized agenda. An introductory bibliography which would present a
nice cross section of these variations would include (in alphabetical order): M. Bookchin, The
Ecology ofFreedom: The Emergence and Dissolution ofHierarchy (Palo Alto, California: Chesh-
ire Books, 1982), W. Devall & G. Sessions, Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered (Salt
Lake City: Gibb-Smith, 1985), N. Evernden, The NaturalAlien: Humankind and Environment
(Toronto: U. ofT. Press, 1985), and A. Naess, “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Eco-
logical Movement. A Summary” (1973) 16 Inquiry 95.
McGILL LAW JOURNAL
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care about nature. It is here that a deep/shallow ecological dichotomy is
useful. Whereas shallow ecology involves “treating merely the symptoms
themselves not the causes (of our deteriorated environment), through tech-
nological fixes such as pollution-control devices”, 34 Deep Ecology, in con-
trast, involves “a process of ever-deeper questioning of ourselves, the
assumptions of the dominant world-view in our culture, and the meaning
and truth of our reality. ’35
Deep Ecology goes beyond a shallow, anthropocentric approach to our
environmental problems. In doing so it concludes that our dying world is
as much a result of a deficient account of ontology as inappropriate tech-
nology. Shallow ecologists, on the other hand, do not want to question our
current understandings of being (or Being); they only wish to make our
water more drinkable. As Arne Naess, one of the Deep Ecology movement’s
leading figures has noted, highlighting the real agenda of shallow ecology,
the “[flight against pollution and resource depletion[‘s] [c]entral objective
[is] the health and affluence of people in the developed countries.
’36
According to Naess, the Kantian principle of individual integrity –
never to use a person solely as a means – must be extended to all living
things. What results is “the attribution of intrinsic value to all living
beings”. 37 This normative commitment to the value of all life –
not just
human life –
is a cornerstone of the Deep Ecological world view.
By virtue of their appreciation of the mutual interdependence of all
life, Deep Ecologists have discovered a solid base from which they can derive
sound social policy with a minimum of obligatory Liberal skepticism. For
Deep Ecologists, the possibility of a radical project being “morally perilous”
is non-existent, for that would involve a fundamental contradiction. For
these planetary-minded persons the only project that can be truly radical
(that is, a project that goes to the root) is one that recognizes and affirms
the values of life and diversity.
Roberto Unger would have us believe that our moral world views are
all equally groundless. But, oddly enough, he does favour some of those
views over others. How then does he come to distinguish amongst different
normative approaches? Apparently “engagement” and “involvement” help
us to find our way. But what are “engagement” and “involvement”, if not
activities designed to help us fulfill our mutual needs? Surely Unger cannot
34D. Rothenberg, “A Platform of Deep Ecology” (1987) 7:3 The Environmentalist at 185,
35B. Devall & G. Sessions, supra, note 33 at 8.
36A. Naess, supra, note 33 at 95.
37A. Naess, “Identification as a Source of Deep Ecological Attitudes” in M. Tobias, ed., Deep
Ecology (San Diego: Avant Books, 1985) at 266.
1989]
NOTES
believe that all our needs are mere social constructions; surely at least some
of them express something more fundamental about us?
Perhaps Unger’s greatest deficiency is that for the sake of maintaining
theoretical consistency, he has overlooked our embodiment: the sense in
which we are rcoted in this world. An anti-necessitarian or anti-naturalistic
approach to social theory has a great deal of positive attributes. Certainly
we have to free ourselves from being trapped into accepting a particularly
narrow institutional scheme as the only possible one that would work. Deep
Ecologists would have no difficulty with such an institutional debunking
project. But when Unger’s anti-naturalism is counter-intuitively applied to
value, he parts company with eco-philosophy.
For Deep Ecology, the name anti-naturalism, in itself, suggests a theory
on a strange mission. What, one wonders, is the point of such an endeavour
to deny our embodiment and worldly location, and all the needs and
–
values which accompany it? Roberto Unger has gone to great lengths to
make basic ethical knowledge more difficult than it need be. It is almost as
though he was trying to be a sort of ethical Dadaist, trying to shock us in
order to achieve a pedagogical effect. 38
Throughout Politics Unger persistently reminds us of his thesis that all
knowledge is conditional (and the product of a specific time and place).
Initially, Deep Ecology would not disagree. Advocates of this nature-based
philosophy also believe that it is our condition that gives rise to our knowl-
edge. But they would not agree that this condition, at its deeper levels, is
as culturally varied as Unger claims it is. inger points to modem anthro-
pological research to support his claim that “[t]here [are] just too many
ways to be human”. 39
There can be no denying that a multinational corporation’s board of
directors meeting differs in many respects from a religious festival in a small
African village. But at some deeper level, are the participants of both of
these cultures really that ontologically different? Do they not both need
bread, sun, water and love? Or put another way, will the coming “greenhouse
effect”, and its consequent disruption of world agriculture, be less significant
to one culture than the other? That Unger, who in his previous book
Passion40 sketched as naturalistic a picture of human personality as one
38The reference here, of course, is to that group of early twentieth century artists (the most
noteworthy being Marcel Duchamp and Tristan Tzara), who shocked the art world with their
claims that anything (even a urinal) could be art. A good introductory overview of the move-
ment and its place in art history can be found in R. Hughes, The Shock of the New (London:
B.B.C. Books, 1980).
39Social Theory, supra, note 1 at 85.
4Supra, note 20.
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could imagine, could deny the above ontological insights, is difficult to
imagine.
A fundamental recognition that our needs as persons are umbilically
tied up with the needs of other persons, animals, and the planet itself, will,
it is true, only take us so far. Even after we agree on a more environmentally
concerned world view, debate will undoubtedly continue to rage over what
the practical implications of such a view should be; but at least we would
have a base of normative understanding from which to work, and a language
to do it in. Deep Ecology does not claim to be a panacea for world unrest,
only a more honest and sensitive approach to our “home”.
At various points in Politics Unger shows us how unimaginative he is
in respect to practical matters. He defers to economies of scale,4’ implicitly
advocates modified free markets, 42 and defines prosperity (apparently ma-
terial prosperity at that) as “an aim in itself … .”43 He baldly exposes his
commitment to materialism when he writes that “social plasticity brings
wealth and power to the societies and the groups that achieve it”,44 implying
that material wealth and power are desirable ends. Here too, a Deep Eco-
logical approach has an insight to offer Unger.
As E.E Schumacher wrote “no degree of prosperity could justify the
accumulation of large amounts of highly toxic substances.” 45 If only for self-
interested reasons, Unger should consider this observation. After all, an
increase in the quantity of goods produced and distributed in a culture by
no means necessarily guarantees an increase in the quality of life, That Unger
neglects, in spelling out his own favoured institutional scheme, to show any
sensitivity to environmental quality, is a major omission.
Politics has little to say about our relation to the natural world and
when it does finally concern itself with nature, it speaks of our separation
from it. In Social Theory he writes that “[n]on-human nature remains im-
perfectly knowable and manageable because of its vast disproportion to our
selves.”‘ 46 Just what does Unger mean by “disproportion”? Does he mean
that we are somehow creatures of a different kind than non-human crea-
tures? I am inclined to think so, and this assumption is a sharp departure
from the biocentric ontological intuitions of Deep Ecologists who do not
want to draw ontological distinctions between forms of life on the planet.
4’Social Theory, supra, note 1 at 120.
42Ibid. at 160.
43False Necessity, supra, note 1 at 369.
44Plasticity, supra, note 1 at 1-2.
45E.E Schumacher, Small is Beautiful; A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (London:
Abacus, 1974) at 120.
46Supra, note 1 at 34.
1989]
NOTES
Later in Social Theory Unger describes the non-human natural world
as a “dark world”. He then goes on to say that we have a “conflict between
the longings for kinship with nature and for transcendence over nature
…. ’47 Once again, Unger’s view of the natural world is one of a realm apart
from us which we seek to either be united with or conquer. Why Unger
insists on making his description of human/nature relations one of sepa-
ration is baffling, and oddly enough makes Unger guilty of the kind of
naturalism he so detests.
Anti-naturalism (or anti-necessitarianism) is a valuable critical tool for
inspiring us to re-imagine the institutional world, but in so far as anti-
naturalism alienates us from our grounding as embodied creatures, and
throws us into a needless exercise in ethical uncertainty, it does us all a
disservice.
That value might be groundable in a new deeper explication of being,
such as that offered by the Deep Ecologists, is not to be underestimated.
Roberto Unger offers us a refreshingly irreverent approach to institutional
organization, but his unrelenting application of this approach to values, to
the point of being blatantly counter-experiential, makes his project much
less radical than he might think.
47Supra, note 1 at 214.
