Word: unger
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...tones as strong as those of the Communist Manifesto, Unger implores...
...Unger here is at the precipice of his analysis. Liberal thought and its revisions are in ruins below him--he looks out toward a new kind of society. But he has caught himself in his own trap: because the general can never accurately describe a particular, he can construct no clear vision of what should come about. The rudiments of his new theory, as formulated, is open to pretty much the same attacks he levels at Marxism. In attempting "total" criticism, Unger launched an attack not merely upon liberalism, but upon the concept of theory itself. And it is probably...
...START on this project, Unger devotes the last chapter of Knowledge and Politics to a "theory of organic groups." He sketches a society of small, democratically-run communes. They are close-knit enough so that everyone knows the other members and has a form of "political love" for them, relating to them not in their work roles but as individuals. The inhabitants have lost all sense of pure self-interest and think only of the interests of the commune...
Each group might be defined by the occupations of its members, part of hierarchically-arranged system of communes. The task of the top commune would to insure peace and order throughout the system. Unger envisions in this system a harmony of the structure and the consciousness of its citizens...
...Unger fails to explore the characteristics of human nature or even whether it is innate. He has picked out elements of human activity like love and work and set out to make their refinement the good of society. But what if the will to dominate, an element present in society long before liberalism, persists? Here we meet the limits of knowledge against politics: the formation of a perfect world, like all man's "great endeavors on this earth, are condemned to incompleteness...