Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Collectivism

Abstract

Knowledge and Politics, by Roberto Mangabeira Unger, came out in the same year, 1975, as The Limits of Liberty by James M. Buchanan. While Buchanan attempts to ground our understanding of liberty and the role of government upon methodological individualism, Unger attacks the whole individualist body of thought that has grown up in the modern West from Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth century onward. Unger elucidates this tradition of thought and, in drawing out its background assumptions more thoroughly than was done in the last chapter, argues that individualism is in a state of crisis, similar to the one in ancient and medieval thought which led to individualism in the first place. Unger argues that individualism, taken as a whole, fails both to be internally consistent and to correspond with life as it is in fact lived. He offers an alternative to both ancient and medieval thought and modern individualism which may be regarded as collectivist, and thus a suitable adversary to Buchanan’s individualism, but which is, as we shall argue, more muddled than collectivist. In the next chapter, we shall expound the ontology of Mario Bunge and later apply his systemic world view to discuss social justice, natural rights and federalism, taking the best features from atomistic individualism and holistic collectivism, the better to have a common framework to discuss all viewpoints.