Law In Modern Society: Toward a Criticism of Social Theory
Cover of paperback edition
of Law in Modern Society |
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| Author | Roberto Mangabeira Unger |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Law |
| Publisher | 1976 (Free Press) |
| Pages | 309 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 1322201 |
| LC Class | K370 .U54 1976 |
| Preceded by | Knowledge and Politics |
| Followed by | Passion: An Essay on Personality |
Law in Modern Society: Toward a Criticism of Social Theory is a 1976 book by philosopher and politician Roberto Mangabeira Unger. In the book, Unger uses the rise and decline of the rule of law as a vehicle to explore certain problems in social theory. According to Unger, problems that were central concerns of classical social theorists like Marx, Durkheim, and Weber—the problems of explanation, order, and modernity—remain unsolved. Unger contends that the failure of classical social theory to solve these dilemmas can be traced to the way in which it asserted its independence from the ancient political philosophers, namely in its denial of a supra-historical human nature and in its insistence upon the contrast of fact and value. Unger argues that a radical reorientation of social theory is needed to solve the problems it faces. "To carry out its own program," Unger writes, social theory must destroy itself." The rise and decline of the rule of law, and the dilemmas of social theory, converge in the need to be able to compare and criticize different forms of society, in order to be able to more effectively submit the organization of society to the human will.
Unger opens Law in Modern Society by connecting the study of law to the unsolved problems of social theory. Social theory is the tradition originating in the writings of Montesquieu and culminating with the work of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber. In Unger's view, classic social theory as represented by these thinkers is marked by an insistence on the distinction between fact and value, description and evaluation, and also by a denial of a unitary human nature. Unger contrasts classic social theory with the political philosophy of the ancients, who did not recognize as sharp a distinction between fact and value, and maintained that there is a universal human nature that exists in all times and places.
The study of law affords a vantage point from which to explore three unsolved problems of social theory, according to Unger. The first, the problem of method, is that the prevailing methodological approaches to social study are inadequate. The rationalist approach (as seen in the works of economists) and the historicist approach (which accepts the function of cause and effect but not logical entailment) both invite deterministic social explanations. Unger contends that we need a third method, one that is generalizing, and yet also open to rich historical particularity while not falling into deterministic explanations.
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