| Abstract [eng] |
This work is a twofold effort to present and to analyze the interrelated conceptions of False Neccesity and Empowered Democracy, both being the pieces of a lifetime work of a Brazilian philosopher and politician Roberto Mangabeira Unger. A closer look to these pieces defines the purpose of this work, which is to find out whether Empowered Democracy is capable of defeating the illusion of False Neccesity, the latter being a suggestion that we have already reached the limits for the best possible regimes to be established, which for that reason should not be replaced by any other alternative. At the same time, the actual democratic regimes struggle a great deal with a crisis and a so-called democracy deficit throughout the world, which is inseparable from the problem of reconciliation of individual and collective wills and, most of all, a repressive nature of neoliberal and welfare democracies towards their citizens, them being both: individuals and groups. The main question, arising from this actuality, is the following: is Empowered Democracy actually not repressive at all, thus, it is an appropriate alternative to all the regimes that entrenched the illusion of False Neccesity? To put the conclusions simply, Unger fails to invent irrepresive democratic regime, as his institutional framework for radical individual emancipation still requires constraints and compulsion for the individual and for the collective forms of life such as ethnical, cultural communities and even family. All of these themes and ideas are covered by three major parts of this work, first of them being dedicated to Unger’s conception of False Neccesity: preconditions of its existence, its formation, content and effects for political practice as well as for political theory. It is also stated that a condition of False Neccesity could, according to Unger, be defeated, which leads directly to the second part, entirely set to present a project of Empowered Democracy, imagined and constructed by Roberto Mangabeira Unger himself. The primary and secondary goals, along with the content of this project, are analyzed and discussed in this second part, having in mind that Empowered Democracy is devised to overcome the problems caused by the illusion of False Neccesity. Finally, the last part of the paper is designed to identify and highlight the major limitations of Empowered Democracy as well as to recognize some of the unanswered questions and to express a generalized opinion on the project. |
