Books in Brief: Knowledge and Politics

Knowledge and Politics, by Roberto Mangabeira Unger (Free Press, 336 pp., $12.95). This is an imposing book—in more senses than one. Mr. Unger’s erudition is vast and, I think, genuine. He does not hide it. He also has an incisive mind, in some ways original. His sentences are clear. I think that many of his critical insights are correct. Despite all these virtues, I found his book hard to read and grew increasingly irritated as I read on. The level of abstraction is so relentlessly high that the reader ultimately feels dizzy and disoriented, as though suffering from oxygen deprivation. There are too few illustrations or historical descriptions to suggest the concrete and specific meaning, the difference that all these abstract propositions make. Consequently, one is left indifferent. Yet the topic is intended to be historical: a critique of liberal political theory from what is perhaps best described as an idiosyncratic Hegelian viewpoint. The great effort demanded of the reader to learn the author’s language—a language which has its angular charms—is not justifiable, unless that language is used to talk about things we could not talk about, or talk about as well, in the less abstract language in which we normally communicate. These things never are revealed. I found no things previously unsaid—if in less Hegelian ways—nor new solutions to the problems so laboriously restated. Knowledge and Politics probably helped the author clarify important matters of social philosophy in his mind. But I don’t think he helps the reader, who either already knows what the author is trying to tell him, or cannot follow him. Perhaps the last sentence of the book should be quoted (to be fair, the work as a whole is not quite as pretentious): “But our days pass and we still do not know you fully: Why then do you remain silent? Speak, God.” Seldom has Deus absconditus been addressed with so much chutzpah.

EH

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Ernest van den Haag

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Knowledge and Politics, by Roberto Mangabeira Unger (Free Press, 336 pp., $12.95). This is an imposing book—in more senses than one. Mr. Unger’s erudition is vast and, I think, genuine. He does not hide it. He also has an incisive mind, in some ways original. His sentences are clear. I think that many of his critical insights are correct. Despite all these virtues, I found his book hard to read and grew increasingly irritated as I read on. The level of abstraction is so relentlessly high that the reader ultimately feels dizzy and disoriented, as though suffering from oxygen deprivation. There are too few illustrations or historical descriptions to suggest the concrete and specific meaning, the difference that all these abstract propositions make. Consequently, one is left indifferent. Yet the topic is intended to be historical: a critique of liberal political theory from what is perhaps best described as an idiosyncratic Hegelian viewpoint. The great effort demanded of the reader to learn the author’s language—a language which has its angular charms—is not justifiable, unless that language is used to talk about things we could not talk about, or talk about as well, in the less abstract language in which we normally communicate. These things never are revealed. I found no things previously unsaid—if in less Hegelian ways—nor new solutions to the problems so laboriously restated. Knowledge and Politics probably helped the author clarify important matters of social philosophy in his mind. But I don’t think he helps the reader, who either already knows what the author is trying to tell him, or cannot follow him. Perhaps the last sentence of the book should be quoted (to be fair, the work as a whole is not quite as pretentious): “But our days pass and we still do not know you fully: Why then do you remain silent? Speak, God.” Seldom has Deus absconditus been addressed with so much chutzpah.