Roberto Mangabeira Unger is one of the leading philosophers and social thinkers in the world today. He is active in Brazilian public life and has served twice as Brazil's Minister of Strategic Affairs, charged with developing initiatives that signal a direction for his country. A polymath, he has written widely in legal, political, economic, and moral theory as well as in natural philosophy. Among his major writings are Passion: An Essay on Personality, a modernist view of human nature; False Necessity, a radical alternative to Marxist social theory; and, most recently, The Knowledge Economy, a study of the unrealized potential of the new vanguard of production. The World and Us is the capstone of his lifework.

Prologue: Finitude and Transcendence in Human Experience
Our Dreamlike and Vertiginous Existence
Philosophy
This Book: Its Scope, Plan, and Character

1. Ontology (as Natural Philosophy and Social Theory)
The Study of What the World Is Like
The Rejection of Metaphysical Rationalism
The Philosophy of Deep Structure and Its Afterlife in Natural Science
The Philosophy of the Timeless One
Temporal Naturalism
Mathematics: The World Emptied Out of Time and Phenomenal Particularity
Causality and Time
No Kingdom within a Kingdom: Deep Structure, Dualism, and Temporal Naturalism
The Human Difference, without Dualism
The Message of This Ontology

2. Epistemology (as Inquiry into Inquiry)
Epistemology and Its Discontents
The Denial of Finitude and Transcendence in Epistemology
The Mistakes of Epistemology Further Examined
The Agent of Inquiry and His Capabilities
The Idea of a Program of Inquiry
The First Crisis: Fundamental Physics and Its Denial of Time, Change, and Causality
The Second Crisis: The Social Sciences and the Suppression of Structural Vision
The Intellectual Division of Labor and the Marriage of Method to Subject Matter
Implications for Natural Science
Implications for the Social Sciences, the Normative Public Disciplines, and the Humanities
Genius Reimagined
A Coda to Epistemology: Art

3. The Human Condition: Becoming More
Human by Becoming More Godlike
The Hinge of Philosophy
Impenetrable Darkness: The Amazing Situation
Finitude: Groundlessness
Finitude: Mortality
Transcendence: Desire
Transcendence: Imagination
Transcendence: Refusal of Belittlement
Finitude and Transcendence as Connecting Threads in the Human Condition
Finitude and Transcendence Reinterpreted: The Semitic Monotheisms and Their Narrative of Redemption
Finitude and Transcendence Reinterpreted: The Idea of One and the Timeless One
The Contradictory Requirements for Sustaining a Self

4. Ethics (as Clarity about the Conduct of Life)
Ethics and Its Work
The Christian Faith and the Conduct of Life
The Secular Romance
The School Philosophy
Finding a Point of Departure in a Contemporary Contest of Moral Visions

5. Two Ways To Die Only Once
The Ethic of Self-fashioning and Non-conformity
The Ethic of Connection and Responsibility

6. The Unresolved Contest Between the Ethics of Self-Fashioning and of Connection
The Dust of History: The United States, China, and the Two Ethics
The Twin Functional Imperatives of the Advanced Societies
The Impossible Synthesis between the Two Ethics
A Duality in Our Moral Consciousness

7. Politics (as Struggle over the Future of Society)
Finitude and Transcendence in Politics
Our Moment in History and World Revolution
The Theory of Regimes: Imagining the Structure of a Society
Sources of a Direction
A Direction: From Shallow Equality to Deep Freedom
A Direction: Deep Freedom and Practical Empowerment in History
A Direction: Deep Freedom and the Contradictions of the Self
The Haven and the Storm

8. Politics: The Program of Deep Freedom
The Idea of an Institutional Program
Democratizing the Market Economy
Deepening Democracy
Cohesion and Freedom: The Self-Organization of Civil Society
Education: Capability and Prophecy
Deep Freedom and World Order

Epilogue

Index of Proper Names and Works
Index of Subjects