“There is no permanent canon of forms of normative argument. Our ways of arguing about ideals are, like our other practices, the mutable products of a specific history and the expressions of our ideas about society and thought.”

Source: False Necessityː Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy (1987), p. 361

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There is no permanent canon of forms of normative argument. Our ways of arguing about ideals are, like our other practi…" by Roberto Mangabeira Unger?

Roberto Mangabeira Unger94

Brazilian philosopher and politician 1947

Related quotes

“[About Jews] By nature we are like all other human beings, yet our people is unlike others, because our life is different, our history is different, our teacher is the Exile.”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

Idishe Bibliotek, i. Pref., 1890. Alle Verk, xii. 7.

“Zazen practice is the direct expression of our true nature. Strictly speaking, for a human being, there is no other practice than this practice; there is no other way of life than this way of life.”

Shunryu Suzuki book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Pt. 1 : Right Practice "The Marrow of Zen", p. 29
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (1973)

“The efforts must be shared between those who welcome and those who wish to integrate. The acceptance of the basic rules of our society, of our democratic ideas, of our ways of life and our cultural plurality are a precondition which cannot be argued against.”

Henri of Luxembourg (1955) Grand Duke (head of state) of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg

Sécher: déi, déi empfänken an also doheem sinn, an déi, déi sech wëllen integréieren, musse gewëllt sinn, openeen zouzegouen. Dobäi muss all Säit d’Basisregelen vun eiser Gesellschaft, eis demokratesch Idealer, eis Liewensaart an eise kulturelle Pluralismus bereet sinn ze respektéieren. Ouni dat geet et net. <br class="br">Speech on National Day, http://www.monarchie.lu/fr/actualites/discours/2014/06/23062014-fetnat/index.html (23 June 2014) <br class="br">Luxembourg, Immigration

“To me, when we talk about the world, we are talking about our ideas of the world. Our ideas of organisation, our different religions, our different economic systems, our ideas about it are the world.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: To me, when we talk about the world, we are talking about our ideas of the world. Our ideas of organisation, our different religions, our different economic systems, our ideas about it are the world. We are heading for a radical revision where you could say we are heading towards the end of the world, but more in the R. E. M. sense than the Revelation sense. That is what apocalypse means – revelation. I could square that with the end of the world, a revelation, a new way of looking at things, something that completely radicalises our notions of the where we were, when we were, what we were, something like that would constitute an end to the world in the kind of abstract – yet very real sense – that I am talking about. A change in the language, a change in the thinking, a change in the music. It wouldn’t take much – one big scientific idea, or artistic idea, one good book, one good painting – who knows – we are at a critical point where the ideas are coming thicker and faster and stranger and stranger than they ever were before. They are realised at a greater speed, everything has become very fluid.

“I like politics and history and am happiest when having a good argument about ideas.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie We Should All Be Feminists

Source: We Should All Be Feminists

“One way to clarify the origin and character, if not the justification, of the ideal inspiring our programmatic institutional ideas is to say that our program arises from the generalization of aims broadly shared by the great secular doctrines of emancipation of the recent past—both liberal and socialist—and by the social theories that supported them. At the heart of each of these doctrines lay the belief that the weakening of social divisions and hierarchies would reveal deeper commonalities and liberate productive and creative powers. The theoretical and practical consequences of this belief were drastically constricted by dogmatic assumptions about the possible forms of social change and their possible institutional expressions. We have attacked the second set of constraints and therefore, by implication, the first. The result is a more generalized or radicalized version of the social ideal. Our attack on these constraints has led us to rethink the content of the progressive cause.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: The Critical Legal Studies Movementː Another Time, A Greater Task (2015), p. 104-5

“We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Source: The Essays: A Selection

“That is the great thing about our movement--that these members are uniform not only in ideas, but even, the facial expression is almost the same!”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Attributed by Jack Kirby in The Forever People #3, National Periodical Publications, (June-July 1971).
Disputed

“We know that our economies attract more trade and investment when citizens are free to start a new business without paying a bribe. We know that our societies are more likely to succeed when all our people -- regardless of color, or class, or creed, or sexual orientation, or gender -- are free to live and pray and love as they choose. […] And, increasingly, civil society is a source of ideas -- about everything from promoting transparency and free expression, to reversing inequality and rescuing our environment.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks at Panama Civil Society Forum (April 2015)

““Our ideas” are only partly our ideas. Most of our ideas are abbreviations or residues of the thought of other people, of our teachers (in the broadest sense of the term) and of our teachers’ teachers; they are abbreviations and residues of the thought of the past. These thoughts were once explicit and in the center of consideration and discussion. It may even be presumed that they were once perfectly lucid. By being transmitted to later generations they have possibly been transformed, and there is no certainty that the transformation was effected consciously and with full clarity. … This means that the clarification of our political ideas insensibly changes into and becomes indistinguishable from the history of political ideas.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Source: What is Political Philosophy (1959), p. 73

“There is no permanent canon of forms of normative argument. Our ways of arguing about ideals are, like our other practices, the mutable products of a specific history and the expressions of our ideas about society and thought.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Roberto Mangabeira Unger94

Related quotes

Related topics