The Religion of the Future
Roberto Mangabeira Unger
For Tamara
“I can think of no greater happiness than to be with you all the time, endlessly …, and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you, and you would hide your face in me …”
—Franz Kafka, The Castle
This paperback edition first published by Verso 2016
First published by Harvard University Press 2014
© 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
© Robert Mangabeira Unger 2016
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
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Verso
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Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-78478-730-1 (PB)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78478-728-8 (UK EBK)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78478-729-5 (US EBK)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Printed in the US by Maple Press
Contents
1.Beyond Wishful Thinking: Life without Illusion
Death
Groundlessness
Insatiability
Belittlement
Religion and the flaws in human life
The common element in past religious revolution
What religion is, or has been
2.Overcoming the World
Central idea, historical presence, and metaphysical vision
Incitements to overcoming the world
Serenity and benevolence
Criticism: betrayal of the past
Criticism: the school of experience
Criticism: betrayal of the future
3.Humanizing the World
Central idea, historical presence, and metaphysical vision
Making meaning in a meaningless world
Our situation and our task
The ennoblement of our relations to one another
Criticism: betrayal of the past
Criticism: the school of experience
Criticism: betrayal of the future
4.Struggling with the World
Central idea, spoken in sacred and profane voice
Metaphysical vision
Conception of the self
Only one regime
Spirit and structure
Self and others
Twin orthodoxies suppressed
Criticism: strength and weakness of the struggle with the world
Criticism: estrangement from life in the present
5.Religious Revolution Now: Its Occasions and Instruments
Reasons for religious revolution
The unique position of the struggle with the world
Resolving the ambivalence of the higher religions to the transformation of the world
Radicalizing the significance of the struggle with the world for our ideas and institutions
Achieving a greater life, without Prometheanism
Recognizing the defects in human existence
Occasions and sources of religious revolution
In what sense a religious revolution
The practice of religious revolution
A tragic contradiction in the history of religion
Philosophy and religion
Direction and indirections of the religion of the future
Christianity as the religion of the future?
6.Deep Freedom: The Politics of the Religion of the Future
Political theology without God
Conception of a free society
Four principles
The principle of apostasy
The principle of plurality
The principle of deep freedom
The principle of higher cooperation
7.Becoming More Human by Becoming More Godlike: The Conduct of Life in the Religion of the Future
The enhancement of life
Method and vision
The overthrow: from self-subversion to self-transformation
Virtue as self-transformation
Virtues of connection
Virtues of purification
Virtues of divinization
The course of life: decentering
The course of life: downfall
The course of life: mutilation
The course of life: mummification
The reward