 Brazillian Philosopher and Politician

 Born: March 24, 1947

 Education: Harvard Law School
 Brazil's Minister of Strategic Affairs in 2007 and again
in 2015
False necessity, or anti-necessitarian social theory, is
a contemporary social theory that argues for the
plasticity of social organizations and their potential to
be shaped in new ways. The theory rejects the
assumption that laws of change govern the history of
human societies and limit human freedom.

Unger's basic point is that the individual can make a

difference in producing social change. He therefore
opposes Marxist theorists who may claim that there is a
flow of history in determinate stages To loosen the
effect of perceived constraints, he argues
that change is not necessarily caused by a short list of
laws or processes.
The only law concerning the results of change
is that there is no law controlling what results
from change. Change may occur in response to
an environment, as an unwilled and
unintended consequence of other apparently
willed acts.
Key Concepts:

1. The infinity of the individual:

For Unger, there is no natural state of the individual

and his social being. Rather, we are infinite in spirit
and unbound in what we can become. The premise
behind the infinity of the individual is that we exist
within social contexts but we are more than the
roles that these contexts may define for us—we can
overcome them.
2. The singularity of the world and the
reality of time:

The singularity of the world and the reality

of time establishes history as the site of
decisive action through the propositions that
there is only one real world, not multiple or
simultaneous universes, and that time really
exists in the world, not as a simulacrum
through which we must experience the
world.