In the depths of the Sixties, Charles de Gaulle, perhaps apocryphally, was quoted as stating that “Brazil is the country of the future, and always will be”. This backhanded compliment from the then French president was supposed to illustrate the divergent political and economic trajectories of the New World. In effect, the USA was the future, while the vast resource-rich Latin American states to Washington’s south, especially Brazil, held an unfilled promise. No figure embodies this symbiosis better than Roberto Mangabeira Unger, the American-Brazilian philosopher, politician and Harvard Law School professor. Now 76, Unger’s star has risen, fallen and risen again in importance as both a global and specifically “New World” thinker. Today, he is more influential than ever: if De Gaulle once located Brazil’s promise in a constantly deferred future, Unger, in contrast, is a philosopher who argues the moment for innovation is now.
Read Full Article »