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Northwestern University Law Review,
Summer 1987,
81 Nw. U.L. Rev. 593
The Hitchhiker's Guide to CLS, Unger,
and Deep Thought
By Jonathan Turley
The history of
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is one of idealism, struggle, despair,
passion, success, failure and enormously long lunch breaks.
Douglas Adams
Life, the Universe, and Everything
The critical moment had come. The two chosen representatives stood before Deep
Thought waiting for the Answer to the "Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe,
and Everything Else." Years ago, "fed up with the constant bickering about the
meaning of life," their advanced society built Deep Thought: a computer the size
of a small city, capable of contemplating "the very vectors of the atoms of the
Big Bang itself." Now finally Deep Thought was ready to fulfill its
purpose. "The Ultimate Answer," Deep Thought said hesitatingly ". . . to the
Ultimate Question . . . of Life, the Universe and Everything . . . is . . . is .
. . forty-two." And so ended the desperate quest of one "hyperintelligent
pandimensional" society for the truth in a critical chapter of Douglas Adams'
book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Roberto Mangabeira Unger is certainly not Deep Thought (for one thing he's well
below the size of a small city), and at the end of this Symposium the reader
will not find a rival numerical answer to the meaning of life -- or even a
nonnumerical answer. What the reader will find are thoughtful discussions of one
theoretician's attempt to understand what it is to be human -- and of his
program for a society that would protect and foster that essential human
personality. The limited purpose of this Article is to provide the novice with
some background on the Critical Legal Studies (CLS) Movement and its relation to
Unger's various works, particularly his most recent effort, Politics: A Work
in Constructive Social Theory. n4 While Politics is a work in
social not legal theory (and thus is not strictly a critical legal
study), Unger's roots in the CLS movement are highly influential in the concepts
and terminology found in this three-volume work. At the obvious risk of omitting
many details and possibly distorting others, the following is a brief guide for
readers venturing for the first time into the realm of critical literature.
[Click
here to download the full
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