Niklas Luhmann > Quotes

“Humans cannot communicate; not even their brains can communicate; not even their conscious minds can communicate. Only communication can communicate.”
― Niklas Luhmann

“In the twentieth century, one encounters artworks that seek to cancel the difference between a real and an imagined reality by presenting themselves in ways that make them indistinguishable from real objects. Should we take this trend as an internal reaction of art against itself? … No ordinary object insists on being taken for an ordinary thing, but a work that does so betrays itself by this very effort. The function of art in such a case is to reproduce the difference of art. But the mere fact that art seeks to cancel this difference and fails in its effort to do so perhaps says more about art than could any excuse or critique.”
― Niklas Luhmann, Art as a Social System

“Communication is improbable.”
― Niklas Luhmann, Love as Passion: The Codification of Intimacy

“What are we to do with what we have written down? Certainly at first, we will produce mostly garbage. But we have been educated to expect something useful from our activities, and soon lose confidence if nothing useful seems to result. We should therefore reflect on whether and how we arrange our notes so they are available for later access.”
― Niklas Luhmann

“[...] Menschen können nicht kommunizieren, nicht einmal ihre Gehirne können kommunizieren, nicht einmal das Bewußtsein kann kommunizieren. Nur die Kommunikation kann kommunizieren.”
― Niklas Luhmann

“Was wir über unsere Gesellschaft, ja über die Welt, in der wir leben, wissen, wissen wir durch die Massenmedien”
― Niklas Luhmann, The Reality of the Mass Media

“Ideology claims to be binding for the whole society. This development leads to typical problems. As the complexity of society increases, so do the demands upon ideology as a schema for solving problems; in particular, there occurs an unsurveyable increase in the interdependencies among the individual components of an ideology, whose consistency must continue to be maintained. Changes, accommodations, and renovations in an ideology become markedly dífficult, because every small step can have unforeseeable repercussions upon the premises appealed to. The burdens upon the reflexive and opportunistic mechanisms anchored in ideology then become excessive.”
― Niklas Luhmann, The Differentiation of Society

“Since it has no boundaries, the world is not a system.”
― Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power

“But within the framework of an ideology such pluralism cannot be so enlarged as to incorporate into the political system and submit to political arbitration radical structural conflicts between family life and economic development, religión and culture, personality and the need for governmental administration, or between the expected motives of agents and the methods of recruiting. In such States, political pluralism remains on a technical and instrumental level; the problem-solving capacity of the political system is built on the premise that, in the last analysis, all critical problems can be reduced to economic problems. For this reason (and because of the political ideologization of all publíc life) limits are set to the level of complexity such a society can reach.”
― Niklas Luhmann, The Differentiation of Society

“Man kann zwar nicht widersprechen, aber man kann auslegen.”
― Niklas Luhmann, Protest. Systemtheorie und soziale Bewegungen.

“No se puede pensar sin escribir.”
― Niklas Luhmann

“Societies to be integrated politically through an ideology are typically planned with a concern for the “output” of specifíc, politically desirable effects. For example, planning takes place with an eye to the goals of pow er politics or today especially with an eye to the goals of economic development. Such societies favor goal programs. Goal programs can be meaningful and successful only if the input of the political system can be varied and selected in conformity with the desired results— that is, only if the political system is relatively free to determine what kinds of information will influence it. The social expectations, demands, and conditions of political support must then be regulated ideologically, as soon as they are loosened from the unchanging bonds of tradition through the process of civilization and freed for a greater mobility. “Public Opinión” must be regulated in such a way that the dominance of ideological values and goals is not put into question and that there is only a technical and instrumental discussion about the best means by which to realize them.”
― Niklas Luhmann, The Differentiation of Society

“El surgimiento del Estado soberano moderno basado en el monopolio de la toma de decisiones sobre el uso de la violencia física, y su inflación a un grado de complejidad que difícilmente puede controlarse, es el ejemplo más significativo de su desarrollo en el ámbito social general. Al mismo tiempo, esta teoría del poder explica el modo en que esta situación es propicia para la revolución, es decir, para el recurso de la violencia con el objeto de modificar un sistema incontrolablemente complejo, por medio de la progresión regresiva.”
― Niklas Luhmann

“A própria sincera, ao expressar-se, torna-se insincera.”
― Niklas Luhmann

“Only communication can communicate”
― Niklas Luhmann

“Der Weg zum Konkreten erfordert den Umweg über die
Abstraktion. Die Soziologie ist derzeit noch zu wenig theoretisch und zu wenig abstrakt für erfolgreiche historische Forschung.”
― Niklas Luhmann, Love as Passion: The Codification of Intimacy

“No es posible pensar sistemáticamente sin escribir.”
― Niklas Luhmann

“La confianza refleja la contingencia. La esperanza elimina la contingencia.”
― Niklas Luhmann

“Die Diskrepanz wird konkret faßbar, wenn die Auffassung vertreten wird, daß Frauenforschung nur von Frauen adäquat betrieben werden könne (ein Argument aus dem Antiquariat der ciceronisch-quintilianischen Rhetorik), oder wenn die Aufschreiqualität von Aussagen neben Wahrheit und Unwahrheit gleichsam als dritter Wert angeboten wird.”
― Niklas Luhmann, Protest. Systemtheorie und soziale Bewegungen.

“Nunca me esfuerzo en hacer algo que no me apetezca. Si me atasco hago otra cosa.”
― Niklas Luhmann

“Vielmehr ist die intellektuelle Skepsis und mit ihr die Bereitschaft zu platten Moralisierungen gewachsen oder auch, wenn man auf Frankreich sieht, die Flucht in eine literarische Arcanistik.”
― Niklas Luhmann, Protest. Systemtheorie und soziale Bewegungen.

“Die Grünen haben also völlig recht, man kann ihnen nur nicht zuhören.”
― Niklas Luhmann, Protest. Systemtheorie und soziale Bewegungen.