Beobachtungen der Moderne

by Niklas Luhmann

Die Proklamation der "Postmoderne" hatte mindestens ein Verdienst. Sie hat bekannt gemacht, dass die moderne Gesellschaft das Vertrauen in die Richtigkeit ihrer eigenen Selbstbeschreibungen verloren hat. Vielleicht hatte das Stichwort der Postmoderne nur eine andere, variantenreichere Beschreibung der Moderne versprechen wollen, die ihre eigene Einheit nur noch negativ vorstellen kann als Unmöglichkeit eines métarécit. Wir mögen gern konzedieren, dass es keine verbindliche Repräsentation der Gesellschaft in der Gesellschaft gibt. Aber das wäre dann nicht das Ende, sondern der Beginn einer Reflexion der Form von Selbstbeobachtungen und Selbstbeschreibungen eines Systems, die im System selbst vorgeschlagen und durchgesetzt werden müssen in einem Prozess, der seinerseits wieder beobachtet und beschrieben wird. Die hier publizierten Texte gehen von der Überzeugung aus, dass darüber etwas ausgesagt werden kann, ja, dass Theoriematerialien schon verfügbar sind, die nur auf dieses Thema der Beobachtungen der Moderne hingeführt werden müssen.

Genres: Philosophy, Sociology

220 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Niklas Luhmann was a German sociologist, and a prominent thinker in systems theory, who is increasingly recognized as one of the most important social theorists of the 20th century.

Luhmann wrote prolifically, with more than 70 books and nearly 400 scholarly articles published on a variety of subjects, including law, economy, politics, art, religion, ecology, mass media, and love. While his theories have yet to make a major mark in American sociology, his theory is currently well known and popular in German sociology and has also been rather intensively received in Japan and Eastern Europe, including Russia. His relatively low profile elsewhere is partly due to the fact that translating his work is a difficult task, since his writing presents a challenge even to readers of German, including many sociologists. (p. xxvii Social System 1995)

Much of Luhmann's work directly deals with the operations of the legal system and his autopoietic theory of law is regarded as one of the more influential contributions to the sociology of law and socio-legal studies.

Luhmann is probably best known to North Americans for his debate with the critical theorist Jürgen Habermas over the potential of social systems theory. Like his one-time mentor Talcott Parsons, Luhmann is an advocate of "grand theory," although neither in the sense of philosophical foundationalism nor in the sense of "meta-narrative" as often invoked in the critical works of post-modernist writers. Rather, Luhmann's work tracks closer to complexity theory broadly speaking, in that it aims to address any aspect of social life within a universal theoretical framework - of which the diversity of subjects he wrote about is an indication. Luhmann's theory is sometimes dismissed as highly abstract and complex, particularly within the Anglophone world, whereas his work has had a more lasting influence on scholars from German-speaking countries, Scandinavia and Italy.

Luhmann himself described his theory as "labyrinth-like" or "non-linear" and claimed he was deliberately keeping his prose enigmatic to prevent it from being understood "too quickly", which would only produce simplistic misunderstandings.

Reviews

[Ewan Jenkins]

A nice cluster of 5 lectures Luhmann delivered in the early 1990's, late in his career, which critiques popular ideas of the postmodern and lays out Luhmann's unique systems-theory approach to the question of modernity. As with all of Luhmann it's hard to say this work is accessible - quite a lot of background knowledge of his working concepts is required to penetrate most of this, and even then, expect to feel confused (the essay "Describing the Future" and its sociology of risk is something I'm still getting my head around) - but the second lecture on "European Rationality" is worth the price of admission alone. There is immense range, historical depth and incisiveness to these essays and much to follow up on; in particular, the implications of a systems-theory "ecology of ignorance" when it comes to dealing with environmental crisis.

[Jooseppi Räikkönen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just can't seem to get what the Luhmann-fuzz is about. Out of this collection the essay "The Ecology of Ignorance" is worth a read, as is his book-length elaboration of its themes in Ökologische Kommunikation. It captures some very profound stuff about ecological crises.

The rest of the essays though? I simply cannot break through to the guy. Now and then glimpses, but then some very unhelpful seeming pseudo-employments of various systems of logic and the sort. Pass on this one, though some day I will give Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft a chance.

[Sherwin]

it is great, compare it with Habermas and Giddens version of modernity...