Disillusioning Modernity

Disillusioning Modernity PDF Author: Balázs Brunczel
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783631604502
Category : Political science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book Here

Book Description
The work of Niklas Luhmann is the most innovative and comprehensive attempt to describe modern society. His views, in turn, have triggered the most intensive criticism ever in social sciences. This book presents his extraordinarily complex theory in a step-by-step fashion and in a way understandable for those who are not familiar with his thought. It examines his views on politics, which, the author argues, is the best way to demonstrate the provocative character of his theory. The book not only facilitates the understanding of Luhmann's theory but is also useful for getting an insight into the methodological problems of the social sciences and the theoretical issues of modern society. Whether we agree with Luhmann or not, his thoughts on democracy, legitimacy, human rights, and the welfare state may help us understand the society we live in. The reader may consider his disillusioning findings as challenges that can contribute to the solution of the problems our society faces.

Disillusioning Modernity

Disillusioning Modernity PDF Author: Balázs Brunczel
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783631604502
Category : Political science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book Here

Book Description
The work of Niklas Luhmann is the most innovative and comprehensive attempt to describe modern society. His views, in turn, have triggered the most intensive criticism ever in social sciences. This book presents his extraordinarily complex theory in a step-by-step fashion and in a way understandable for those who are not familiar with his thought. It examines his views on politics, which, the author argues, is the best way to demonstrate the provocative character of his theory. The book not only facilitates the understanding of Luhmann's theory but is also useful for getting an insight into the methodological problems of the social sciences and the theoretical issues of modern society. Whether we agree with Luhmann or not, his thoughts on democracy, legitimacy, human rights, and the welfare state may help us understand the society we live in. The reader may consider his disillusioning findings as challenges that can contribute to the solution of the problems our society faces.

Observations on Modernity

Observations on Modernity PDF Author: Niklas Luhmann
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804732352
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 150

Get Book Here

Book Description
This collection of five essays by Germany’s most prominent and influential social thinker both links Luhmann’s social theory to the question “What is modern about modernity?” and shows the origins and context of his theory. In the introductory essay, “Modernity in Contemporary Society,” Luhmann develops the thesis that the modern epistemological situation can be seen as the consequence of a radical change in social macrostructures that he calls “social differentiation,” thereby designating the juxtaposition of and interaction between a growing number of social subsystems without any hierarchical structure. “European Rationality” defines rationality as the capacity to see the difference between systems and their environment as a unity. Luhmann argues that, in a world characterized by contingency, rationality tends to become coextensive with imagination, a view that challenges their classical binary opposition and opens up the possibility of seeing modern rationality as a paradox. In the third essay, “Contingency as Modern Society’s Defining Attribute,” Luhmann develops a further and probably even more important paradox: that the generalization of contingency or cognitive uncertainty is precisely what provides stability within modern societies. In the process, he argues that medieval and early modern theology can be seen as a “preadaptive advance” through which Western thinking prepared itself for the modern epistemological situation. In “Describing the Future,” Luhmann claims that neither the traditional hope of learning from history nor the complementary hope of cognitively anticipating the future can be maintained, and that the classical concept of the future should be replaced by the notion of risk, defined as juxtaposing the expectation of realizing certain projects and the awareness that such projects might fail. The book concludes with “The Ecology of Ignorance,” in which Luhmann outlines prospective research areas “for sponsors who have yet to be identified.”

Luhmann on Law and Politics

Luhmann on Law and Politics PDF Author: Michael King
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1847312144
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Get Book Here

Book Description
Perhaps more than any other social theorist in recent history, Niklas Luhmann's work has aroused extreme, and often antagonistic, responses. It has generated controversies about its political implications, its resolute anti-humanism and its ambitious critique of more established definitions of society, social theory and sociology. Now, however, a steadily growing number of scholars working in many different disciplines have begun to use aspects of Luhmann's sociology as an important methodological stimulus and as a theoretical framework for reorientating their studies. This collection of essays includes critical and reconstructive contributions by a number of distinguished social theorists, political theorists, legal scholars and empirical sociologists. Together, they provide evidence of Luhmann's extensive and diverse relevance to the issues facing contemporary society, and, at the same time, they enhance our understanding of the challenges posed by his theoretical paradigm to more traditional conceptions of social theory.

Niklas Luhmann's Theory of Politics and Law

Niklas Luhmann's Theory of Politics and Law PDF Author: M. King
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230503586
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
Niklas Luhmann's social theory stands in direct opposition to the dominant 'anthropocentric' traditions of legal and political analysis. King and Thornhill now offer the first comprehensive, critical examination of Luhmann's highly original theory of the operations of the legal and political systems. They describe how from the perspective of his 'sociological enlightenment' Luhmann continually calls to account the certainties, the ambitions and rational foundations of The Enlightenment and the idealized versions of law and politics which they have produced.

The Politics of Orientation

The Politics of Orientation PDF Author: Hannah Richter
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438495072
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Politics of Orientation provides the first substantial exploration of a surprising theoretical kinship and its rich political implications, between Gilles Deleuze's philosophy and the sociological systems theory of Niklas Luhmann. Through their shared theories of sense, Hannah Richter draws out how the works of Luhmann and Deleuze complement each other in creating worlds where chaos is the norm and order the unlikely and yet remarkably stable exception. From the encounter between Deleuze and Luhmann, Richter develops a novel take on postfoundational ontology where subjects and societies unfold in self-productive relations of sense against a background of complexity. The Politics of Orientation breaks and rebuilds theoretical alliances by reading core concepts and thinkers of Continental Philosophy, from Leibniz to Whitehead and Marx, through this encounter. Most importantly, the book puts Luhmann and Deleuze to work to offer urgently needed insight into the rise of post-truth populism. In our complex democratic societies, Richter argues, orientation against complexity has become the ground of political power, privileging the simplistic narratives of the populist right.

Comparing Apples, Oranges, and Cotton

Comparing Apples, Oranges, and Cotton PDF Author: Frank Uekötter
Publisher: Campus Verlag
ISBN: 3593500280
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Get Book Here

Book Description
Plantations are a key institution of the modern era. From an environmental perspective, they are also one of the most consequential modes of production. This volume assembles articles on commodities as diverse ase coffee, cotton, rubber and apples, providing overviews on plantation systems from Latin America to New Zealand while at the same time exploring the multitude of dimensions that the environmental history of plantations incorporates. The global history of plantation systems highlights the enormous resilience of modern monocultures but also the price that humans and environments were paying. "

The Transformation of Humanities Education

The Transformation of Humanities Education PDF Author: Vidar Grøtta
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 3839443075
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 573

Get Book Here

Book Description
This first comprehensive study of Norwegian humanities education employs systems theory to analyze its transformation from a form of teacher training to its modern status as research-oriented generalist education. Using historical documents and statistical analyses, Vidar Grøtta shows that the expansion of the post-war research system in Norway led to an increase in admissions to humanities education in the 1960s and an ensuing research drift in humanities curricula. Interacting with certain political dynamics and the knowledge economy that has emerged since the 1970s, this research drift resulted in a shift in humanists' career patterns and a transformation of the societal functions of the humanities. The most recent developments in Norwegian humanities education, from 2000 to 2018, are outlined and discussed in the afterword to this volume.

Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism

Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism PDF Author: Gavin Rae
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000222616
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume brings together an international array of scholars to reconsider the meaning and place of poststructuralism historically and demonstrate some of the ways in which it continues to be relevant, especially for debates in aesthetics, ethics, and politics. The book’s chapters focus on the works of Butler, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Irigaray, Kristeva, Lacan, and Lyotard—in combination with those of Agamben, Luhman, Nancy, and Nietzsche—and examine issues including biopolitics, culture, embodiment, epistemology, history, music, temporality, political resistance, psychoanalysis, revolt, and the visual arts. The contributors use poststructuralism as a hermeneutical strategy that rejects the traditional affirmation of unity, totality, transparency, and representation to instead focus on the foundational importance of open-ended becoming, difference, the unknowable, and expression. This approach allows for a more expansive definition of poststructuralism and helps demonstrate how it has contributed to debates across philosophy and other disciplines. Historical Traces and Future Pathways of Poststructuralism will be of particular interest to researchers in philosophy, politics, political theory, critical theory, aesthetics, feminist theory, cultural studies, intellectual history, psychoanalysis, and sociology.

Theories of Distinction

Theories of Distinction PDF Author: Niklas Luhmann
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804741231
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
The essays in this volume formulate what is considered to be the preconditions for an adequate theory of modern society. The volume starts with an examination of the modern European philosophical and scientific tradition notably the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl.

Niklas Luhmann's Modernity

Niklas Luhmann's Modernity PDF Author: William Rasch
Publisher: Cultural Memory in the Present
ISBN: 9780804739917
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book Here

Book Description
An introduction to the nature of modernity as envisioned by Germany's leading social theorist of the late-20th century, Niklas Luhmann. The book injects concepts derived from Luhmann's influential systems theory into debates about modernity and postmodernity, constructivist and foundationalist epistemologies, the relationship between politics and ethics, and the possibilities of interdisciplinary work that spans the great divide between science and the humanities. The book stages challenging engagements with suchthinkers as Jurgen Habermas, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Drucilla Cornell, Judith Butler, Michel Serres, N. Katherine Hayles, and such political theorists as Chantal Mouffe and Carl Schmitt. The book closes with two interviews: one a discussion with Luhmann and Hayles on epistemology, the other with Luhmann on the functional differentiation of modern society.