Luhmann Observed

Luhmann Observed PDF Author: Anders La Cour
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137015292
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
This book, for the first time, brings Niklas Luhmann's work into dialogue with other theoretical positions, including Lacan, Derrida, Deleuze, gender studies, bioethics, translation, ANT, eco-theories and complexity theory.

Luhmann Observed

Luhmann Observed PDF Author: Anders La Cour
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137015292
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
This book, for the first time, brings Niklas Luhmann's work into dialogue with other theoretical positions, including Lacan, Derrida, Deleuze, gender studies, bioethics, translation, ANT, eco-theories and complexity theory.

Observations on Modernity

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

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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.”

The Radical Luhmann

The Radical Luhmann PDF Author: Hans-Georg Moeller
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231527179
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) was a German sociologist and system theorist who wrote on law, economics, politics, art, religion, ecology, mass media, and love. Luhmann advocated a radical constructivism and antihumanism, or "grand theory," to explain society within a universal theoretical framework. Nevertheless, despite being an iconoclast, Luhmann is viewed as a political conservative. Hans-Georg Moeller challenges this legacy, repositioning Luhmann as an explosive thinker critical of Western humanism. Moeller focuses on Luhmann's shift from philosophy to theory, which introduced new perspectives on the contemporary world. For centuries, the task of philosophy meant transforming contingency into necessity, in the sense that philosophy enabled an understanding of the necessity of everything that appeared contingent. Luhmann pursued the opposite—the transformation of necessity into contingency. Boldly breaking with the heritage of Western thought, Luhmann denied the central role of humans in social theory, particularly the possibility of autonomous agency. In this way, after Copernicus's cosmological, Darwin's biological, and Freud's psychological deconstructions of anthropocentrism, he added a sociological "fourth insult" to human vanity. A theoretical shift toward complex system-environment relations helped Luhmann "accidentally" solve one of Western philosophy's primary problems: mind-body dualism. By pulling communication into the mix, Luhmann rendered the Platonic dualist heritage obsolete. Moeller's clarity opens such formulations to general understanding and directly relates Luhmannian theory to contemporary social issues. He also captures for the first time a Luhmannian attitude toward society and life, defined through the cultivation of modesty, irony, and equanimity.

Niklas Luhmann

Niklas Luhmann PDF Author: Claudio Baraldi
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319499750
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
This book provides an insight into the ideas of one of the world’s greatest sociologists: Niklas Luhmann. It explains, in clear and concise language, the basic concepts of Social Systems Theory and their application to the specific case of the Education System, which was considered by Luhmann as a primary subsystem of modern society. It illustrates the complex and sophisticated thinking that characterises Luhmann’s work and explains that Luhmann’s theory has given an important and original contribution to the study of education from a sociological point of view. His contribution has some resonance in recent social constructionist and relational approaches to education, as well as in studies of educational interaction. In addition, research methodologies, in particular mixed methods strategies, draw heavily on epistemological issues. The book finally argues that educationists can appreciate the extent of Luhmann’s contribution to the field of education, although their perspective cannot be fully harmonised with, nor reduced to, the sociological one. This divergence of perspectives can stimulate pedagogy to call into question its conceptual framework as well its approach to social situations in the classroom.

Luhmann's "Social Systems" Theory

Luhmann's Author: Hans Josef Vermeer
Publisher: Frank & Timme GmbH
ISBN: 3865961029
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
The present essay is an attempt to apply the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann's "Social Systems" theory to translation. Luhmann's book unfolds a theoretical view of human society as a closed system. In trying to apply it to translation as a practical communicative complexity, especially from the perspective of a functional model as e.g. the "skopos" theory, certain features discussed in Luhmann will prove to be helpful for a better understanding of the concept of translation, others must be reinterpreted for the present purpose. The "fragments" now published follow Luhmann's considerations as closely as possible, but refrain from drawing detailed parallels to "translation" as a complex system. Prof. Dr. Hans J. Vermeer taught Portuguese and translation theory at the universities of Mainz and Heidelberg. Retired since 1992, he nonetheless continued to accompany the development of translation theories and to teach in various universities abroad. His work comprises (mostly unpublished) lectures and contributions to conferences and publications on Translation Studies, medieval German specialized literature and South Asian languages.

The Narratology of Observation

The Narratology of Observation PDF Author: Martin Wagner
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311059434X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
How does literature evoke reality? This book takes cues from the history of scientific observation to provide a new approach to this longstanding question of literary studies. It reconstructs a narrative technique of ‘literary’ observation in which reality appears by mimicking processes of visual perception, and it traces the functioning of this technique through a wide range of European fiction from the early 18th to the late 19th centuries.

Art as a Social System

Art as a Social System PDF Author: Niklas Luhmann
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804739078
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
This is the definitive analysis of art as a social and perceptual system by Germany's leading social theorist of the late 20th century. It combines three decades of research in the social sciences, phenomenology, evolutionary biology, cybernetics, and information theory with an intimate knowledge of art history, literature, aesthetics, and contemporary literary 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

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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.

Theories of Distinction

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

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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: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804739924
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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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.