Description
Book SynopsisThis book is an introduction to the nature of modernity as envisioned by Germany's leading social theorist of the late twentieth century, Niklas Luhmann. For Luhmann, modernity is neither an Enlightenment project nor a ludic rejection of that project, but rather the pre-condition of all our deliberations, the structure within which our semantics makes sense, even as we think we celebrate (or mourn) its passing. Rather than viewing modernity as a disease for which we seek a cure, Luhmann poses it as a question to which we continually devise incomplete and partial answers. When we grow impatient with the contingency and indeterminacy that is thus forced upon us and seek solace in community, religion (orthodox or civic), consensus, and a universal vision of the good life, we grow impatient with modernity itself.
The book injects concepts derived from Luhmann's influential systems theory (complexity, contingency, and enforced selectivity; system differentiation, self-referential c
Table of Contents
A note on translations; Introduction: paradise lost, modernity regined; 1. Theories of complexity, complexities of theory; 2. Injecting noise into the system; 3. Constructivism as a two-front war; 4. In search of the Lyotard Archipelago; 5. The limit of modernity and the logic of exclusion; 6. Immanent systems, transcendental temptations, and the limits of ethics; 7. Locating the political; Appendix; Notes; Index.
