A CARNIVALIZATION OF PHILOSOPHY
Niklas Luhmann’s relation to the discipline and history of philosophy was highly ambiguous. He was “officially” a sociologist (a professor in a department of sociology) and always regarded himself as one. However, he was awarded one of the most prestigious philosophy prizes in Germany, the Hegel Award, in 1989, and in his works he referred to Plato and Kant at least as often as to the works of the sociological founding fathers. Jürgen Habermas rightly stated: “It is not so much the disciplinary tradition of social theory from Comte to Parsons that Luhmann tries to connect up with, as the history of problems associated with the philosophy of consciousness from Kant to Husserl.”1
In Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft Luhmann says: “If one intends to pass a judgment on the possibilities for self-description in and by modern society, one must most of all take into account that this self-description is no longer transmitted orally in the form of teachings of wisdom and also no longer articulates lofty ultimate thoughts in the form of philosophy. It rather follows the particular rules of the mass media. Every morning and every evening the web of news is inescapably lowered down on earth and determines what has been and what one has to be aware of.”2
This is a sarcastic, or rather a “carnivalesque” statement, since, in the terms of Mikhail Bakhtin, it unites the sacred with the profane, the high with the low, and the wise with the foolish.3 Traditionally, the sages, the priests, and the men of wisdom were responsible for informing society about itself, for explaining the world. Later on, philosophers assumed this function. Nowadays, however, the mass media have taken over. Most people consult neither the wise nor the philosophy professors to be told what matters. Most people simply switch on the TV (or, since times have quickly changed, the computer). Philosophy used to be the love of wisdom. With Hegel, it was supposed to become more than that, namely “actual knowing” or science (Wissenschaft).4 Hegel understood this transformation as an “elevation” (Erhebung). After the rise, however, we have to conclude with Luhmann, came the fall. Philosophy was soon replaced by the mass media as the main purveyor of “actual knowledge.”
The mass media are in fact not the only source of society’s self-description, of course, although they are probably the most important. The statement quoted above is, for rhetorical reasons, exaggerated. After all, Luhmann’s whole theory is supposed to be another self-description in and of society as well. In this way, not only the mass media can claim to be the usurper of “Hegel’s throne,” but also Luhmann himself.5
Hegel is not only among the most referenced philosophers in Luhmann’s works, he also shares a key term with Luhmann: “system.” Hegel followed Kant’s transcendental methodology, distinguishing between a (scientific) system and a mere aggregate of information that for him did not count as true science. A mere aggregate of information is simply a collection or assembly of facts. As such, it cannot claim to be scientific. Knowledge becomes scientific once it is systematized, once it is integrated into a coherent whole. The most decisive difference between a mere aggregate of information and a scientific system is that the former is coincidental whereas the latter is necessary. A collection of information, such as a compilation of statistical data about body temperature, is only a random collection of numbers as long as it is not understood within an overarching conceptual scheme. Once medical concepts and principles are applied, the data can be related to each other and constitute a scientific description of, for instance, a fever. Seen within a larger conceptual context, the temperature data become “necessary” by becoming part of a specific medical history. The body temperature becomes a necessary aspect of the health of a patient. For Hegel, the concepts of philosophy, science, system, and necessity are mutually explanatory. True philosophy has to be scientific; science is by definition systematic; and that which is systematic is understood as necessary: “the True is actual only as system.”6
The science that Hegel was interested in, which for him was the only true science, was the “science of the experience of consciousness,” or, in other words, the phenomenology of spirit. For Hegel, science, in its ultimate meaning was the process of the self-understanding of consciousness. Through science, consciousness understands its own necessity (in Hegel’s sense of this term). It understands itself, its history, its structure, and its manifestations in a systematic fashion and comes to grasp its own necessity. Science is not primarily concerned with information about objects external to itself, but is instead the cognition of cognition. Science is self-reflective. True science, and here Hegel once again continues the Kantian tradition, is reason’s enlightenment of itself. In Luhmannian terms, one can say that philosophy, for Hegel, consisted in the systematic, and therefore scientific, self-description of spirit through which spirit realizes (in the twofold meaning of this term) its own necessity and reality. Only spirit has the capacity to be self-reflective in this manner. As long as consciousness or thought is concerned with the (seemingly) nonspiritual it remains in an alienated state (and this necessitates the subjective turn of philosophical science). It can only fully realize itself in and through itself. The highest type of cognition is the self-cognition of cognition. This is what scientific and systematic philosophy consists in. It is the ultimate self-description. For Hegel, any attempt at self-description had to culminate in (t)his philosophical system.
If my understanding is correct, and philosophy, for Hegel, was the ultimate (or absolute) self-description—not of himself, of course, but in general—then one may well conceive of Luhmann’s project, in light of the above quotation, as a “carnivalization” (in Bakhtin’s terms) or Aufhebung (in Hegelian terms) of Hegel. I will show how Luhmann ironically twisted the Hegelian approach and thereby “deconstructed” traditional philosophy. In order to do this, I briefly summarize my reading of Hegel.
For Hegel, philosophy was the ultimate self-description that is
Spiritual. As the grammatically ambiguous title Phenomenology of Spirit demonstrates, philosophy is both performed by the spirit and about it. Philosophy is spirit relating to itself. Spirit manifests itself as conscious cognition. It is, substantially speaking, ideal, and not material. Spirit realizes itself in consciousness.
Scientific. Philosophy is the most fundamental and highest form of science or knowledge. Only philosophy is concerned with “the True” (with a capital T).7 All other sciences, with mathematics and history as paradigmatic examples, are in a state of alienation in which their objects do not coincide with their mode of cognition. All of the truths they arrive at remain external and partial. Only philosophical science is able to grasp truth wholly; only it can comprehend nothing less than “the entire realm of the truth of Spirit.”8
Systematic. Philosophy is the only truly systematic science and, therefore, strictly speaking, the only real science. Only the philosophical system includes itself completely in itself. Its principles do not remain axiomatic, but become fully integrated into the systemic whole. A complete system is not a linear, hierarchical chain of argumentation, but a coherent and circular whole in which all aspects are equally foundational.
Necessary. Only philosophy is a complete scientific system, and therefore only philosophy establishes complete necessity. Philosophy is not concerned with a simple registering of isolated facts that could be otherwise, but with a systemic understanding of contextual necessity.
Like Hegel, Luhmann was concerned with self-description, and, like Hegel, he was concerned with systems. However, an obvious difference should be stated right away in order to avoid any misunderstanding: while Hegel believed that his philosophy took on the shape of a system, Luhmann’s systems theory is a theory about systems and not a system itself (although it obviously emerges within a contemporary social system, namely the science system). The entities that Luhmann called systems, that is, social systems, biological systems, psychic systems, and so on, are not systems in the Hegelian sense of the term. For Hegel, there was, strictly speaking, only one real system, namely his own philosophy. For Luhmann, systems are empirically given, and they comprise such manifold things as cells, the economy, and people’s minds. Hegel understood the concept of system in the Kantian sense as the ideal (and only true) form of science (as opposed to a mere aggregate of information), whereas for Luhmann (autopoietic) systems were self-generating and self-reproducing operational processes. The Hegelian and Luhmannian usages of the term “system” have little in common.
Similarities emerge, however, if one compares Hegel’s system with Luhmann’s concept of theory. While Hegel aimed at constructing a stringent and coherent philosophical system, Luhmann aimed at establishing a general and encompassing social theory. Luhmann often stated that he conceived of himself as a theorist, and Social Systems has (in the German edition) Outline of a General Theory as its subtitle. He was never specific in defining what exactly a theory is, but perhaps that was supposed to be self-evident. In one of the passages in which he talks about his theory as a theory, he uses a telling metaphor. At the end of Einführung in die Systemtheorie (Introduction to Systems Theory) he speaks of “theory architecture” and “problems of design.”9 Theory is understood as a conceptual edifice, or, as he explains on the same page, as concepts within a coherent context of usage. Kant used exactly the same metaphor in his transcendental methodology and spoke about the “architecture of pure reason” and the “art of systems.”10 It is probably safe to say that Luhmann’s theory is a successor of Kant’s and Hegel’s system. Luhmann did not intend to be a “normal science” sociologist, helping to increase the sociological “aggregate of information” by conducting surveys and collecting data. Instead, he wanted to react to the theory crisis in sociology and establish a new general theory of society.11
If one compares Luhmann’s concept of theory with Hegel’s concept of the system, then one can point out at least four similarities:
1. Both system and theory are meant to be begrifflich durchkonstruiert,12 which means they have to be both “conceptual” and “thoroughly constructed.” Theory and system are based on notions, not on facts, and they have to constitute a coherent and comprehensive network, a consistent whole.
2. Both system and theory are meant to be universally applicable. While not being concerned with mere “naked truths” (nackte Wahrheiten, an expression used by Hegel for the facts that traditional historiography deals with, such as, for instance, the date of Caesar’s birth),13 system and theory are capable of identifying the meaning of basically any event within their respective conceptual framework. Hegel was not interested in Caesar’s birthday, but he could identify the significance of Caesar’s existence in terms of his philosophical apparatus. Similarly, Luhmann’s theory was supposed to be so encompassing that it was able to interpret something so mundane as the dynamics of a soccer game in the terms of social systems theory.14
3. Both system and theory are concerned with an adequate understanding of their subjects, or at least a more adequate understanding than that of previous philosophers or sociologists. For Hegel, the philosophical system was the only adequate form of science. He did not accuse his philosophical predecessors of being wrong or false, but he viewed them as lacking in conceptual refinement. Hegel was not concerned with discovering new facts or with simply refuting others. He conceived of his task in the fashion of Jesus Christ: his system was not meant to falsify the earlier prophets, but to substantially raise the level of expression and thus to present the same truth in a more adequate fashion.15 Luhmann was certainly less religious than Hegel, and his striving for adequacy was less ambitious. Still, Luhmann was hoping that his theory might surpass all of its competitors in adequacy. He did not want to suggest yet another version of a prescriptive social theory (in addition to, for instance, Marx and Habermas) and accused those who accused him of not offering any help or advice to society of betraying theoretical adequacy with their political agendas. Rather than telling society what to do and where to go, he intended to improve the adequacy of social theory by raising it above and beyond ideology.16
4. The most intricate similarity between Hegel’s system and Luhmann’s theory relates to their respective claims of self-inclusion. By way of a conceptual feedback loop both are supposed to finally explain themselves through themselves. Hegel’s goal in the Phenomenology is “Absolute Knowing, or Spirit that knows itself as Spirit”.17 In the end the system realizes that it is its own content, that it can only be truly complete by completely including itself. Luhmann seems to deny this self-inclusion to Hegel’s system when he writes: “The novel, the romance, but also Hegel’s novel of the love between world-history and philosophy localizes the observer who can also see what he himself previously could not see at the end of the story. This makes it necessary to exclude the narrator who has known everything already from the beginning, and thus also Hegel himself, from the story.”18 I do not think that this criticism is fair. As I see it, the main characteristic of the system in Hegel’s Phenomenology (the “novel of the love between world-history and philosophy”) is precisely such an Insichgehen (withdrawal into itself)19 in which the narration, and thus the narrator, finally turns out to be its own subject. In any case, Luhmann explicitly claims such a self-inclusion for his theory: “In this way, the epistemologist becomes him/herself a rat in the labyrinth and has to reflect on the position from which he/she observes the other rats. Then, the reflection no longer merely leads to the common conditions, but beyond these to the unity of the system of cognition, and all ‘externalization’ has to be explained as system-differentiation. Only with the sociology of cognition does a radical, self-inclusive constructivism become possible.”20 Luhmann’s radical constructivism refers back to itself. Indeed, it radically constructs itself. The theory is about cognitive construction (including and focusing on social construction), but also realizes that it is within society and thus within the construction it is about. The problem with self-inclusion is therefore the most decisive aspect that theory and system have in common. However, the problem of self-inclusion leads to radically different consequences for Hegel and Luhmann and, by extension, for system and theory. It is not only what makes them similar, but also what distinguishes them. It is here too that I think we find clear evidence for Luhmann’s radicalism.
For Hegel, philosophy was ultimately the science (Wissenschaft) of the spirit (Geist)—both in a subjective and an objective sense, that is, both by and about spirit. Spirit manifests itself as knowledge (Wissen) and as cognition (Erkenntnis), and, as the science of the “experience of consciousness.” Philosophy is therefore cognitive science, and, in a very strict sense, Geisteswissenschaft (literally: science of the spirit). The term Geisteswissenschaft, however, also means in a broader and more contemporary sense the humanities (as opposed to, for instance, Naturwissenschaften, or natural sciences). Derived from the Hegelian concept of philosophy as the foundational “science of the spirit,” the other Geisteswissenschaften were conceived of as dealing with more specific manifestations of spirit (such as history, arts, languages, etc.) This conceptual model implies, in the Hegelian sense, that spirit is the underlying intelligent or cognitive principle of (human) reality. Spirit is cognitive, and all (human) activity is substantially cognitive or spiritual. Luhmann stood in strong opposition to subsuming everything human under a general notion such as spirit. He flatly opposed this Hegelian heritage: “The ambition of a common foundation, a foundational symbol, an ultimate thought, has to be abandoned—or left to the philosophers. Sociology does not get—in any case not in this way—to what Hegel had called ‘spirit.’ It is not a Geisteswissenschaft.”21
While Luhmann continued to understand society in terms of cognition, he no longer agreed with Hegel and other humanists that cognition is to be understood as something founded on spirit.22 Luhmann says, quite sarcastically, that if one intends to continue to believe in one universal “ultimate thought” that underlies all (human) activity one may still be a philosopher in the traditional sense, but not, as Hegel had assumed, a (social) scientist. By separating cognition from spirit, Luhmann thus implicitly also separated philosophy from (social) science. In Luhmann’s theory, cognition is systemic and can be spiritual (or, as Luhmann would say, mental), but it can also be social and biological—or, perhaps, “machinic,” chemical, and so on. For Luhmann, social systems can cognize as much as minds or cells can, but there is no “common foundation” for these types of cognition. A science of cognition is therefore no longer a “science of the spirit.” Sociology, for Luhmann, is concerned with the cognition of social systems, but it is not concerned with spirit or even with humans. It is not philosophy nor does it belong to Geisteswissenschaften in the Hegelian sense.
For Hegel, there were, in the strict sense, no sciences in the plural. Science was a unified endeavor with philosophy at its helm. This was not the case for Luhmann. Science, for Luhmann, has emerged as a social system along with the development of functional differentiation. Modern science is thus a function system next to others such as law, politics, economy, and so on. Luhmann was interested in how this system functions. He wrote a lengthy monograph on the subject—The Science of Society.23 While this is not the place to outline Luhmann’s analysis of science as a social system, it may suffice to say that, like other systems, science has its own code (true/false), programs (theories, models), function (production of knowledge), and so on. Like other systems, it provides opportunities for careers (professors, scientists) and is structurally coupled with various systems such as (manifested in the systemically hybrid organization of the contemporary university) the education system, the economy, and, in the United States, even sports.
Embedding science in society removes the exalted prestige that it enjoyed with Hegel as well as the identification of science with philosophy. Science has, in modern society, no privilege whatsoever over any other system. One becomes more famous in sports, for instance. Despite producing knowledge, science does not produce general knowledge. This function is assumed by the mass media. That which is “known to be known”24 is what we know through watching TV and browsing the Internet, not what is published in academic journals. There is no particular importance ascribed to philosophy in the sciences. No physicist will be employed because of her excellent knowledge of Plato. Philosophy still enjoys some traditional prestige, but it certainly does not have a definite or guiding influence on the other sciences. Luhmann points out that nowadays it is entirely out of the question that philosophy can claim to be the leading scientific discipline.25
Like Hegel, Luhmann conceived of himself as a scientist. While for Hegel this meant that he was replacing the priests in expressing the world-spirit, for Luhmann it meant that he was publishing in an autopoietic and operationally closed system of communication that produces texts and theories that are selected for publication on the basis of such criteria as true or false rather than, for instance, on the basis of “selectors” such as being scandalous or not (as in the mass media).26 For Hegel, (philosophical) science was the highest form of cognitive or spiritual activity. For Luhmann, it was a type of communication that had evolved among many others. Interestingly enough, both scientists were very much aware of the paradoxical nature of their scientific endeavors—which is most obviously expressed in the grammatically ambiguous titles of their major works (The Phenomenology of Spirit and the many works by Luhmann that are titled analogously: The Science of Society, The Politics of Society, The Society of Society, etc.).27 The type of science they pursued included itself in itself. For Hegel, the science of the spirit was a science both by and about spirit. For Luhmann, the study of society could only be performed within society by a sociologist. The theory of social systems is itself a product of one of the systems, namely science, which it analyzes. Rephrasing the quotation from above, it can be said that the scientist becomes himself a rat in the labyrinth that science has constructed.
It is crucial to note how this scientific feedback loop is connected with two diametrically opposed assessments of the status of the Hegelian system on the one hand and Luhmannian theory on the other. To analyze this difference I contrast Hegel’s ending of the preface to the Phenomenology with that found in Luhmann’s Science of Society. Hegel ends his preface with a pseudo-modest reflection on how he, the individual philosopher, is only a spokesperson for the “universality of Spirit” that chose to express itself through him. I am saying “pseudo-modest” because while Hegel downplays his own role in the self-realization of spirit, he nevertheless is very clear about the fact that his is the time at which the “universality of Spirit” has finally “gathered such strength” as it never did before. Hegel claims nothing less than embodying the culmination of spirit’s self-realization. While Hegel admits that Spirit could have expressed itself through another individual philosopher, he nevertheless implies that it would not have failed to express itself in the form of the philosophical system that was published under his name.28
Luhmann’s preface to The Science of Society, on the other hand, ends on a distinctively different note, namely, if my interpretation of its cryptic last sentence is appropriate, with self-irony. Luhmann concludes his acknowledgements of colleagues and students by stating: “It remains only to say, as usual, that any remaining errors are chargeable to me—with the exception of errors in this sentence, obviously!”
When one reads the first half of this sentence, one expects Luhmann to be doing what most authors of academic publications do, that is, making a personal gesture of moral responsibility toward others, after just having expressed equally personal feelings of gratitude and affection toward them, in a specific section of a book (usually the preface or the acknowledgments) which, in its main parts, is scientific and thus impersonal, unemotional, and amoral. This expectation is then radically disappointed (a common technique for jokes) in the second half of the sentence. In the light of the second half of the sentence, the seemingly personal, emotional, and ethical statements of academic authors in the acknowledgments are exposed as simply or “obviously” one more stereotype within academic or scientific writing and thus as having nothing to do with individual feelings or moral convictions. They are thus just as much a linguistic convention enforced on academic authors by the science system as the academic jargon used in the main body of the book. In other words, acknowledgments are not simply authentic personal, emotional, and moral confessions that demonstrate some personal traits of the author, but one more stereotypical form of expression constructed within the discourse of academic writing. In fact, such seemingly personal statements—being so stereotypical—demonstrate the very opposite of what they state, namely that scientific communication operates “systemically” in accordance with the codes, programs, and communicative conventions it has developed and therefore does not leave room for personal emotions or moral authenticity. In this way, the final sentence of the preface of The Science of Society demonstrates, in the form of a parody, that science is not the authentic realization of truth, but a social system with its own standardized forms of communication, just like all other social systems. Its “truth” is merely a communicative construct among many others.
This brings me to what is, to my mind, the most important difference between Hegel and Luhmann: the status they ascribed to science. Hegel conceived of (philosophical) science as a system of necessity and Luhmann understood (sociological) science as a theory of contingency.
The German word used by Hegel for necessity is Notwendigkeit. Literally, the German noun Not, etymologically related to the English noun need, indicates a state of crisis or emergency. A Hungersnot, for instance, is a famine—a critical situation in which people are hungry, that is, there is a need for food that cannot be met, and thus there is hunger. The German noun Wende, on the other hand, which is the linguistic root of the wendigkeit part of Notwendigkeit, means “turn” or “shift.” In a Hungersnot, when people are hungry and thus need food, they feel the necessity to eat so that the situation of need will be turned into or shifted toward a situation without need. In this way, notwendig means “necessary” not merely in a logical or modal sense, but rather in an existential sense, where something is needed in order to resolve a crisis. When one is hungry, it is necessary to eat. A quite appropriate English translation for the term “necessary” in Hegel’s usage would therefore be “critical.”
In the Phenomenology of Spirit, a book that Luhmann has called “the great novel of philosophy,”29 Hegel recalls (erinnert) the Bildung (roughly, “growth” or “maturation”) of spirit. In this sense, it is a sort of autobiographic novel of spirit.30 Hegel’s main task in this book is to reconstruct the “necessity” of all experiences throughout the life of spirit. This is not to say that he is pursuing the project of explaining why everything was predestined from the beginning and therefore modally necessary rather than merely accidental or possible. Instead, in connection with the existential meaning of “necessary,” he intends to explore the “critical meaning” of whatever happened to, with, and by spirit.
In our personal lives, for instance, we may pursue the project of trying to understand our experiences in such a way—not as being predestined, but as necessary elements that have made us into what we are now. We can look at our life as a series of “needful” situations in which we acted in accordance with those needs. We can understand, for instance, why and that we needed to marry our partner, why and that we needed to become a professor, why and that we needed to have or to not have children, and so on. We only understand ourselves and our life fully once we completely understand the necessity of all we have done. If we successfully recall our growth and maturation, the experiences of our life, then we will be able to conceive of every moment as a necessary step to what we have finally become. The past events of one’s life will all connect to each other and be recognized as meaningful with respect to what one is now. It is no longer merely coincidental and thus ultimately senseless that, for instance, one married, had a child or two, or met this or that friend. All these experiences become important and decisive parts of what one is.
Hegel, in the Phenomenology of Spirit, attempted to describe the necessities of the life of spirit or the experience of consciousness. This experience was to be understood as being constituted by critical turning points, and in this sense it was to lose its contingency. A complete self-understanding means a complete transformation of the status of our experience from being seemingly contingent and accidental events into a meaningful and necessary whole. Hegel aspired to perform such a transformation of contingency into necessity not for his personal life, but for the whole life or experience of spirit, that is, the world. That was the task of philosophy, of systematic science.
Just as “necessity” is a crucial concept for Hegel, “contingency” is central for Luhmann. The word contingency, like the word “necessity,” has a certain ambiguity to it and for Luhmann a particular meaning. “Contingent” means “contingent upon” or “depending on.” I can say: I will attend this conference in Montreal, but it will be contingent upon my flight to Montreal not being unexpectedly canceled. In this sense, the term means, as does its Latin origin, to “hang together with” or “to be connected with.” Two things depend on one another and are tied to one another: my attendance at the conference and the plane’s reaching Montreal. Either both will come true or neither of them. It is not coincidental or purely by chance that I will appear at the conference, but essentially related to that flight not being canceled. In this sense, it is not against all odds or unlikely that I will appear at the conference, but rather probable. Once the plane for Montreal had departed it became more or less certain that, in connection with this fact, I would attend the conference (contingent upon the plane not crashing, of course).
“Contingent,” however, also means “not necessary” or “by chance,” in the sense that “it could have come about otherwise.” If I say that it was a matter of pure contingency that my father married my mother and that I was subsequently born, this could be meant, for instance, in this way: if my father’s car had not unexpectedly broken down in that town on that day, had he not ended up in that particular bar that night, and met my mother, chances are that they would never have met at all and that I would not have been born. It is purely a matter of chance that I exist—and, in fact, considering the probabilities of all the unintended and unplanned things that had to happen for my father to meet my mother that night, my existence was basically against all odds or “extremely unlikely” to use a phrase often employed by Luhmann.
“Contingent” for Luhmann means both “being connected with” and “extremely unlikely.” Given the fact that I do exist, that I became an academic who specializes in Luhmann, that I was invited to this conference on Luhmann in Montreal, that my application for a travel grant was successful, and that the flight to Montreal was not canceled, my attendance was no surprise. Given all other possibilities, however, and the very fact of the utter improbability of my existence in the first place, the fact that I appeared at this conference in Montreal was indeed against all odds. Contingency, for Luhmann, does not simply mean “anything goes” or “pure coincidence.” It means that whatever happens is connected with many other things. At the same time, however, it is also extremely unlikely any given things should happen because of all the contingencies involved.
Luhmann, as a theoretician of contingency, did not believe in the possibility of a master-narrative such as the one Hegel aspired to in the Phenomenology. Hegel wanted to tell the narrative of spirit. By transforming contingency into necessity, we end up with a coherent story, with a unified whole. While Hegel believed that the complete self-inclusion, or feedback loop, of science or philosophy would lead to the self-unification of spirit and an insight into its own necessity, for Luhmann (and many postmodernist thinkers) this “project of modernity” has to be abolished. Luhmann believed that insight into the scientific feedback loop demonstrates contingency and not ultimate necessity. There is no necessity for science to have become what it is. There was no necessity for our society to develop as it had. That all the social phenomena experienced today exist is even more unlikely than my personal existence, which was against all odds. Other possibilities were and always are there. There were societies that had no science, no economy, and not even families—and there will likely be future societies in which all these social formations will no longer be what they are today. Given their connection with everything that has happened in the past few hundred years, we can explain why all the social phenomena are as they are and why things evolved the way they did.
For Luhmann, science is the opposite of what it was for Hegel; it is the transformation of necessity into contingency. It is the discovery of the unlikely within the familiar. Luhmann therefore approaches social theory in a very different way from Western mainstream philosophers, from Hobbes to Habermas, who often presumed they might find some meaningful (normative or natural or rational) foundation for social reality. The modern state, for instance, could be seen as a necessary reaction to the crisis of what Hobbes famously called the “natural” war of all against all. Social institutions, like politics, the economy, the family, and so on, could therefore become “necessary” in a Hegelian sense for mainstream modern theoreticians. From the perspective of these thinkers, social philosophy can show us why and how, for instance, our basic laws and our political constitutions are grounded on certain necessities. Social science has the function of explaining these necessities and further developing social institutions in accordance with them.
Luhmann questioned this necessity, viewing society instead as a complex dynamic system in which meaning is always contingent and subject to construction. The meaning of social institutions and values is derived from their connection with other social institutions and values that have happened to evolve. There is no ultimate necessity to them given that they are all so extremely unlikely. For instance, there is no existential or natural or rational necessity for our legal and political institutions. In the context of our current society, they are of course explicable and understandable, but, at the same time, they are entirely unnecessary in a Hegelian sense. We can see that things could potentially be very different.
The theoretical consequence of Luhmann’s discovery of utter contingency was not to declare a complete arbitrariness of “anything goes,” but to replace a philosophy of necessity with a theory of contingency. For him, the switch from a program of transforming contingency into necessity to a program of transforming necessity into contingency did not mean the end of social theory, but rather a new beginning. Luhmann described his position as such: “We would gladly concede that there is no such thing as a binding representation of a society within that society. But that concession would be not the end but rather the beginning of a reflection on the form of such a system’s own self-observations and self-descriptions. These must be submitted within the system in a process that must in turn be observed and described.”31
The lack of a “binding representation of a society within that society” means that there is no metanarrative, no Hegelian recollection, that would unite all social phenomena within one phenomeno-logy. This may well be the end of the possibility for any philosophical system in the Hegelian sense. However, for Luhmann, it meant the beginning of a theory of the impossibility of metanarratives, a theory of self-descriptions in a feedback loop, a theory of self-descriptions that are contingent upon themselves. Rather than understanding how a society functions on the basis of necessity, Luhmann wants to understand how it can, and indeed does, function on the basis of contingency.
Against the background of this comparison between Hegel and Luhmann, this quotation from Luhmann should gain a more particular significance: “If one intends to pass a judgment on the possibilities for self-description in and by modern society, one must most of all take into account that this self-description is no longer transmitted orally in the form of teachings of wisdom and also no longer articulates lofty ultimate thoughts in the form of philosophy.”32
The replacement of a “lofty” system of necessity with a theory of contingency is a replacement of an outdated form of science with a new form of science. It marks the end of the assumption that a scientific self-description is actually an “elevation” (Erhebung) at all. Luhmann’s self-description is neither “wise” nor “philosophical” in the traditional sense. It is one of many possible self-descriptions emerging within the feedback loop of contingent forms of communication. It lacks any transcendent or enlightening qualities. It is a paradoxical insight into the impossibility of any elevation or definite enlightenment.
Philosophy, therefore, to put it in Hegelian terms, has passed the point of its highest purpose. It can no longer be accepted as what it once believed it was: the most foundational scientific knowledge. Therefore, philosophy is now just one of the many disciplines taught at academic institutions and paid for by students, the government, or both. Luhmann summarizes the actual state of this discipline quite accurately: “Some philosophers are now only interested in the textual history of the discipline, others in fashionable topics such as postmodernism or ethics; still others present the predicament of any general view in a literary or feuilleton-like way; and, what is perhaps worst: the striving for precision that borders on pedantry.”33
The time of the philosophical system is past. One can still work in the field as a curator of the dusty classics; one can take part in discourses or debates that have proven to be intellectually marketable (postmodernism, ethics); one can do away with the scientific pretension altogether and write texts that are pleasant to read; or one can do the opposite and assume a seriously scientific attitude and write technical papers that do not say much. This last possibility, also known as analytic philosophy, seems to currently dominate the field, at least in North America, but Luhmann did not find it very attractive. Given this state of affairs, Luhmann concludes: “What once was philosophy thus degenerates to a mere expertise in dealing with philosophical texts, and philosophers become experts in philosophy.”34
There is no social role left for the wise men and the philosophers of old. Neither wise sayings nor the establishing of the ultimate scientific system will help one in pursuing an academic career, not even in philosophy. Instead, one has to engage in a variation of the four types of academic philosophy described above and become a professional expert. Hegel himself would probably have found it difficult to get through the contemporary peer review process: I would be curious to find out which publisher would accept the manuscript of the Phenomenology of Spirit today. Luhmann seems to be a bit nostalgic about this and to feel more akin to his philosophical (and perhaps even wise) predecessors than to the academic experts of his day.
If neither philosophy nor science can claim to be the “binding representation of a society within that society,” there is no such thing as a foundational self-description of society. Luhmann’s theory, however, claims to be a self-description, but a self-description of a social state in which no foundational self-descriptions are possible. He is therefore quick to admit that other social self-descriptions outside of science may well be more influential than his own. This brings us back to Luhmann’s assertion that the self-description in and by modern society “follows the particular rules of the mass media. Every morning and every evening the web of news is inescapably lowered down on earth and determines what has been and what one has to be aware of.”35
Sociology is not more real, venerable, or “True” (with a capital T) than the news, the weather report, or even a commercial. It is more “true” in the sense that truth/falsity is the basic code of the system of science. Scientific communication normally discusses the truth-value of scientific propositions, like this book, which attempts to represent Hegel and Luhmann truly and tries to point out certain falsities as well. If I should be lucky enough to have this book eventually generate further scientific communication, it will be typically about the truth/ falsity of my propositions, and so on in a spiral of communicative autopoiesis. The mass media, on the other hand, have other priorities. Presenting spectacular information, for instance, is more important than assessing truth/falsity.36 On the night before I wrote this, I heard an interview with a U.S. university professor of anatomy who believed in and hoped to prove the existence of Big Foot. This scientist freely admitted that he was having a hard time gaining respect in the academic community. But he obviously found it much easier to attract the attention of the mass media than did most of his colleagues. The mass media are not so much interested in Big Foot as a subject that promises to bring about new “truths”; they are more interested in presenting interesting information. The mass media system and the science system construct different self-descriptions of society that are not compatible with each other since they communicate differently and on the basis of incommensurable codes, programs, and so on. There is no single system that can impose its codes and constructions on others. Luhmann’s theory tries to address this paradox. Science has to make true propositions about the impossibility of truth under current social conditions.
This paradoxical situation leads to a carnivalization of philosophy and science. That which was once esteemed (or, more precisely, esteemed itself) as the lofty mountain top of human cognition, appears as only one contingent reality construction among many. The difference between the high and the low has been removed. The carnival used to make fun of the aristocrats and clerics and expose their pretensions. Theory makes fun of science and philosophy and exposes their pretensions. In a somewhat Socratic manner, social theory explains its own limits and thereby the limits of any attempt at knowledge. If my interpretation is correct, Luhmann labeled his own theory a “supertheory” in a self-ironic fashion.37 This interpretation is supported by the peculiar style of Luhmann’s texts in which one finds dry, technical, and conceptual language frequently interspersed with bits of sarcasm, satire, and parody.38
I would argue that the traditional scientific-philosophical ambitions of the enlightenment have been undermined by carnivalistic theory and that this leads to a certain “lightness of being,” or, alternatively, la gaya scienza. One can witness the “dialectics of enlightenment” brought about by the scientific age. With indubitable Cartesian scientific “certainty,” and with utmost seriousness, the great projects of social science were put into practice: the French rule of reason, the Russian elimination of class distinctions, the racism of the Nazis, the disciplinary mechanisms described by Foucault—these were all supported and defended by what may be called “extremist” science, philosophy, or both. Today, we see the applications of their supposedly more rational successors: free markets expanding worldwide along with neo-Kantian universal recipes for peace, social understanding, and liberty. If faced with a choice between these types of serious science and carnivalistic theory, I’d find it rather easy to decide in favor of the latter.