[np] sloterdijk on luhmann/: abstract

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

 out now --- 

 peter sloterdijk: der anwalt des teufels. niklas luhmann und der egoismus der  
 systeme. in: soziale systeme. zeitschrift für soziologische theorie. jahrgang 6 
 (2000), heft 1, leverkusen: leske & budrich, pp. 3-38.

 http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/sozsys/


 peter sloterdijk: the devil's advocate. niklas luhmann and the egoism of  
 systems 

 "the aim of the text is to demonstrate that niklas luhmann's systems theory 
 represents a major semantic caesura, to the extent that every subsequent theory 
 will be measured according to whether it has gone through the lesson of this 
 theory or not. in order to identify the content of this lesson, systems theory 
 is located in a perspective of the history of morals and metaphysics in which 
 its distinctive achievement appears as the differentiation of self-reference 
 and moral coding. self-reference is no longer described in the moral code as 
 sin or egoism; instead, it is seen as an inelluctable fundamental structure of 
 humankind and, ultimately, of operative closed systems per se. correspondingly, 
 the distinction between self-reference and outside reference appears as a form 
 of interruption of (pure) self-reference essential for psychological and 
 sociological meaning systems on their parts. from the perspective of 
 philosophical anthropology, this is translated into a deculpabilisation of 
 humankind, whose consequences are not only that it revolutionises the 
 relationship between morals and anthropology, but that for example it also 
 places the concept of irony on a new (cybernetic) footing."

kfl