Luhmann: Concluding remarks

Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) could propose and answer the fundamental question of his philosophy - How is nature possible?, only because for him nature was nothing but the representation: “a special way in which our intellect assembles, orders, and forms the sense-perceptions (perceptions, of color, taste, tone, temperature, resistance, and smell), which in the accidental sequence of subjective experience course through our consciousness, are in and of themselves not yet "nature;" but they become "nature" through the activity of the mind, which combines them into objects and series of objects, into substances and attributes and into causal coherences (Simmel, 1910).

In a way, Luhmann treats the questions of how society is possible and how it functions in a similar fashion. I believe for Luhmann too individual elements are given which in a certain sense always remain in their discreteness, as is the case with the sense-perceptions, and they undergo their synthesis into the unity of a society only through a process of communication which puts the individual existence of the several elements into relationship with that of the others in definite forms of structure and functions.

Centered on this foundation, perhaps no one has developed a more ambitious and general theory of society than Luhmann (Fuchs, 1999). Yet, as we have seen probably 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, there is 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 re-orientating 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 (King & Thornhill, 2006).

As a final point, the Internet has changed the everyday life for many of us and it is here to stay. It is transforming our societies and social systems by shaping social processes, creating new forms of co-operation and competition in the various subsystems of society such as the ecological, the economic, the political, and the cultural systems. Through virtual communities, social networking platforms, societies are becoming more and more self-organized. Virtual communities, social networking platforms, real time on demand access to data are breaking the boundaries of informational capitalism, accelerating the movements for democratization, and redefining the rules of commerce. In my view, all these rapid changes amplify the relevance and importance of Luhmann social theory in today’s context and for the future generations to come, while I remain to be critical of his conceptual elimination of human actors from society.