Luhmann’s Predecessors and His Theory of Society

Öz

Niklas Luhmann is one of the most important social scientists of the last century. He wrote a great many and high-quality works that stimulated social research. Despite this, Luhmann has not received the recognition he deserves in Turkey. The following article is an attempt to present Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory. For this, his predecessors are first introduced; these are Thomas Hobbes, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Talcott Parsons. Then, Luhmann’s model of society in the triangle of system, environment, and communication media is discussed. It is shown that Luhmann conceptually departed from the idea of culture, values, norms, and the individual. Instead of them, he let the system guide him as an independent entity. Instead of them, he proposes the function of symbolically generalized communication media for the stability of society. By society, Luhmann does not mean the concrete society but the semantics of this society, that is, the society as an object of the social sciences.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Communication
• double contingency
• social order
• systems theory