Luhmann Explained: From Souls to Systems (Ideas Explained) [Paperback]

Hans-Georg Moeller (Author)

Book Description

Series: Ideas Explained | Publication Date: August 30, 2006

What are systems? What is society? What happens to human beings in a hypermodern world? Niklas Luhmann addressed these questions in depth. This book introduces his social systems theory which explains specific functions like economy and mass media from a cybernetic perspective, integrating various schools of thought including sociology, philosophy, and biology. Luhmann Explained explores the great thinker’s radical analysis of “world society.” The book gives special attention to the present-day relevance of Luhmann's theory with respect to globalization, electronic mass media, ethics, and new forms of protest.

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Open Court (August 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812695984
• ISBN-13: 978-0812695984
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #413,697 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very helpful report on Luhmann's thought and works, February 15, 2008

By 

Ulisses S. viana "Prof. Schwarz" (Brasilia, Brazil) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Luhmann Explained: From Souls to Systems (Ideas Explained) (Paperback)

This book surprised me since I received it from Amazon and immediately started reading it! I am always a little bit suspicious about this kind of "summaries" and "reports" on someone's else work. Mostly when this someone else is Niklas Luhmann, whose work I have been studying for my academic texts. In the case of Moeller's "Luhmann Explained", I have to recognise the excellence of the result in the "dangerous" task taken up by his author. First of all because he tried to introduce Luhmann's complex and difficult theory by using quotations and citations from Luhmann himself. The fact is that he succeeded in being as much as possible "faithful" to Luhmann's own texts. In few occasions, when strictly necessary, Moeller puts forward his own opinions on Luhmann's ideas. I recommend this book for everyone who wants to be "safely" introduced to Luhmann's complexity. It is a serious "entrance gate" to the contingency which characterizes Luhmann's ideas as, for instance, the formulation of a theory of a nonhuman society based on the differentiation of the autopoietic "social systems".
If you are interested in learning about one of the most intriguing and "puzzling" thinker of 20th century: be welcome on board!

Ulisses Schwarz Viana
Brasilia (Brazil)

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars College-level students will find it a challenging, exciting read., November 5, 2006

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Luhmann Explained: From Souls to Systems (Ideas Explained) (Paperback)

College-level collections strong in philosophy will appreciate this blend of philosophy and sociology, which considers systems, society, and Niklas Luhmann's sociological theories in particular, which departs from many competing concepts in explaining how economics and mass media evolve. From biology to philosophy and other genres, LUHMANN EXPLAINED analyzes the fundamentals of world society and its logical systems. College-level students will find it a challenging, exciting read.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Friendly, Intelligent Guide, April 7, 2009

By 

Christine K. Gray (Washington, DC, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Luhmann Explained: From Souls to Systems (Ideas Explained) (Paperback)

I enjoyed this book immensely. Moeller provides a friendly, intelligent guide to the complexity of Luhmann's thinking. Just as Galileo removed the earth from the center of the universe, Luhmann removes human beings from the center of society. Step by step, Moeller spells out Luhmann's devastating critique of the dominant humanistic understanding of humans as individuals with unitary identities whose thoughts, decisions and actions make society what it is. Luhmann insists, counterintuitively, that if we ever were unitary beings, we no longer are. Instead, we are multi-dimensional, our wholes never neatly the sums of the parts. Society, for its part, is continuously recreating itself as functional systems operating separately, but interdependently.

Luhmann's way of conceptualizing society and the place of humans in it is initially disorienting, ultimately exhilerating. Moeller's reading of Luhmann's radical, complex and apparently topsy-turvy view of human society is eminently readable, and by the end I felt that I'd been offered -- and had grasped -- a compelling new vision of the social world. In the preface, Moeller writes this: "Luhmann...tries to grant all the different dimensions of bodily life, of conscious experience, of communicative practice their own right of existence." In doing so, he adds, Luhmann is a thinker "of multiplicity and difference and in this respect he is more 'postmodern' than 'modern.'" For Moeller, Luhmann's functionalist model of society is the best theoretical description of our society that is currently available. His careful, well-paced exegesis of Luhmann's thinking gave me the opportunity to tap into the mind of a great, original thinker. Moeller did a beautiful job with this book, and I'm a grateful beneficiary of his thoughtfulness. To close, here is the Luhmann quote that Moeller chooses for the book's frontispiece.

"It has always been clear to me that a thoroughly constructed conceptual theory of society would be much more radical and much more discomforting in its effects than narrowly focused criticisms -- criticisms of capitalism for instance -- could ever imagine."

Just so.