MARC Record from harvard_bibliographic_metadata

LEADER: 03464cam a2200373 a 4500
001 013015918-2
005 20120119125029.0
008 110511s2012 nyu b 001 0 eng
010 $a 2011018977
020 $a9780231153782 (cloth : alk. paper)
020 $a0231153783 (cloth : alk. paper)
020 $a9780231153799 (pbk. : alk. paper)
020 $a0231153791 (pbk. : alk. paper)
020 $a9780231527170 (ebook)
020 $a0231527179 (ebook)
035 0 $aocn726620666
035 $a(PromptCat)40020206455
040 $aDLC$cDLC$dYDX$dYDXCP$dCDX$dBWX
042 $apcc
050 00 $aHM701$b.M635 2012
082 00 $a301.092$223
100 1 $aMoeller, Hans-Georg,$d1964-
245 14 $aThe radical Luhmann /$cHans-Georg Moeller.
260 $aNew York :$bColumbia University Press,$cc2012.
300 $axiii, 168 p. ;$c21 cm.
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
505 0 $aThe trojan horse: Luhmann's (not so) hidden radicalism -- Why he wrote such bad books -- The fourth insult: a refutation of humanism -- From necessity to contingency: a carnivalization of philosophy -- The last footnote to Plato: a solution to the mind-body problem -- Ecological evolution: a challenge to social creationism -- Constructivism as postmodernist realism: a teaching of differences -- Democracy as a utopia: a deconstruction of politics -- Conclusion: Nec spe nec metu : neither hope nor fear.
520 $a"Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) was a German sociologist and system theorist who wrote on law, economics, politics, art, religion, ecology, mass media, and love. Luhmann advocated a radical constructivism and antihumanism, or "grand theory," to explain society within a universal theoretical framework. Nevertheless, despite being an iconoclast, Luhmann is viewed as a political conservative. Hans-Georg Moeller challenges this legacy, repositioning Luhmann as an explosive thinker critical of Western humanism. Moeller focuses on Luhmann's shift from philosophy to theory, which introduced new perspectives on the contemporary world. For centuries, the task of philosophy meant transforming contingency into necessity, in the sense that philosophy enabled an understanding of the necessity of everything that appeared contingent. Luhmann pursued the opposite--the transformation of necessity into contingency. Boldly breaking with the heritage of Western thought, Luhmann denied the central role of humans in social theory, particularly the possibility of autonomous agency. In this way, after Copernicus's cosmological, Darwin's biological, and Freud's psychological deconstructions of anthropocentrism, he added a sociological "fourth insult" to human vanity. A theoretical shift toward complex system-environment relations helped Luhmann "accidentally" solve one of Western philosophy's primary problems: mind-body dualism. By pulling communication into the mix, Luhmann rendered the Platonic dualist heritage obsolete. Moeller's clarity opens such formulations to general understanding and directly relates Luhmannian theory to contemporary social issues. He also captures for the first time a Luhmannian attitude toward society and life, defined through the cultivation of modesty, irony, and equanimity."--Publisher's website.
600 10 $aLuhmann, Niklas,$d1927-1998.
650 0 $aSocial systems$xPhilosophy.
650 0 $aSociology$xPhilosophy.
899 $a415_565710
988 $a20111223
906 $0DLC