Richard Münch

Zum Gesellschaftsbegriff der Systemtheorie: Parsons und Luhmann und die Hypothese der Weltgesellschaft / On the Concept of Society in Systems Theory: Talcott Parsons, Niklas Luhmann and the Hypothesis of World Society

The essay analyzes the concept of society in Talcott Parsons and in Niklas Luhmann – and it looks for the connecting lines from the respective concepts of society to ideas of world society. In Talcott Parsons there is a strong disposition towards understanding society in terms of territoriality, the territorial control of physical force and in terms of nationality. These tendencies are partially thwarted by the Aristotelian traditions Parsons is looking back to; by the interdisciplinary models he imports to sociology (the concept of species from Mayr; the idea of single origin or of the psychic unity of mankind) and by some empirical circumstances of international system building which impose themselves. Luhmann, too, looks into an Aristotelian concept of society, but he interprets society consistently as the most extensive social system. For Luhmann in present-day society this can only be realized as system of world society. The essay tries to demonstrate that three references are fundamental for both theoreticians: The collective singular “society” as pointing to the emergence of forms of sociality being specific to mankind; the coexistent plurality of many societies being characteristic of the biggest part of the history of mankind; and finally the question for the extraordinary situation of our time in which the word “society” can only be made use of in a meaningful way by speaking about a single system of world society.