ELECTIVE AFFINITY BETWEEN THE SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY OF LUHMANN AND THE GERMAN PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

The article argues for the existence of an elective affinity between the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann and German philosophical anthropology, affinity that would bring to light (a-letheia) a 'blind spot' of the functionalism of the equivalence that is placed in the antithesis of the so called anti humanism in Luhmann. The question asked by the German sociologist: which self-projection of man is behind the assumptions of functionalist thinking? He responded: the man as problem solver in a transcendental sense. As well as in Goethe elective affinity of a 'new' theoretical content with pre-existing materials, in the case that concerns us, such pre-existing materials would have had a known address, so that the originality of Luhmann would be in a new composition of categories. The new luhmannian composition takes shape, at least in the following arguments: the distinction from man/environment to the distinction system/environment; the turn from contingency to double contingency; complexity and its reduction in German philosophy to complexity and its reduction in systems theory; from categories of self-reference and self-observation to the theory of the observer; the offset of the human and the world to the offset of society; the functionalism of the German philosophy to the functionalism of the equivalence.