This collection of five essays by Germany's most prominent and
influential social thinker both links Luhmann's social theory to the
question "What is modern about modernity?" and shows the origins and
context of his theory.
In the introductory essay, "Modernity in Contemporary Society," Luhmann
develops the thesis that the modern epistemological situation can be
seen as the consequence of a radical change in social macrostructures
that he calls "social differentiation," thereby designating the
juxtaposition of and interaction between a growing number of social
subsystems without any hierarchical structure. "European Rationality"
defines rationality as the capacity to see the difference between
systems and their environment as a unity. Luhmann argues that, in a
world characterized by contingency, rationality tends to become
coextensive with imagination, a view that challenges their classical
binary opposition and opens up the possibility of seeing modern
rationality as a paradox.
In the third essay, "Contingency as Modern Society's Defining
Attribute," Luhmann develops a further and probably even more important
paradox: that the generalization of contingency or cognitive uncertainty
is precisely what provides stability within modern societies. In the
process, he argues that medieval and early modern theology can be seen
as a "preadaptive advance" through which Western thinking prepared
itself for the modern epistemological situation. In "Describing the
Future," Luhmann claims that neither the traditional hope of learning
from history nor the complementary hope of cognitively anticipating the
future can be maintained, and that the classical concept of the future
should be replaced by the notion of risk, defined as juxtaposing the
expectation of realizing certain projects and the awareness that such
projects might fail. The book concludes with "The Ecology of Ignorance,"
in which Luhmann outlines prospective research areas "for sponsors who
have yet to be identified."
