The Habermas¹/Luhmann² Debate

Abstract

For the purposes of this work, the Habermas/Luhmann debate centers on two questions. One is theoretical, and one is ethical. The theoretical question is: Can all social processes be adequately explained in systemic terms? The ethical question is: How does reliance upon systems theory normatively affect an advanced industrial society? Since the original debate, Habermas has described an evolutionary process of the constitution of society that accords a role to systems theory. He continues, however, to voice objections and reservations about systems theory and about Luhmann in particular.

My consideration of this debate faces a major handicap because I am not at all proficient in German, and the debate has never been published in an English translation. This handicap is not, however, an insurmountable obstacle for the following reasons.

• In the past 25 years, Habermas and Luhmann have written profusely on the themes discussed in the debate, particularly those which are the topics of this volume. Their later works reformulate their positions on those themes.

• The debate sets the stage for this research but is not its principal focus; therefore, an accurate but brief summary of the debate is an adequate, though not optimally desirable, platform for launching this research.

• Two admirable summaries of the debate are available in English, one from the Habermasian side by Friedrich Sixel (1976), and one from the Luhmannian side by Stephen Holmes and Charles Larmore 1982).

For these reasons, the debate will be synopsized from the reflections of the above-mentioned commentators.

Two questions in the debate are directly related to the theme of this book. One of the questions is theoretical: Can all social processes be explained in primarily systemic terms? Or alternatively, can social processes be completely explained without resort to systems thinking? In this debate, Habermas contends that social action requires consensual decision-making. Luhmann, on the other hand, contends that social activities are too complex for consensual bartering; they require impersonal systemic regulation.

The ethical question concerns the issue: How does reliance upon systems theory normatively affect an advanced industrial society? Habermas claims that applications of systems theory tend to repress free personal agency because they operate mechanically without recourse to common sense, democratic discourse, and social justice. Luhmann counters that the complexity of pluralistic societies precludes normative consensus in the particulars of contested situations. Moreover, impersonal, positive laws are the safeguards of individual and community rights. Finally, insistence on personal norms in social contexts is a remnant of dysfunctional metaphysical narrow-mindedness.

The thinking of Habermas during this period is most accessible in English in Knowledge and Human Interests (1971a), Toward a Rational Society (1971b), and the article: “On systematically distorted communication” (1970).

Before and during these debates, Luhmann published the essays contained in The Differentiation of Society (1982). These essays can be read as an elaboration of his positions during the debate.