The Limited Reach of Communication Systems

Abstract

Luhmann’s critique of the ‘the semantics of interaction’ It must be said that Luhmann’s systems theory has produced highly significant gains for communication theory. It has enabled a plausible critique of some rather tenacious interaction theories with their concepts of mutuality, commonality and dialogue bequeathed by the ‘semantic of interaction’ (see Social Structure and Semantics - Gesellschaftsstruktur und Semantik). It has also facilitated a salutary counter-intuitive analysis of the role of Reason, morality and other assumed aprioris such as the distinction between the general and the specific and a critique of Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action even if this critique has regrettably remained little-explored by English-speaking scholars.

One should remember that every either/or must be introduced artificially above a substratum where it does not apply.

—Niklas Luhmann, 1995: 209¹