Models of Social Irreductibility in the Systemic Theory of Niklas Luhmann

Abstract

This paper comparates the contributions of the systemic sociology of Niklas Luhmann to the general construction of the scientific object of Sociology. Our goal is to identify, to schematize and to contrast two luhmannians models of social irreductibility (the one intersubjetivist, the other comunicative) and to examine its theoretical consequences. Our main hypothesis affirms that Luhmann displaces the threshold of social irreductibility when he goes from the first to the second model. In methodological terms we frame contextually Luhmann’s materials within the sociological field during the Seventies and Eighties, analyzing them from a comparative and exegetical integrated perspective.