Critical systems theory

Philosophy and Social Criticism 38 (1):3-23 (2012)
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Abstract

Besides their skepticism about universal reason and universal morality, the Frankfurt Schools of Critical Systems Theory and Critical Theory share basic assumptions: (1) the thinking in societal-systemic, institutional concepts, which transcend simple reciprocal relations by dint of their complexity; (2) the assumption that society is based on fundamental paradoxes, antagonisms, antinomies; (3) the strategy to conceptualize justice as a contingent and transcendental formula; (4) the form of immanent (and not morality-based, external) critique as an attitude of transcendence; (5) the aim of societal (and not only political) emancipation in an ‘association of free individuals’ (Marx). The article focuses on those parallels and aims to conceptualize a critical turn-around of autopoietic systems theory

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10.1177/0191453711421600

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Citations of this work

Critical Autopoiesis and the Materiality of Law.Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos - 2014 - International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique 27 (2):389-418.
The social and the political in Luhmann.Joohyung Kim - 2015 - Contemporary Political Theory 14 (4):355-376.
Europe, crisis, and critique: Social theory and transnational society.Patrick O’Mahony - 2014 - European Journal of Social Theory 17 (3):238-257.

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References found in this work

Negative dialectics.Theodor W. Adorno - 1973 - New York: Continuum.
Dialectic of enlightenment: philosophical fragments.Max Horkheimer - 2002 - Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Edited by Theodor W. Adorno & Gunzelin Schmid Noerr.
The morality of law.Lon Luvois Fuller - 1964 - New Haven: Yale University Press.

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