Methodological nationalism in sociological theory is unfit for the current globalized era, and should be discarded. In light of this contention, the present article discusses Max Weber’s view of language as a way to relativize the frame of the national society. While a “linguistic turn” in sociology since the 1960s has assumed that the sharing of language—linguistic community—stands as an intersubjective foundation for understanding of meaning, Weber saw linguistic community as constructed. From Weber’s rationalist, subjectivist, individualist viewpoint, linguistic community was (...) a result of social actions, not a prior entity as assumed by German metaphysical organicism (and historicist holism). Indeed, Central Europe in Weber’s era was a battlefield of linguistic nationalism(s); in contrast to the national societies of the Cold War period, national borders were unstable and ultimately the multiethnic empires of the region were dismantled after World War I into ethnolinguistic nation-states. Experience of this contemporary reality brought Weber to the core of the relationship between language and politics: A language community is an imaginary one demarcated not by language itself but by conscious opposition against outsiders, with monolingual contexts within borders created artificially by homogenizing policies like linguistic standardization and national education—the first modernity of language. In this way, Weber felt, language can be a means to domination. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore how a self-referential social system, although it is not a human being, can be said to “observe.” For this purpose, the article reformulates Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems as sociological phenomenology, or the de-consciousness philosophized phenomenology, because a social system has the same structure of intentionality as consciousness: Just as consciousness is always consciousness of something, communication is always communication of something. In correlation to this communicative intentionality, communicated environments come and (...) go as social phenomena. A social system is not a thing, but an autonomously observing subject. Hence, this systems theory takes on the role of a second-order observer: It observes how social systems as first-order observers observe self-referentially because phenomena given to the natural attitude of the first-order observer constitute multiple social realities in daily life. Therefore, the theory of self-referential social systems is not objectivism, but a variation of mundane subjectivist phenomenology. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore how a self-referential social system, although it is not a human being, can be said to “observe.” For this purpose, the article reformulates Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems as sociological phenomenology, or the de-consciousness philosophized phenomenology, because a social system has the same structure of intentionality as consciousness: Just as consciousness is always consciousness of something, communication is always communication of something. In correlation to this communicative intentionality, communicated environments come and (...) go as social phenomena. A social system is not a thing, but an autonomously observing subject. Hence, this systems theory takes on the role of a second-order observer: It observes how social systems as first-order observers observe self-referentially because phenomena given to the natural attitude of the first-order observer constitute multiple social realities in daily life. Therefore, the theory of self-referential social systems is not objectivism, but a variation of mundane subjectivist phenomenology. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore how a self-referential social system, although it is not a human being, can be said to “observe.” For this purpose, the article reformulates Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems as sociological phenomenology, or the de-consciousness philosophized phenomenology, because a social system has the same structure of intentionality as consciousness: Just as consciousness is always consciousness of something, communication is always communication of something. In correlation to this communicative intentionality, communicated environments come and (...) go as social phenomena. A social system is not a thing, but an autonomously observing subject. Hence, this systems theory takes on the role of a second-order observer: It observes how social systems as first-order observers observe self-referentially because phenomena given to the natural attitude of the first-order observer constitute multiple social realities in daily life. Therefore, the theory of self-referential social systems is not objectivism, but a variation of mundane subjectivist phenomenology. (shrink)

A Correction to this paper has been published: 10.1007/s11186-021-09436-2.

When Thomas Luckmann, a pioneer of the “linguistic turn” in sociology, regarded Émile Durkheim as a source for the sociology of language, he had lifeworldly community–building in mind. However, the French sociologist himself understood language in the context ofcivil society–building. To Durkheim, language was a “social thing in the highest degree” that enabled general ideas and intermediated them to people. Abstract human ideals like the civil religion since the French Revolution could be shared through (a common) language. Thus, Durkheim took (...) the exclusive use of French in the Third Republic’s laic public education for granted, ignoring the patois in the country: This “child of the Enlightenment” considered French to be a universal language ofGesellschaftand, beyond ethno-communal elements, to work as a basis for the organic solidarity of French national civil society where the social division of labor was progressing. Durkheim’s theory was predicated on civil-linguistic, not ethnolinguistic, nationalism. (shrink)

This article aims at clarifying the philosophical (=phenomenological) implication of Talcott Parsons’s analytical realism. Generally, his theory is understood as being confrontational to phenomenology; however, in his first book, The Structure of Social Action, Parsons positively referred to Husserl’s Logical Investigations. They shared a sense of crisis: Husserl thought that there was no certain basis in modern science, and Parsons had the feeling that there was no common theory to establish sociology as a science. Thus, both of them criticized the (...) factual sciences of positivism (positivistic empiricism) and showed a strong orientation to the general theory. For this, they depended on conceptual realism (Platonic realism). According to Husserl, scientific knowledge will be arbitrary if the Ideal is not there as the norm of fact. He believed that in truth all people always see Ideas. Similarly, Parsons thought that in truth all people always act toward the Ideal, because the Ideal element is necessarily found through the logical framework of sociology, i.e., the action frame of reference. Hence, he maintained that the Ideal element that gives a normative orientation to actions is real, though analytical, insofar as the social order is established. (shrink)