The spiritual foundations of modern systems theory: Niklas Luhmann’s libertas indifferentiae

Jurgen Habermas (1929- ) and Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) are the two most important post-war German social theorists. Thousands of sociology students in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Germany had to work their way through the so-called "Habermas-Luhmann debate" (Habermas & Luhmann 1971) and few German students of social theory today manage to escape the labyrinth of Luhmann's theory. Yet, while Habermas has many readers and interpreters in the English-speaking world, comparatively few of Luhmann's work have been translated into English. Of his major theoretical works, only the 1984 volume Soziale Systeme (Social Systems) is at present available in English (Luhmann 1995). The unfortunate consequence of this situation is that the reception of Luhmann outside Germany is not only delayed but also effectively rendered impossible as most readers first encounter Luhmann through Habermas's misleading criticism.