Luhmann and Derrida

immunology and autopoiesis

Willis Santiago

Guerra Filho

Pablo Ghetti

pp. 227-242

in: Anders la Cour, Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos (eds), Luhmann observed, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Abstract

The process of globalization leads us to figure the whole world as a society, the "world society" (Weltgesellschaft — see Luhmann, 1971). In the world society in which we live, with its hyper- complexity and multicentrality, as it is described by autopoietical systems social theory, this is a proposal to do research through the point of view of the present state of differentiation of systems in such a society. One of those systems is the legal one, which is at the same time separated and articulated with the others, so that mutual irritations are absorbed through the so called 'structural coupling" (Maturana & Varela, 1973) between the centre and periphery of one another, in order to maintain their stability and simultaneous growth in their environment, autonomously. Legal systems and political systems are connected through a particular media of operative closeness called the legal constitution of the State. From Constitutional Supreme Courts we expect to ultimately define what is to be seen as constitutionally grounded. These courts become then co-responsible with the operation of the binary code of both systems, that is to say, the lawful or non-lawful code in the case of the legal system and the government or opposition in the case of the political system (Luhmann, 1993, 1995, 2000a, 2004). This is due to the centrality of the definitions about constitutionality of legal norms both to legal and political systems.

Cited authors

Derrida Jacques