81005469

open access

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ニクラス・ルーマンにおけるシステムと宗教 : 機能と意味のはざまで(上)

System and Religion in the Theory of Niklas Luhmann : Between Function and Meaning (1)

Japanese (日本語)

Intercultural Studies Review

27

91-114

神戸大学大学院国際文化学研究科

2014-03-25

2014-03-17

This paper aims to explore the significance of Niklas Luhmann’s (1927- 1998) theoretical arguments on religion. His system theory potently influences over the world, and is considered as useful to reveal the shape of the modern society. However, the importance of his theory of religion has been often overlooked. Certainly it has much ambivalence, but we can get a wider view through that character itself, in order to deepen our understanding of his thought including his general social theory. Luhmann put an essential question about the existence of religion in the modern world. One of his attempts to answer it was his famous theory of “religion as a social system”, and the other was his study of “religious semantics”. The former shows us how the religion as a system remains in the secularized society. It is adapted to his general social theory. Yet still, his consistent question, “Can religion still be?” is not answered by this approach only. A key concept of his system theory is “code,” which brings a system its identity and closeness, and makes it closed to the other one; regarding the religion, although Luhmann had initially set up the code as “immanence/ transcendence,” afterward, he changed its definition into “marked/ unmarked.” Therefore, we have to take the latter approach, the study of semantics to face this question. This illuminates how the religious system has been grown up in the history, and using both approaches, systematic and semantic, lets us understand his theory of religion more property.

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