EXISTENTIALISM CONTINUITIES, CONSEQUENCES
AND POSTMODERNISM. BREAKS, AND SOME FOR MEDICAL THEORY
DIRK RICHTER
Westfälische Klinik für Psychiatrie Münster, P.O. Box 8620, D-48046 Münster, Federal Republic of Germany
ABSTRACT. Since existentialism lost its influence in philosophy in the 1960s, postmodern theory has taken over criticizing basic concepts of western thought. From a postmodern point of view, the main shortcomings of existentialism is that it criticizes traditional unitarian concepts, while re-inventing new unitarian models. Against these unitarian approaches postmodemism holds that the world can only be described in terms of difference. In this article the postmodem program and its differences from existentialism are explained in reference to three concepts of western philosophy: subject, truth, and ethics. Applying these concepts, the relevance of postmodernism for medical theory is illustrated.
Key words: Ethics, existentialism, postmodernism, subject, truth
1.
INTRODUCTION
Whereas postmodern theories have proven their relevance through widespread discussion in other fields of science (such as: architecture, study of literature, sociology, philosophy), their reception in medical theory has hitherto been rather sporadic. Thus some mainstays of postmodem philosophy shall be introduced in the following and contrasted with existentialist positions. Existentialism suggests itself for the reason that it can rightly be considered the precursor of postmodern theories. By contrasting existentialism with postmodernism the shortcomings of existentialist positions are demonstrated in this contribution. Since only principal features of postmodern theories are to be applied in the following, and the distinctions that undoubtedly exist shall be disregarded, at least some theorists whose positions are generally regarded as being postmodern shall be cited: In particular these are the Italian Gianni Vattimo, the Frenchmen Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida as well as the late Michel Foucault. In the Anglo-American sphere Richard Rorty has gained renown and in the German-speaking world Wolfgang Welsch has substantially influenced the discussion. I will also refer to the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann whose approach is basically compatible with postmodern theories. ~
Theoretical Medieine 15: 253-265, 1994. © 1994 Kluwer Aeademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
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What is the objective of postmodern philosophy? The central differentiation to be applied here and to which also postmodern theories themselves orientate, is the difference between unity and plurality. Postmodern theories opt for plurality, against unity. Thus they claim to have left behind the grand narratives of western intellectual history and philosophy. The grand narratives postmodernism discards include the subject, morality, the unitarian concept of reason, Enlightenment, and progress. In connection with the dismissal of these central ideas of modernity, other projects can be discarded at the same time, e.g., the emancipation of humankind and in fact, the very assumption of any teleological goal of humankind, but also political undertakings such as the liberation of the proletariate by Marxism and capitalistic mass benefication} At the bottom of attempts to maintain or even enforce the above-mentioned concepts, postmodern theory senses a potential of totalitarianism. It fears that conflicting positions will be monopolized by means of the central ideas of modernity and thus be made invisible. Thus there is more to the concept of postmodernism than mere contemporary diagnosis. It does not only establish what is universally apparent, namely the decrease in attraction and creative power of the central ideas of modernity. First and foremost, and this is what constitutes the true philosophical essence, postmodernism is campaigning rigorously against the fundamentals of cultural modernity. It is at this very point - as I will elaborate in the following - that the analogies with existentialism are located. To demonstrate this, I will first consider in more detail Heidegger's and Sartre's dealings with the problems of unity, multiplicity and difference (2). Subsequently, the continuities and inconsistencies in the relationship between existentialism and postmodernism shall be identified in reference to three basic concepts of the theory of modernity, namely the subject (3), truth (4), and ethics (5). The relevance of postmodern positions for problems of theoretical medicine is demonstrated by respective concise examples. Occasional illustrations from the field of social theory should add variety to the discourse.
2.
UNITARIAN
CONCEPTS
IN E X I S T E N T I A L I S M
One of the basic elements of early Heidegger is a diagnosis of a crisis in science, which leads hirn to a fundamental criticism in Sein und Zeit of the syndrome Max Weber called the occidental rationalism. 3 According to Heidegger, philosophy, the history of philosophy, and the history of ontology in particular have paid attention only to existing things (Seiendes)
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while neglecting the issue of authentic Being. Thus, the history of theory and its concomitant traditions would have to be destructed, or - in presentday vocabulary: de-constructed. In this context, Heidegger himself designates the terms "Descartes' ego cogito, subject, reason, mind, person ''4 as concepts to be reconsidered. It is these assaults on the bulwark of transcendental philosophy in particular that make Heidegger so attractive to the subsequent history of theory. His criticism aims at a conception of the human that links the antique animal rationale equipped with logos and with Christian elements of transcendence. Heidegger believes, that due to this link between antique and theological ideas, the Being of humans is no longer investigated and thus our anthropological destiny with regard to the question of Being (Seinsfrage) remains undetermined. Heidegger reestablishes this criticism of traditional philosophical beliefs concerning our metaphysical destiny above all in his Brief über den "Humanismus" of 1947, 5 where he blames humanism of not explaining the historical origins concerning the Being of humans, but on the contrary, to conceal the connection of humans with Being. However, it is not only Humanism that this verdict is aimed at; all "-isms," that is, all theories of salvation and redemption, as well as all political ideologies are faced with this accusation. Heidegger's answer to the shortcomings of the universally-known grand theories is a fundamental ontology that endeavors to find the "wholeness of Being" (Seinsganzheit) 6 beyond existing things (Seiendes), to which the common sense concerning persons belongs. Equipped with this fundamental ontology, the modern individual will be able to survive, even in view of the deterioration of traditional values and existential isolation. It is Heidegger's wish to protect us from the "decay" (Verfallenheit) into the faceless "anyone" (das Man) of modern mass society. Heidegger wants persons to distinguish themselves from triviality with determinateness (Entschlossenheit). It is exactly this point that brought Heidegger close to the national socialist worshipping of heroes. Heidegger's existential analyses of the looming disintegration of modernity aims at grounding a new perspective of unity, an "invariant basis of existence," as Habermas put it. 7 Doubt and dis-unity are to be excluded from the determination of Being. Heidegger explicitly disassociates himself from occidental rationality, traditional metaphysics as well as science, because they are no longer able to remove the uncertainties. On the contrary, they a r e a symptom of our loss of Being (Seinsvergessenheit), which goes hand in hand with disunities and ruptures of modernity. Religion, rationality, and science have had to adapt to modernity with its individual complexity, intricacy, and insecurity. But they lost their
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supposed function of finding alternatives to crisis-prone modemity with this adaptation. Although substantially influenced by Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre comes to an absolutely different conclusion about the importance of humanism. In contrast to Heidegger, Sartre's thesis is: "Existentialism is a Humanism. ''8 This thesis is derived from Heidegger's notions of project (Entwurf) and determinateness (Entschlossenheit). The project is a basic feature of existence (Dasein) as well as of Being. Human beings have been thrown into this situation, our facticity, within which we have to realize our freedom with determinateness. We have no choice but to chose our freedom and to change the world according to our projects. This causes an immense responsibility for our actions. According to Sartre, there are no excuses for any mistakes of individual men and women or of humankind as a whole. Humans, Sartre says, are condenmed to be free and to bear the whole weight of responsibility for the world on our shoulders. Thus the central reference point of Sartre's existentialism is human reality with its achievements and risks. Sartre grants totality to human reality: there is nothing but human reality to determine what one has to be and to do. He attests to this totality of human reality an absence of contingency, which he explains by analogy to religious phenomena: human reality is seen as an equivalent to the "'ens causa sui that is named God by the religions. ''9 Sartrian existentialism is humanistic because it is no longer based on external models in the classical way, neither on philosophy of reason, nor on Christian theology. In contrast, it is the human alone who can, as project, set goals for him- or herself that only he or she will be able to realize in the future. From here, it is but a small step to Marxism, which is comparatively radical in its critique of the bourgeois conception of humankind and its morality, and which points out at the same time perspectives for the future, namely, concepts for change Jn the existentialist sense. Sartre devotes a major portion of his theoretical efforts to the link between existentialism and Marxism. The declared aim is the renewal of fossilized Marxism, respectively Stalinism, of the Fifties and Sixties. For this purpose Sartre undertakes great efforts to criticize the dialectics of nature originating from Engels and to substitute it with dialectics in which individual experience and the individual concept get their due. 1° Altogether Sartre designs two concepts of unity: On the one hand there is a strong version of subjectivity, to which totality and absence of contingency are attributed. On the other hand, there is a political orientation to Marxism - an "-ism,'" as Heidegger would say - paving the way for a political vision with new certainties, utopias and perspectives of unity. Seen
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from Heidegger's position, Sartre falls back behind him, since he speaks for a strong concept of subject as weil as for a political gränd theory.
3.
THE SUBJECT
Sartre was the last important representative of existentialism. However, postmodem theories in a way pursue the concerns of e×istentialism. As indicated in the beginning, postmodern theories, like existentialism, aim at overcoming the grand theories of modernity depreciated by Heidegger as "-isms." A clear example is post-structuralism which can be considered a postmodem theory because it also emphasizes the resistance, suppressed by discourses of power, that can still not be completely extinguished. 11 Michel Foucault convincingly identified the necessary link between the existence of power and resistance. Politically, it is imperative to strengthen this eventful and discontinuing character of discourses to defend it ägainst the discursive "police. ''~2 Here a new concept of subjeet is heralded, which is constituted beyond all grand theories of modemity. This new concept of subject manifests that, in modern soeiety, apart from the generally aecepted point of view, there are always other ways of describing the worldD The postmodern subject is no longer his or her own ruler, able to view the world objectively and then to influence it in äccordance with wishes or even to dominate it. The transformation of the concept of subject in postmodem philosophies has been described as decentering. It was demanded - e.g., by Gianni Vattimo while discussing Heidegger's critique of humanism - that the subject should make a "reducing diet. ''13 The result is a "weak subject, ''~4 who is not, as in Sartre's theory, equipped with absolute features, but can only trust his or her relative abilities and perspectives. Here, postmodernism perpetuates the existentialist diagnosis, that, in modemity, one is left solely to refer to oneself. However, it refuses to cushion this existential loneliness with new concepts of unity. Postmodern subjects can no longer find orientation in the grand narratives of modemity; they draw their strength e×clusively from themselves. Instead of introducing new semantics of unity, postmodernism cultivates the radical self-reference of modern existence to a lifestyle. This conception of an art of living, as it was for instance presented by Foucault, reacts to the loss of unitarian guide]ines of morality and at the same time aims at immunizing the subject against totalitarian efforts, is Such a conception takes into consideration that it has in effect become impossihle to determine an independent position from which the world or
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society can be observed. The postmodern diagnosis holds that the world is inevitably polycontextual and that unity has been irretrievably lost. Furthermore, it says that each viewpoint and each statement remains bound to its context and perspective. This diagnosis shows that postmodernism shares the existentialists' observations concerning the grand theories and -isms. These theories, no matter whether political, philosophical or even theological, are doomed to fail. The difference, however, lies in the fact, that postmodernism dispenses with the construction of new semantics of unity, which are, for instance, represented by Heidegger's fundamental ontology or Sartre's human reality. Postmodernism is serious about the decline o f universalistic discourses: 16 instead of universalism it vigorously advocates particularism; instead of unity, it endorses difference. If applied to problems of medical theory, this position and its notions of a weak subject and the contextual cognition results in a warning to be careful with the development and use of risk technologies, such as those encountered in genetic research. The term "risk" in this connection does not imply that accidents will occur or that something unexpected will happen. It means that dealing with risks implies first and foremost dealing with problems of time, or to put it more exactly: with the temporal contextuality of decisions. Each decision concerning risks has to be taken in the light of a principally unknown future. Given the irreversibility and nonlinearity of time, the "social costs" of risk technologies for future generations cannot be overlooked, but the decision has to be taken at present time. Thus, in the context of risks, the problem is the contemporary anticipation offuture damages. 17And here the notion of a weak subject may reflect the vagaries and uncertainties that are related to such decisions. One does know that each decision taken at present time has irreversible consequences in the future, but one does not know what these consequences will exactly be like. It should be clear that this last statement not only applies to decisions that introduce new and risky processes but also to those that will avoid risk technologies. As to research in and application of genetic technology (for example in HIV/AIDS therapy) these uncertainties of time cannot be over-estimated. With every use, devastating consequences that presently are unpredictable must be reckoned with. However, one must not necessarily conclude that research and application in this field should be stopped. To dispense with implementation of risky research would also mean a decision taken in the light of an unknown future. Such a renunciation could have disastrous consequences too, easily imaginable in the case of a vaccine against HIV viruses potentially developable on the basis of genetic technology. In other
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words: Taking into consideration postmodern concepts such as the weak subject and the context-bound position, these notions help to clarify the theoretical as well as the practical uncertainties in every respect. To be sure, decision-making in connection with risks will not becoming easier while bearing these concepts in mind. But this can only be regarded as an advantage, if contrasted with "modern" theories promising certainty and feasibility (such as Sartre's phantasy of omnipotence). Certainty and feasibility have substantially contributed to the underrating of negative consequences in the field of risk technologies. But let us return for another moment to the philosophical debate. In contrast to so-called modern theories, postmodern theories no longer regard the abandonment of unity of the world as a loss. Modern theories have also observed the world's decline of unity, their main effort, however, has been to theoretically cushion this loss of unity. One example is the Kantian differentiation of reason into pure reason, practical reason and judgement, cushioned, however, with a transcendental subject as a new kind of unity set against it. Hegel in his Philosophy ofRight, diagnoses a differentiation of society into economy and polifics, or, in bis own terminology, into a civil society and a state, which in turn should be integrated by means of the public good (Gemeinwohl) and the monarch. Existentiatism, too, belongs to this class of modern theories, although (with the exception of Nietzsche ~8) existentialism was the first to reject basic principtes of the classical theories. In this case, however, modernity's loss of unity was compensated by the reference to an invariant Being. Alternatively - as Sartre suggested - the metaphysical "loss of home" of the modern individual was to be turned into a merit and to be ascribed to omnipotent ability (which in conjunction with Marxism culminated in an atheist doctrine of "salvation"). Postmodern theories accept this loss of unity; yet they do not merely understand it as a history of decline, but also as an opportunity. By this regard they are still in line with modernity, as the genealogy of the theories listed demonstrates. Postmodernism is postmodern only because of its theoretical content. In other words: We are not living in a postmodern era, but postmodern theory seems to allow us to adequately describe modernity without resorting once again to modern concepts of unity. The theory of postmodernity becomes the basis of reflection on modernity. The diagnosis that modernity can only be described adequately from different points of view means that plurality and polycontextuality is turned into a soil for fertile reflections. Thus, the common accusations against postmodern theory do not hold, namely that after dispensing with the concepts of unity there is nothing left but the arbitrariness of "anything goes," or even worse, that
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the critique of fundamental modern "-isms" leads to anti-humanism or even to totalitarianism itself. ~9
4.
TRUTH
I would like to further illustrate this in reference to the concept of truth. It is a postmodern understanding, that the decentering of the subject is connected with a decrease of truth - o n e more grand narrative is left behind. Thomas Kuhn's paradigmata theory, to mention only one example, illustrates the obviously irrational course of the history of science. 2° Although attempts are still being undertaken to save the universal concept of truth, 21 validity-claims to truth under modern conditions can at best be formulated counterfactually, i.e., not universally redeemable. Neither subject nor science, especially not its supposed queen, philosophy, can redeem such claims. And this is not because philosophy has only been able to approximate the universal truth, but because in (post-)modernity there is no longer a privileged position from which this venture could be tackled. Given the multiperspectivity of modernity, the problem of any universal validity-claim is that it can be seen as related to a certain context, that means, it can be observed as contingent. 22 However, this is not the final word on the subject of truth. Under the presumption of a polycontextural world, it is possible to postulate local truths. Claims of truth have to be specified and limited. From a sociological point of view, the problem of truth is still a different one. This is because one can see that within the modern society a certain context of truth has developed. To my mind,-there is much to be said for locating this context in the scientific system, i.e., criteria of truth only play an important role in the scientific system, but not in other sectors of society. In politics, what matters is not whether a statement is true, but whether somebody has the power to push his point through; in economics, it is only the possibility of payments that decide one's position in the competition for market shares, and not "true" statements in advertising; legal decisions only ascertain whether a state of facts is legal or illegal - it is not justice that is decisive, much less, the truth. Medicine and its relationship to truth will later be dealt with in greater detail. Under the conditions of modern society, truth is reduced to an operation of the scientific system, or - to paraphrase Niklas Luhmann - to a code which is used by science itself to distinguish between true and false. 23 By writing this article I claim scientific truth, too. I could not possibly expect a reader to continue reading if I said that I was convinced of the
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falseness of my own statements. However, I claim scientific truth only, i.e., I am aware of the fact that there exist conflicting opinions on the matter, for instance the position that the idle talk of postmodernity merely corresponds to a conservative Zeitgeist, a Zeitgeist that prevents humankind from searching for a salvation from its alienation. And I am also aware of the fact, that there is no meta-rule to settle this argument. There is a Conflict, thus the title of Lyotard's postmodern programmatic publication, that can only be settled by force against one of the parties concerned.24 Whoever denies this would first have to name the rule and secondly to name the authority to employ the rule. The argument that a Conflict is basically not decidable is the new element introduced by postmodern theories. Modern theories work upon the assumption of the one truth that will succeed in the end. The practical implementation of this rule has had devastating effects; not without reason the totalitarian aspect has orten been emphasized by the postmodern camp. This can be illustrated with an example about German psychiatry. Practice, theory and research of drug consumption have until quite recently adhered to the so-called abstinence paradigm. This maintains that particularly for consumers of illicit drugs (notably heroin), giving up consumption, hence abstinence, is the only alternative to an otherwise certain death. Due to this paradigm drug consumers are forced into abstinence theräpies, and if they abandon their therapy or resort to consumption, these persons are charged with unwillingness to cooperate. The end of the story remains the reduction to misery, not caused by narcotics but the consumer's poor living conditions, as a result of the criminalization of the use of narcotics. Until a few years ago, alternative paradigmata to the abstinence paradigm have not been taken seriously, let alone financial support for research. But now there are first signs of change. Nowadays it is known that therapy or death are not the only alternatives for drug consumers; moreover these alternatives are no longer considered the norm. There are drug consumers who are able to pull themselves out of their addiction and there are others, who manage the hitherto unthinkable, that is to control and ration their heroin consumption and lead an almost normal life. 2» Aware of these diverse types of drug consumption, the therapy and support sector can now be diversified so that in the future more adequate aid can be offered to people seeking help. This example clearly illustrates the detrimental consequences of a claim to monocontextural truth. The type of self-controlled drug consumer I just described is not new, he or she has always existed. Research, however, was incapable of noticing that individual, because - oriented exclusively to the abstinence paradigm - it considered his or her existence impossible, and,
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if he or she did at all exist, the person concerned was not considered to be drug-addicted in the clinical sense. Because a person who was a clinical case of addiction was considered unable to give up consumption or to control the use of narcotics - a tautological pattern of explanation. The exclusive observation of drug consumption under the premises of illness, therapy, and abstinence has prevented the recognition of other perspectives concerning this very consumption and thus their development into practical policy. Returning to the theoretical level, it now should have become clear, that with the renunciation of the one truth not arbitrariness but a pluralized truth evolves. There is the health system's perspective, that only distinguishes between healthy and sick. And there is the consumer's perspective that knows how to integrate drug consumption into everyday life. In other words: It is not random arbitrariness that features the postmodern viewpoint, but contingency. Postmodernism is characterized by the conviction that in principle, everything could just as weil be quite different.26 The example of the drug-consumer makes clear that theories of truth, although claiming universality, due to their contextuality, fail to see something that is not in their fange of vision, or, to be more precise: that cannot be within their range of vision. Applying this diagnosis epistemologically, this means that every observation is only accomplished by seeing something and excluding something else. Formulated theoretically: Every observation creates its unity by difference. Like an eye every observation has a blind spot that denies access to the whole. Every observation needs this difference to produce information.27 Holism in the strict sense is nonexistent. Postmodern observation then means to observe how the other observes, to observe that every observation has its particular context, also one's own view. This operation has also been called second order observation. 28 Naturally, this second order observation has its blind spot, too, and sees only what it sees, and does not see what it does not see. Hence it is not a higher level of observation, as the Marxist ideology critique claimed itself to be, but only a different kind of observation - which brings us back to the multiperspectivity of postmodern theories.
5. ETHICS Linked with the multiperspectivity of the world and the inevitable loss of unity is the departure of a further grand narrative: the idea of a universal morality. As is generally known, this idea of a marshalling unity has run
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through the history of philosophy from its antique and theological beginnings via the philosophy of transcendence, to the modern ethics of discourse of Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel. Such a grand narrative cannot hold in a postmodern perspecfive. Every approach of a universalistic nature has to face the question, from where it draws its difference without which an observation of the world is impossible. In other words: Any and all theories of ethics must allow an examination of their own contingency. And this not because morality itself is contingent, but because they can only be observed under contingent circumstances of modernity. But what remains of morality, if postmodern theory has now completely occupied the modernist bulwark already weakened severely by Heidegger? The answer may sound surprising: Practiced solidarityI The question is: Do I really need a foundation or even a final foundation to act solidarily? From the viewpoint of social theory the evolution of the semantics of human rights, democracy, and solidarity is not a necessary development which is based on a philosophy of humanistic inspiration. Rather they are a coincidental result of modern society, and thus in itself contingent. If I have perceived that these guiding values, for me as well as for others, render life within modern society more easily bearable, I can dispose of ladders of foundations? 9 At any rate, the innumerable attempts to justify such basic values have not succeeded in reducing the sufferings in the world any better than simple adherence to them. Rather than a threat, the contingency of moral positions may in fact safeguard ethics flora generating too vigorous consequences that have to be relativized in retrospect. It is exactly the consideration of contingency~ the possibility that any position - including our own - could also be wrong, that fosters respect for the basic values of persons potentially concerned. Take for example the unreliability of HIV test-results that has led to "false" positive results in many cases. This fact completely undermines the justifiability of discriminating against HIV-positive persons, a practice already questionable for many other reasons, though being backed politically, legally and medically in many countries of the world. Thus, theory is not the sheet anchor, hut practice. Accordingly, a treatise by Rorty is entitled: "The priority of democracy to philosophy. ''3° To act solidarily one does not need a detailed conception of justice, which is irnplicit eren in some postmodern theories. 31 Solidarity has to be pracficed. More cannot be done in a world flooded with contingencies - nor less.
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CONCLUSION
In summary, it should have become clear that the preparatory work accomplished by existentialism for postmodernism is considerable. The leitmotiJ is the leaving behind of the grand narratives of occidental philosophy and intellectual history. But from the postmodern point of view, existentialism fails in not accepting the loss of unity. On the contrary, existentialism strives to provide a new foundation for it by means of politics as in Sartre's case or by means of metaphysics as with Heidegger. Postmodernism reflects the failure of the grand narratives of modernity not only in terms of the contents, but also and above all methodically. The existentialist critique of the contents of modern "-isms" cannot - from a postmodern point of view - compensate for their methodical shortcomings. Acknowledgement - The author is indebted to Karin Farrent for translating the article into English, and Gerd Nollmann and Armin Nassehi for commentaries on earlier versions.
REFERENCES 1. Scherr A. Postmoderne Soziologie - Soziologie der Postmoderne: Überlegungen zu notwendigen Differenzierungen der sozialwissenschaftlichen Diskussion. Zeitschrift für Soziologie 1990;19:3-12; Luhmann N, Fuchs P. Reden und Schweigen. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1989. 2. Welsch W. Gesellschaft ohne Meta-Erzählung? In: Zapf W, ed. Die Modernisierung moderner Gesellschaften, Verhandlungen des 25. Deutschen Soziologentages in Frankfurt am Main 1990. Frankfurt/M. and New York: Campus, 1991: 174-184. 3. Heidegger M. Sein und Zeit. 16th Ed. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1986. 4. Ibid: 22. 5. Heidegger M. Über den Humanismus. In: Heidegger M. Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit. Mit einem Brief über den Humanismus. 2nd Ed. Bern: Francke, 1954:53-119. 6. Heidegger M. Sein und Zeit: 182, 7. Habermas J. Heidegger - Werk und Weltanschauung. In: Farlas V. Heidegger und der Nationalsozialismus. Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1989:11-37: 17. 8. Sartre JP. L'existentialisme est un humanisme. Paris: Nagel, 1946. 9. Sartre JP. L'être et le néant. Essai d'ontologie. Paris: Gallimard, 1949: 708. 10. Sartre JP. Critique de la raison dialectique, Vol. 1. Paris: Gallimard, 1960. 11. Foucault M. Histoire de la sexualité 1: La volonté de savoir. Paris: Gallimard, 1976. 12. Foucault M. L'ordre du discours. Paris: Gallimard, 1972. 13. Vattimo G. Das Ende der Moderne. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1990 (German translation of: Vattimo G. La fine della modernitä. Milano: Garzanti Editore, 1985): 54. 14. Welsch, W. Unsere postmoderne Moderne. Weinheim: VCH Acta Humaniora, 1987: 316. 15. Foucault M. Histoire de la sexualité 2: L'usage des plaisirs. Paris: Gallimard, 1984; Foucault M. Histoire de la sexualité 3: Le souci de soi. Paris: Gallimard, 1984; Schmid W. A u f der Suche nach einer neuen Lebenskunst: Die Frage nach dem Grund der Neubegründung der Ethik bei Foucault. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1991, 16. Lyotard JF. Le différend. Paris: Minuit, 1983.
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17. Luhmann N. Soziologie des Risikos. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1991; Nassehi A. Die Zeit der Gesellschaft: Auf dem Weg zu einer soziologischen Theorie der Zeit. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1993. 18. Nietzsche's contribution to what is nowadays called "postmodernism" is widely accepted in the literature. See, for example, the chapter concerning Nietzsche by Habermas, who of course is critically against postmodernism as well as against Nietzsche (see Habermas J. Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1985). 19. See for instance the critique by Luc Ferry and Alain Renault against postmodernist thought in general (see Ferry L, Renaut A. La pensée 68. Essai sur l'anti-humanisme contemporain. Paris: Gallimard, 1985). 20. Kuhn TS. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd Ed., enlarged. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970 (Neurath O, Carnap R, Morris C, eds. International Encyclopedia of Unified Science; Vol. II, No 2). 21. Habermas J. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, 2 Vols., Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1981; Habermas J. Faktizität und Geltung: Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des modernen Rechtsstaats. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1992. 22. Luhmann N. Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1990. 23. Ibid. 24. Lyotard JF. Le différend. 25. Harding WM, Zinberg NE, Stelmack SM, Barry M. Formerly-addicted-now-controlled opiate users. International Journal of the Addictions 1980;15:47-60; Biernacki P. Pathways of Heroin Addiction: Recovery Without Treatment. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986; Weber G, Schneider W. Herauswachsen aus der Sucht illegaler Drogen. Selbstheilung, kontrollierter Gebrauch und therapiegestützter Ausstieg. Münster: Westf. Wilhelms-Universität Münster, 1992 (Ministerium für Arbeit, Gesundheit und Soziales Nordrhein-Westfalen). 26. Luhmann N. Kontingenz als Eigenwert der Moderne. In: Luhmann N° Beobachtungen der Moderne. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1992: 93-128. 27. Bateson G. Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Cotlected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and Epistemology. San Francisco: Chandler, 1972. 28. Luhmann N. Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft. See also: Von Foerster H. Observing Systems. Santa Barbara: Intersysterns Publication, 1982. 29. Rorty R. Contingency, lrony, and Solidarity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 30. Rorty R. The priority of democracy to philosophy. In: Rorty R. Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1. Cambridge, I/K: Cambridge University Press, 1991: 175-196. 31. Welsch (in: Gesellschaft ohne Meta-Erzählung?) has argued that Lyotard's demand for toleration of conflicting positions (see Le différend) is itself a new meta-rule.