Principle of trans-subjectivity in Luhmann’s historical methodology

Abstract

This article examines the problem of trans-subjectivity in Niklas Luhmann’s historical methodology. Trans-subjectivity, like inter-subjectivity, is understood in the humanities in different ways (N. Lossky, A. Bergson, I. Prigogine and others). Luhmann’s exploration of time leads him to devide it into “eternity” ( aeternitas ) and “system time” ( tempus ). Each manifestation of the latter is imbued with a special meaning that distinguishes one system time from another. History is reconstructed within the framework of the time dimension of meaning. These temporally measured meanings are the framework for reconstructing. This means that in historical methodology Luhmann essentially defended the principle of trans-subjectivism, although he denied the ontological positions of subject and object. In the framework of a forming system-communication approach significantly based on Luhmann’s historical methodology, trans-subjectivity becomes a new, more substantive and maximally realistic (and therefore more objective) understanding of the principle of historicism, when the past is viewed through the prism of the perception of a particular person, regarded as both the subject and the object of history. If in digital history such an ontological superposition is especially applicable thanks to the new conditions of an informal environment that allows for an almost total self-description of society (according to Luhmann), and records the digital footprints of social actions of the Ego , in non-digital traditional historical science it can also be used as a fertile conceptual scheme, and explanatory model.