The future cannot begin - Niklas Luhmann

Luhmann, Niklas, The Future Cannot Begin: Temporal Structures in Modern Society , Social Research, 43:1 (1976:Spring) p.130

The Future Cannot Begin: Temporal Structures in Modern Society· BY

NIKLAS LUHMANN

The History of the Future

THE history of the future does not reach back very far.

Human life, of course, provides always for an immediate future as well as for an immediate past. This immediate time, this time at hand of conditioned and conditioning events, has been distinguished from a more distant past and a more distant future, both of which tend to fuse in the darkness of a mythic time. Philosophy, later, reconceptualized this view by a two-level theory of time, distinguishing eternal time and the time of changing events. 1 Given this conception of time, medieval philosophers felt no need to reflect a difference of existence and perpetuation, seeing creation and preservation as one identical act of God. And they implied that the mere succession of thoughts and events produced the idea of time but could not change, as such, the relation between God and His creatures. It was only the structural change from traditional to bourgeois society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which dissolved this older notion and replaced it by a temporal structure that con1 For Neo-Platonic origins. cf. the texts edited by S. Sambursky and S. Pines. The Concept of Time in Late Neoplatonism aerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. 1971). Cf. also Pitirim A. Sorokin. Social and Cultural Dynamics, of vols. (New York: Bedminster Press. 1937).2: 473 ff.

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tains in itself the possibility of higher complexity. Arthur Lovejoy claims for the eighteenth century a "temporalizing of the chain of being." 2 This means a restructuring of the "series rerum" in the sense of a development from simple to complex forms. The retrogressive time reckoning "before Christ" gained common acceptance in the eighteenth century.s By this invention the past was delivered from the necessity of being grounded in a beginning event. It then became open for limitless historical research. But if the past no longer has a fixed time of beginning which sets into motion time itself and creates the best of possible worlds and defines the natural forms, what will happen to the future? If there is any unity in time itself, any fundamental change in the conception of past cannot remain without consequences for the perception of future. I have to add that this temporalization of being not only evaporated the natural forms; with this, it destroyed the basis of the Aristotelian conception of negation as deprivation (sleresis, privalio) too." The problem of negativity had to be reformulated as a universal category. Since then, any experience and any action implies negation as a requisite of selective determination, and the future becomes a storehouse of possibilities from which we can choose only by means of negation. Future itself, and this means past futures as well as the prese~t future, must now be conceived as possibly quite different from the past. It can no longer be characterized as approaching a turning point where it returns into the past or where the order of this world or even time itself is changed. It may contain, as a functional equivalent for the end of time, emergent properties and not-yet-realized possibilities. It becomes an open future. 2 Cf. Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the HiJtory of an Idea (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986). 8 Cf. Adalbert Klempt, Die Siikularisierung der universalhistorischen AuDassung (Guingen: Musterschmidt, 1960), pp. 81 ~. 4 This was, to be sure, only one of the traditional notions of negation (the discussion of different notions of negation was very complex in late medieval and early modern times): but its abolition did necessitate, nevertheless, the reconstruction of the meaning of negation as such.

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There are controversies about the exact birth date of this modern conception of future." Some authors think of the seventeenth century. others of the second half of the eighteenth. 6 This second view seems to be geared to the fact that the second half of the eighteenth century changes its expectations about coming events from a pessimistic to an optimistic vision. from moral decay to progress." The last possible date is the French Revolution. which changed the meaning of revolution from turning back to moving forward and put into common use the word avenir. In the proceedings of the Institut National. I found the phrase: Le temps present est gras d'avenir,8 apparently current at that time (1798). The wording temps present-present time-is interesting in itself. In what sense can time be present? One possible interpretation might be that the phrase "present time." by adding stress to 11 Cf. Robert Nisbert, Social Change and History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 106 ff. 8 Cf. Reinhart Koselleck, "Historia Magistra Vitae," in Manfred Riedel, ed., Natur und Geschichte (Stuttgart, 1967), pp. 196-220: and Reinhart KoseIleck, "Vergangene Zukunft der frUhen Neuzeit," in Festgabe lilr Carl Schmitt (Berlin, 1968), pp. 551566. T Cf. Carl L. Becker, The Heavenly City 01 the Eighteenth Century Philosophers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982). 8 So Hend Gregoire, Sur les moyens de perlectionner les sciences politiques, M~moires de l'lnstitut National (Classe des sciences morales et politiques), Vol. I (Paris, 1798), pp. 552-556. Future is perceived, in this political context at least, as dose at hand (prochainementl). Actually, neither the word avenir nor the phrase Le temps present est gros d'avenir had been invented during the French Revolution. The phrase serves as motto in Louis ~bastien Mercier's book rAn deux mille quatre cent quarante: Rive s'il en lut jama;s (London, 1772). Mercier refers to Leibnlz. Checking Lelbnlz, we find a characteristic difference. He does not speak about "the present time" but only about the present as such and uses the phrase only to show that monads have a temporal dimension. For example: Essais de Theodict!e § 860 (In C.J. Gerhardt, ed., Die philosophischen Schrilten von Gottlried Wilhelm Leibniz [Hfldesheim: Olms, 1961],6: 829): "C'est une des regles de mon systl!me de l'harmonle que le present est gros de l'avenlr." Or Principes de la Nature et de la Grace, fondt!es en raison § 18 (Gerhardt 6: 604): "Le present est gros de l'avenir, le future se pouvoit lire dans le pas~, l'~loign~ est exprim~ dans le prochain." Or Letter to Bayle, without date (Gerhardl 8: 66): "Le present est toujours gros de l'avenir ou chaque substance doit exprimer dl!s ~present tous ses eslats futurs"-thus: no open futurel Or Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement (Gerhardt 5: 48): "Le present esl gros de l'avenlr el charg~ du pa~."

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the notion of the present, compensates for a loss of meaning and duration in the present itself. 9 In fact, if we have an almost infinite historical past, structured and limited only by our actual interests, and if we have an open future, the present becomes the turning point which switches the process of time from past into future. The French Revolution symbolizes and proves the possibility of this understanding by its practice. The Germans, on the other hand, join by writing Zeitgedichte-time poems-in the sense of poems of political actuality.IO However, the punctualization of the present preceded the open future by more than a hundred years; it was not its consequence. Already in the early seventeenth century the unity of existence and preservation was split and the present was conceived as discontinuous, depending on secondary causes for its endurance. Henceforth, actuality has to be thought of as instantaneous change. The transformation of time perspectives began by reconceptualizing the present. It led, then, to a series of relief measures: to the concept of system, to increasing interest in mechanisms and in security, and, during the eighteenth century, to the interpretation of existence as sentiment. But only the economic and political breakthrough of the bourgeois society provided the background for solving time problems by temporal means: by extending the time horizons of past and future and by orienting the present toward their difference. To put it in the romantic way of Lamennais: "I fly from the present by two routes, that of the past and that of the future. uu If this is enough evidence-and it would be easy to produce more-that with the rise of bourgeois society the structure of time 9 On the psychological level we have some evidence for this dual understanding of the present: either as a very short or as a rather long duration. See Thomas J. Cottle and Stephen L. Klineberg, The Present Of Things Future: Explorations of Time in Human Experience (New York: Free Press, 1974), p. 108. 10 Cf. JUrgen Wilke, Das "Zeitgedicht": Seine Herkunft und frilhe Ausbildung (Meisenheim am Glan: A. Hain, 1974). 11 I take this quotation from Georges Poulet, Studies in Human Time, translated by Elliott Coleman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1956), p. 26.

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has changed drastically in the direction of higher temporal complexity. then we must expect that this change will have its impact on every social structure and on every concept. Nothing will retain its old meaning. If there is formal continuity in institutions or terminologies. this only will conceal the fact that every single form has gained higher contingency and higher selectivity.12 We have been reacting to the consequences of this change for a long time. We observe the "loss of the stable state." 18 and we know that a faster rate of change requires more anticipatory be-, havior-Iiterally, more acting before the event, more future-oriented planning. 14 However, we still do not have a satisfactory concept of time. The prevailing "solution" to this problem is the distinction of several different notions of time.l~ Still, we lack a satisfactory theory that would be able to correlate variations in social structure and variations in temporal structure. This deficiency is not only a problem of functionalist theory; it has older and deeper roots. IO

Toward a Concept of Time It is now a very common view that time is an aspect of the social construction of reality. This view suggests that there are several 12 In fact. a new Wiirterbuch Gescllichtliche GrundbegriDe which began to appear in Germany in 1972 tries to make this point. 18 So the formula of Donald A. Sehon. Beyond the Stable State (New York: Norton. 1978). 14 See only F. E. Emery and E. L. Trist. Towards a Social Ecology: Contextual Appreciation ot the Future in the Present (London and New York: Plenum Press. 1978). p.88. lIS See. for example. the much discussed distinction of the linear dimension and the modalitles of time by J. Ellis McTaggart, "The Unreality of Time." Mind 17 (1908): 457-474. reprinted in his Philosophical Stu.dies (New York and London: Longmans. 1984). pp. 110-181. For the German historisch-geisteswissenschattliche tradition. cf. Martin Heidegger. "Der Zeitbegriff in der Geschic:htswissenschaft," Zeitscllritt tilr Philosophie und philosophische Kf'itik 160 (1916): 178-188. 18 Cf. Hermlnio Martins. "Time and Theory in Sociology:' in John Rex, cd., APproaches to Sociology: An Intf'oduction to Major Tf'ends in British Sociology (London and Boston: Routledge Bc Kegan Paul, 1974), pp. 246-294.

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times, a plurality of Temporalgestalten or of social times. IT This conception disconnects time and chronology. Accordingly, we may have several times and one integrating chronology. But there remain questions to be asked: Are we allowed to reduce the unity of time to the unity of chronology? Don't we fall back, by assuming a plurality of times, upon the pre-Aristotelian notion of time as movement or process? Is there any progress beyond the classical definition of time as measure of movement? To avoid an uncontrolled fusion of the notions of time and of movement._ I propose to define time as the interpretation of reality with regard to the difference between past and future. This definition presupposes, of course, that daily life gives the experience of change and contains in itself the point of departure for its own "timing." I could prove this presupposition by phenomenological analyses. This experience of change, however, is not yet really time, as Husserl himself came to see in his later years. It is pervasive and unavoidable. If you do not see or hear any change, you will feel it in yourself. It is the dowry of organic life for its marriage with culture. And it predetermines the universality of time on the cultural level. But it remains by and large open for cultural elaboration and variation, precisely because it is a universal predisposition for temporalizing experience. This conceptual approach offers several important advantages: • It begins by making a clear distinction between movement, process, or experience of change on the one hand, and the cultural constitution of time as a generalized dimension of meaningful reality on the other. • Thus, chronology can be conceived as a standardized scheme of movement and of time. It fulfills several functions at once: first, comparing and integrating movements that are not simul1'1 Cf. Pitirim A. Sorokin and Robert K. Merton, "Social Time: A Methodological and Functional Analysis," American Journal of Sociology 42 (1937): 615-629; Pitirim A: Sorokin, Sociocultural Causality, Space, Time (New York: Russell Bc Russell, 1964), pp. 171 ff.; Georges Gurvitch, The Spectrum of Social Time, translated by Myrtle Korenbaum (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Rcidel, 1964), esp. pp. 20 ff on multiple times.

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taneously present; 18 second, establishing relations between past and future in the double sense of fixed and unchangeable distances and movement of chronological units (dates, not eventsl) from future to past; and third, linking the experience of change in daily life to the relational structure of time. These multiple functions are interconnected by the use of one standardized movement for creating distance between dates. Not time, as Aristotle would have it, but chronology makes distance. It serves as an evolutionary universal which combines very simple rules for its use with highly complex functions-like money . • We should avoid, then, any confusion of chronology and time. The approach that I would like to propose articulates the temporal dimension as the relation between past and future. Thereby, the current conceptions of past and future come to be regarded as the decisive factors in the constitution of time. Complexity-in-time, for example, correlates with the possible divergence of past states and future states. Increasing complexity-in-time will, then, have its impact on the prevailing interpretations of past and of future. The history of the future, outlined in the beginning of this paper, illustrates this point. .. The relation of past and future will not have the same form in every society. We can suppose that there are correlations between this relation and other variables of the societal system. We may formulate the hypothesis that increasing system differentiation correlates with increasing dissociation of past and future. High discontinuity may, on the other hand, shorten the time perspective in the sense that a more distant past and a more distant future become irrelevant. There is some empirical evidence to support this proposition 1°-much to the surprise of students to whom the 18 The primary functiQn of primitive time-reckoning seems to be the integration of recurrent ecological changes and social norms regulating behavior. Cf. Daniel M. Maltz, "Primitive Time·Reckoning as a Symbolic System," Cornell Journal 01 Social Relations 8 (1968): 85-112. 19 Cf. Lucien Bernot and Ren~ Blancard, Notlville: Un village franrais (Paris: Institut d'ethnologie, 1953), pp. 321-332: Johan Galtung, "Images of the World in the Year 2000: A Synthesis of the Marginals of the Ten Nations Study," 7th World

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growing importance of time in modern society means simply an extension of time in the chronological sense. • This brings us back to my central thesis and suggests the formulation that the relevance of time (in fact, I would maintain: relevance as such) depends upon the capacity to mediate relations between past and future in a present. 20 All temporal structures relate to a present. The endurance of the present had to be shaken, as we have seen, before modern society could reconstruct its own temporality.

The Future as Temporal Horizon Time itself and its conceptualization are changed by the mechanisms of sociocultural evolution. This fact has consequences for the way we see and conceptualize our future~ Sociological analysis, therefore, finds itself facing a problem that has two sides: Its concept of future should be reasonably adequate for scientific procedures and it should be adequate in respect to its own historical situation. Both conditions of adequacy define diverging requirements, particularly for our own very late and highly complex society. To work out the complexities of this problem it will be useful to distinguish three different ways of conceptualizing the future: the chronological conception, the theory of modalities, and phenomenological analysis. The chronological conception presupposes identity and continuity of time and knows of only one principle of differentiation: Congress of Sociology. Varna. 1970 (Ms.); Margaret J. Zube. "Changing Concepts of Morality 1948-1969." Social Forces 50 (1972): 385-393. 20 This does not mean that the present can be explained by its function. There is always the primordial fact of a specious present mediating time and reality. We have. therefore. following George Herbert Mead. The Philosophy of the Present (Chicago: Open Court. 1932). p. 88. to distinguish functional presents and the specious present. A present without function (i.e .• without context) is by that fact reduced to a specious present.

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dates. The future is the series of dates which will come after the present. This chronological conception suggests that the future will begin where the present ends. A thorough analysis shows, however, that we cannot think of two immediately connected in· stants of time without thinking an interval separating them. 21 Already medieval authors concluded that beginning and ending cannot be, except as a property of the instantaneous present. 22 We know, furthermore, from cultural comparison as well as from empirical investigations that in daily life we experience time as rather discontinuous, that future is disconnected from the present and that only a few societies and in those societies only a fraction of their members feel obliged to gloss over these discontinuities and to level them out by a kind of mathematical calculation. 23 The theory of modalities has been used since the Middle Ages to formulate a two-level conception of reality, reflecting different modes in which being and nonbeing can present themselves. The temporal modes are: past, present, and future. They are distinct modes, of course, but there is again a kind of idealizing and equalizing at work. It is presupposed that these three modes of time, at least as modes,· are on an equal footing. This may be due to linguistic requirements. We have the choice between these three tenses. Whereas chronology depends on mathematical calculation, the theory of modalities depends on language. Its prototype seems to be: speaking about something. However, in our historical situation-at the "present time"f-it may be required not only to question the u gali1ean" idealizations 24 but also the linguistic schemes which we use and on which we continue to depend. The theory of temporal modalities leaves as open and undecidable the Aristotle, Physics, Book VI, 236a. See the chapter De incipit et desinit of thc Regule Solvendi Sophismata of WflIiam Heytesbury (14th century) as presented by Curtis Wilson, William Heytesbury: Medieval Logic and the Rise 01 Mathematical Physics (Madison: Univcrsity of Wisconsin Press, 1956), pp. 29 ff. 28 Cf. Sorokin and Mcrton. "Social Timc"; Cottlc and Klineberg. The Present 01 Things Future, pp. 108 ff . •• Cf. Edmund Husserl. Die Krisis der europliischen Wissensclzalten und die trans%endentale Philosophie, in Hus.rerliana, Vol. IV (Dcn Haag: Nijhoff, 1954). 21

22

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question whether the beginning should be conceived of as remotio of the past and positio of the present or as remotio of the present and positio of the future. 25 And the main question would be whether the treatment of the present as one of the modes of time is adequate. 26 The theory of modalities seems to offer a rational model for the fact that meaning is always something which preserves its identity by referring into horizons of further exploration and modification.2~ If this is true, we shall have to use phenomenological analysis to find our way back to the origins of time. This means to conceive of future as well as of past as time horizons of the present. The present, then, gets a special status by its function of integrating time and reality and of representing a set of constraints for temporal integration of future and past. Now, this conceptual redisposition makes it necessary to state more clearly what it means to conceive of the future as a temporal horizon of the present. The most important consequence is sigSee again William Heytesbury in Wilson. William Heytesbury. There are close parallels to the difficulties Kant ran into by equalizing the three modalities of necessity. possibility. and actuality (substituting this for the traditional pairs of necessarium/contingens and possibile/impossibile) as different modes of cognition. The problem consists in the differentiation of completely conditioned possibility and actuality. Cf. Ingetrud Pape. Tradition und Transformation der Modalit6t (Hamburg: Meiner. 1966). I: 224 ff. See also Nfcolai Hartmann. Moglicllheit und Wirklichkeit, 2nd ed. (Meisenheim am Glan: Westkulturverlag A. Hain. 1949). esp. pp. 228 ff. Kant felt unable to think of the possible as becoming actual by the addition of something. because the addition would then be something which is not possible (Kritih der reinen "'ernunft B. pp. 283 ff). For the same reasons we feel unable to think of the future as beginning to become a present. 27 For the notion of horizon. see Edmund Husserl. Ideen %u einer reinen Phlinomenologie und Phiinomenologiscllen Philosophia, Vol. I. in Husserliana Vol. III (Den Haag: Nijhoff. 1950). pp. 48 ff. lOO ff. 199 ff; Erfahrung und Urteil: Untersucllungen %ur Genealogie der Logik (Hamburg: Claassen Bc Goverts. 1948); Erste Philosophie, Vol. 11. in Husserliana, Vol. VIII (Den Haag: Nijhoff. 1959). pp. 146 If; Analysen %ur passiven Synthesis, in Husserliana, Vol. XI (Den Haag: Nijhoff. 1966), pp. 3 ft. George Herbert Mead hits upon this metaphor without mentioning Husserl; cf. Mead, The Philosophy of the Present, p. 26: "There is nothing transcendent about this powerlessness of our minds to exhaust any situation. Any advance which makes toward greater knQwledge simply extends the horizon of experience, but all remains within conceivable experience." III

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naled by the title of this paper :The future cannot begin. Indeed, the essential characteristic of an horizon is that we can never touch it, never get at it, never surpass it, but that in spite of that, it contributes to the definition of the situation. Any movement and any operation of thought only shifts the guiding horizon but never attains it. If we characterize processes or activities as beginning or ending, we use a terminology which belongs to the present. If we use these expressions to refer to distant dates-for example: the Roman Empire began to fall-we refer to a past present or to a future present. This iterative use of temporal modalities which goes back at least to Augustine is necessary for a theory of time that differentiates time and chronology. But this is not enough. .We can, in addition, formulate a distinction between future presents and the present future; and we can speak, if necessary, about the future of future presents, the future of past presents (modo fttturi exacti), and so on. 28 This iterative use of modal forms has always been a problem for the theory of modalities; 20 for example: why not "the future of futures" like "the heaven of heavens" (coelum coeli)? Only phenomenological analysis can justify the selection of meaningful combinations of modal forms. It shows that all iteration of temporal forms has to have its base in a present. 80 If we accept this distinction of the present future and future presents, we can define an open future as present future which has room for several mutually exclusive future presents. Open future is, of course, only a vague metaphor. In a sense, the openness of the future was a topic of logical and theological discussions since Aristotle's famous chapter IX peri hermeneias. 81 But it has been 118 For further elaboration. see Niklas Luhmann. "Weltzcit und Systemgeschichte." in his Soziologische AutkUirung (Opladen. 1975). 2: 150-169. 29 See only Alexis Meinong. Ober Moglichke;t und Wahrsche;nlichkeit: Beitriige zur Gegenslandstheor;e und Erkenntn;stheor;e (Leipzig: Barth. 19I!S). 80 This is. of course. the main idea of George Herbert Mead. Mead himself uses the formulation "past pasts" in the sense of pasts of past presents. Cf. Mead. The PhilosoPhy 01 the Present, p. 7. 81 For the medieval discussion de futuris cont;ngePltibus and its importance for church policy. see Thomas Aquinas. In I. Per; Hermeneias lect. XIII, XIV: Qua-

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discussed with respect to the limits of logic and human cognition in its application to future events-and not as the technique of defuturizing the future by the binary code of logic. Whereas the ancients started with generalizations of their everyday world by means of cosmological and theological assumptions and thought not of "the" future but of coming events and the possibility of their privative negation. s2 we experience our future as a generalized horizon of surplus possibilities that have to be reduced as we approach them. We can think of degrees of openness and call /utur;zat;on increasing and de/uturizat;on decreasing the openness of a present future. Defuturization may lead to the limiting condition where the present future merges with the future presents and only one future is possible. Actually. the structure of our society prevents defuturization from going this far. But there are techniques of deflIturization which react exactly to this condition. Leon Brunschvicg has drawn our attention to the fact that the statistic calculus defuturizes the future without identifying it with only one chain of events. ss And indeed. the new interest in chance. games of hazard. and statistics coming up in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries corresponds closely to an emerging interest in the future and to the idea that it may be a rational and even a secure strategy to prefer the insecure over the secure. S4 There are ways to make use of the future without beginning it and without reducing it to one chain of datable future presents. estiones disputatae de Veritate q. 11, art. 12; Summa Theologiae I q. 14 art. 15; William Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione et de praescientia Dei et de futurls contingentibus, edited by Philotheus Boehner (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Francisc:an Institute, St. Bonaventure College, 1945); Leon Baudry, ed., La Querelle des futurs contingents (Louvain 1465-1475) (Paris: J. Vrin, 1950). a8 Cf. Paulu8 Engelhardt, "Der Mensch und seine Zukunft: Zur Frage nach dem Menschen bei Thomas von Aquin," in Festchrift fur Max Muller (FreiburgMunchen, 1966), pp. 852-874. aa Leon Brunschvicg, L'experience humaine et la causalite physique (Paris: Alcan, 1949), p. 855 • .. Cf. Ernest Coumet, "La Th~orie du Hasard est-eUe nee par Hasard?," Annales: Economies, Sodetes, Civilisations 25 (1970): 574-598.

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Temporal Integration Redefined: Technology and Utopian Schemes

By now we are advanced far enough to redefine the problem of l

temporal integration. One possible interpretation would be that te~poral integration is achieved by changing wishful thinking and fanciful perspectives into more realistic ones, adapting to the outcome of the past so far as it has structured the present. 81S This view evaluates realism as maturity. But why so? If lower-class children abandon certain educational and occupational aspirations, this may be so much the better for them. It would be rational, however, only insofar as reality itself is rational. To identify temporal integration with realistic orientation presupposes a perfect world -realitas sive perfectio. This is a well known traditional premise, but it does not differentiate time and reality far enough to use temporal integration as a means to control-not necessarily to change-reality. There have been societies which had to use reality as rationality control. Our society, however, has to use rationality as reality control. Its structure and its environment are too complex for adaptive procedures,86 and there is not enough time available for adjustment. Under the condition of high complexity, time becomes scarce. Time has to be substituted for reality as the predominant dimension while future obtrudes itself as the predominant horizon. Such a society will need forms and procedures of temporal integration which, above all, combine the present future and future presents and consider the past only as th.e set of facts which we are no longer able to prevent from existing or becoming. The prevailing conception of the present future seems to be a utopian one 8T with an optimistic or a pessimistic overtone. The See, for example, Cottle andKlineberg, The Present of Things Future, pp. 70 If. Russel L. Ackolf and Fred E. Emery, On Purposeful Systems (London and Chi· cago: Aldine, 1972), esp. pp. 80 If, pursue a similar intention by distinguishing goal. seeking and purposeful systems. liT In one important sense the reference to "utopias" is misleading here because originally the literary device of a utopia was invented Just because critics were 9101 1111

lie

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future serves as a projection screen for hopes and fears. Its utopian formulation warrants rational behavior toward different (predictable and unpredictable) future presents, at least in the form of coherent negation. The future is expected to bring about the communist society or the ecological disaster, emancipation from domination or l' homme integrale discussed by Sartre and Merleau-Ponty.38 This is the future that cannot begin. It remains a present future and at least an infallible sign of the presence of critics. It moves away if we try to approach it. It does not vanish, however, as long as the structural conditions of the present society endure, but it may resettle with new symbols and meanings, if the old ones are worn out by disappointments and new experiences. Our recent experiences seem to show that these utopian futures speed up their change and may change so quickly that they never will have a chance to be tested and to get confirmation in a present. Technologies, on the other hand, orient themselves to future presents. They transform them into a string of anticipated presents. They postulate and anticipate causal or stochastic links between future events in order to incorporate them into the present present. This implies two important reductions of complexity. The first transforms the character of events which are emerging recombinations of independent contingencies into a carrier function of the process of determination. The second brings into relief a sequential pattern, a chain of interconnected events; it sequentializes complexity by abstracting more or less from interfering processes. 39 A future defuturized by technology can be able to use the future of their own society as projection screen. The turning point can be dated exactly: in 1768 Mercier began to write his l'An deux mille quatre cent quarante. 88 A comprehensive presentation of such imaginary approaches to future is Fred L. Polak, The Image of the Future, 2 vols. (New York: Oceana Publications, 1961). However, it does not pay enough attention to the historical variability of time itself. Cf. also Wendell Bell and James A. Mau, "Images of the Future: Theory and Re· search Strategies:' in Bell and Mau, eds., The Sociology of the Future: Theory, Cases, and Annotated Bibliography (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1971), pp. ~. 89 A harsh criticism of the technocratic conception of time has been formulated by

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used as a feigned present from which we choose our present present to make it a possible past for future presents. To justify the choice and, more important, to justify this whole procedure of technical defuturization we use values. Values, then, have the function of guaranteeing the quality of present choice in spite of technical defuturization. Any refinement, however, of technological forecasting and control will make future presents so much more surprising, because it multiplies defeasible assumptions about the present future. It requires, therefore, in its present, corresponding mechanisms of coping with surprise: learning potential, planned redundancie~, and the generalized ability to substitute functional equivalents. Technology and utopian schemes are, of course, very different approaches to the future. Their difference suggests options and polemical behavior. Many ideological discussions and political confrontations of our day draw their resources from this bifurcation. If you embark on the vessel named Utopia, you will become highly critical in respect to technology, and rightly so, even if you are prepared to use technology to get your vessel off the shores. If, on the other hand, you set out to improve technology you may get annoyed, and again rightly so, with people who use the future as a substitute for reality and interfere with your work without contributing to it. Each side tries to totalize its own perspective on the future and suppress the other.40 But the totality Herbert G. Reid, "The Politics of Time: Conflicting Philosophical Perspectives and Trends," The Human Context 4 (1972): 456-483; "American Social Science in the Politics of Time and the Crisis of Technocorporate Society: Toward a Critical Phenomenology," Politics and Society 3 (1973): 207-243. 40 This is, of course, what Habermas has in mind when he unveils the use of technology and systems theory as ideology. Cf. JUrgen Habermas, Tec/mik und W;ssenschaft als "Ideologie" (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1968); Jtirgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann, Theorie der Gesellscllaft oder Sozialtechnologie-Was leistet die Systemforschung1 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1971). See also Robert Boguslaw, Tile New Utopians: A Study of System Design and Social Change (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965); Joseph Bensman and Robert Lilienfeld, Craft and Consciousness: Occupational Technique and the Development of World Images (New York: Wiley, 1973), pp. 282 ff; Robert Lilienfeld, "Systems Theory as an Ideology," Social Research 42 (Winter 1975): 637~60.

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is the difference itself: the difference of the present future and future presents. This difference itself is a historical fact, produced and reproduced by the structure of our society. We cannot avoid it or circumvent it as long as we continue to live in this highly complex society. But this does not mean that we have to pursue these pointless polemics. Still, critical discussion and polemics have the important advantage of being present behavior. Any attempt to replace them by posing the problem of temporal integration would defer the solution of this problem into the future and would, thereby, slide off into either utopian or technical channels. Again, the problem of temporal integration, too, would become either a utopian or a technical problem and, thus, perpetuate itself. An open and indeterminate future seems to suggest a shift from cognition to action, as Marx would have it, or today from predicting to creating the future. 41 This sounds like: If you cannot see, you have to actl But both, prediction and action, have their utopian and their technical aspects. Substituting the one for the other does not solve the problem of temporal integration. The complex society of our day has to use both ways for reducing the complexity of its future; it has rather to sequentialize predictions and actions into complex self-referential patterns. There is no problem of choice between prediction and action, but there may be a problem of social and structural limitations for the combination of predictions and actions.

Social Communication as a Nontemporal Extension of Time It should be clear by now that we can expect temporal integration and, for that matter, integration of utopian schemes and technology only as a present performance. Therefore, older societies which thought of themselves as living in an enduring or even U So Bettina J. Huber, "Some Thoughts on Creating the Future," Sociological Inquiry 44 (1974): 29-39.

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eternal present did not experience our problem. Only in modern times. and only by shortening the time span of the present. does the problem of perseverance. or conservatio, get its actuality.42 and only then do utopian schemes and technology diverge. By restructuring time in the last 200 years. the present has become specialized in the function of temporal integration; however. it does not have enough time to do this job. It is at this point that we can grasp the importance of the theoretical contributions of George Herbert Mead 48 and Alfred Schutz 44 concerning the interrelations between temporal and social experience. Both authors were aware of the fact that social communication defines the present lor the actors (because it commits the actors to the premise of simultaneity) and provides in addition the chance lor a non temporal extension 01 time. "The field of mind." in the words of Mead. "is the temporal extension of the environment of the organism." and the mechanisms which accomplish this are social ones. 41i But then. the environment of systems can be also used as a non temporal extension of time. Other persons are socially relevant only insofar as they present. in communication. different pasts and/or different futures. They transform in a highly selective way distant temporal relevances into present social ones. And it is this selectivity that can be submitted to social control-for example. by the twin mechanisms of trust and distrust. 46 This non temporal extension of time by communication constitutes time horizons for selective behavior-that is. a past that can never be reproduced because it is too complex and a future that cannot begin. And it is again this temporal com42 Cf. Hans Blumenberg. Selbsterhaltung und Beharrung: Zur Konstitution der neu%eitlichen Rationalitiit (Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literature in Mainz. Wiesbaden, 1970). 48 Mead, The Philosophy 0/ the Present. 44 See above all Alfred Schutz, Der sinnha/te Au/bau der so%ialen Welt (Vienna: J. Springer, 1982). 411 Mead, The Philosophy 0/ the Present, p. 25. 40 For a more extensive treatment, see Niklas Luhmann, P'ertrauen: Ein Mechanismus der Reduktion so%ialer Komplexiliit, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1978).

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147 • plexity that makes selectivity necessary for meaningful behavior and communication. These considerations bring us back to the roots of evolutionary interdependencies between social and temporal structures. Since this can be regarded as achieved knowledge, we cannot afford to fall back on much simpler notions of the future as most social forecasting does. The conception of interdependency, however, is in itself too vague and indeterminate to serve as a framework for further analysis. Neither Mead nor Schutz had adequate successors. The next step, indeed, is a difficult one. It requires the conceptualization of limitations and of gains that might result from novel combinations. In view of the facts our society has produced in its bourgeois phase we should be able to calculate the limits of the meaningful extension of time; we should know the social correlates of a high differentiation of temporal horizons; we should be able to anticipate a change in temporal structures as a consequence of social change-for example, as a consequence of an eventual decline of the monetary mechanism; we should be able to estimate the degree of heterogeneity of temporal structures we can tolerate in different subsystems of our society; we should know how the shrinking temporal horizons of families affect the economy, and how we can avoid the well known negative impact which the time perspectives of a growing economy have on the political system; 47 and, last but not least, we should know what is implied if we rely on clocks and dates to integrate the different time perspectives of different sectors of the society and what dysfunctional consequences we have to expect if we use chronology to fulfill this important function. It is sure that we cannot reduce this set of complex questions, involving the future, to a single one: how to begin the future. It is difficult to see how we could proceed in elaborating these questions or even answering them. Systems theory seems to be the only conceptual framework which has sufficient complexity. TEMPORAL STRUCTURES

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For a classical statement, see Alexis de Tocqueville, L'Ancien regime et la revolu-

tion. 5th ed. (Paris, 1866).

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So far, however, systems theory has used only very simple, chronological notions of time and future, conceiving of the future simply as the state of the system at a later time. 48 Only environment, but not time, is recognized as a set of possible restraints on system states. Abstracting from time is, of course, quite legitimate as a scientific procedure; but then we must refrain from using temporal notions in presenting the results. In comparison with the conceptual elaboration of problems of time, systems theory 'is much more advanced in its conceptual complexity. It is the theory of time that is lagging behind, not the theory of systems. Not only social science but also the theory of history suffers from this deficiency. If the theory of time could be advanced, there Inight appear highly suggestive possibilities of research in correlations between system structures and temporal structures. The theory of time has to transform its vague idea of "everything is possible in the long run," based on a chronological conception of time, into a concept of temporal structures with limited possibilities of change. It is a prerequisite of correlations that both variables are reduced contingencies in the sense that they cannot assume any shape whatever. We have, therefore, to look for time-inherent restrictions of possible correlations (substituting this for older notions of the substance or essence of time) before we set out to establish correlations between system structures and temporal structures. These time-inherent restrictions are, nevertheless, results of sociocultural evolution and not a priori assumptions about the nature of the world or conditions of cognition. If we conceive of time as the relation between (more or less differentiated) temporal horizons and if we use a conceptual language that allows for iterative modalizations (present future, future presents, future of past presents, etc.) and define the function of the present and the function of chronology in these terms, we 48 See as a rather typical example Ervin Laszlo, A Strategy for tile Future: The Systems Approach to World Order (New York: Braziller, 1974).

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may have a sufficient base to start this kind of research. But we have to remain aware of the fact that a commitment to these conceptualizations is a commitment to "modern times." Older societies did not produce such an elaborated framework, and they did not need it to understand themselves. They lived, for structural reasons we may be able to explain, within a less differentiated time.

The Future of Systems Social systems are nontemporal extensions of tilne. They make the time horizons of other actors available within one contemporary present. This requires for social systems a double relation to time: a sequential one conceivable as process or as action in terms of means and ends, and a structural one conceivable as the difference between system and environment. With respect to time, the difference of system and environment means that no complex system can rely exclusively on point-to-point relations to its environment-that is, on instantaneous adjustment by immediate experience and immediate reaction. 49 It needs time for its own operations. This presupposes that under normal conditions no single event will change the whole system at once. Changing everything at once amounts to destruction. In other words: There is no conceivable state of a complex system which could be achieved by changing everything at once. The structural technique by which a system avoids this condition of changing everything at once is differentiation-or more exactly: a matching of internal and external differentiation. lSo It is only at this rather taxing theoretical level of the relation between the relations of system/environment 49 Cf. Talcott Parsons, "Some Problems of General Theory in Sociology:' in John C. McKinney and Edward A. Tiryakian, eds., Theoretical Sociology: Perspectives and Developments (New York: Appleton·Century·Crofts, 1970), pp. 27-68. 110 Cf. W. Ross Ashby, Design for a Drain (New York: WHey, 1952). Cf. also Uriel G. Foa, Terence R. Mitchell, and Fred E. Ficdlcr, "Differentiation Matching," Behav;oral Science 16 (1971): 130-142.

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and structure/process that we are able to locate our problem. Systems, then, in relation to their environment, depend for temporal reasons on a differentiation of structure and process. The time perspective of modern society, on the other hand, project,s the difference of the present future and future presents. Both distinctions, worked out in very different intellectual traditions, seem to converge. If this is true, we can bring together systems theory and phenomenological research. In fact, the process of continuing communication in social systems under the condition of contemporaneity is the prospect of sequential social presents that will constitute forever new futures and new pasts. They are and will remain presents because they require a simultaneous integration of the perspectives of different actors. Structure, on the other hand, establishes for our society an open future in the sense that it provides for the selectivity of future presents. Stated in more concrete terms, structure makes it possible and even necessary to postpone choices and to use the present future as a kind of storehouse for decisions to be made later. At the same time, the present system operates on the premise of continuing its processes. As a system it reproduces its present step by step. This sequentializing of presents, however, is meaningful only as a chain of choices, not as a chain of facts. The process of communication has its effect in producing and reproducing choice situations. Going further, we have to break up this general notion of postponement of choices and have to distinguish two essentially different forms: (I) deferment of gratification and (2) deferment of negation. Both have their functional and institutional correlates. Deferment of gratification is a main prerequisite for the economic system as a condition for capital investment. Deferment of negation is a main prerequisite of the political system as a condition of trust in political power. Both require institutional support, both require a present future for their present motivation. Both require a working integration of utopian schemes and technology

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and a kind of security base for trust. III Both would not survive a considerable shrinkage of time horizons. Both may be endangered by too high a fluctuation rate of utopian schemes and technological innovations. And, last but not least, do we not take too much for granted that it is and will remain possible, in spite of changing structural conditions, to separate deferment of gratification and deferment of negation and to avoid spill-over effects? Or will a refusal to defer gratifications any longer amount to a refusal to defer negations; and finally, will the shrinking of time horizons in the economy endanger trust in politics, political ideologies, value schemes, etc? All of these questions pertain to what we have come to call bilrgerliche Gesellschaft and relate to the continuity or discontinuity of its structures under changing conditions. The bilrgerliche Gesellschaft has been a revolutionary society with a strong structural emphasis on time and corresponding simplifications of social and environmental relations. The principle of its future was simply the denial of its past 112 by the antistructural postulate of equality.lls The self-conception of this society"in its bourgeois variant did rely heavily on time-using and time-binding mechanisms like money and legal procedure. By now, we are aware of 111 For the function of security bases in relation to generalized media.of communication. see Talcott Parsons, "On the Concept of Power" ~md "On the Concept of InOuence." in his Sociological Theory and Modern Society (New York: Free Press, 1967). pp. 297-354. 355-382. Furthermore, Niklas Luhmann. "Symbiotische Mechanismen," in Otthein Rammstedt, ed., Gewaltverhiiltnisse und die Ohnmacht der Kritik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974), pp. 107-131. 112 Cf. Joachim Ritter, Hegel und die franzosische Revolution (Koln: West· deutscher Verlag, 1957). 113 A well known statement is Antoine de Condorcet, Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progres de l'esprit humain (1794). For the continuing impact of this idea and for empirical correlations between future orientation and emphasis on equality. see James A. Mau. Social Change and Images of the Future: A Study of the Pursuit of Progress in Jamaica (Cambridge: Schenkman. 1968). Since equality implies freedom and freedom implies inequality. the postulate of equality cannot refer to reality. but only to time. Its only function is to deny the relevance of the past--e.g., the relevance of biographies and ascribed status for the access to education (equality of opportunity) or to political elections.

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highly complex operating conditions and of the narrow limits of effectiveness these mechanisms are subject to. In its Marxist or dialectical variant, the theory of society has to build its concept of future on negations of the present; but there is much more to negate in our present society than dialecticians could ever use for constructing or even bringing about one and only one desirable future: They have to focus on one central problem, thus overstating centralization, and to discount complexity in order to design a strictly linear theory which can be used to reconstruct or even to change the "process of history." There are many reasons, then, to suspect that the burgerliche Gesellschaft went very far in temporalizing reality and that the twin conceptions of bourgeois and Marxist theory were based on this. common presupposition. This does not decide the question whether this is a temporary distortion characteristic of the period of transition into a new type of world society, or whether this reflects lasting prerequisites of highly complex societies and/or an acceleration of the evolutionary process without parallels in previous history. We are certainly not prepared to decide this question without further research on the conceptual as well as on the empirical level. But we have the intellectual resources to go beyond the boring controversies of Marxist versus- bourgeois or utopian versus technocratic theory, and the starting positions are available for working out a systems theory of society which recognizes the fact that the future cannot begin and which compensates by the higher complexity of its conception of time for what might appear as a loss of future.

-I am indebted to S. Ho)mes. S. Seldman. and A. earlier draft of this paper.

J.

Vidich for comments on an

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