Barbara Jung on Sun, 15 Nov 1998 22:51:58 +0100 (CET)


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<nettime>Concerning the death of N.Luhmann


The german system theorist Niklas Luhmann,
born 1927, died last friday. 

Translated from his internet diary today,
r.goetz wrote:

<snip>
'...up to now, nobody has read Luhmann's works to completion. But
Luhmann himself had not finished it, the writing down, being 
the sadness of his too early death. The fact that it has been no
more terrible as it could be, for him as the great, serene wise man, to
face death so early, that the pain and the complaint were
not too dreadful, and the last breath was blessed by what he
believed in. He always mentioned that everything came to him
very easily, the colossal of his work. And he agreed to everything,
just as it was, because, against his intuition of not yet understanding
exactly enough, he developped an understanding why something,
although it was actually completely improbable, absolutely not
obvious, nevertheless was reasonable to realize. Also
with regard to death his access to the world was life-long
meditation, the most human trace in the most beautiful way. To wish
him all what 'sense' just could be, to the last brim of life,
and then tranquility.'



Some of Luhmann's works available in english are
-Social systems
-Love as passion: the codification of intimacy
-Observations on modernity

B. Jung

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