Mitsuhiro Tada: Time as Sociology’s Basic Concept

Vortrag im Rahmen der Gesellschaft für Soziologie (GSU)

Zum Vortrag:

This presentation aims to clarify the proper position of time as sociology’s basic concept in relation to meaning (Sinn). In sociology, the inseparable relationship between time and meaning has been clearly shown by Schütz’s phenomenological sociology and Luhmann’s social systems theory. Referring to Bergson’s and Husserl’s theories, Schütz argued that the problem of meaning in Weber’s interpretative sociology is a problem of time. The meaning of an action that an actor her/himself subjectively thinks of is determined not by a common normative value for example, but rather through her/his own inner time: the meaning of an on-going action (Handeln) is the act (Handlung) projected as an aim in the stream of consciousness. Similarly, Luhmann considered self-referential social systems as temporal subjects that cognize their own reality of the external world. Phenomena appearing to a social system through communicative intentionality are weighted by the system’s own past and future, and are thereby selectively (not randomly) actualized as meaningful units in the present. System order (or social order) is thus temporally organized in the atemporal, chaotic world of meaning. “Self-reference” is to refer to a system’s own eigen time (Eigenzeit), which provides the basis for a system’s autonomy.

Zum Vortragenden:

Mitsuhiro Tada is associate professor at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Kumamoto University, Japan. His research focuses on sociological theory, the history of sociology, and issues of nationalism. For his first book The Temporal Construction of the Social World: Theory of Social Systems as Sociological Phenomenology (Harvest-sha, 2013), he received the Young Investigator's Award from the Japan Association for the Study on the History of Sociology.