Social Self–Organization and Self–Deconstruction

A tribute to Francisco Varela

Abstract

The notions of autopoiesis and the like have enjoyed some fame in the social sciences, yet one thing is to apply them to the analysis of the social realm, a completely different thing is to reveal them in the traditional corpus of Western humanities. With regards to domains as different as Literary Theory, Religious and Social Anthropology, Political Science, Sociology, Philosophy and Psychosociology, we show that relevant ideas on the organization of the living, such as organizational closure, autonomy, endogenous fixed point, help us to better understand our age–old knowledge in social, economic, moral, and political philosophy. In particular, we will shed light on the only apparent paradoxical relation that links relevant social phenomena such as self–referentiality, self–externalization (or self–transcendence) and (self–)deconstruction.