Our society, however, has to use
rationality
as reality control.
The-future-cannot-begin-Niklas-Luhmann
The chronological conception presupposes identity and con- tinuity 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 Al- ready medieval authors concluded that beginning and ending can- not be, except as a property of the instantaneous present. 22 We know, furthermore, from cultural comparison as well as from em- pirical 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 equal- izing 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 sit- uation-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
21 Aristotle, Physics, Book VI, 236a.
22 See the chapter De incipit et desinit of thc Regule Solvendi Sophismata of WflIiam Heytesbury (14th century) as presented by Curtis Wilson, William Heytes- bury: 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).
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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 modifica- tion. 2~ If this is true, we shall have to use phenomenological analy- sis to find our way back to the origins of time. This means to con- ceive of future as well as of past as time horizons of the present. The present, then, gets a special status by its function of inte- grating 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 sig-
III See again William Heytesbury in Wilson. William Heytesbury.
28 There are close parallels to the difficulties Kant ran into by equalizing the three <I> modalities of necessity. possibility. and actuality (substituting this for the tradi- tional 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. Moglicll-
heit 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 Phlinom- enologie 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. "
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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 con- tributes to the definition of the situation. Any movement and any operation of thought only shifts the guiding horizon but never at-
tains it.
If we characterize processes or activities as beginning or end-
ing, 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 differ- entiates 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 mean- ingful 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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TEMPORAL STRUCTURES 141
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 every- day world by means of cosmological and theological assumptions and thought not of "the" future but of coming events and the possi-
bility 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 fu- ture presents and only one future is possible. Actually. the struc- ture 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 (Freiburg- Munchen, 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 nowl we are advanced far enough to redefine the problem of 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 out- come 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, how- ever, only insofar as reality itself is rational. T o 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 be- comes scarce. Time has to be substituted for reality as the pre- dominant dimension while future obtrudes itself as the predom- inant 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
1111 See, for example, Cottle andKlineberg, The Present of Things Future, pp. 70 If.
lie 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
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future serves as a projection screen for hopes and fears. Its uto- pian 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 re- mains a present future and at least an infallible sign of the pres- ence 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 experi- ences. 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 pres- ents. They postulate and anticipate causal or stochastic links be- tween 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 func- tion of the process of determination. The second brings into re- lief a sequential pattern, a chain of interconnected events; it se- quentializes complexity by abstracting more or less from inter- fering 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, andAnnotatedBibliography(NewYork:RussellSageFoundation,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 techno-
logical 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, corre- sponding 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 bifurca- tion. If you embark on the vessel named Utopia, you will be- come 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 Phe-
nomenology," Politics and Society 3 (1973): 207-243.
40 This is, of course, what Habermas has in mind when he unveils the use of tech-
nology and systems theory as ideology. Cf. JUrgen Habermas, Tec/mik und W;ssen- schaft als "Ideologie" (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1968); Jtirgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann, Theorie der Gesellscllaft oder Sozialtechnologie-Was leistet die System- forschung1 (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 Con- sciousness: Occupational T echnique and the Development of W orld 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, pro- duced and reproduced by the structure of our society. W e 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 ad- vantage 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 prob- lem 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 pre- dicting to creating the future. 41 This sounds like: If you can- not 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 predic- tions 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 com- bination of predictions and actions.
Social Communication as a Nontemporal Extension of Time
It should be clear by now that we can expect temporal integra- tion and, for that matter, integration of utopian schemes and tech- nology 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 In- quiry 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 re-
structuring 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 Schutz44 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 com- mits the actors to the premise of simultaneity) and provides in addition the chance lor a nontemporal 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 nontemporal 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 sub- mitted to social control-for example. by the twin mechanisms of trust and distrust. 46 This nontemporal extension of time by com-
munication 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 com-
42 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 Mech-
anismus 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 fore- casting 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 suc- cessors. 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 antici- pate 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.
61 For a classical statement, see Alexis de Tocqueville, L'Ancien regime et la revolu- tion. 5th ed. (Paris, 1866).
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?
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So far, however, systems theory has used only very simple, chrono- logical 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 tempo- ral notions in presenting the results.
In comparison with the conceptual elaboration of problems of time, systems theory 'is much more advanced in its conceptual com- plexity. 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 "every-
thing is possible in the long run," based on a chronological con- ception 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, never- theless, results of sociocultural evolution and not a priori as- sumptions about the nature of the world or conditions of cogni- tion.
If we conceive of time as the relation between (more or less differentiated) temporal horizons and if we use a conceptual lan- guage that allows for iterative modalizations (present future, fu-
ture 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 con- ceptualizations is a commitment to "modern times. " Older so- cieties did not produce such an elaborated framework, and they did not need it to understand themselves. They lived, for struc- tural 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 contempo- rary 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 differ- ence between system and environment. With respect to time, the difference of system and environment means that no complex sys- tem can rely exclusively on point-to-point relations to its environ- ment-that is, on instantaneous adjustment by immediate experi- ence and immediate reaction. 49 It needs time for its own opera- tions. 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 con- ceivable 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 ex- ternal 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," Be- hav;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 tem- poral 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 sys-
tems 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 post- ponement of choices and have to distinguish two essentially differ- ent forms: (I) deferment of gratification and (2) deferment of ne-
gation.
