The other and the third. On the paradigm shift in social theory

Social theories, as the basis of all cultural- and social sciences, understand self- and complex social-relations as emerging from a basic encounter/interaction of ego and alter. They reconstruct how dyadic structures or "interdependencies" (Wechselwirkungen, Georg Simmel) of shame, exchange, struggle, recognition, cooperation and love are formed within the medium of glances and words, of actions and expectations, of goods and gifts. There exists a rich and differentiated tradition of the figure and the function of the "other" (Hegel, Feuerbach, Husserl, Buber, Sartre, Levinas, Luhmann (double contingency), et al.). In his standard work "The other" (1965) Michael Theunissen exemplarily analyzed and reconstructed this socio-ontological history of reflection in its main features.

Through the increasingly systematic consideration of the figure of the "third" a paradigm shift is in the offing in social theory, because only now do mediation, arbiter, competition, intrigue, coalition, delegation and scapegoating become visible as other fundamental structures of the social. The third is not another other, not its repetition, but brings up socio-ontological new figures and functions (as not a fourth and a fifth, etc.). A theory-systematical source can be build through mutual translations of psychoanalytical theorems on the oedipal constellation/triangulation, approaches of relation sociology/interactionism and systems theoretical theorems of the observer. Thus the work of relevant authors on the basic relation of the dyadic and triadic figuration of interaction and creation of institutions (Freud, Simmel, Sartre, Girard, Serres, Levinas, Luhmann, Coleman, et al.) can be reinterpreted. Alterity and tertiarity shall be reconstructed in their identity-theoretical and societal-theoretical consequences for the differentiation of law, media, politics and economy of the market - spheres which are social-theoretically understandable only through the figure and the function of the third.

Der Andere und der Dritte. Zur Sozialanthropologie im 20. Jahrhundert.
Presentation at the Frankreich-Zentrum of the Universität Freiburg, Kolloquium "Historische Diskurse in der Anthropologie und Ethnologie", 13./14. Februar 1998.

Die Funktionen des Dritten bei der Konstitution von Ich und Anderem. Presentation at the Second Annual Conferenc of the SFB 541 Universität Freiburg i. Br., "Identität und Alterität in Theorie und Methode", 16. Februar 1999.

Figuren und Funktionen der Tertiarität. Zur Anthropologie der Medien.
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Der Andere und der Dritte. Zur Anthropologie der Medien.
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Das Medium ist der Bote. Zur Soziologie der Massenmedien aus der Sicht einer Sozialtheorie des Dritten,
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Der Dritte. Zum Paradigmenwechsel in der Sozialtheorie (Doppelbesprechung v. Th. Bedorf u. D. Wetzel),
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