“Novelty” as a communicative criterion of social “autopoiesis” (on the examples of differences in the society of Homeric and archaic Greece)

The study is devoted to the semantic study of the phenomenon of “novelty” in the context of social and philosophical theorizing by Niklas Luhmann. The factor of novelty is considered as a necessary aspect of communication, its obligation as an informational or demonstrative component, the semantic ambiguity of the word in the subsystems of religion and art is indicated. On the basis of an etymological analysis and study of the resource of the National Corpus of the Russian language, three “basic” attitudes towards the novelty were identified: negative, neutral and positive in the fields of religion and art. Within the framework of the study, the dependence of the noting of the “new” and social valuations of this phenomenon depending on the cultural and historical context, the study of which is possible using the methodology of N. Luhmann, is indicated. As an example of the practical application of the method of “distinguishing differences” and identifying semantic dynamics in self-descriptions of autopoietic social systems, the experience of understanding the novelty in the society of Homeric and archaic Greece, the degree and forms of its acceptability/unacceptability is analyzed. In terms of Luhmann’s philosophy, the society of our research refers to segmented, in which access to the forbidden, the unknown, of which the novelty is a part, is strictly regulated. On the basis of Homer’s poems, as well as texts of the archaic period, the main mechanisms of the emergence of a novelty are shown, interpreted as news from the world of the gods, received by people through poets, oracles, signs. As a result of the study, the difference between the lexeme «novelty» and the social phenomenon of the new was demonstrated. The phenomenon of novelty is an integral characteristic of communication, however, the historical forms of its access to social life change depending on the context, which can be traced in the textual forms of self-description of a society.

Niklas Luhmann, novelty, religion and art, communication, Homeric Greece, archaic Greece