Roman Angerer
The article undertakes an archeological investigation into the writings of the German Sociologist and cybernetic Systems-thinker Niklas Luhmann. His writ-ings spanning almost four decades of uninterrupted stage growth and text pro-duction are good fodder to dissect ruptures between and plateaus of semantic-syntactic structures called developmental stages. By this an architecture is exem-plarily revealed that spans four Tiers including sixteen Stages with four sub-phases at each niveau of relative stability which sometimes is called Center of Gravity. The article is structured as an oscillation between genetic and structural-ist phases that enrich Luhmann`s Life Work by multiple references to other thinkers at the integral and post-integral stages. The final section that then pre-sents the complete model is also a critique of other developmental models specif-ically directed towards and suggesting critical revision of Terri O`Fallons STAG-ES model. This happens through introducing four common fallacies develop-mental models commit, when trying to appropriate the transcendental and phylo-genetic realm preconditioning our conscious growth, through the contingencies our very self-referential and themselves-thematizing observations. Additionally, in discerning between genesis and structure, descenders and ascenders, inside and outside perspectives and ultimately an Aristotelian and an Platonist Type of stage growth it is the attempt of a seamless intervention between both modes, uniting them and ultimately deluding them of their most prominent errors: the ne-cessity of a first distinction mistaken for the creator and their ultimate purpose mistaken for the divine.
Tags: stages, ego development, Angerer, Archeology, Nicholas Luhmann, semantics, text analysis, universal grammar
