The Nihilism of Risk Society

Abstract

In recent decades, discussion about “risk society” has been allotted considerable attention both in studies and among the critically minded public. This article examines risk society in terms of a totalizing society-power of a social subjectivity that erases the world horizon and proves to be nihilistic in its empowerment. Society, as self-establishing, not only follows the course of modernity, which in its unrelenting drifting gets nowhere but also, within its own totalization, risks anticipation of the same. In this connection, the notions of “reflexive modernisation” in Ulrich Beck, of “liquid modernity” in Zygmunt Bauman, and of the “self-production of social systems” in Niklas Luhmann have been particularly adopted for critical discussion. “Risk society” as an “operational concept” presupposes the apparatus of ecosociology, which links eco-nomics, eco-logy and eco-technology and has taken over the executive function of control, so that everything has the power to function.