![]() Like any other concepts, the concept of system simplifies the complex reality into a recognizable pattern for a schematic understanding and explanation of the objects under study. However, we can define it, at least in social sciences, roughly as a concept designating the social relations in which“ the actions of several actors are meaningfully interrelated and are thus in their interconnectedness, marked off from an environment.” 1) This does not mean that the concept is an exact reflection or replication of the given relations. Introduction The term “system”is so widely used in ordinary language that its precise meaning is all but lost. Keywords : Diachronic systems theory, International Relations, Hegelian dialectic of recognition, Master and slave, Autopoietic political theory By carefully reconstructing Hegelian dialectic of recognition, this paper illuminates its theoretical potentiality as autopoietic political systems theory of international relations that overcomes the theoretical limitations of the prevalent positivist conceptualization of system in International Relations. Only when we succeed in overcoming the limitation of boundary delineation can we make use of the concept of system in the study of international relations. When carefully examined, it turns out that no theoretically sound method of determining system’s boundary is found in the prevalent positivistic conceptualization of system. To address these implications, this paper first analyses the theoretical issue of boundary delineation. The necessary internal relationship among system components have important theoretical implications for the systems theory in International Relations, specifically in regards to its epistemological and ontological issues. Otherwise, its conceptual components cannot have a non-contradictory internal relationship among them. If the concept of system is to be not just a descriptive but an explanatory one of social relations, each type of system has to be taken as a whole package, including its structural requirements. Most of them conflate one type of system with others without heeding to their distinctive conceptual requirements. ![]() Those who use it tend to be not very clear about what kinds of system they have in mind in their usage. ![]() Abstract The term “system”is so widely used in ordinary language that its precise meaning is all but lost. ![]()
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