Cornelius Castoriadis
Societies are not governed by laws of history or nature but create themselves through imaginary significations; autonomy means that a society and its members recognise themselves as the authors of their institutions and dare to question them.
Placement
Philosopher, economist and psychoanalyst born in Constantinople and raised in Athens who co-founded the group “Socialisme ou Barbarie” in Paris in 1949, broke with Marxism and placed the creative “social imaginary” and the project of individual and collective autonomy at the centre of his work.
Key ideas
- The imaginary institution of society
- Autonomy and heteronomy
- Radical imagination
- Critique of bureaucratic society
Influence
Influenced by 1
Sigmund Freud
influenced by
Castoriadis read Freud’s psyche as radical imagination, a ceaseless flow of representations that society must socialise (The Imaginary Institution of Society, 1975). C. Castoriadis, L’institution imaginaire de la société (1975)
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Sigmund Freud › 1856–1939
Influenced 1
Jean-François Lyotard
influenced
As a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie (1954–64) Lyotard adopted Castoriadis’s critique of bureaucracy, Soviet and capitalist, before splitting with him in 1963 over his revision of Marxism. J.-F. Lyotard, La guerre des Algériens. Écrits 1956–1963 (1989); Pérégrinations (1988); SEP “Jean François Lyotard”
Evidence: AI draft
Jean-François Lyotard › 1924–1998
Criticism
Criticized by 1
Jürgen Habermas
criticised by
Habermas objected that Castoriadis’s creative social imaginary transfers the philosophy of the subject to society and cannot ground rational autonomy (Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 1985). J. Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne (1985), excursus on Castoriadis (after Lecture XI)
Evidence: AI draft
Jürgen Habermas › 1929–2026
Criticizes 2
Karl Marx
criticised
Castoriadis concluded that Marx’s economic determinism and primacy of productive forces cannot grasp social creation, so the theory had become an ideology (Imaginary Institution of Society, 1975, I). C. Castoriadis, “Marxisme et théorie révolutionnaire”, Socialisme ou Barbarie 36–40 (1964–65); L’institution imaginaire de la société (1975), part I
Evidence: AI draft
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Jacques Lacan
criticised
Castoriadis rejected Lacan’s view of the imaginary as specular illusion, conceiving it as radical creation, and attacked Lacanian practice (Imaginary Institution, 1975; ‘La psychanalyse, projet et élucidation’, 1977). C. Castoriadis, L’institution imaginaire de la société (1975); “La psychanalyse, projet et élucidation”, in Les carrefours du labyrinthe I (1978), pp. 81–157
Evidence: AI draft
Jacques Lacan › 1901–1981
Works
Breaks with Marxist determinism: every society creates itself through imaginary significations that are neither rational nor natural, and autonomy means recognising and questioning one’s own institution.
Essays on psychoanalysis, language, science and society, the first of six volumes under this title.
Position
Castoriadis is on the map for the idea that societies create themselves. In “Socialisme ou Barbarie” he analysed the Soviet Union as bureaucratic capitalism and saw the division between those who direct and those who carry out orders as the central conflict of modern societies in East and West; his ideas on workers’ self-management found an echo in May 1968. In the 1960s he concluded that Marxism, with its determinism and its claim to know the laws of history, had itself become an obstacle. “The Imaginary Institution of Society” sets against it the social imaginary: every society institutes itself through significations, gods, values, ideas of what is real, that cannot be deduced from nature or reason. Autonomy means that a society, and an individual, recognises itself as the author of its institutions and can question them; he found historical models in the Athenian polis and in modern democratic and workers’ movements. From Freud he took the radical imagination of the psyche, while rejecting Lacan’s structuralism. Jean-François Lyotard belonged to Socialisme ou Barbarie for ten years. Jürgen Habermas objected in 1985 that in Castoriadis’s model the creation of new worlds of meaning cannot be tied back to reasons the members of a society can share, and Axel Honneth discussed his ontology of creation critically in the same decade.
Life & context
Cornelius Castoriadis was born on 11 March 1922 in Constantinople; his family moved to Athens the same year. He studied law, economics and political science in Athens, joined the communist youth in 1937 under the Metaxas dictatorship and during the German occupation broke with the Communist Party to join a Trotskyist group, which exposed him to persecution from both sides. In December 1945 he left for Paris on a French scholarship aboard the ship “Mataroa”. In the French Trotskyist party he formed a tendency with Claude Lefort and left the party with it in 1948; the group and journal “Socialisme ou Barbarie” (journal 1949–65) emerged from it, and he wrote there under pseudonyms such as Pierre Chaulieu and Paul Cardan. From 1948 to 1970 he worked as an economist at the OEEC, later the OECD. Only after becoming a French citizen in 1970 did he publish under his own name. In 1969 he followed the break with Lacan’s school that led to the founding of the Quatrième Groupe, trained as a psychoanalyst and practised from 1973. From 1980 he was director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. He died in Paris on 26 December 1997.
Further main works
- Bureaucratic Society (La société bureaucratique, 2 vols., 1973)
- The Content of Socialism (Le contenu du socialisme, 1979)
- The Rising Tide of Insignificancy (La montée de l’insignifiance, 1996)
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