Sociology Conferences, Symposia and Seminars
SYMPOSIUM: CASTORIADIS IN DIALOGUE
Date: Friday, 28th November 2008
Venue: Monash University (Caulfield )
Ten years after the death of Cornelius Castoriadis, the interdisciplinary significance of his thought remains largely unmined. His philosophical-political elucidations sought not only to interrogate the human sciences (from art to epistemology) but extended to the natural sciences as well (from auto-poiesis to mathematics). Melbourne has long been central for Castoriadis studies, and, in continuing that tradition, interested scholars are invited to submit abstracts in any area of Castoriadis' thought for in-depth presentation and discussion. Proposals that bring Castoriadis into dialogue with other thinkers and traditions are especially welcome.
Email: Suzi.Adams@arts.monash.edu.au
ABSTRACTS
Castoriadis, Arnason and the Phenomenology of the World
Suzi Adams, Monash University
Working in the wake of Merleau-Ponty, Castoriadis reconfigured key phenomenological themes in new directions and thus, despite his ontological turn, can be situated within the context of post-transcendental phenomenology (or even post-phenomenology). In this vein, Arnason has consistently emphasized the hermeneutical aspects to Castoriadis’ thought, especially in regards to the imaginary dimensions of meaning. Arnason has developed Castoriadis’ reflections on the imaginary and the institution in the direction of a theory of culture, which, drawing on Merleau-Ponty, he refers to as 'cultural articulations of the world'. In contrast, Arnason finds Castoriadis' approach to the problematic of the world as an 'ultimate horizon of horizons’ too underdeveloped. The present paper argues that although Castoriadis’ insights into the world are uneven and oblique, they nevertheless lend themselves to hermeneutical reconstructions that enrich our understanding of the world horizon and the human context in significant ways.Habermas and Castoriadis
Craig Browne, University of Sydney
This paper aims to explore the implications of the confrontation between the thought of Habermas and Castoriadis. As is well known, Habermas's The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity includes a critical excursus on Castoriadis, which is intended to buttress the preceding chapter's contention that 'not even the linguistic turn of praxis philosophy leads to a paradigm change'. Habermas finds that Castoriadis's notion of the imaginary institution of society fails to grasp the normative dimension of intersubjective praxis. By contrast, the work of George Herbert Mead enables, in Habermas’s opinion, a superior appreciation of the connection between the ‘intramundane learning’ of everyday practices and the broader alterations in 'world-horizons'. Yet, Habermas's elaboration of the intersubjective paradigm of mutual understanding is undoubtedly open to a counter-critique. Even his reconstruction of Mead's theory subordinates some of the continuities that it has with the philosophy of praxis. In fact, Castoriadis's account of the imaginary institution of society can be seen to address questions that Habermas's theory left unresolved. It will be suggested that a constructive dialogue between the thought of Habermas and Castoriadis should commence from an analysis of Habermas's original reconstruction of the intentions of praxis philosophy in the program of knowledge constitutive interests. Habermas's later theory may have abandoned the core intentions of this program, but my analysis suggests, on the one hand, that the ensuing framework need not be considered intrinsically superior and, on the other hand, that Castoriadis addressed somewhat similar questions from a different angle, such as the epistemological grounds of critique, the limits of the production paradigm, and the implications of the integration of psychoanalysis into social theory.Modern autonomy as reflexive historicity: from Castoriadis to Gauchet
Natalie Doyle, Monash University
Once a close collaborator of Castoriadis, Marcel Gauchet in his work radically questions his definition of autonomy and democracy. Rejecting the exclusive emphasis on the Greek example and the tendency to fuse religion with the notion of heteronomy and disregard for liberalism, Gauchet has explored the role played by Christianity in the formulation of a new understanding of human power linked to the gradual withdrawal of European societies from the religious imaginary of collective unity. This new understanding of power underpins the appearance of the new social imaginary of liberalism central to modern autonomy. The culture of liberalism performed an individualistic "inversion" of values that encouraged Western European societies to embrace historical contingency. Modern autonomy, in other words, involves far more than societies formulating their own laws. It is inseparable from historicity with both and intellectual and practical dimensions, the latter encapsulated in a new economic relationship to the natural world. Castoriadis's opposition of two distinct and antagonistic modern imaginaries – that of democratic autonomy and the quest for absolute rational mastery of nature – is replaced by an historical analysis of their intertwined evolution and their ultimate synthesis in liberal democracy. Gauchet's analysis of the contemporary state of liberal democracy in which the liberal dimension has come to erase the political one breaks with Castoriadis's thought but in fact to deepen its original attack on the transformation of modern democracy into "elective oligarchy".Cornelius Castoriadis and Tragedy
Vrasidas Karalis, University of Sydney
The paper addresses one of the most crucial parameters in Castoriadis's thinking: the vision of a democratic self-articulation and how the autonomous subject within the strictures of its social situation and existential reality can represent its own specificity. In his later works Castoriadis developed an extremely complex understanding of the tragic by re-interpreting Greek tragedy and by re- assessing the ways that it had been understood by German and French philosophy. For Castoriadis tragedy is the organic form for self-articulation in democracy and the only way in which the autonomous subject can give form to its presence and historicity. For him the tragic appears not as conflict with destiny but as conflict within the subject in its attempt to understand its own self and establish its own self-instituting processes. The paper also attempts an assessment of Castoriadis' reading of Sophocles' famous chorus from Antigone against the background of its interpretations by Martin Heidegger and Jacques Lacan.fromBeginning, Ending, Nothing, Nowhere: Castoriadis and the Concept of Creation
Jeff Klooger, Independent Scholar
One of the most contentious of Castoriadis' ideas is his concept of creation, especially as he presents it in the guise of "creation ex nihilo" – that is, creation out of/from nothing. Even people who are generally well disposed to Castoriadis, people who are students and advocates of his thought, often find it difficult to accept this idea. My paper will be an attempt to explore the concept of creation proposed in Castoriadis’ work. I will begin by contrasting his approach to the emergence of the new with its classical antithesis in the philosophy of Parmenides, who famously concluded that the universe must be unchanging since nothing can come to be or cease to be. From this extreme, I will explore Castoriadis’ approach, asking whether we can and should accept it as it is presented by Castoriadis or whether we ought to attempt to modify its more extreme expressions to make it more generally palatable.Figure, Spirit, Mirage: Castoriadis on Capitalism, Arnason on Castoriadis
Jeremy C A Smith, University of Ballarat
Capitalism represented for Castoriadis an imaginary signification of the endless expansion of rational mastery juxtaposed to the project of autonomy. In interdisciplinary terms, his critique stands alone as it goes to the heart of a rarely challenged conceptual apparatus of political economy. Launched as an intended critique of historical materialism, Castoriadis' perspective forms a basis for re-thinking ontology, value, liberalism, 'national economies', consumption and civilisational patterns. In the phantasms of pseudo-rational mastery and the maximisation of consumption are found the figurative meanings that make up political economy and saturate economic life. An examination of the metaphoric 'figures' or forms of the capitalist imaginary opens an unusual bridge to Arnason's post-Weberian re-theorization of capitalism. The latter involves a reconstruction of Weber’s metaphor of the 'spirit' of capitalism (in turn taken over by Boltanski and Chiapello).This fits Arnason’s self-location in the emerging paradigm of civilisational sociology, in which Castoriadis is only one of several influences joining Marx, Elias, Deutschmann and Fernand Braudel. The resulting analysis is conditioned by Arnason's post-phenomenology. However, it is his work on the Japanese constellation that is the most inventive and experimental aspect of his thinking on capitalism. The 'spirit' of capitalism is supplemented by a less-developed metaphor of 'mirage'. Conceptual pursuit of the notion of capitalism as a mirage could bring Arnason's survey of Japanese capitalism closer to Castoriadis key propositions. However, a reinterpretation of Arnason’s work in combination with other theorists (including Peter Wagner and John Clammer) suggest point not only to capitalism's imaginary of unlimited growth, but also to civilisational limitations on accumulation that are not easily categorized as part of the project of autonomy. An examination of Japanese capitalism therefore can point to another direction for reformulation of Castoriadis' ideas on self-legislation.Castoriadis and Taylor
Karl E. Smith, La Trobe University
Castoriadis and Taylor have much in common in terms of their philosophical roots, their respective understandings of the peculiarities of anthropos and their deep and abiding concern for the future well-being of humankind. In many and varied ways, each author’s work informs and enriches the other’s theory. Yet they strongly disagree about ultimate foundations and values. Contrasting their positions on these points reveals much about their respective limitations. Analysing their respective strengths and weaknesses in the light of each other’s work helps to provide a better account of meaning and being.