Suzi Adams

The dialogue focuses on the sources, contexts, and configuration of Johann P. Arnason’s intellectual trajectory. It is broadly framed around the interplay of philosophy, sociology, and history in his thought. Its scope is wide ranging, spanning critical and normative theory, phenomenology and hermeneutics, and contemporary and classical sociology. It explores the importance of Castoriadis, Merleau-Ponty and Patočka for Arnason’s understanding of the human condition from a comparative civilizational perspective; his engagement with Habermas and Eisenstadt for the development of his hermeneutic of modernity and multiple modernities; his ongoing, albeit subterranean, dialogue with Charles Taylor; and concludes with a discussion of his recent focus on the religio-political nexus.

The essay’s argument is twofold: First, it contends that Ricoeur’s articulation of the social imaginary in the Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (and other essays of that period), reveals a turn to a general theory of culture, which is best understood as a shift from a hermeneutics of culture to a cultural hermeneutics. This move forms part of his philosophical anthropology of “real social life”. The essay proposes it is epitomized in Ricoeur’s changing reception of Cassirer. Second, the essay hermeneutically reconstructs the emergence of this turn in Ricoeur’s intellectual trajectory, and, in so doing, contends that it is connected to a rearticulation of both the phenomenological reduction and the symbolic function that took place in the mid- to late 1960s. Ricoeur’s developing response to the phenomenological problematic of the world horizon underlies these further phenomenological-hermeneutic considerations. The essay concludes with a brief sketch of Ricoeur’s understanding of the symbolic mediation of action (in the Geertz lecture) as a reconfiguration of the hermeneutical actualization of phenomenological preconditions of the symbolic.

Key words: Paul Ricoeur, cultural hermeneutics, phenomenology, social imaginary, world horizon, the symbolic, the human condition

Castoriadis and the Non-Subjective Field: Social Doing, Instituting Society and Political Imaginaries.
Suzi Adams

Abstract:
Cornelius Castoriadis understood history as a self-creating order. In turn, he elaborated history in two directions: as the political project of autonomy, and as the ontological modality of the social-historical. On his account, history as self-creation was only possible through the interplay of social  (or political) imaginaries and social doing. Although social imaginaries are readily situated within the non-subjective field, non-subjective modes of doing have been less explored. Yet non-subjective contexts are integral to both the “doing” and “imaginary” dimensions of the human condition, and form the preconditions for concrete varieties of social and political action and politics (as la politique), more generally.  The present paper begins to clear a path to reflect on social doing in its non-subjective aspects; as such, it is preparatory rather than programmatic.  After briefly reviewing the field of “social imaginaries”, it reflects on Castoriadis’s elaboration of “praxis” and “teukhein”. It then considers Johann Arnason’s culturological reconfiguration of Castoriadis’s approach, and Jan Patočka’s asubjective phenomenology of the movement of human existence as different ways of engaging with the problematic of doing, instituting society and political imaginaries. Despite a gradual subordination of “doing” to “signification” in Castoriadis’s philosophical elaborations, “social doing” as a non-subjective modality does not disappear altogether from his thought – especially and explicitly in respect to the phenomenon of instituting society as a political project – and remains a point of recurring intrusion into his more explicit theoretical concerns. 

Keywords: Castoriadis * Patočka * Arnason * Praxis * Asubjective Phenomenology * Political Imaginaries *Action * Cultural Movement * Social Doing * Autonomy

This article critically engages with Castoriadis’s elucidation of autonomy. It does so by taking into account the implications of Castoriadis’s enduring interest in the ecological devastation of the natural world, on the one hand, and the changing configuration of his philosophical anthropology, on the other—especially in regard to his reconsideration of the creativity of nature in the 1980s and the reconfiguration of the nomos and physis problematic. It contextualizes these movements in his thought within a broader hermeneutic of modernity that, following Johann Arnason, emphasizes the cultural currents of both Romanticism and the Enlightenment as constitutive of modernity as a field of tensions. In an extension of Arnason’s elaboration, however, the present article argues that a latent opening towards an ecological worldhood is implicit to Castoriadis’s hermeneutic of modernity that, conversely, also finds Castoriadis at the limits of autonomy.

The paper presents a hermeneutical reading of Cornelius Castoriadis’ 1971 homage to Merleau-Ponty. It situates its interpretation within the problematic of ‘world articulation’, and argues that Castoriadis’ mature philosophy emerged from multiple encounters with Merleau-Ponty’s thought. Although the ultimate focus of Castoriadis’ homage emphasizes the subject, the present paper reconstructs its more submerged philosophical contexts, especially as they pertain to the being of the world and its cultural articulation. It suggests that Castoriadis’ early engagement with Merleau-Ponty’s thought resulted in important insights into dimensions of the world – especially concerning its Sinnfähigkeit.

Arnason and Castoriadis’ unfinished dialogue: Articulating the world


Suzi Adams
Flinders University, Australia, suzi.adams@flinders.edu.au

Abstract

The article reconstructs the unfinished dialogue between Arnason and Castoriadis, with a particular emphasis on the problematic of world articulation. Arnason’s thought is situated as reconfiguring classical sociological constellations, especially as they pertain to the revitalization of the civilizational problematic and the emphasis on the philosophical dimension of sociological investigation. His interpretative framework is located within the nascent field of post-transcendental phenomenology, which he elaborates via the overlapping problematics of cultural articulations of the world as an inter-cultural horizon, and the human condition as various modes of being-in-the-world. Arnason’s encounter with Castoriadis is considered. Despite the many points of fruitful contact, Castoriadis’ neglect of the phenomenological question of the world as a ‘shared horizon’ is, in Arnason’s view, too great to overcome; Arnason looks instead to Weber, Merleau-Ponty and, more recently, Patočka for interpretative resources. Although Castoriadis’ elucidation of the world proceeds ‘in fragments’, the article contends that hermeneutical reconstruction of his thought reveals openings onto the problematic of elemental world orders that can further the dialogue with Arnason.

Keywords
Arnason Castoriadis chora culture hermeneutics phenomenology the sacred world orders

The present essay contributes to the reconstruction of the imaginary element in Castoriadis’s thought. It highlights the phenomenological-hermeneutic affinities with Castoriadis’s project, but also his critical engagement with phenomenology through the lens of his dialogue with Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It is beyond the scope of the essay to assess all aspects of Castoriadis’s critique of Merleau-Ponty. The aim is rather to draw on his discussion to situate—and recover—the phenomenological debates and sources of significance for Castoriadis’s articulation of the imaginary in order to argue both with and against Castoriadis’s theoretical framework. The essay is organized into three sections. Leaning on Merleau-Ponty, the first part sketches an approach to phenomenology within which to situate Castoriadis’s project. It also articulates the main lines of Castoriadis’s critique of Merleau-Ponty. The second section reconstructs Castoriadis’s elucidation of the imaginary element as the imaginary institution of the real. The final section considers Castoriadis’s changing response to the phenomenological problematic of the world, and the implications that this holds for his elucidation of the imaginary element and human creation.

This is the editor's foreword to Ricoeur and Castoriadis in Discussion: Human Creation, Historical Novelty and the Social Imaginary. Edited by Suzi Adams. London: Rowman and Littlefield International (In Press).


LInk to book at publisher's website: https://www.rowmaninternational.com/book/ricoeur_and_castoriadis_in_discussion/3-156-fd5e1016-0462-473e-a654-fedd1d78bbf2

This book is the first systematic reconstruction of Castoriadis’ philosophical trajectory. It critically interprets the internal shifts in Castoriadis’ ontology through reconsideration of the ancient problematic of ‘human institution’ (nomos) and ‘nature’ (physis), on the one hand, and the question of ‘being’ and ‘creation’, on the other. Unlike the order of physis, the order of nomos played no substantial role in the development of western thought: The first part of the book suggests that Castoriadis sought to remedy this with his elucidation of the social-historical as the region of being elusive to the determinist imaginary of inherited philosophy. This ontological turn was announced with the publication of his magnum opus The Imaginary Institution of Society (first published in 1975) which is reconstructed as Castoriadis’ long journey through nomos via four interconnected domains: ontological, epistemological, anthropological, and hermeneutical respectively. With the aid of archival sources, the second half of the book reconstructs a second ontological shift in Castoriadis’ thought that occurred during the 1980s. Here it argues that Castoriadis extends his notion of ‘ontological creation’ beyond the human realm and into nature. This move has implications for his overall ontology and signals a shift towards a general ontology of creative physis. The increasing ontological importance of physis is discussed further in chapters on objective knowledge, the living being, and philosophical cosmology. It suggests that the world horizon forms an inescapable interpretative context of cultural articulation – in the double sense of Merleau-Ponty’s mise en forme du monde – in which physis can be elucidated as the ground of possibility, as well as a point of culmination for nomos in the circle of interpretative creation. The book contextualizes Castoriadis’ thought within broader philosophical and sociological traditions. In particular it situates his thought within French phenomenological currents that take either an ontological and/or a hermeneutical turn. It also places a hermeneutic of modernity – that is, an interpretation that emphasizes the ongoing dialogue between Romantic and Enlightenment articulations of the world – at the centre of reflection. Castoriadis’ reactivation of classical Greek sources is reinterpreted as part of the ongoing dialogue between the ancients and the moderns, and more broadly, as part of the interpretative field of tensions that comprises modernity.

This paper discusses the formation of Castoriadis's concept of imaginary significations and relates it to his changing readings of Marx and Weber. Castoriadis's reflections on modern capitalism took off from the Marxian understanding of its internal contradictions, but he always had reservations about the orthodox version of this idea. His writings in the late 1950s, already critical of basic assumptions in Marx's work, located the central contradiction in the very relationship between capital and wage labour: Labour power was not simply transformed into a commodity, as Marx had argued; rather, the instituted attempt to treat it as a commodity was a contradiction in itself, between the subjectivity and the objectification of labour. Castoriadis then moved on to link this claim to Weber's analysis of the interconnections between capitalism and bureaucracy. The main contradiction of modern capitalism, whether wholly bureaucratized as in the Soviet model or increasingly bureaucratized as in the West, now seemed to be a matter of incompatible systemic imperatives: the need to control and to mobilize the workforce. Finally, difficulties with this model – and with the revolutionary expectations based on it – led to a more decisive break with classical theories and to the formulation of a bipolar image of modernity, where the vision of an autonomous society is opposed to the logic of calculation and domination, embodied in capitalist development. On both sides there is an imaginary component, irreducible to empirical givens or systemic principles. In this regard, Castoriadis remained closer to Weber than to Marx, but he also anticipated, in a distinctive way, later emphasis on the cultural dimension of modernity, and more specifically the notion of modernity as a new civilization.

This essay focuses on Arnason's most recent work, and reconstructs his developing account of the religio-political nexus. Arnason's elaboration of the religio-political nexus aims to extend 'the civilizational dimension' beyond the Axial Age to archaic civilizations. He situates the religio-political nexus within the Durkheimian-Maussian current of civilizational thought, and fortifies it through engagement with debates in historical anthropology (Gauchet, Clastres, Godelier) and Castoriadis's notion of power and religion. The second part of the essay discusses Arnason's articulation of the sacred, and argues that consideration of Ricoeur's work on the 'symbolic function', in dialogue with Castoriadis and Arnason, would enrich our understanding of the interplay between the imaginary, symbolic, and the sacred.