One of the most influential recent developments in supposedly radical philosophy is ‘posthumanism’. This can be seen as the successor to ‘deconstructive postmodernism’. In each case, the claim of its proponents has been that cultures are oppressive by virtue of their elitism, and this elitism, fostered by the humanities, is being challenged. In each case, however, these philosophical ideas have served ruling elites by crippling opposition to their efforts to impose markets, concentrate wealth and power and treat everyone and everything (...) as mere instruments in a way that is not only undermining democracy and threatening economic, social and political stability through growing inequality, but is crippling efforts to deal with the global ecological crisis. Philosophers, Nietzsche claimed, are physicians of culture. Why should people claiming to be philosophers, or at least aligned with philosophers, subvert their own calling? In this paper I will suggest that with the expansion of education and the rise of neoliberalism, those involved in education and research, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, have been proletarianized, and most have accepted this proletarianization. They have been reduced to a fraction of the proletariat - wage-slaves without economic security and therefore dependent on the will of others on whom they are dependent. They are not ordinary wage-slaves, however, but wage-house-slaves, having salaries rather than wages. If, as Marx argued, social being determines consciousness, posthumanism can be understood as the expression of ressentiment of these house-slaves at their condition while simultaneously serving to affirm their superiority to field-slaves while serving their masters. Their work is supported because it provides ideological cover for their masters, the new transnational managerial class or corporatocracy as they expand their power through information technology, while absolving this corporatocracy from responsibility for the consequences of their growing power. In making this claim I will argue that the real target of deconstructionists and posthumanists, although this is now seldom appreciated, has been the humanism of the New Left, a revival of the Radical Enlightenment inspired by Renaissance civic humanism and the German Renaissance. (shrink)

Fukuyama's 'The End of History' has referred to Kojeve's 'homogenous state' as some sort of conceptual container for the evolving idea of liberal democracy. This paper critically re-assess the homogeneity of state as final stage of liberal idea and defends civil society in terms of democratic governance. It also invites to discuss the role of scholars as public intellectuals and repels the ideological abuse of the scientific method.

Social work is a contested tradition, torn between the demands of social governance and autonomy. Today, this struggle is reflected in the division between the dominant, neoliberal agenda of service provision and the resistance offered by various critical perspectives employed by disparate groups of practitioners serving diverse communities. Critical social work challenges oppressive conditions and discourses, in addition to addressing their consequences in individuals’ lives. However, very few recent critical theorists informing critical social work have advocated revolution. A challenging exception (...) can be found in the work of Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–97), whose explication of ontological underdetermination and creation evades the pitfalls of both structural determinism and post-structural relativism, enabling an understanding of society as the contested creation of collective imaginaries in action and a politics of radical transformation. On this basis, we argue that Castoriadis’s radical-democratic revisioning of revolutionary praxis can help in reimagining critical social work’s emancipatory potential. (shrink)

This article offers an approach that combines, on the one hand, the philosophical notion of reflexivity, which is related to the ideas of self-reference and paradox, and, on the other hand, the sociological discussion of epistemic reflexivity as a problem of coherence, which was mainly initiated by certain branches of ethnomethodology and social constructionism. This combinatory approach argues for reflexivity as an epistemic criterion of ontological coherence, which suggests that social ontologies should account for the possibility of self-reflective subjectivity – (...) for otherwise they result in a paradoxical conclusion according to which a social scientist reflects on her or his ontological commitments even though these commitments deny her or him the capacity for self-reflection. This analysis presupposes that all human sciences are categorically premised on social ontologies; and it argues for an analytical distinction between self-reflection, which refers to the agential capacity for reflecting on one’s own commitments, and the epistemic criterion of reflexivity hereby proposed. These two analytically distinct though interdependent socio-theoretical concepts are frequently conflated in the literature; thus, this article also aims at a ‘clearing of the ground’ that can be of categorical use to the human sciences. (shrink)

A collaborative article by the Editorial Collective of Social Imaginaries. Investigations into social imaginaries have burgeoned in recent years. From ‘the capitalist imaginary’ to the ‘democratic imaginary’, from the ‘ecological imaginary’ to ‘the global imaginary’ – and beyond – the social imaginaries field has expanded across disciplines and beyond the academy. The recent debates on social imaginaries and potential new imaginaries reveal a recognisable field and paradigm-in-the-making. We argue that Castoriadis, Ricoeur, and Taylor have articulated the most important theoretical frameworks (...) for understanding social imaginaries, although the field as a whole remains heterogeneous. We further argue that the notion of social imaginaries draws on the modern understanding of the imagination as authentically creative. We contend that an elaboration of social imaginaries involves a significant, qualitative shift in the understanding of societies as collectively and politically-instituted formations that are irreducible to inter-subjectivity or systemic logics. After marking out the contours of the field and recounting a philosophical history of the imagination, the essay turns to debates on social imaginaries in more concrete contexts, specifically political-economic imaginaries, the ecological imaginary, multiple modernities and their inter-civilisational encounters. The social imaginaries field imparts powerful messages for the human sciences and wider publics. In particular, social imaginaries hold significant implications for ontological, phenomenological and philosophical anthropological questions; for the cultural, social, and political horizons of contemporary worlds; and for ecological and economic phenomena. The essay concludes with the argument that social imaginaries as a paradigm-in-the-making offers valuable means by which movements towards social change can be elucidated as well providing an open horizon for the critiques of existing social practices. (shrink)

The paper explores the notion of ‘the subject’ in the context of education as an alternative to more limited concepts such as the student or learner. Drawing on the thought of Cornelius Castoriadis, the subject under consideration is a conscious, self-reflective subject that organizes and modifies itself in relation to a world of significations. Through the capacity for conscious self-modification, the subject becomes a self-reflective agent in a socially instituted world of significations. For Castoriadis, this kind of subjectivity is not (...) readily available in every kind of social organization; rather, it is a possible product of a society that has instituted itself explicitly or autonomously. This socially instituted reflexivity is for Castoriadis historically associated with democracy, politics and philosophy. In the second part, the discussion is extended to the non-human realm and the world of the living being. Here, too, meaning—or proto-meaning in the case of the living being—is a constituent in the formation of a world. In this discussion, where Francisco Varela is an important source, concepts such as meaning, signification, normativity and purpose are introduced in the natural sciences, or rather, the sciences of human and non-human nature. The aim of the paper is twofold: on the one hand, to introduce pedagogical reflections into discussions about human on non-human nature; and, on the other, to develop a richer conceptual repertoire for exploring educational phenomena than what is immediately available. An important background, in both cases, is the possibility of ecological crisis, which poses new problems for educators. (shrink)

In A Secular Age, Taylor introduces the idea of porous subjectivity by way of elucidating the mode of being typical of the enchanted pre-modern world, and juxtaposes it to the buffered self typical of the disenchanted modern world. The framing of the problem in this way, with the argument so clearly oriented as an attack on the latter position, risks a polarization that defaults to the former as the preferred option. These, though, are not our only choices. There is much (...) to recommend Taylor’s notion of porous subjectivity as distinct from the buffered self of atomistic individualism. But Taylor associates the emergence of the disenchanted world with disengaged reason, and the existence of an enchanted world with a deeper mode of engagement in the world. If we instead focus upon modes of engagement with the world separate from the question of enchantment, we can perhaps further our understanding of human subjectivity and relations with others. (shrink)

In Luce Irigaray's thought, Socrates is a marginal figure compared to Plato or Hegel. However, she does identify the Socratic dialectical position as that of a ‘phallocrat’ and she does conflate Socratic and Platonic philosophy in her psychoanalytic reading of Plato in Speculum of the Other Woman. In this essay, I critically interpret both Irigaray's own texts and the Platonic dialogues in order to argue that: the Socratic dialectical position is not ‘phallocratic’ by Irigaray's own understanding of the term; that (...) Socratic philosophy should not be conflated with the mature Platonic metaphysics Irigaray criticizes; and that Socratic dialectical method is similar in some respects with the dialectical method of Diotima, Socrates’ instructress in love and the subject of Irigaray's “Sorcerer Love” essay in An Ethics of Sexual Difference. (shrink)

Every metaphysic, according to Reiner Schürmann, involves the positing of a first principle for thinking and doing whereby the world becomes intelligible and masterable. What happens when such rules or norms no longer have the power they previously had? According to Cornelius Castoriadis, the world makes sense through institutions of imaginary significations. What happens when we discover that these significations and institutions truly are imaginary, without ground? Both thinkers begin their ontologies by acknowledging a radical finitude that threatens to destroy (...) meaning or order. For Schürmann it is the ontological anarchy revealed between epochs when principles governing modes of thinking and doing are foundering but new principles to take their place have not yet emerged. For Castoriadis it is chaos that names the indeterminationdetermination that governs the unfolding of the socio-historical with contingency and unpredictability. And yet for both thinkers their respective ontologies have political or ethical implications. On the basis of the anarchy of being, Schürmann unfolds an anarchic praxis or ethos of “living without why.” And on the basis of his notion of being as chaos, Castoriadis develops his political praxis of autonomy. The challenge for both is this move from ontology to practical philosophy, how to bridge theory and practice. The key for both seems to be a certain ontologically derived sense of freedom. In this paper, I analyze and compare their respective thoughts, and pursue the question of how anarchy or chaos and the implied sense of an ontological freedom might be made viable and sensible for human praxis, how radical finitude in the face of ontological groundlessness might nevertheless serve to situate a viable political praxis. (shrink)

The article discusses the status and role of politics — in its various facets — in the pragmatic sociology of critique. We focus on a number of different dimensions of politics — politics-as-justification, politics-as-distribution, politics-as-constitution, and politics-as-defiance — that can said to be of importance for a pragmatic sociology of critique, but that have not all been taken up equally in this approach. We situate pragmatic sociology in a tradition of thought that views politics as emerging in the settlement of (...) disputes over differences without resorting to violence. However, we argue that pragmatic sociology tends to ignore questions of the constitution of politics, and suggest that one way of bringing the foundational aspect upfront is by conceptualizing and studying defiance, including forms of explicit (dissent) and implicit critique (resistance) of the existing order. (shrink)

The following article defines Castoriadis’ concepts of the radical imagination and the social imaginary as a platform for a discussion of some motifs important to Castoriadis: the nature of human subjectivity, the nature of ‘reality’, the role and scope of the human imagination, the importance of freedom, the question of whether or not we are free (i.e. how sick/diminished/vulnerable is the second epoch of autonomy that broke open in/as modernity), and the roles of science, politics and philosophy in human social (...) life. The central work on the radical imagination and the social imaginary is of course more than an arbitrary jumping-off point: this paper argues that understanding these concepts is vital if one is to understand the core elements of Castoriadis’ writings and his broader emancipatory project. (shrink)

Straddling the divide between universalism and relativism, agonistic reason as construed by Foucault and Castoriadis dismisses universal foundations without becoming context-bound or inescapably subjectivist. It is propelled by a strong commitment to freedom and it draws flexibly on available resources and its creative potentials in order to vindicate its conditional claims. This provides a hyper-critical and liberating mode of critical reason which delves into the underlying norms of agency in order to open them up to question and to enhance free (...) self-direction. The argument that is put forward, then, is threefold. Firstly, Castoriadis’ accent on ontological reflection, the imaginative disclosure of new figures and the global intent of critique contrasts with Foucault’s account of agonistic reason and yields a more robust version of critical rationality. Secondly, this form of reflective agonism can effectively address fundamental challenges and reason across contexts, tackling moral and other issues that arise from cultural innovation and exchange. Lastly, agonistic reason need not, and should not, call upon absolute principles on any level in order to uphold its own values and do justice to its radical others. (shrink)

An intellectual and cultural movement advocating a radical enhancement of human performance via technoscientific and biomedical advances, transhumanism has grown in notoriety in recent years. Grouping engineers, philosophers, sociologists, and entrepreneurs, the movement and its ideals of enhanced humans have a strong social resonance, be it doping in sport, the use of smart drugs, or the biomedical battle against aging. This article sheds theoretical and critical light on transhumanism through the lens of human perfectibility. It particularly aims to show how (...) the movement marks a significant reversal of the humanist conception of human perfectibility inherited from the Enlightenment. Far from working for the social and political emancipation of humans and the human condition, transhumanism is emblematic of a depoliticized conception of human perfectibility focused on the technoscientific adaptation of the human being. Transhumanism thus marks a major rupture with the modern democratic project of autonomy. (shrink)

Among the many parallels between Hannah Arendt and Cornelius Castoriadis is their shared interest in the kind of politics that is characteristic of the council movements, revolutionary moments and the political democracy of ancient Greece. This article seeks to elucidate how the two thinkers fill out and complement each other’s thought, with special attention to political creation—an ambiguous theme in Arendt’s thought. While critical of the notion of ‘making’ in the political field, Arendt also emphasizes the importance of building institutions. (...) To take this seriously means that her analyses of the nature of politics must be modified and, in this respect, Castoriadis’s understanding of politics as institution-building can serve as a guideline. However, Arendt’s concept of ‘plurality’ in the public sphere represents a level of political analysis that is underdeveloped in the work of Castoriadis. Taken together, their thought highlights many important aspects of political creation in a radical sense. (shrink)

The focus of this article will be on inserting the words of older women in prison into debates on time, agency and gendered identities in total institutions. Specifically, the article will address the complexity and contradictions of the time of ‘a mediated real’, and how this impacts on embodied identities within prison timescapes. This will be explored through looking at how prison-time as a ‘somatic identity cipher’ functions performatively in the construction of older women’s identities. The article will also examine (...) how female elders in prison become agents and negotiate techniques of discipline. The role of prison-time will be shown to be simultaneously experienced as further punishment while also being resisted as we draw out the relationship between temporality, spaces of incarceration and identification. First, we will locate the field in terms of issues of theory and method. Then we will look at performativity, identity and time in negotiating, acquiescing to and resisting the identity ‘prisoner’. This will enable us to understand the role and meaning of time in relation to how females in prison are compelled to reiterate and negotiate the identity ‘prisoner’ within the discipline of ‘the time of incarceration’. We hope to demonstrate through the voices of the women that there is no single abstract imprisoned body. These are real bodies, fleshy, sensate bodies that experience real pain; at the same time, these bodies are not simply given but also interpreted, mediated and in part constituted in social and cultural meanings. This enables us to show that the body can be both a generator and receptor of meanings. (shrink)

This article discusses the work of Cornelius Castoriadis, an important political thinker and theorist of democracy. Castoriadis developed not one but two theories of democracy based on two distinct understandings of autonomy. The first is compatible with the key features of representative government; the second is not. Unfortunately, Castoriadis models his interpretation of the idea of popular sovereignty on the second view, thereby concluding, like Rousseau before him, that it is incompatible with representative government. This article discusses both approaches and (...) presents a reinterpretation of political representation and of the idea of popular sovereignty in order to show how they can be made compatible. I argue that the discourse of popular sovereignty and the modern principles of representative government entail one another. (shrink)

Towards the end of the 19th century there was a revival of the struggle for democracy throughout the world. The formation of Australia as a federation embodied this commitment, a commitment subsequently abandoned. The impetus for public education in Australia came from its commitment to democracy, inspired by the British Idealists. If the people of a country are to be its governors, these philosophers argued, they must be educated to be governors. Taking this injunction seriously, I will argue that the (...) history of the struggle for democracy should be central to education, taught in such a way that students are able to appreciate what this commitment to democracy means. Taking Australia as a model, I will argue that this implies that the young be educated so that they define themselves in relation to the vision of a democratic society and see themselves as historical actors responsible for the future of their country and the future of humanity. (shrink)

Throughout his life, Cornelius Castoriadis displayed an unwavering commitment to democracy. He militated for it and developed concepts to elucidate its significance for human freedom. Yet are the concepts Castoriadis developed enough to explain the depth of his aforementioned commitment? In this essay, I try to imagine how Castoriadis would have addressed Roberto Michels’s ‘iron law of oligarchy’ thesis. I find that Castoriadis’s concepts can help us question the normative value Michels assigned to oligarchy, but they fail to explain how (...) he could have remained so committed to democracy when oligarchy seems ineluctable. Such a commitment, I argue, ultimately rests on an existential decision, the roots of which cannot be rationally explained. (shrink)

The political morality that Plato and Aristotle supported was governed by various anthropological and social determinants, which means that they focused on man understood as a citizen and interpreted through the dialectic as well as through the prospects of the city’s happiness, since for both of them man was a social animal. The political ethics of Plato and Aristotle does not endanger the political community with political bankruptcy. This political morality does not start from intransigent principles to reach a compromise (...) that has already been surpassed by the previous negative dynamics. The Byzantine political morality oscillates between the individual and the totality. It is not governed by individualism but rather by communitarianism, which entails that it confirms the dynamics of unity within the city. The Byzantine political morals is imbued with an anticipation of the political crisis, it seeks to identify any negative developments and strives to avoid the political marginalization of the citizens who are likely to rebel against any autocratic government. The Byzantine political morality is, thus, not an idle and selfish political introversion, concerned merely with political crises, conflict scenarios and conspiracy theories, as it strives to come up with various solutions that should guarantee political balance. (shrink)

In Luc Boltanski’s On Critique, various dimensions of democracy as a political regime and form of society are evident, but never explicitly conceptualized. There is, however, something to be gained by making the democratic dimension in Boltanski’s work more explicit: the normative and political standpoints become clearer, but also the real-life possibilities for and significance of critique in contemporary times. The paper will first discuss the (latent) democratic theory in On Critique by focusing on the differentiation between reality and the (...) world and the conceptualization of institutions. In a second step, I will relate a rather rudimentary democratic theory to the radical-democratic dimensions of the work of Claude Lefort and Cornelius Castoriadis in order to make its contours more explicit. In a third step, I will discuss a tension that exists between the radical-democratic dimension in On Critique and Boltanski’s portrayal of contemporary capitalist-democratic societies as largely immune to critique. (shrink)

This study is inspired by the current debate between the traditional anarchist views, the post-left and post-anarchist understandings of anarchy. It claims that the depictions of anarchy by both sides are primarily negative and develops an original and positive definition of anarchy. In particular, it argues that anarchy is the concept that refers to a way of being with the cosmos and thus instead of being posterior to the political it is in fact prior to it. This is to say, (...) it is neither political nor ontological but can only be seen as metaphysical in the sense of what cannot be spoken of in terms of a primary cause or a founding principle. Methodologically, it follows Martin Heidegger’s understanding of anarchy as an-arché and his idea to look into pre-Socratic, as in non-teleological thought, to define anarchy. But it then adopts Emmanuel Levinas’ approach that anarchy refers to what escapes the thesis- antithesis dialectic. It draws mainly upon Ancient Greek philosophy and literature as this is where anarchy appears as a term for the first time. In particular, it criticizes the Aristotelian ontological and political thought, while it is mainly assisted by the thought of Democritus as the only pre-Socratic whose work escapes ontological thinking. Moreover, the development of a positive definition of anarchy ultimately leads this study to defend the communal nature of traditional anarchism while rejecting its association with the political. (shrink)

In the context of nationalizing, secularizing or Kemalist states, analyses of Islamist movements are often thrown back on notions of traditionalism or atavism. In a related vein, for certain social theorists writing on modernity, the uniqueness of the West is clarified through an imaginative [mis]interpretation of other cultures or civilizations. Too often, however, the apparent gains in Western self-insight reflect an ‘inability to constitute oneself without excluding the other’ (Cornelius Castoriadis). Ironically Castoriadis himself, in a project we might term an (...) ethnography of the West (see his writings on ecology, capitalism, rationality, contemporary culture, racism, Greek philosophy/history, and the environment) is prone to the same vice, especially in his identification of the West as the sole autonomous society. This article argues that in the shariainstitution of a legal autonomy, Islam and Islamism alike demonstrate an affinity with modernity as defined by Castoriadis. In the light of this Islamist autonomy, it concludes that Castoriadis’ vision of modernity as a struggle between opposed imaginaries of autonomy and rational mastery needs reformulating. (shrink)

Plato’s simile of the cave has for over two millennia been the model for a particular understanding of the limitated nature of human knowledge. Castoriadis’s understanding of human knowledge differs from Plato’s in that the artificiality of knowledge, and by extension of culture and society in general, is seen not as a barrier to true knowledge but as a necessary precondition for any knowledge whatsoever. Plato dreams of leaving the cave and encountering the world in the clear light of day; (...) Castoriadis contends that the labyrinth of human creation is our only means of encountering the real. Plato tries to use philosophy to design a way out of the traps humans find themselves in, traps they build for themselves. Castoriadis seeks no such escape and believes that to make such an ultimate escape the business of philosophy or politics is misguided, if not dangerous. (shrink)

The non-credit bearing and ongoing education and development of mid- to late-career corporate executives is known by the compound term executive education. Reductively stated, executive education, for its corporate consumers and its business school providers, is predicated on the relationship between an order and its execution ; a relationship I call the “order-execution cognate”. With the word execution derived from Greek for sequence, and with the sequence of an execution following-on from its corresponding order, sequentiality is the essence of execution, (...) and the cognate. Executive education involves the amelioration of this order-execution cognate, to the ends of increased profits and competitiveness for the corporation concerned, and increased career prospects for the individual executive. Concerning sequentiality, and as a thesis on the philosophy of executive education, I apply a strand of ontological reflection to examine this cognate, namely philosophy concerning time and temporal succession. To aid in this task I use the English translations of writings on time by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Emerging from Heidegger’s thought are two temporal types that acknowledge and critique temporal succession; chronological time and Kairotic time respectively. By associating Heidegger’s philosophic method with that of early German Romantic philosophy, I articulate how it is possible to reconceive the temporal sequence of the order-execution cognate as a productive oscillation between chronic and Kairotic time; I call this oscillation “ironic temporality,” and its productivity “ironic productivity”. My philosophical analysis of commercially lucrative and neoliberal executive education is at odds with traditional knowledge-based analyses, affording a critique of the capitalist order which the educative event serves. Disrupting temporal notions of that event then becomes a dangerous political act; becomes the means to frame the educative event for the management of our age; and becomes the new orders for executive education. (shrink)

Movements tend to employ instituent practices and to acquire constitutive characteristics when they set up the material foundations of their collective autonomy, i.e. when they establish socially reproductive commons, democratically producing forms of life that respond to basic needs of the participants to the commons. The legal recognition of the sphere of the commons and the freedom of people to share, co-establish and self-regulate whole infrastructures of their social production is therefore not a negligible change but a complete reversal of (...) the logic currently underlying our legal order. It is, therefore, clear that to the end of multiplying and expanding the sphere of the commons we need to invent a new theory of a law of the commons and a hybrid and transitional semi-state ius communis, which will be capable of incorporating the acquis of social movements and receptive to emerging forms of life of the oppressed. (shrink)

This essay discusses the changes promoted in European universities by the ‘Bologna Process’ and the ‘European Higher Education Area’. Through an analysis of the main policy documents and mechanisms, the paper demonstrates that the European Higher Education Area is designed to dismantle academic autonomy across the continent. Before setting out to examine this transnational policy process, the paper specifies in its first part the meaning of academic autonomy – a particular European creation, as it argues – through an overview of (...) the historical material. (shrink)

Scholars are increasingly examining how formal leaders of organizations _change_ moral norms. The prominent accounts over-emphasize the role of rational persuasion. We focus, instead, on how formal leaders successfully break and thereby create moral norms. We draw on Dreyfus’s ontology of cultural paradigms and Williams’s moral luck to develop our framework for viewing leader-driven radical norm the change. We argue that formal leaders, embedded in their practices’ grounding, clarifying, and organizing norms, get captivated by anomalies and respond to them by (...) taking moral risks, which, if practically successful, create a new normative order. We illustrate the framework with Churchill’s actions in 1940 and Anita Roddick’s Body Shop. Last, we discuss normative orders, when ordinary leaders change norms, evil, and further research. (shrink)

Beginning with a consideration of Castoriadis’s elucidation of autonomous thinking, both by way of the contrast he draws with the inherited tradition and in relation to his account of the demands of the political project of autonomy, we compare Plato’s story of the Cave to suggest that Castoriadis overestimates the power of questioning and of creating new social forms. We then argue that Castoriadis and Plato emerge as two extremes: whereas the first favours the power of questioning to the exclusion (...) of receiving value, the second privileges the power of receiving over creation and creativity. (shrink)