This article explores how George Lapassade’s institutional pedagogy meets the definition of ‘praxis’ formulated by Cornelius Castoriadis, as the activity creating reflective and deliberative subjects. Lapassade applies Castoriadis’s criticism of bureaucracy to transform the teacher-learners’ relationship and emphasises how self-governance group dynamics among learners facilitates learning in general and access to critical thinking in particular. Castoriadis’s concept of democracy as individual and collective autonomy demands an interpretation of equality as a dynamic process instead of as a state of social relations, (...) both in politics and in classrooms. His understanding of politics as a matter of opinions rather than applied knowledge necessitates a questioning of how the relationship between politics and knowledge is presented in classrooms. The argument articulates two main themes: authority and power both between adults and children and within class groups, and the relationship between knowledge and politics, problematised by Castoriadis’s concept of truth. (shrink)

Kostas Axelos and Cornelius Castoriadis are among the most inspiring thinkers of the second half of the 20th century. They each combine comprehensive philosophy with social and political theory, and a broad view on human history with a critical diagnosis of the present, with nuanced observations on our current condition—characteristics, rare during this period, that this article describes as polyscopic thought. Castoriadis is widely known as the philosopher of ‘autonomy’, of the human capacity to give oneself one’s own law; his (...) diagnosis of the present focused on the weakening of this capacity in contemporary capitalism and democracy. Axelos, in turn, is a thinker of the ‘planetary age’ in which the human pretence to master the world and one’s own fate withers away in the face of the predominance of ‘technique’. This essay connects and contrasts the work of the two thinkers trying to understand the differences and to uncover underlying commonalities. Significantly, it suggests that both scholars saw a need to rethink key concerns in philosophy and the social sciences with a view to better grasp what awaits human beings in the current world and what can be done about it. (shrink)

Cornelius Castoriadis is one of the very few social and political philosophers – modern and ancient – for whom a concept of imagination is truly central. In his work, however, the role of imagination is so overarching that it becomes difficult to grasp its workings and consequences in detail, in particular in its relation to democracy as the political form in which autonomy is the core imaginary signification. This article will proceed by first suggesting some clarifications about Castoriadis’s employment of (...) the concept. This preparatory exploration will allow us in a second step to discuss why the idea of democracy is closely linked to tragedy, and why this linkage in turn is dependent on the centrality of imagination for human action. In a third conceptual step, finally, we suggest that any concept of imagination will need to take into account the plurality and diversity of the outcomes of the power of imagination. Thus, the question of the nature of the novelty that imagination creates needs to be addressed as well as the one of the agon in the face of different imagined innovations in a given democratic political setting. As a consequence of this shift in emphasis, to be elaborated further, one will be able to say more about one question of which Castoriadis was well aware, which he never addressed himself in detail, though: the decline and end of polities and political forms, the question of political mortality. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyze the current crisis of higher education and to propose a new model to counter the threat this crisis poses to the arts and humanities. The crisis of the university is presented through a comparison with two earlier crises: the first occurring in the seventeenth century and the second in the early nineteenth century. I argue that as an institution and a culture the mission of the university is to uphold the value of (...) autonomy, a term I borrow from Cornelius Castoriadis, and to actively cultivate the autonomy of its students and teachers. (shrink)

This article examines the link between oligarchy and the notion of representative democracy, which for Castoriadis also implies the bureaucratisation of society. However, in an argument with and against Castoriadis, one has to decipher modern oligarchies before launching into a radical critique of the principle of representation. There is a diversity of representative democracies, and the complexity of modernity comes from a mixture of oligarchy, representation and democracy. Even though the idea of democracy has evolved, we do not live under (...) representative democracies but under liberal oligarchies. Direct democratic procedures and representative elements can sometimes be gathered in order to create new forms of political commitment. The main problem is avoiding a concentration of powers, which cannot create the conditions for the emergence of democratic institutions. (shrink)

In this paper I examine two theories of democracy that can be found in contemporary French philosophy. Both Cornelius Castoriadis and Jacques Rancière offer a critique of modern democracy with the purpose of refounding it. The ‘refoundation narratives’ they propose are both based on an account of the origins of democracy in ancient Greece. According to Castoriadis, ancient democracy is grounded in a ‘magma’ of ‘social imaginary significations’ in which ‘autonomy’ is considered the correct response to Being defined as an (...) insurmountable ‘Chaos’. On the contrary, modern democracy defines Being as a determinacy and consequently fails to grasp the notion of autonomy. According to Rancière, the origins of democracy are to be found in the invasion of the public space by ‘those without a part’ who consequently have no title to govern. The problem with the ‘domesticated’ modern democracy is that it denies the existence of Otherness; that is, of non-citizens excluded from the public space. Therefore it appears incapable of letting the ‘dis-agreement’ manifest itself and consequently incapable of transforming the ‘police’ order. After examining the meaning of both theories, I attempt to elucidate the difficulties encountered by each author in the attainment of his goal, which is that of refounding modern democracy. (shrink)

De las muchas virtudes que caben reconocerse en el pensamiento de Cornelius Castoriadis nunca podrá eludirse el valor de su singular aproximación a lo que vino en denominarse “la experiencia griega”. En este artículo trataremos de acompañar su original lectura de la Grecia antigua, retomando la pertinencia y la exactitud con la que Castoriadis se sirvió de la pólis griega para justificar algunos matices velados de nuestras intuiciones políticas. En nuestra exposición trataremos de alinearnos con su original perspectiva, sirviéndonos esencialmente (...) del uso y la recuperación del ápeiron y sus distintas interpretaciones, en Anaximandro, en Aristóteles y, naturalmente, en el propio pensamiento de Cornelius Castoriadis. La conclusión de nuestro planteamiento -y quizá este gesto no sea más que un homenaje velado- aspirará a disentir de alguna de sus propuestas sin por ello dejar de reconocer la originalidad, la valentía y la vigencia de su aportación como lector de la experiencia griega. (shrink)