Despite its ground-breaking character, Castoriadis’s theory of society remains, in some respects, caught up in conceptual difficulties common to social theory generally, particularly the problem of conceptualizing social unity without resort to an understanding of society that downplays heterogeneity and over-emphasizes the homogeneous. Unlike many other theoretical approaches and traditions, Castoriadis’s work also offers a possible path out of this dilemma in the form of philosophical innovations which could enable us to conceptualize social unity without flattening the heterogeneous characteristics of (...) the social. Castoriadis sometimes fails to recognize the full implications of his own rejection of ontological determinism, and so ends up proposing a far too deterministic and homogeneous model of social types. This essay aims to show how this might be remedied by drawing on Castoriadis’s own fundamental insights. (shrink)

This article critically considers Castoriadis’ central concept of creation ex nihilo. It does so in two ways. It first draws on recent research to suggest that the historical inauguration of the project of autonomy in ancient Greece - in both its political and philosophical aspects - was more complex and contextually anchored than Castoriadis acknowledges: it did not surge forth out of nothing. Second, it considers the idea of creation from a theoretical perspective. Here the idea of creation as contextual (...) rather than absolute is offered. Within this suggested qualification, two lines of discussion - drawn from the hermeneutical and phenomenological traditions - are broached. (shrink)