Castoriadis On Insignificance Dialogues

POSTSCRIPT ON INSIGNIFICANCE
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POSTSCRIPT ON
INSIGNIFICANCE
Dialogues with Cornelius
Castoriadis
Cornelius Castoriadis
Edited with an Introduction by Gabriel Rockhill

Translated by Gabriel Rockhill and John V. Garner
Continuum International Publishing Group

The Tower Building
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New York, NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
Originally published in French as Post-scriptum sur linsigniance:
Entretiens avec Daniel Mermet ditions de lAube, 1998, Dialogue
ditions de lAube, 1999, and Briser la clture in Cornelius
Castoriadis: Rinventer lautonomie, ed. Blaise Bachofen, Sion Elbaz
and Nicolas Poirier ditions du Sandre, 2008.
This English Language Edition Continuum, 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or
retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-3960-3
PB: 978-1-4411-0870-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Castoriadis, Cornelius, 19221997.
[Post-scriptum sur linsignicance. English]
Postscript on insignicance : dialogues with Cornelius Castoriadis / Cornelius
Castoriadis; edited with an introduction by Gabriel Rockhill, translated by
Gabriel Rockhill and John V. Garner.
p. cm.
Selected bibliography of Castoriadis books in English P.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4411-3960-3 ISBN 978-1-4411-0870-8 1. Castoriadis,
Cornelius, 1922-1997Interviews. I. Castoriadis, Cornelius, 19221997.
Dialogue. English. II. Title.
B2430.C3584A5 2010
194dc22
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain
2010032003
Contents
Acknowledgments
vii
Editors Introduction
ix
Eros of Inquiry: An Aperu of Castoriadis Life and Work

By Gabriel Rockhill
PART I: POSTSCRIPT ON INSIGNIFICANCE

Preface: Cornelius, Essential Dissident
No God, No Caesar, No Tribune! . . .

Cornelius Castoriadis Interviewed by Daniel Mermet
PART II: DIALOGUES

Preface: Introduction to Discussants
22
25
Rejoinders: Facing Modernity

Cornelius Castoriadis in Dialogue with Octavio Paz
The Meaning of Psychoanalysis1
44
Cornelius Castoriadis in Dialogue with Jean-Luc Donnet

4
Life and Creation
58
Cornelius Castoriadis in Dialogue with Francisco Varela

5
The Limits of Formalization
74
Cornelius Castoriadis in Dialogue with Alain Connes

6
Breaking the Closure
93
Cornelius Castoriadis in Dialogue with Robert Legros
Selected Bibliography of Castoriadis Books in English
108
Index
111
vi
Chapters 3 to 5 had no specic titles in the original French publication.

To help orient Anglophone readers, who might not be familiar with
Castoriadis interlocutors, we decided to add heuristic titles.ED
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our deep gratitude to all of those who have
contributed directly or indirectly to this project. First of all, we would
like to thank the Department of Philosophy at Villanova University,
and in particular the chair, John Carvalho, and the director of
graduate studies, Walter Brogan. We greatly appreciate the excellent
working conditions that allowed us to complete this project. We
would also like to thank Walter Brogan more specically for his role
as the editor of Epoch, the journal that accepted to publish our translation of the interview, No God, No Caesar, No Tribune! . . .
This book owes a special debt to Guillaume Zorgbibe, the director of
ditions du Sandre, and Pierre-Antoine Chardel, the director of the
book series Bibliothque de philosophie contemporaine. We would
like to thank the latter for bringing to our attention the interview entitled Breaking the Closure, which was originally published in one of
the books in his series: Cornelius Castoriadis: Rinventer lautonomie, ed.
Blaise Bachofen, Sion Elbaz, and Nicolas Poirier (Paris: ditions
du Sandre, 2008, 27389). We would like to express our sincere
gratitude to Guillaume Zorgbibe for granting us the translation rights.
We would also like to thank all of the friends and colleagues who
provided feedback on the editors introduction. It is a daunting task to
try to come to terms with the major facets of Castoriadis writings in
only a few pages, and we greatly appreciate the work of all of those
who took the time to read it. Arnaud Toms deserves particular
mention for his insightful comments and critical feedback, as well as
Suzi Adams, Nicolas Poirier, and Ingerid Straume.
Finally, this book would not have been possible without the diligent
work and support of the editorial staff at Continuum. We would like
vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
to thank, in particular, Sarah Douglas for recognizing the importance

of this book and accepting our proposal. We would also like to express
our gratitude to Tom Crick and David Avital for helping us see it
through to completion.
Gabriel Rockhill and John V. Garner
viii
Editors Introduction
Eros of Inquiry: An Aperu of Castoriadis
Life and Work
By Gabriel Rockhill
In relation to animals, humans are sick beings, because

they cant live without making sense of what is and
what they do. Everything must have meaning; everything must make sense. As a consequence, it is a shock
to discover that nothing makes sense of itself.
Cornelius Castoriadis
Cornelius Castoriadis audaciously dened philosophy as the act of

taking responsibility for the totality of the thinkable [prise en charge
de la totalit du pensable].1 His life and work attest to the intensity with
which he dedicated himself to this project. If he sometimes lamented
the lack of major philosophic voices in an era when academic
interpretations of the past had come to dominate professional
thinking, he almost single-handedly made up for it himself.2 A quintessential iconoclast who admitted suffering from an ros du savoir, he
broke through the ideological torpor of French academic and political
circles, and he established one of the most original and comprehensive
bodies of work in twentieth-century European philosophy.
Born in 1922 to a Greek family that had immigrated to Constantinople, Castoriadis grew up in pre-war Athens and moved to Paris in
1945 to study philosophy. He co-founded, with Claude Lefort, the
ix
revolutionary group and journal Socialisme ou barbarie (published from

19491965). The journal distanced itself from Trotskyism and broke in
more or less fundamental ways with Marxism. It provided a radical
critique of bureaucracy, arguing in favor of a revolutionary socialism
founded on workers self-management, and many have argued that it
had a signicant impact on the events of 1968.3 Castoriadis, due to
political concerns, wrote under pseudonyms until the 1970s, when he
was naturalized as a French citizen. From 1948 until 1970, he had worked
as an economist at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development.4 In 1973, he began working as a trained psychoanalyst,
and he was named Directeur dtudes at the cole des Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Sociales in 1981. He passed away in Paris in 1997.
The quintessential dissident, Castoriadis cut across the rigid structures of academic life and stalwartly refused the simple dividing lines
between theoretical endeavors and practical engagements. His work
impressively spans across the elds of philosophy, political theory,
sociology, history, economics, psychoanalysis, and the philosophy of
science. However, he did not aim to establish a system or unify the
sciences under a single logic. On the contrary, he was keenly aware of
the precarious and limited nature of the attempt to elucidate the
world:
Theory as such is a doing, the always uncertain attempt to carry out
the project of elucidating the world. And this is also the case for the
supreme or extreme form of theory that is philosophy, i.e. the
attempt to think the world without knowing, in advance or afterwards, whether the world is really thinkable, or even what thinking
actually means.5
Philosophy, as the extreme form of theory, is neither a founding
gesture nor a conceptual system of all systems. It is a form of total and
absolute interrogation with no a priori limits, which simultaneously
recognizes that there are things that we do not know and will never
know. Moreover, philosophy, like all theoretical undertakings, is
never the work of an isolated individual (Castoriadis was very critical
of what he refers to as the egological tradition of modern philosophy).
It is a specic type of social-historical activity that happened to be
invented by the Greeks and, as we will see, is linked to the promotion
of a new imaginary social signication: autonomy.
x
EDITORS INTRODUCTION
The autonomy exercised by Castoriadis himself in the elaboration

of a unique theoretical enterprise has produced a singular project that
cannot be comfortably situated within the standard models used to
schematize twentieth-century French philosophy. Although there are
striking similarities between some of his claims and the work of JeanPaul Sartre, there are also signicant divergences, particularly in their
respective relationships to the Marxist tradition. Although Sartre is
rumored to have claimed, Castoriadis was right, but at the wrong
time, Castoriadis quip succinctly sums up their political disagreements: Sartre had the honor of being wrong at the right time!6
Regarding structuralism, which many perceive as the next major
theoretical movement after the phenomenological existentialism
promoted by Sartre and others, Castoriadis could not have been
clearer in his condemnation. In attacking what he calls inherited
ontologies, he highlights two essential types. The rst is labeled
physicalist, and it consists in reducing society and history to nature,
and particularly to the biological nature of man. Functionalism, he
argues, is the best representative of this point of view since it posits a
set of xed human needs and explains social organization as the series
of functions aiming to satisfy these needs. The second type of inherited ontology is called logicist, and the poorest form of logicism is
structuralism. It is based on the assumption that
The same logical operation, repeated a certain number of times,
would [. . .] account for the totality of human history and the different forms of society, which would only be the different possible
combinations of a nite number of the same discreet elements.7
Castoriadis not only lambasts structuralisms pseudo-scientic
naivety8, but he also impugns the political orientation of the thinkers
afliated to a greater of lesser degree with the diverse avatars of
structuralism (including what is called, in the Anglophone world,
post-structuralism). In particular, he attacks the thesis formulated
by Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut concerning la pense 68 on the grounds
that the major thinkers afliated with it came into vogue after the
failure of May 1968, and they played no role even in the vaguest
sociological preparation of the movement, at once because their
ideas were totally unknown to the participants and because these
ideas were diametrically opposed to the participants implicit and
xi
explicit aspirations.9 He also eschews and derides the valorization of

difference, which clearly demarcates him from a number of his French
contemporaries:
It is quite obvious that, in deance of the hardly enticing rose water
being amply sprinkled about everywhere today, I do not respect
others difference simply as difference and without regard to what
they are and what they do. I do not respect the difference of the
sadist, of Eichmann, or Beriaany more than of those who cut off
peoples heads, or even their hands, even if they are not threatening
me directly. Nothing in what I have said or written commits me to
respect differences for the sake of respecting differences.10
Finally, he identies deconstruction as one of the symptoms of the
current social crisis because it limits critique to the pedantic dissection
of historical texts.11 He similarly assails the reduction of history to the
endless proliferation of metaphysics as well as the theological turn of
many of the post-Heideggerians.12 Against the recognized movements
and intellectual fashions of his day, Castoriadis uninchingly asserted
that he wanted to be part of
a tradition of radical critique, which also entails [a tradition] of
responsibility (we cannot put the blame on God Almighty, etc.) and
self-limitation (we cannot invoke any extra-historical norm to regulate our modes of action [normer notre agir], which nevertheless
must be regulated).13
This short book of interviews is a testament to the originality as
well as the breadth and depth of his thinking. Initially published in
1998 as Post-scriptum sur linsigniance, and then later combined with
Dialogue (1999), the title of the original book echoes the title of the
fourth volume of Crossroads in the Labyrinth, published in 1996:
La monte de linsigniance or The Rising Tide of Insignicance. The idea of
a Postscript on Insignicance clearly indexes one of the central themes in
Castoriadis thinking: the lack of absolute closure, the absence of
a nal resting point. Through the course of this book, the issue of
insignicance or the general paucity of meaningful creations in contemporary society regularly punctuates a series of intense exchanges.
A trenchant political intervention where Castoriadis lambasts false
progressivism in the name of a truly revolutionary project is followed
xii
by four engaging discussions with a poet (Octavio Paz), a psychoanalyst (Jean-Luc Donnet), a biologist (Francisco Varela), a mathematician (Alain Connes), and a philosopher (Robert Legros).14 These
dialogues with representatives of so many different elds produce
far-reaching discussions that serve to introduce the broad and deep
concerns of a mode of critical thinking whose passion for knowledge
could not be reigned in by preestablished categories. In order to
introduce these discussions, I would like to provide a brief aperu of
Castoriadis key philosophical and ontological claims before examining, with a critical eye, the primary facets of his work discussed in
the dialogues: politics, art, psychoanalysis, and the philosophy of
science.15
HISTORICAL ONTOLOGY
Let us begin with one of Castoriadis most general claims: being is
creation.16 As he explains in Figures of the Thinkable, creation means,
above all, discontinuity, emergence of the radically new and stratication of what exists.17 Rather than the perpetual repetition of the
same fundamental elements or structures, being attests to the appearance of the unprecedented. This is, in part, because being is temporal,
or ratherin Castoriadis dauntless formulationbeing is time (and
not in the horizon of time).18 In short, creation, being, time go
together: being means to-be [tre signie -tre], time and creation
require one another.19
The imaginary and the imagination, Castoriadis writes, are the
mode of being that this vis formandi of Being in general takes in this
offspring of overall Being-being [ltre-tant global] that is humanity.20
The imaginary and the imagination are not simply reproductive or
combinatory faculties. The imaginary is an incessant and essentially
undetermined (social-historical and psychical) creation of gures/
forms/images, and the imagination is the capacity to give rise [faire
surgir] to something that is not the real. 21 Castoriadis tends to use
the vocabulary of the imagination to refer to the creative capacity of
the psyche, which he describes more specically as a radical imagination because it is neither determined nor reproductive but is
xiii
actually capable of producing reality. The terminology of the imaginary is commonly invoked to refer to the social imaginary and the
creative capacity of the anonymous collective.22 Castoriadis uses
these two poles of the vis formandi to dismantle the simplistic
opposition between individual and society, thereby demonstrating
that individuals are, and must be, social: There is no human
individual. There is a psyche that is socialized and, in this socialization, in the nal result, there is almost nothing individual in the true
sense of the term.23 Moreover, since society only exists qua
self-alteration, Castoriadis introduces the notion of the socialhistoricaldened as the self-creation [autocration] of society as
such and of the historical eld as suchto emphasize the extent to
which society and history are consubstantial in the creative production of social institutions:
The social makes itself and can only make itself as history; the
social makes itself as temporality; and it makes itself in every
instance as a specic mode of actual temporality, it establishes itself
[sinstitue] implicitly as a singular quality of temporality. [. . .] The
historical is this very thingthe self-alteration of this specic mode
of coexistence that is the social, and is nothing apart from this.
The historical makes itself and can only make itself as social;
the historical is, in an exemplary and pre-eminent manner,
the emergence of the institution and the emergence of another
institution [une autre institution].24
Castoriadis further divides the social imaginary into the instituting
social imaginary and the instituted social imaginary. The former refers
to the creation of social imaginary signications by the anonymous
collective and, more generally, the social-historical eld. Once these
are created, they solidify into the instituted social imaginary, which
guarantees the continuation of society and the perpetuation of
its forms. Every society is self-instituted, for Castoriadis, but most
societies attempt to guarantee their own proper institution by
instituting an extra-social origin of the social order itself. There
are two important ramications of this position. On the one hand,
it means that history is understood as creation and is therefore
undetermined (which does not mean that it is unconditioned):
xiv
History is creation: the creation of total forms of human life.

Social-historical forms are not determined by natural or historical
laws. Society is self-creation. That which creates society and
history is the instituting society, as opposed to the instituted society.
The instituting society is the social imaginary in the radical sense.25
On the other hand, since there is ultimately no guarantee to social
institutions outside of the powers that created them, then societies
can be separated according to whether they are heteronomous or
autonomous. The former are founded on the belief that their institutions were not created by them but were instead bestowed upon them
by an external force (spirits, ancestors, Gods, nature, etc.). Autonomous societies, which are relatively rare, recognize and assume
responsibility for the creation of their institutions; they consciously
and explicitly establish their own laws.
THE VICISSITUDES OF POLITICAL AUTONOMY

Castoriadis regularly invokes two prime examples of autonomous
societies: ancient Greece and Europe as of the rst Renaissance
around the eleventh or twelfth century.26 Greece is the social-historical locus in which both democracy and philosophy appear for the rst
time, and it is therefore the origin of modern Europe according to
Castoriadis. These dual projects share a common interrogative orientation, a comparable critical stance. Philosophy, as we have seen, is
not a systematic conceptual enterprise but is, instead, the passionate
investigation of all things with no preestablished limits. Similarly,
democracy is not the rule of law or the rights of man; it is rather the
collective act of putting the law in question. Both philosophy and
democracy are projects of autonomy insofar as they seek to create
laws for themselves rather than accepting entrenched rules; they aim
at deliberately investing in and reexively clarifying the instituting
power of the imagination. Their simultaneous appearance in ancient
Greece therefore constituted a rupture that inaugurated the explicit
questioning by society of its own instituted imaginary.27 The West
attests to a powerful reemergence of the Greek project of autonomy
xv
as of approximately the twelfth century, and the modern era,

beginning in the eighteenth century, is characterized by the mutual
contamination of two imaginary signications: autonomy and
rational mastery.28 Since approximately the middle of the twentieth
century, Castoriadis claims that the heteronomous forces of insignicance have been seriously encroaching on the project of autonomy.29
Before taking a closer look at his analysis of the contemporary era of
conformism, we should briey discuss his overall conception of
politics.
Politics, in the strict sense of the term, is not reducible to the various
battles over governmental power, the multifarious plots of manipulation and control, or the motley attempts to defend the interests of
groups or individuals. It is a collective activity whose object is the
institution of society as such.30 It therefore belongs to the human
domain of creative production. There is no nal form of politics or
ultimate structure that can be determined once and for all, meaning
that there is no end to the activity of politics itself. Moreover, there is
no episteme or scientic knowledge of politics for Castoriadis; it exists
in the realm of doxa or opinion.31 And he has gone to great lengths to
dismantle the various determinist forms of history, teleology, and
theodicy found in the Marxist and liberal traditions.32 Thus, it is not
only impossible to deduce a particular type of politics from a specic
form of theoretical expertise, but it is equally impossible to sanction
political structures based on the supposed fatality of history.
In the contemporary era, politics has been taken over by selfproclaimed specialists. What is inappropriately called democracy is
actually a liberal oligarchy in which the ruling elite maintains democracy as a propitious prop. The close correlation between democracy
and the education of the citizenry has been replaced by a rampant
stultication of the masses, and true sociopolitical tensions and struggles have given way to the fragmentation of lobbies and interest
groups, not to mention the false opposition between the right and
the left. Compared to the direct democracy of ancient Athens, the
representative pseudo-democracy of the contemporary world has
turned rule of the people, in the sense of rule by the people, into rule over
the people. The public/public sphere, which Castoriadis identies as the
rst condition for the existence of an autonomous societyof a
democratic society, has been de facto privatized.33 Although citizens
xvi
are not legally barred from participating in what the Greeks called
the ecclesia, the latter is almost exclusively dominated by private
interests:
On the factual level the essential features of public affairs are still
the private affair of various groups and clans that share effective
power, decisions are made behind closed doors, the little that is
brought onto the public stage is masked, prefabricated, and belated
to the point of irrelevancy.34
In short, the autonomous political project of democracy, as it was
once understood, has been gutted of its true content, leaving only the
abject carcass of pseudodemocratic oligarchy.
The demise of the project of autonomy at a political level is closely
tied to an overall crisis in social imaginary signications, that is, the
signications that determine the prevailing representations, affects,
and intentions of a society. The capitalist imaginary of unlimited
expansion of production and consumption has become the dominant,
and nearly exclusive, imaginary signication of contemporary society.35
The consumer, who is content to cast votes on the political marketplace every few years, has more or less entirely replaced the citizen,
once dened by Aristotle as one who shares in governing and being
governed.36 The unlimited world of endless consumption tends
to engulf all other social signications in a sinister abyss where
moneyor its avatars, such as media notoriety and poweris the
only value. Far from having the freedom naively presupposed by
the apologists of neoliberal ideology, the unchecked consumer is
plunged into a world of unbridled conformism and actually ends up
thinking and acting in strict accordance with what the institution calls
for. Heteronomy thereby establishes its hegemony in the heart of the
supposed freedom of unlimited consumerism. Moreover, the dominant
imaginary signication of unlimited expansion becomes a vortex in
which other signications disappear, leading to an overall atrophy of
the imagination and a retreat of creativity in all elds (philosophy, art,
science, etc.). Insignicance comes to saturate almost everything in a
determined world of blind narcissism and hedonism orchestrated by
the Eleatic fatalities of neoliberalism. And the project of autonomya
distinctive feature of the Westis relegated to the margins. Nevertheless, far from being a cynical and acquiescent condemnation of the
xvii
present, Castoriadis truculent criticisms of his historical conjuncture

reveal his deant repudiation of the dominant imaginary signication
in the name of revolutionary praxis and the struggle to demonstrate
that history is not a fatality because a break is always possible.
POETIC WINDOWS ONTO THE ABYSS

The institution of society has always aimed at covering over what
Castoriadis calls Chaos, the Groundless, the Abyss, by producing a
powerful and compelling web of meaning.37 The core social imaginary
signications, those produced by religion, present the Abyss at the
same time that they occlude it. Art, on the contrary, particularly when
it is honed into a masterpiece, is nothing short of the presentation
of the Abyss (of Chaos, of the Groundless) [prsentation de lAbme
(du Chaos, du Sans-Fond)].38 In creatively giving form to chaos, which
Castoriadis carefully distinguishes from the act of imitation, it is
closely related to both philosophy and science:
Not only does one see the creative imagination at work in all of
them, but art, as well as philosophy and science, attempts to give
form to chaosto the chaos underlying the cosmos, the world, the
chaos that is behind the successive strata of appearances.39
The difference between these three ways of giving form to chaos is
thatunlike philosophy and science, which attempt to elucidate the
world that is given to usart actually creates a world and new
worlds, and it does so relatively freely.40
By giving form to chaos, the artist reminds society that it is living on
the abyss:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Lifes but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
xviii
And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.41
These notable lines from Shakespeares Macbeth instantiate, for
Castoriadis, the essential gesture of all art by opening a window onto
chaos, thereby reminding society that the only true salvation is deliverance from the very idea of salvation itself. It is for this reason that
art can and does play a critical role and is closely linked to the project
of autonomy. By opening onto and giving form to chaos, art calls
into question the established signications, even the meaning [signication] of human life and its most indisputable contents.42 Indeed, the
modern European era, from 1800 to 1950, was marked by the work
of a series of artists for whom there was no pre-given meaning.43
Castoriadis highlights, moreover, the historical specicity of the avantgarde as a rupture between creative artists and established society
dating from the mid-nineteenth century.44 As of the 1950s, however,
the critical role of art has sharply declined, replaced by a pseudoavant-garde that articially produces the new and the subversive
for their own sake, all the while sinking into an insipid conformism
that quiescently accompanies the mummication of culture and the
reduction of past icons to funerary monuments.45
Although Castoriadis recognizes the sociohistorical specicity of
cultural production as well as of certain gures of the art world
(pure art, avant-garde art, the accursed artist, the misunderstood
genius, etc.), he nonetheless identies a universal and transhistorical
nature of art itself as a window onto the chaos of being.46 In fact,
unlike the project of autonomy, art extends well beyond the Western
world and includes popular forms of creative production. From the
caves of Lascaux to African masks, Mayan statues, and The Art of the
Fugue, art has always sought to bring humanity to the border of the
abyss from which it comes: every culture [. . .] creates its own path
toward the Abyss.47 Moreover, Castoriadis believes in great art as
the singular, unexplainable, timeless creation of an individual genius
capable of halting the world and perching us on a novel precipice over
the chasm of non-meaning. This is precisely why art is intemporal
for him: great works of art act as timeless monuments demonstrating
the sovereign ability to accept mortality and create signication while
xix
inhabiting the border of Chaos.48 In short, art is not only

universal and transhistorical in the sense of extending across the
histories of all human cultures, but it is intemporal insofar as it
bears witness to the dauntless creative power of humanity.
AUTONOMY OF THE PSYCHE

The aim of psychoanalysis, Castoriadis claims, is consubstantial
with the project of autonomy.49 Psychoanalysis ultimately belongs to
the same emancipatory project as democracy and philosophy since it
aims at helping the social individual become a creative source of
possibilities who, instead of being trapped within the fatalities of
psychic life, is an active participant in the construction of his or her
own story (histoire). This does not amount to the victory of reason
over the instincts or the conquest of the unconscious by the conscious
mind, but rather the establishment of a new relationship between the
conscious I and the unconscious in which the former opens itself up
to the latter. Castoriadis jettisons, moreover, the more or less resolute
individualism that has plagued much of the psychoanalytic tradition,
and he insists on the central role played by society, institutions, and
imaginary signications in the formation of the psyche.50 As mentioned above, he rejects the reication of the distinction between
individual and society in the name of thinking through the diverse
ways in which the psychic and the social are radically irreducible to
one another and absolutely indissociable, impossible without one
another.51
This is evident in his account of the developmental trajectory of the
psyche. Initially, we can postulate that it is in a monadic state of
indifferentiation between self and other, as well as between affects,
representations, and desires. This state, characterized by a conatus of
perpetual identity, is prior the motherprior to any distinction with
the mother as well as any fusion with the mother and precedes the
existence of the partial object. There is, strictly speaking, no differentiation: I am everything, I am being itself, being is me, and I am
pleasure, pleasure is me.52 This is what Freud meant, according to
Castoriadis, by the expression I am the breast [Ich bin die Brust]. The
xx
object is not separate since I am the source of pleasure and the

immediate satisfaction of all desire. This is, moreover, the root of
the absolute egocentrism that will remain with the psyche and of
what Freud called the magical omnipotence of thought. In Castoriadis interpretation, the newborn at the stage of the psychic monad
expresses the radical imagination because even when the breast is not
there, the baby imagines its existence, sometimes in conjunction with
thumb sucking. This illustrates his distinction between organ pleasure
and the pleasure of representation insofar as human beings are capable
of feeling pleasure simply through the representations of their
imagination. Indeed, he afrms that the human is dened by the
predominance of the pleasure of representation over organ pleasure,
over the simple satisfaction of drives.53 It is not sexuality per se that
characterizes human beings, for Castoriadis, but rather the distortion
of sexuality, which includes this parting of ways between biological
pleasure and imaginary pleasure.54
The other ruptures the closed circuit of the psychic monad. In what
Castoriadis calls the triadic phase, a new relation is established between
the infant, the mother, and the partial object, the breast. The newborn, who believed that he or she was all powerful, discovers the
truth and transfers this omnipotence to the mother. This is the beginning of the process of socialization. However, the exit from monadic
life is in fact a false exit because the originary omnipotence is simply
transferred to the mother. The child, in normal development, must
overcome the mothers all-powerfulness in recognizing it as incomplete, engaged with the other of the father. Yet the father is not
omnipotent either because he is a father among other fathers; instead
of being the source of the Law, he himself is subservient to the Law of
society.
It is important to note that, for Castoriadis, the process of socialization is not simply a negative process of repression. By being socialized,
the psyche enters into the instituted magma of social signications,
for society itself is a magma of imaginary signications that gives
meaning to collective and individual life. Society is therefore not
simply repressive or prohibitive, but it provides a framework of meaning to the psyche. In fact, Castoriadis asserts that if the psyche does
not emerge into a social space of meaning that replaces its originary,
monadic meaning, it cannot survive. As he regularly claims, society
xxi
can make almost anything out of the psyche (a Christian, a bourgeois,

a Nazi, etc.), but it cannot not provide the psyche with meaning.55
The psychic monad, through a series of ruptures, thus eventually
develops into the social individual, that is, the subject split between a
monadic pole tending toward self-enclosure and the pole of imposed
social signications, which have been gradually integrated through a
succession of syntheses.
The psychoanalytic cure does not lead to an end of analysis, nor
does it provide the subject with a denitive understanding of the
meaning of life. The practical essence of psychoanalytic treatment,
Castoriadis writes,
is that the individual rediscovers himself as the partial origin of his
history [histoire], freely experiences the act of making himself,
which was not initially known as such the rst time around [fait
gratuitement lexprience du se faire non su comme tel la premire fois],
and becomes once again the origin of possibilities, as having had a
history [histoire] that was a history [histoire] and not a fatality.56
In fostering the autonomy of the social individual, psychoanalysis
is simultaneously a praxis, that is, an action that encourages the
autonomy of others, and a form of poiesis insofar as it aims at liberating
the creative potential of the radical imagination.57 Ultimately, psychoanalysis allows the subject to live on the border of the abyss by
constructing a cosmos on the edge of chaos as a response to the double
imperative: live as a mortal, live as if you were immortal.58
A PHILOSOPHICAL PASSION FOR THE SCIENCES

Castoriadis proclaims that science is, should be, contrary to what
has happened since Hegel, an object of passion for the philosopher.59
Yet, he goes on to explain in the same passage that he does not
have in mind a fetishization of the supposed certainties of scientic
discourse. On the contrary, science should be an object of philosophical passion because it is an endless fount of enigmas, an inextricable
mixture of light and darkness, bearing witness to an incomprehensible
meetingalways secured and always eetingbetween our imaginary
xxii
creations and what is.60 Furthermore, science should be of central

concern to philosophers because it is a glaring example of autonomy,
that is, of the rejection of inherited beliefs in the name of our ability
to create something new and transform ourselves.
Castoriadis lambasts the myths of scientic progress on numerous
occasions. The evolution of the sciences is not cumulative in any sense
of the term, be it the gradual addition, the spread, or the progressive
perfection of scientic knowledge.61 Instead, the historical stages of science correspond to so many ruptures and breaks. However, Castoriadis
distances himself from Kuhnian paradigms and Foucauldian epistemes
as well as epistemic breakson the grounds that they ignore the problem
of the relationship between the contents of scientic knowledge at
different stages. This problem, he claims, has come to the forefront in the
twentieth century since the macroscopic world is still explained within
the framework of classic Newtonian physics, and it is unclear exactly
how this relates to the microscopic world of quantum mechanics.62
Moreover, he asserts that the Newtonian model is not a purely arbitrary
construction but actually corresponds to an important class of elements
and has been able to make predictions beyond what was originally in
its purvey when it was established.63 This does not, however, mean
that he believes that there is a world of identiable facts independent of
scientic interpretation. Quite to the contrary, he insists on the ways
in which experiential facts are rendered identiable and observable by
scientic theories:
We cannot therefore pretend to believe that there exists a world of
facts in themselves, which are what they are prior to all scientic
interpretation, and independently of it, with which we compare
theories in order to see whether or not they are falsied by it. To be
sure, a scientic theory cannot behave in an entirely arbitrary fashion,
nor can it forego all empirical content; but this empirical content has
always undergone an enormous degree of conceptual elaboration,
precisely at the hands of the theory in which it is presented.64
One of the major lessons of contemporary science is precisely that the
separation between philosophy and science, between a conceptual
base and empirical results, is absolutely untenable. Castoriadis refers
to this situation as the end of scientic tranquility.65 Henceforth,
philosophy and science must proceed in concert with one another.
xxiii
Castoriadis work is a testament to just such an orientation, but this

is unfortunately not the place to explore the various positions he has
taken on the different sciences. For our current purposes, let us
concentrate on two fundamental claims related to his engagements
with mathematics and biology, in anticipation of his dialogues with
Alain Connes and Francisco Varela. Concerning mathematics, set
theory serves as an essential reference point for his ontology insofar
as he distinguishes between two dimensions of being. One dimension
he refers to as set-theoretical or ensemblistic (ensembliste), that is,
based on the logic of set theory (la thorie des ensembles). He also calls
this dimension identitary and abbreviates these two adjectives in
the neologism ensidic (ensidique). This dimension, which is an
essential aspect of all language, life, and social activity, is characterized by the logic of the principle of identity, of contradiction, and of
the excluded third, the logic that is at the basis of arithmetic and
mathematics in general and that is formally and effectively realized in
set theory and its interminable ramications.66 According to
Castoriadis, ensidic logic corresponds to an organizable stratum of
being (the rst natural stratum), and it deploys itself in social
institutions via what he calls the legein (language as a purportedly
univocal code) and the teukhein (practice in the functional and instrumental sense). This ensidic dimension does not exhaust being. There
are what Castoriadis calls magmas, which are irreducible to the
formalization of ensidic logic. Indeed, the activity of formalization
itself, insofar as it cannot be formalized, is a preliminary indication of
the existence of magmas. More germane to our discussion here, we
can take the example of society. For if there is an ensidic dimension of
society, as we have just seen, society itself is neither a set, nor a
system or hierarchy of sets (or of structures); it is a magma and a
magma of magmas.67 Similarly, the psyche rebels against ensidic logic
as radical imagination and undetermined creation.68
Turning to Castoriadis engagement with biology, we can begin with
his description of living beings (des vivants) as those who support
themselves on the ensidic being of non-living nature and create
a world for themselves. More specically, a living being is a selfconstituting for-itself characterized by self-nality (conservation,
reproduction, etc.) and the creation of a proper world of representations, affects, and intentions.69 Autonomy, properly speaking, appears
xxiv
to be a characteristic of humanity alone. Man is the only animal,

Castoriadis writes, capable of breaking the closure in and through
which every other living being is.70 He also emphasizes the extent to
which one of the major differences between humanity and the rest of
the natural world is that the imagination of other living beings is
subservient to functionality and given once and for all, whereas for
human beings it is defunctionalized and perpetually creative.71
Indeed, this is one of the reasons that the human species, at a biological and psychological level, is incapable of life and probably would
have disappeared if it wasnt for the invention of something without
precedent in the natural world: the self-creation of society.72
NOTHING IF NOT CRITICAL

It would be a twofold contradiction to remain at the level of pure
exegetical commentary, even for this brief introduction. On the one
hand, it would contradict my own work, where I have called into
question the limitations of exegetical thought (where thinking is reduced
to thinking within and through the canonical gures of the past) and
charted out its historical emergence as the dominant modus operandi
of professional philosophers in the continental tradition.73 On the
other hand, it would contradict Castoriadis work insofar as he
criticizes the philosophic cannibalism of the tradition of pure commentary and asserts that for a philosopher, there can only be a critical
history of philosophy.74 In the name of pursuing the tradition of
radical critique that Castoriadis himself identies with, it is therefore
indispensable to discuss some of the limitations and problems
inherent in his project.
First of all, he deploys a strategy that has now become commonplace among those philosophers seeking to accentuate the originality
of their work. This strategy might be called personal apotheosis via
selective history, and it consists in claiming that no one in the past
barring, perhaps, a few soothsayershas thought what the philosopher in question has been able to think, and that all other
philosophers have been trapped to a greater or lesser extent in an
illusory mode of thinking. In Castoriadis case, he regularly states that
xxv
the quasi-totality of Western philosophywhich is philosophy proper

for him75has thought being in terms of determinacy (dterminit)
and ignored the radical imaginary. He therefore purports to be the
rst thinker to truly break with what he calls inherited thought by elucidating the creative imagination and asserting that being is undetermined.76 He sometimes suggests at least partial exceptions,77 and it is
obviously necessary to examine his general claim as it plays itself out
in the various interpretations he provides of individual philosophers.
Since this is not the place for such an undertaking, let us simply state
that it is highly unlikely that nearly the entire Western world would
think in one way and that a single individual would suddenly think
differently. It is much more likely that Castoriadis is reproducing
an element of his own social world, and more specically of the
philosophical habitus that he shares with many of his compatriots.
The professed singularity of his project would thereby actually
conrm its conformity to an unoriginal strategy of personal apotheosis through historical promotion. The recognition of this conformity
at a strategic level does not, of course, invalidate in toto his claims to
originality, but it does relativize his self-promotional strategies and
the crude logic of history they produce.
This is not the only strategy that Castoriadis shares with many
twentieth-century European philosophers. He also employs the
chiaroscuro technique for delineating history by contrasting the light
and shadow of two fundamental tendencies: autonomy and heteronomy, the instituting imaginary and instituted social signications,
the magmatic dimension and the ensidic dimension, and so on. In
spite of a partial attempt to avoid a categorical valorization of one
term over the other, and despite the insistence that both dimensions
are necessary or inevitable (at least for certain of these terms), it is
nonetheless a patent verity that Castoriadis is more enamored with
the imaginative acts of creation than with the xity and determinedness of what has already been instituted. Moreover, he runs the risk
of treating these notions and values as transhistorical, as if there was
a perennial conceptual and normative vocabulary allowing us to
discuss any sociohistorical conguration. Indeed, he tends to assume
that his conceptual arsenalthe imaginary, institution, heteronomy,
etc.is valid for any and all social and historical milieus, as if categories such as the imagination, creation, or art could have the same
xxvi
purchase on the ancient Greeks, the Aztecs, Buddhists in the second

century BC, Innuits in the fourteenth century AD, and ourselves.78 Any
differences that are recognized tend to be supercial differences
situated at the level of varying denitions, misunderstandings, or
unadulterated ignorance of the same basic categories and values, which
therefore appear to determine the totality of phenomena. Insofar as
these absolute categories seem to preclude the possibility of practices
undetermined by Castoriadis binary normative and conceptual edice
(i.e., that are neither simply autonomous nor heteronomous, neither
creative nor determined, neither art nor non-art, etc.79), he
risks slipping into an ontology of determinacy through the backdoor,
so to speak, that is to say through the systematic valorization of creative indeterminacy. Of course, he historicizes autonomy and its various avatars in a certain sense by restricting them to the Greco-Western
world, but this does not change the fact that the entire history of
humanity can be conceived of with the categories of autonomy and
heteronomy. His work thereby approximates a form of selective sociohistoricism since he chooses what is part of society and history, as well
as what escapes sociohistorical specicity in the strong sense of the
term (his own systematic vocabulary). As a nal note in this regard, it
cannot go unnoticed that Castoriadis conceptual and normative
framework is largely, if not entirely, dependent on a modern European
sensibility. The valorization of creation, novelty, and the imagination,
in spite of occasional counter-claims, bears the indelible mark of the
modern glorication of creativity (not to mention the rediscovery of
the Greeks as of the late eighteenth century).80 Furthermore, the
identication of Greece as the politico-philosophic origin of Europe is
a relatively recent trope rooted in a new codication of philosophic
history that emerged at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning
of the nineteenth century.81
To his credit, Castoriadis recognizes that his schematization of
history is situated within history:
When we speak of history, who is speaking? It is someone of a given
period, society and classin short, it is a historical being. And yet
the very thing that founds the possibility of historical knowledge
[une connaissance historique] (for only a historical being can have an
experience of history and talk about it) prevents this knowledge
xxvii
[connaissance] from ever being able to acquire the status of complete

and transparent knowledge [savoir]since it is itself, in its essence,
a historical phenomenon that demands to be apprehended and
interpreted as such. The discourse on history is included within
history.82
This opens the door for a more generous reading of his work in terms
of an attempt to lucidly and explicitly formulate a creative intervention from within a particular sociohistorical conjuncture.83 On this
reading, for which there is textual evidence, Castoriadis appeal to
certain universals would be a situated and reexive appeal that aims
at overcoming the risks of cultural relativism by proposing transcultural reference points. Instead of indiscriminately positing transhistorical concepts, he would be suggesting heuristic tools for making
sense of sociohistorical developments while at the same time remaining open and transparent about his presuppositions.
While I certainly hope that this is the case, Castoriadis nevertheless
regularly makes sweeping statements about the history of humanity
that would need to be qualied. For instance, the claim that the entire
history of the human race has been dominated by heteronomy and
that there are only two moments of autonomyGreece and the
Westis a moot point at many levels.84 To begin with, it presupposes
the ability to know the inner workings of all cultures that have ever
existed, or at least of all of those that have ever been known to exist.85
This not only poses serious hermeneutic problems, but it is structurally impossible from our current position because there are cultures
that have partially or totally disappeared, and to which we have little
or no access. So the claim itself can only be advanced on hypothetical
grounds. Moreover, there is something slightly patronizing, selfaggrandizing, and unduly simplistic about a Greek living in modern
Europe who afrms that the only two moments of autonomy occurred
in ancient Greece and Europe. Of course, Castoriadis claims that he
does not want to elevate Greece to the status of a model, and he is
extremely critical of his own sociohistorical conjuncture and the crisis
of autonomy. However, it is nevertheless clear that he valorizes the
Greco-Western project of autonomy and that no other cultures in
the world are on par with it: Before Greece and outside the
xxviii
Greco-Western tradition, societies are instituted on the principle of a

strict closure: our view of the world is the only one that is meaningful
and true, the others are bizarre, inferior, perverse, bad, disloyal,
etc.86 It is rather ironic, in this regard, that the Greco-Western break
with the closure of traditional societies purportedly means a true
openness to other cultures, for this openness actually implies,
among other things, the ability to recognize the universal closure
and, hence, relative inferiorityof all other cultures.87 In fact, the
closure of traditional societies is a trait that the members of these
societies share with the animal world, whereas the autonomy of the
Greco-Western world is generally dened as a properly human invention.88 When Castoriadis asserts that the true interest in others was
born with the Greeks (a debatable claim in its own right89), he means,
moreover, that Greece is not only the privileged origin of philosophy,
democracy, and politics proper, but also of true history and ethnology,
as well as of what he calls judging and choosing, in a radical sense.90
When confronted with the criticism that he afrms and defends the
superiority of Western culture, he retorts that he is actually only
asserting the superiority of one dimension of this culture over another
dimension of the same culture.91 Even if this point is granted, it is
nonetheless the case that the West is apparently the only place where
the closure of instituted societies has been ruptured by a creative project of critical inquiry aiming at taking on the task of the autonomous
institution of society. Indeed, Castoriadis unabashedly declares that
Western humanity is the most advanced part of humanity.92 This
not only casts a long shadow over the rest of humanity and the deep
history of cultures, but it also raises the issue of the desire to spread
the project of autonomy and the simplicity of its implicit historiography: do other cultures have any choice other than to either remain in
their arcane and archaic ways or recognize and embrace the superiority of one dimension of European culture?93 Even if the project of
autonomy could end up taking on different iterations in various cultures (if it spreads)94, it is rather unfortunate that Castoriadiswho
clearly has broad interests in other culturesdoes not make ample
room for the emergence of alternative cultural projects.
xxix
CONCLUDING REMARKS
When driven by an intense eros of inquiry that knows no a priori
bounds, it is perhaps inevitable that you will occasionally falter.
In the case of Castoriadis, there are plenty of aspects of his work that
invite critical reection. Nevertheless, the breadth, depth, and
originality of his project need to be recognized in their own right. It
is extremely rare, particularly in an era of increasing academic specialization, that a single thinker spans the elds of philosophy, politics, psychoanalysis, art theory, economics, sociology, history, and
the philosophy of science. It is even more uncommon that he or she
do so while establishing a unique and expansive philosophical project that does not t comfortably within the dominant models and
intellectual fashions of the times. It is a testament to the intensity of
Castoriadis eros of inquiry that his passion for critical reection
broke through the strictures of his intellectual milieu in order to
establish a novel, unique and wide-ranging philosophical project.
His passion for independent elucidation should serve as an open
invitation to all of us to fervently pursue the tradition of radical
critique.
xxx
NOTES
1
3
4
9
10
The Castoriadis Reader, ed. and trans. David Ames Curtis. Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1997, 362 / Fait et faire. Paris: ditions
du Seuil, 1997, 11 (translation slightly modied).
See Figures of the Thinkable, trans. Helen Arnold. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2007, 81 / Figures du pensable. Paris:
ditions du Seuil, 1999, 104.
On Socialisme ou barbarie, see The Castoriadis Reader, 139.
Since there is signicant uctuation in the biographical information available regarding Castoriadis, I have decided to rely on the
Association Castoriadis, whose members include many of his
close friends and family members: http://www.castoriadis.org/en/
readText.asp?textID=40. However, I decided to follow the bibliography provided by ditions du Seuil for the date of employment
at the OECD because 1945 (the date found on the Association Castoriadis website) seemed premature due to the fact that
Castoriadis had just arrived in Paris on a scholarship for a doctorat
dtat in philosophy (which he never nished).
The Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. Kathleen Blamey.
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987, 74 / Linstitution imaginaire
de la socit. Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1975, 11011 (translation
slightly modied).
This rumored exchange is referred to in the Castoriadis obituary
on the website: http://www.agorainternational.org/about.html.
The Imaginary Institution of Society, 171 / Linstitution imaginaire de la
socit, 2567 (translation slightly modied).
It [structuralism] has nothing to say about the sets of elements it
manipulates, about the reasons for their being-such, about their
modications in time (ibid., 171/257). On the pseudo-scientic
ideology of structuralism, see World in Fragments: Writings on
Politics, Society, Psychoanalysis, and the Imagination, ed. and trans.
David Ames Curtis. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997,
51 / La monte de linsigniance. Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1996, 35.
Ibid., 501/34 (translation slightly modied).
The Castoriadis Reader, 398 / Fait et faire, 63. Also see the Agora
International Interview available at http://www.agorainternational.org/enccaiint.pdf.
xxxi
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
xxxii
See La monte de linsigniance, 902 and Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy: Essays in Political Philosophy, ed. David Ames Curtis. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1991, 14/Le monde morcel. Paris: ditions
du Seuil, 1990, 282.
See ibid., 1617/2856.
The interview with Legros was not part of the original French
publication and was rst printed in Cornelius Castoriadis: Rinventer
lautonomie, ed. Blaise Bachofen, Sion Elbaz, and Nicolas Poirier.
Paris: ditions du Sandre, series Bibliothque de philosophie
contemporaine, 2008, 27389. Since I wanted to add a discussion
with a philosopher, I am very grateful that ditions du Sandre let
us translate the conversation with Legros, which ts perfectly
within the purview of the book. Like the other interviews, it was a
lively oral exchange that took place on France Culture in the
1990s.
Since the interviews are all from the 1990s, I have primarily
concentrated on Castoriadis later work, from approximately The
Imaginary Institution of Society (1975) until the end of his life. Moreover, for the purposes of writing a synoptic overview in the limited
space of this introduction, I have privileged a synchronic point of
view for purely heuristic reasons. In doing so, it is important to
highlight that it is by no means my intention to occlude the dynamism of Castoriadis project, which obviously changed in diverse
ways between 1975 and 1997.
Fait et faire, 253 (all translations, unless otherwise indicated, are
my own). The entire quote reads: being is creation, vis formandi:
not the creation of matter-energy, but the creation of forms.
Castoriadis also asserts that being is creation/destruction (Figures
of the Thinkable, 190/Figures du pensable, 223)
Ibid. (translation slightly modied).
Fait et faire, 258.
Domaines de lhomme. Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1986, 9.
World in Fragments, 184/Fait et faire, 116 (translation slightly
modied). For reasons of clarity, I have exceptionally translated
ltre as Being (in general) in order to distinguish it from ltant
(being in the sense of a specic entity or phenomenon).
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
The Imaginary Institution of Society, 3/Linstitution imaginaire de la

socit, 8 (translation slightly modied); World in Fragments, 181/
Fait et faire, 113 (also see Domaines de lhomme, 48).
World in Fragments, 131/Le monde morcel, 182.
modied). Also see ibid., 187/120; Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy,145/
Le monde morcel, 139, 187; The Castoriadis Reader, 332).
Domaines de lhomme, 12; The Imaginary Institution of Society, 215/
Linstitution imaginaire de la socit, 31920.
The Castoriadis Reader, 269/Domaines de lhomme, 329.
World in Fragments, 86/La monte de linsigniance, 194. Castoriadis
has provided variable dates for this rst Renaissance, ranging
from about the eleventh to the fourteenth century.
socit, 319.
See Le monde morcel,1822.
See ibid., 224.
See, for instance, A Society Adrift: Interviews and Debates 19741997,
ed. Enrique Escobar, Myrto Gondicas, and Pascal Vernay, trans.
Helen Arnold. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010, 125;
Domaines de lhomme, 356; Figures du pensable, 155.
See The Imaginary Institution of Society, 970/Linstitution imaginaire
de la socit, 13104.
The Castoriadis Reader, 407/Fait et faire, 76.
Ibid.
Le monde morcel, 210.
Politics in The Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2, ed. Jonathan
Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984, 2037
(1283b401284a1).
See The Castoriadis Reader, 315/Domaines de lhomme, 521 and
Figures of the Thinkable, 171/Figures du pensable, 203: The chaos/
abyss/groundless [chaos/abme/sans-fond] is what is behind or under
every concrete existent, and at the same time it is the creative
forcewhat we would call the vis formandi in Latinthat causes
the upsurge of forms, organized beings. The singular human being
is a fragment of that chaos, and at the same time a fragment or an
xxxiii
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
xxxiv
agency of that vis formandi, of that force or that creativity of being

as such (translation slightly modied).
Domaines de lhomme, 347.
Figures of the Thinkable, 80/Figures du pensable, 102 (translation
slightly modied). On the issue of imitation, see Fentre sur le chaos.
Paris: ditions du Seuil, 2007, particularly 1523.
Figures of the Thinkable, 80/Figures du pensable, 103 (translation
slightly modied).
The Tragedy of Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5) in The Norton Shakespeare:
Based on the Oxford Edition, ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York and
London: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1997, 2613. For Castoriadis discussion of Shakespeare and Macbeth, see Fentre sur le chaos,
1045, 155.
La monte de linsigniance, 75.
Ibid.
See Figures of the Thinkable, 84/Figures du pensable, 107 (lavantgarde should clearly be translated as the avant-garde instead of
the vanguard).
See Ibid. 845/1078 and Fentre sur le chaos, 17.
See Domaines de lhomme, 344 and Fentre sur le chaos, 25.
See La monte de linsigniance, 76 and Fentre sur le chaos, 47.
World in Fragments, 129/Le monde morcel, 178 (translation slightly
modied).
See, for instance, Crossroads in the Labyrinth, trans. Kate Soper and
Martin H. Ryle. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1984, 103/Les
carrefours du labyrinthe 1. Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1978, 157; Figures
of the Thinkable, 89, 1978/Figures du pensable, 11213, 232.
The Castoriadis Reader, 291/Domaines de lhomme, 482 (translation
slightly modied).
Figures of the Thinkable, 170/Figures du pensable, 202.
Ibid. 217/254 (translation slightly modied).
World in Fragments, 150/Le monde morcel, 250 (for a more detailed
description of the various aspects of the distortion of sexuality,
see the ensuing pages).
See Figures of the Thinkable, 217/Figures du pensable, 254 and
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
Crossroads in the Labyrinth, 26/Les carrefours du labyrinthe 1, 612

(translation slightly modied).
Human beings, for Castoriadis, are not dened essentially by
their rationality, but rather by the continuous, uncontrolled
and uncontrollable surge of our creative radical imagination in
and through the ux of representations, affects, and desires (World
in Fragments, 1278/Le monde morcel, 177, translation slightly
modied).
Ibid., 136/189.
Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, 270/Le monde morcel, 119 (translation
slightly modied).
Ibid. (translation slightly modied).
See Crossroads in the Labyrinth, 167/ Les carrefours du labyrinthe 1,
218.
Ibid., 168/219.
Ibid., 171/223.
The Castoriadis Reader, 352/Fait et faire, 174. Also see The Castoriadis Reader, 328: Everything that is must contain an ensemblisticidentitary (logical, in the largest sense possible) dimension;
otherwise it would be absolutely indeterminate, and (at least for us)
nonexistent.
The Imaginary Institution of Society, 228/Linstitution imaginaire de
la socit, 336 (translation slightly modied). In Fait et faire,
Castoriadis asserts that being is magmatic because it is creation
and temporality (258).
See Crossroads in the Labyrinth, 97/ Les carrefours du labyrinthe
1, 149.
World in Fragments, 14550/Le monde morcel, 2439.
modied. Also see Fait et faire, 16, 17981/The Castoriadis Reader,
3567). This is one of the reasons Castoriadis derides the denition
of human beings as rational animals: he [man] is much less
reasonable than animals (World in Fragments, 177/Fait et faire,
108). Man, he states in an interview, is a living, but monstrous,
xxxv
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
xxxvi
totally dysfunctional being (Conversations with French Philosophers,

trans. Gary E. Aylesworth. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities
Press International, Inc., 1995, 33).
See Domaines de lhomme, 489, 542/World in Fragments, 354
(also see The Castoriadis Reader, 331).
See Logique de lhistoire: Pour une analytique des pratiques philosophiques. Paris: ditions Hermann, 2010.
Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, 17/Le monde morcel, 287 (also see 23
and Figures of the Thinkable, 81/Figures du pensable, 104).
This stance gives rise to a series of important questions: whyand
on what groundsdoes Castoriadis classify all philosophic developments outside of the Greco-Western world as heteronomous,
and therefore not true philosophy? Why does he accept as a more
or less natural given the history of Western philosophy as it has
been codied since approximately the early nineteenth century
(with its supposed origin in Greece and the sequence of its canonical gures)? Why doesnt he recognize that philosophy, far from
having a proper nature supposedly invented by the Greeks, is a
variable socio-historical formation, a concept in struggle with no
inherent essence (even a historical essence)? Isnt he ultimately
naturalizing the contingent, contemporary edice of the history of
Western philosophy? Isnt he acting as if the instituted signications of the Western tradition as of only approximately 200 years
were actually more or less natural signications stretching back to
the Greeks? On these and related issues, see my book, Logique de
lhistoire.
See, for example, Crossroads in the Labyrinth, 20910/Les carrefours
du labyrinthe 1, 2689; Fait et faire, 270; Figures of the Thinkable,
73/Figures du pensable, 95.
See, for instance, The Castoriadis Reader, 3712/Fait et faire, 234.
Here is one example among others: Of this abyss, of this chaos,
humanity has always had at once a sharp and confused perception.
It has always felt its intolerable and insurmountable nature, and it
responded to it by social institutions and above all by the institution that, almost everywhere, almost always, was its nuclear
element: religion (Fentre sur le chaos, 99100).
To take the agrant example of the category of art (and, therefore, non-art as well as great art), which is culturally ubiquit-
ous for Castoriadis, there is excellent research that has demonstrated

the extent to which it is a modern, European category that cannot
and should not be indiscriminately applied to all time periods and
all cultures. See, for instance, Jacques Rancire, The Politics of
Aesthetics, ed. and trans. Gabriel Rockhill. London: Continuum
Books, 2004 and Larry Shiner, The Invention of Art: A Cultural History.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
80
On this issue, see Raymond Williams historical account of the
emergence of the idea of the creative imagination, particularly
within the arts: Donne spoke of poetry as a counterfeit Creation.
Mallet, in 1728, spoke of the companion of the Muse, Creative
Power, Imagination. By the end of the eighteenth century, this
emphasis, with its key-word, imagination, was becoming paramount. The main line runs as an emphasis on creative imagination as a general human faculty, which is seen at its highest in the
poet (The Long Revolution: An Analysis of the Democratic, Industrial,
and Cultural Changes Transforming Our Society. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1961, 9). Also see Nathalie Heinichs work on
the novel social imaginary that emerged around the turn of the
nineteenth century, particularly Llite artiste: Excellence et singularit
en rgime dmocratique. Paris: ditions Gallimard, 2005 and tre
artiste: Les transformations du statut des peintres et des sculpteurs. Paris:
Klincksieck, 1996.
81
I have explored this issue in much greater detail in Logique de
lhistoire.
82
socit, 489 (translation slightly modied).
83
Along these lines, Castoriadis writes that we have to understand
[. . .] that there is truthand that it is to be made, that in order to
attain it, we must create it, which means, rst and foremost, to
imagine it (World in Fragments, 373/Domaines de lhomme, 570,
translation slightly modied)
84
It should be noted that Castoriadis occasionally suggests that there
are perhaps other moments by using vocabulary such as at least
two moments.
85
The human domain appears, at the start, as a highly heteronomous
domain [. . .]. Archaic societies, like traditional societies, are very
highly closed societies informationally, cognitively, and organizaxxxvii
86
87
88
89
90
91
xxxviii
tionally. In fact, this is the state of almost all societies we know of,
almost everywhere, almost always (The Castoriadis Reader, 311/
Domaines de lhomme, 514).
It is worth noting that Castoriadis has nonetheless suggested that
it is impossible to establish a hierarchy of the multiple socialhistorical worlds (see, for instance, Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy
66/Le monde morcel, 69).
As we saw above: Man is the only animal, capable of breaking the
closure in and through which every other living being is. (The
Castoriadis Reader, 314/Domaines de lhomme, 520). However, some
men have apparently not been capable of this, so they remain
within the closure of the animal world.
Castoriadis tends to downplay the central role of slavery and
imperialism in ancient Athens in favor of a relatively halcyon
image of autonomous democracy. On the centrality and importance of slavery, imperialism and various forms of rigid social
hierarchy in Athenian society, see Moses I. Finley, Ancient Slavery
and Modern Ideology. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers,
1998; Moses I. Finley, Democracy Ancient and Modern. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1985; Edmond Lvy,
La Grce au Ve sicle: De Clisthne Socrate. Paris: ditions du Seuil,
1997.
The Castoriadis Reader, 268/Domaines de lhomme, 327 (translation
slightly modied); ibid., 272/353.
See The Castoriadis Reader, 3978/Fait et faire, 63. In a revealing
discussion between Castoriadis and the Mouvement AntiUtilitariste dans les Sciences Sociales (MAUSS), Alain Caill
astutely underscores the tension in Castoriadis work between a
hyper-relativism in which all societies are recognized as equal
insofar as they are creations of the radical instituting imaginary
and an extreme form of universalism in which one cultural
dimension is unconditionally valorized over all others (Cornelius
Castoriadis, Enrique Escobar, Myrto Gondicas, Pascal Vernay,
Dmocratie et relativisme: Dbats avec le MAUSS. Paris: Mille et une
nuits, 2010, 51). In his response, Castoriadis distinguishes between
a philosophical point of view and a political point of view.
Philosophically and historically, he claims that we have to admit
92
93
94
that all societies, in the same way, come from a movement of

creation of institutions and signications (ibid., 55). From this
point of view, all cultures are equal, as he had asserted in his
earlier debate with Daniel Cohn-Bendit (De lcologie lautonomie.
Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1981). However, from a political point of
view, one has the right to discuss and criticize societies, to stake
out a position on the relative value of cultures. It is at this level
that he supports and defends the project of autonomy, whose seed
he nds in ancient Greece and the West (see Dmocratie et relativisme, 567). It is rather unfortunate and culturally belittling, however, that he attempts to reinscribe this pragmatic position within
a philosophic history by claiming that such a political point of view
is itself the unique privilege of the Greco-Western world. Indeed,
he asserts that a Chinese, a traditional Indian does not consider it
self-evident to take political positions, to judge his society. On the
contrary, this would even appear inconceivable to him; he does
not dispose of the mental framework for doing it (ibid., 56).
Le monde morcel, 212.
In an interview with Esprit, Castoriadis claims that other cultures
need to extricate themselves from their religious closure and accept
Western universalism, and he bemoans the fact that the West is
not currently able to have an emancipatory inuence on these
closed societies (see La monte de linsigniance, 701).
Castoriadis does assert that the condition for the universalization
of Western values is that other cultures appropriate them and that
appropriating them does not mean becoming Europeanized
(Dmocratie et relativisme, 61). In fact, in a brief passage that could
have been developed, he states that he is in favor of a common
overcoming that would combine the democratic culture of the
West with steps that need to come, or that should come, that is to
say a veritable individual and collective autonomy in society, with
the preservation, recovery, development, in a different way, of
values of sociality and community that surviveas far as they
have survivedin third-world countries (ibid.).
xxxix
PART I
Translated by John V. Garner
In memory of Cornelius Castoriadis, who passed away on December 26,

1997, we have rebroadcast the interview which he granted to us one
year beforehand.
Sometimes, people wish to take back words, to go back over ideas
with a rested ear. Now, in making the script of this interview
available for you to address, I did not presume, by any means, any
respect, or any stretch, that one of the most fecund and most lucid
thinkers of our time would be concerned by such things.
From across the divide we feel that all is not lost!
Daniel Mermet
L-bas si jy suis, France-Inter
http://www.la-bas.org/
Preface: Cornelius, Essential Dissident

Missing is the voice of Cornelius Castoriadis; missing is that jubilation

in his voice repeating We who desire [desirons] or we who are
deranged [delirons]? Missing is the Bir-Hakeim bridge and the airport
shuttle outside the window; missing is the light over the Seine that
November morning in 1996.
What he was saying arrived at just the right moment in these
Trotsko-Balladurian1 times. He who dismissed both antirevolutionary communism and neoliberalism as conformist thought,
as non-thought.
At stake was not abdication for itself. He did not lapse into aesthetic
renunciation, nor into cynicism la Mitterand, nor into that sated
apathy, which says: Its all the same, its all been done, all is vanity.
He locates this rise of insignicance not only in an elite politics
reduced to implementing neoliberal [12] fundamentalism but also,
through its consequences, in the citizen who is detached from the
life of the City by unemployment and generalized precariousness.2
Unemployment leads to disintegration [dsinsertion]; precariousness
leads to submission. From this stems the dislocation of the community of destiny. Silently, we have consented, we have collaborated in this incredible regression, a non-thought producing this
non-society, this rise of insignicance, this social racism. The major
problem is not unemployment; it is at rst and always prot, Cornelius repeated.
2
PREFACE: CORNELIUS, ESSENTIAL DISSIDENT
Confronting diversionists [brouilleurs de pistes] and pseudocomplexity, which places hope wholly in the social imaginary,
Castoriadis was in search of a radicalness until the end. I am a
revolutionary in favor of radical changes, he said a few weeks before
his death3; I do not think that one can make the French capitalist
system work in a free, egalitarian, and just way as it [13] is. He was
a revolutionary who, through his life, went on to repeat, We do not
philosophize in order to save the Revolution but in order to save our
thought and our coherence.
But one cannot reduce Cornelius Castoriadis to a single register.
A philosopher and a sociologist, he also worked as an economist and
a psychoanalyst. A titan of thought, enormous, outside of norms,
said Edgar Morin. An encyclopedic thinker with a jubilation for living
and for ghtingcorporeal, spiritual, innite ghting, but constantly
movinghe leaves us with much to work with and so much work
to do . . .
Daniel Mermet
February 7, 1998
[14]
NOTES
1
Leon Trotsky (18791940) was a Bolshevik, and later an antiStalinist, whose version of Marxism emphasized Permanent Revolution. douard Balladur (1929) is a French right-wing politician
who served as Prime Minister from 19931995 and failed in a run
for President in 1995. TR
The numbers in brackets refer to the original pagination of the
French text: Post-scriptum sur linsigniance. Entretiens avec Daniel
Mermet suivi de Dialogue. La Tour dAigues: ditions de lAube, 2007.
TR
Cornelius Castoriadis died on December 26, 1997. Born in Greece,
he moved in 1945 to Paris where he created the now mythical
review Socialisme ou Barbarie. In 1968, with Edgar Morin and
Claude Lefort, he published May 68: The Rupture. In 1975, he published The Imaginary Institution of Society, his most important work.
3
In 1978, he began working on the series Crossroads in the Labyrinth.

It was following the publication of the fourth volume of this series,
entitled The Rising Tide of Insignicance, published in ditions du Seuil,
that we met with him in November 1996.
CHAPTER ONE
No God, No Caesar, No Tribune! . . .

Cornelius Castoriadis Interviewed by Daniel Mermet
Translated by Gabriel Rockhill and the Villanova French
Translation Workshop1
DANIEL MERMET: Why this title, The Rising Tide of Insignicance?2

Is this the dening characteristic of our age?
CORNELIUS CASTORIADIS: What characterizes the contemporary world
is of course crises, contradictions, oppositions, fractures, etc., but what
strikes me above all is precisely insignicance. Lets take the quarrel
between the right and the left. Presently, it has lost its meaning. Its
not because theres not anything to fuel a political quarrel, and even
a very extensive political quarrel, but because both sides say the same
thing. As of 1983, the socialists established one policy; then Balladur
came along. He had the same policy. Then the socialists returned;
they had, with Brgovoy, the same policy. Balladur [16] returned; he
had the same policy. Chirac won the elections saying, Im going to do
something different, and he had the same policy. This distinction
lacks meaning.
D.M.: By which mechanisms is this political class reduced to powerlessness? Its a buzzword today, powerlessness.
C.C.: No its not a buzzword; they are powerless, thats for sure. The
only thing they can do is swim downstream, which is to say apply the
ultraliberal policy that is in fashion. The socialists havent done
5
anything different, and I dont think they would do anything different if they returned to power. They are not statesmen [politiques], in
my opinion, but politicians [politiciens] in the sense of micro-politicians
[micropoliticiens], people on the hunt for votes by any means.
D.M.: Political marketing?
C.C.: Yes, its marketing. They have no program. Their aim is to stay
in power or to return to power, and for that theyre capable of anything. Clinton campaigned solely by following the pollsIf I say this,
is it going [17] to y?each time taking the winning option for public opinion. As they say: I am their leader, therefore Im led by them.
Whats fascinating in our age, as in all ages moreover, is the way
things conspire. There is an intrinsic link between this type of political
nullity, politics becoming worthless, and insignicance in other
domains, in the arts, in philosophy, or in literature. This is the spirit of
the times: without any conspiracy by some power that one could designate, everything conspires, in the sense of radiating in the same
direction, for the same results, that is to say, insignicance.
D.M.: How should politics be done?
C.C.: Politics is a strange profession, even the aforementioned politics.
Why? Because it presupposes two abilities that have no intrinsic relation. The rst is to come to power. If you dont come to power, you
can have the best ideas in the world, and its of no use. There is thus
an art of coming to power. The second ability is, once you come to
power, to do something with it, that is to say, to govern. [18] Napoleon knew how to govern; Clemenceau knew how to govern;
Churchill knew how to govern. These are people who arent of the
same political alignment as me, but what Im describing here is a historical type. Nothing guarantees that someone who knows how to
govern knows, for all that, how to come to power. In an absolute
monarchy, what did it mean to come to power? It meant to atter the
king, to be in the good graces of Madame de Pompadour.3 Today, in
our pseudo-democracy, to come to power means to be telegenic, to
sniff out public opinion. Once in power, what do you do? What
Mr. Chirac is currently doing: nothing. You swim downstream. As
needs be, you change hats because you recognize that in order to
come to power you told stories, and that these stories dont apply.
6
NO GOD, NO CAESAR, NO TRIBUNE! . . .
D.M.: You say pseudo-democracy . . .

C.C.: Ive always thought that so-called representative democracy is
not a true democracy. Its representatives only minimally represent
the people who elect them. First they represent themselves or
represent particular interests, the lobbies, etc. And, even if that wasnt
the case, to say that someone is going to represent me in an irrevocable manner for 5 years [19] amounts to saying that I divest myself of
my sovereignty as part of the people. Rousseau already said this: the
English believe that they are free because they elect representatives
every 5 years, but they are free only one day every 5 years: the day of
the election.
And even that isnt true. The election is rigged, not because the ballot
boxes are being stuffed, but because the options are determined in
advance. No one asked the people what they wanted to vote on. They
are told, vote for or against the Maastricht Treaty, for example. But
who made the Maastricht Treaty? It wasnt us. There is Aristotles
wonderful phrase responding to the question, Who is the citizen?:
The citizen is someone who is able to govern and to be governed.4
Are there forty million citizens in France at the moment? Why
wouldnt they be able to govern? Because all political life aims precisely at making them forget how to govern. It aims at convincing
them that there are experts to whom matters must be entrusted. There
is thus a political countereducation. Whereas people should accustom
themselves to exercising all sorts of responsibilities and taking initiatives, they accustom themselves to following the options that others
present to them or voting for those options. And since people are far
from being [20] stupid, the result is that they believe in it less and less,
and they become cynical, in a kind of political apathy.
D.M.: Civic responsibility, democratic practice, do you think that it
was better in the past? That elsewhere, today, its better than in
France?
C.C.: No, elsewhere, today, its certainly not better. It can even be
worse. Once again, the American elections illustrate this. But, in the
past, it was better from two points of view.
In modern societies, lets say starting from the American and French
Revolutions until about the Second World War, there was still a lively
7
social and political conict. People opposed one another. People

demonstrated. They didnt demonstrate for a particular SNCF5 route
Im not saying this is contemptible, its at least a goal but in the past
the workers demonstrated or went on strike for political causes and
not only for petty corporatist interests. There were major questions
that concerned all salaried employees. These struggles marked the
last two centuries. However, what we observe now is a decline in [21]
peoples activity. And there is a vicious circle. The more people
withdraw from activity, the more some bureaucrats, politicians,
so-called people in charge, take the lead. They have a good justication: I take the initiative because people arent doing anything. And
the more those people dominate, the more the others say to themselves, its not worth it to get involved; there are enough of them
dealing with it and, in any case, theres nothing one can do about it.
Thats the rst point of view.
The second point of view, linked to the rst, is that of the dissolution of the grand political ideologieseither revolutionary or truly
reformistthat really wanted to change things in society. For a thousand and one reasons, these ideologies have been discredited; they
have ceased to correspond to the times, to correspond to peoples
aspirations, to the situation of society, to historical experience. The
collapse of the Soviet Union and of communism was an enormous
event. Can you show me one single person among the politicians
not to say political schemerson the left, who has truly reected on
what has happened, on the reasons why this has happened, and who
has, as we foolishly say, learned lessons from it? An evolution of this
kind, rst of all in its initial phasethe advent of [22] monstrosity,
totalitarianism, the gulag etc.and then in its collapse, merited a very
in-depth reection and a conclusion regarding what a movement that
wants to change society can do, must do, must not do, cannot do.
Absolutely no reection! How, then, do you want what one calls the
people, the masses, to arrive at their proper conclusions when they
are not really enlightened?
You were talking to me about the role of intellectuals. What are
these intellectuals doing? What have they done with Reagan,
Thatcher, and with French socialism? They brought back the hardline liberalism from the beginning of the nineteenth century, the one
that we had been ghting against for 150 years and that would have
8
driven society to catastrophe because, in the end, old Marx wasnt

entirely wrong. If capitalism had been left to itself, it would have
collapsed a hundred times. There would have been a crisis of overproduction every year. Why hasnt it collapsed? Because the workers
struggled. They imposed wage increases, thereby creating enormous
markets of internal consumption. They imposed reductions in working
hours, which absorbed all of the technological unemployment. Now
we are surprised that there is unemployment. But since 1940 working hours havent [23] noticeably diminished. Nowadays we quibble,
thirty-nine hours, thirty-eight and a half, thirty-seven and three
quarters, its grotesque! . . . So, there was this return of liberalism,
and I dont see how Europe will be able to get out of this crisis. The
liberals tell us, its necessary to have condence in the market. But
what these neoliberals are telling us today, the academic economists
themselves refuted in the 1930s. They showed that there can be no
equilibrium in capitalist societies. These economists were neither
revolutionaries nor Marxists! They showed that everything the liberals relate concerning the virtues of the market that would guarantee
the best possible allocation, that would guarantee resources, the most
equitable distribution of income possible, they showed that all of this
is nonsense! All of this has been demonstrated and never refuted. But
there is this grand economico-political offensive by the dominating
and ruling strata that can be symbolized by the names of Reagan and
Thatcher, and even Mitterrand for that matter! He said, alright,
youve laughed enough. Now we are going to re you, we are going
to slim down the industrywe are going to eliminate the excess fat,
as Mr. Jupp saysand then you will see that the market, in the long
run, will guarantee you [24] well-being. In the long run, but in the
meantime there is 12.5 percent of ofcial unemployment in France.
D.M.: Why isnt there opposition to this liberalism?
C.C.: I dont know; its extraordinary. We spoke of a sort of terrorism
of conformist thought, that is to say of non-thought. It is unique in its
conformity in the sense that it is the rst form of thought that is complete non-thought, liberal conformist thought that no one dares to
oppose.6 Currently, there is a sort of victorious discourse of the right
that is not a discourse but afrmations, empty discourses. And behind
this discourse, there is something else, which is what is most grave.
9
What was liberal ideology in its heyday? Around 1850 it was a

widespread ideology because there was a belief in progress: get rich!
These liberals thought that progress would bring about an elevation
of economic well-being. But even when people werent getting rich,
in the exploited classes, there was a move toward less work, toward
less arduous tasks, in order to be less stultied by industry. It was the
great theme of the age. Benjamin Constant says as much: the workers cannot vote because they are stultied by industry [25] (he says it
straight out; people were honest back in the day!), thus a voting
system based on the poll tax is necessary. But subsequently, working
hours diminished, there was literacy, there was education, there was
enlightenment, which was no longer the subversive Enlightenment
of the eighteenth century but enlightenment all the same, which
spread through society. Science develops, humanity becomes more
humane, societies become more civilized and little by little, asymptotically, we will arrive at a society where there will be practically
no longer any exploitation: this representative democracy will tend to
become a true democracy.
D.M.: Not bad?
C.C.: Not bad. Except that it didnt work, and it doesnt work like that.
The rest happened, but men did not become more human, society did
not become more civilized for all that. Capitalists did not soften up.
We see that now. Its not the fault of men; its the system. The result
is that, from the inside, people no longer believe in this idea. The
mood, the general frame of mind, is one of resignation. Today, what
dominates is resignation, even among the representatives of liberalism. Whats the major argument at the [26] moment? Perhaps this is
bad, but the alternative is worse. Everything boils down to this. And
its true that this has numbed quite a lot of people. They tell themselves: if we change things too much, were headed for a new Gulag.
Thats whats behind the ideological exhaustion of our age, and I think
that we will only get out of this by a resurgence of a powerful critique
of the system and a revival of peoples activity, of their participation in
communal affairs. It is a tautology to say that, but we must wait, we
must hope and we must work in this direction.
D.M.: The political elite reduced to serving as lackey for the World
Company, guard-dog intellectuals, the media that has betrayed its
10
role as an oppositional force, these are some of the causes and some
of the symptoms of this rise of insignicance.
C.C.: But at present, were feeling the tremors of a revival of civic
activity. Here and there, were nonetheless starting to understand that
the crisis is not an inevitable outcome of modernity to which we
must submit, adapt, for fear of archaism. Thus the problem of the
role of citizens is raised and the aptitude of each person to exercise
rights and democratic duties with the aimsweet and [27] beautiful
utopiaof getting out of generalized conformism.
D.M.: Your colleague and accomplice, Edgar Morin, talks about the
generalist and the specialist. Politics requires both: the generalist who
knows next to nothing about a little of everything, and
the specialist who knows everything about a single thing but not the
rest. How is a good citizen made?
C.C.: This dilemma has been posed since Plato. Plato said that the
philosophers, who are above the specialists, must rule. In Platos theory, they have a view of everything. The other alternative was Athenian democracy. What were the Athenians up to? Indeed, something
very interesting. Its the Greeks who invented elections. Its an
historically attested fact. Perhaps they were wrong, but they invented
elections! Who was being elected in Athens? The magistrates werent
being elected. The magistrates were being appointed by drawing lots
or by rotation. For Aristotle, remember, a citizen is someone who is
capable of governing and being governed. Everyone is capable of governing, so lots are drawn. Why? Because politics is not the business of
specialists. There is no science of [28] politics. There is opinion, the
doxa of the Greeks; theres no episteme.7 Id like to point out, moreover,
that the idea that there arent specialists of politics and that all opinions are of equal worth is the only reasonable justication for the
principle of the majority. Thus, for the Greeks, the people decide and
the magistrates are chosen by drawing lots or appointed by rotation.
There are specialized activities because the Athenians werent crazy.
Indeed, they did rather signicant things; they made the Parthenon,
etc. For these specialized activitiesthe setting up of shipyards, the
construction of temples, the waging of warspecialists are necessary.
Therefore, such specialists are elected. Thats what an election is
because election means election of the best. And what is the election
11
of the best based on? Well, thats where the education of the people
comes in, since they are led to choose. A rst election takes place,
a mistake is made, its noticed, for example that Pericles is a deplorable strategist; well, then, he is not reelected, or hes even dismissed.
But the postulate according to which doxa, opinion, is equally shared,
is of course an entirely theoretical postulate. For this postulate to have
a bit of substance, doxa most be cultivated. And [29] how can a doxa
concerning the government be cultivated? Well, through governing.
So democracythis is whats importantis a matter of educating citizens, something that does not exist at all today.
Recently, a magazine published a statistic indicating that 60 percent
of congressmen admit that they dont understand anything about the
economy, congressmen, in France, who are going to make decisions,
who are making decisions all of the time! They vote on the budget,
they increase or decrease taxes, etc. In truth, these congressmen, just
like cabinet members, are slaves to their specialized advisors. They
have their experts, but they also have their prejudices or preferences.
And if you closely follow how a government, a large bureaucracy,
functionsas I have done in other circumstancesyou see that those
who are in charge trust the experts, but they choose experts who
share their opinions. You will always nd an economist who will tell
you, yes, yes, this must be done, or a military expert who will tell
you, yes, nuclear armament is necessary or nuclear armament is
not necessary: anything and everything. This is an utterly insipid
game, and this is how we are currently being governed. Hence the
dilemma of Morin and Plato: [30] specialists or generalists. Specialists
in the service of people, that is the question, not in the service of a
few politicians. And people learning to govern by governing.
D.M.: You said education, and you say, this is not the case today.
More generally, what mode of education do you envisage? What
mode of distributing knowledge?
C.C.: There are many things that would need to be changed before
we could talk about truly educational activity at the political level.
The principle education in politics is active participation in affairs,
which implies a transformation of institutions that encourages this
participation and that makes it possible, whereas contemporary institutions repel, distance, dissuade people from participating in affairs.
12
But this is insufcient. It is necessary for the people to be educated,

and to be educated for the governing of society. It is necessary for
them to be educated in the res publica. And yet, if you take contemporary education, it has nothing whatsoever to do with this. We learn
specialized things. Indeed, we learn to read and to write. This is very
good; it is necessary that everyone know how to read and write.
Moreover, among the Athenians, no one was illiterate; [31] almost
everyone knew how to read, and it is because of this that they
inscribed the laws in marble. Everyone could read them, and so the
famous adage, all are presumed to know the law, had meaning.
Today, you can be condemned because you committed an offense
even though you can not know the law, and you are still told, you
are presumed to know the law. Thus, education should be much
more centered on communal matters. The mechanisms of the economy, the mechanisms of society, of politics, etc., should be made
understandable. We are not capable of teaching history. History as we
teach it to children bores them to death, whereas it could fascinate
them. We should teach a true anatomy of contemporary society: how
it is, how it functions.
D.M.: You have spoken and written a lot about the movement of May
1968 that, with Edgar Morin and Claude Lefort, you have called the
breach. Today, this period is a golden age for the youth who regret
not to have lived through it. If one thinks back to this period, one is
struck by the blindness: this revolutionary, romantic, absolute, doctrinaire behavior without any basis, in complete ignorance. When Im
told today, youre lucky, you lived through 1968, I [32] respond,
wait a minute, the cultural level, the level of knowledge was a lot
lower than today. Am I right?
C.C.: Yes, youre right, from a certain point of view, which is very
important. But it is not so much a question of the level of knowledge,
I think. Its the tremendous domination by ideology in the strict sense
and, I would say, in the bad sense of the term. We cant say the Maoists
didnt know; they had been indoctrinated or they indoctrinated
themselves. Why did they accept indoctrination? Why did they
indoctrinate themselves? Because they needed to be indoctrinated.
They needed to believe. And this has been the great scourge of the
revolutionary movement from the start.
13
D.M.: But man is a religious animal.

C.C.: Man is a religious animal, and this is not at all a compliment.
Aristotle, whom I venerate and never stop citing, only once said
something that is really an enormous . . . well, we cant say blunder
when it comes to Aristotle, but all the same. When he says, man is
an animal who desires knowledge, its false.8 Man is not an [33]
animal who desires knowledge. Man is an animal who desires belief,
who desires the certainty of a belief, hence the grip of religions, hence
the grip of political ideologies. In the workers movement, at the outset, you nd a very critical attitude. Take these two lines, the second
verse of the Internationale, which is, to be sure, the hymn of the Paris
Commune: There is no supreme savior: no Godexit religion no
Caesarexit Napoleon III no tribuneexit Lenin.9 Isnt this the
case? People had this need for belief. They fullled it as they could,
some with Maoism, others with Trotskyism and even with Stalinism,
since one of the paradoxical results of May 1968 was not only to supply skin for the Maoist or Trotskyist skeleton but to increase, once
more, the recruitment of the Communist Party, despite the absolutely
hideous attitude of the Communist Party during the events of 1968
and the Grenelle Agreements.10 Today, how are we wiser than in May
1968? I think that perhaps the result, both of the consequences of
May and of the evolution in the countries in Eastern Europe and of
the evolution in general of society, is such that people have become
much more critical. This is very important. To be sure, there is a fringe
that still looks for faith [34] in Scientology, sects, or in fundamentalism, but this is in other countries, not so much in our own. However,
people have become so much more critical, much more skeptical,
which also inhibits them from acting, of course. Pericles, in the
Funeral Oration delivered before the Athenians, said: We are the
only ones for whom reection does not inhibit action. This is admirable! He adds: The others either do not reect and are recklessthey
commit absurd actsor, in reecting, they do nothing because they
say to themselves: this view and this speech are as good as their
opposites.11 Yet, thats just it: we are also currently, without a doubt,
going through a phase of inhibition. Once bitten, twice shy. They had
a taste of all this; they say to themselves, thats enough of the lofty
speeches and all the rest! Indeed, lofty speeches arent necessary,
14
true speeches are. This is what doesnt exist in a social projection [projection sociale], if I might say.
D.M.: With whom do you want to struggle? And against whom and
against what?
C.C.: I want to struggle along with practically everyone, with the
entire population, or almost, and against the system, and therefore
against the 3 percent, the 5 percent of people who are really [35]
staunch and un-educatable defenders of the system. This is the division, in my opinion. I believe that currently everyone in society
apart from 3 or 5 percenthas a personal and fundamental interest in
things changing.
D.M.: But what would you say to the younger generation?
C.C.: If youre putting it as a question of organization, I would say that
there is no answer. Currently, this is also the question. One of my
friends from the journal Socialisme ou Barbarie, Daniel Mothwho is
still my friendwrote this extraordinary phrase: Even the Roman
Empire, in disappearing, left behind it ruins; the workers movement,
in disappearing, only left refuse behind. How do we get organized
now? The question is how can we get organized? This question runs
into the same obstacle, that is to say that people are not active enough
at present to do something like that. In order to take up an organization of this kind, its necessary to be ready to sacrice more than one
hour Saturday night. This implies a rather signicant undertaking,
and very few people are currently disposed to do this. This is why I
describe the era since 1960 [36] as an era of privatization. People have
withdrawn into their little milieu, the nuclear family, not even the
extensive family. In May 1968, we used to say subway-work-sleep,
now its subway-work-TV-sleep.
D.M.: And no work? Can work be erased?
C.C.: Subway-work-TV-sleep and unemployment ofce.
D.M.: And the intense fear of losing ones job! The panic is widespread, as its: I dont have it anymore or Im not going to have it
anymore.
C.C.: Yes, absolutely.
15
D.M.: What makes your thought so rich is also its psychoanalytic

outlook on the world. It isnt that common to have, as such, several
enlightening perspectives. Raoul Vaneigem published a book whose
title is We Who Desire Without End [Nous qui dsirons sans n].
C.C.: We who are deranged [Nous qui dlirons]? Oh that, yes! We who
are deranged! (laughter)
D.M.: What do you think of this irreducible desire that makes it such
that history continues? [37]
C.C.: Well, in any case, there is an irreducible desire. Indeed . . . Its a
long story. Moreover, this wasnt always true; its a relatively modern
phenomenon. If you take archaic societies or traditional societies,
there is no irreducible desire. Were not talking here about desire
from a psychoanalytic point of view. Were talking about desire such
as it is transformed by the socialization of peoples. These societies are
societies of repetition. Yet, as it happens, in the modern era, there is a
liberation in all senses of the term with respect to the constraints of
the socialization of individuals. They say, for example, you will take
a wife from such a clan or such a family. You will have a woman in
your life. If you have two of them, or two men, it will be in secret; it
will be a transgression. You will have a social status, it will be this and
not something else. There is a wonderful thing, in Proust, in the
world of Combray. In Prousts family, someonefrom the very proper
bourgeoisie, the family he describeswho had married a duchesse or
a princess had fallen in status. Even though he had money, even
though he became someone who left his cast to climb higher, he
became a gigolo. And to climb higher was to fall in status. But today
we have entered into an era of illimitation [38] in all domains, and we
have the desire for the innite. Now this liberation is, in one sense, a
great conquest. Its not a question of reverting to societies of repetition. But we must also learnand this is one of my major themes
learn to self-limit ourselves, individually and collectively. And
capitalist society today is a society that, in my eyes, is running into the
abyss from every point of view because its a society that doesnt know
how to be self-limiting. And a truly free society, an autonomous society, as I call it, must know how to be self-limiting.
D.M.: To limit is to forbid. How does one forbid?
16
C.C.: No, not forbid in the repressive sense, but know that there are
things we cannot do, or that we must not even try to do, or that we
must not desire. Take, for example, the environment. We live in a free
society on this marvelous planet that were in the process of destroying. And as I utter this phrase, I have in mind the wonders of the
planet. Im thinking for example of the Aegean Sea, of snow-capped
mountains, Im thinking of the view of the Pacic from a spot in Australia, Im thinking of Bali, of the Indies, of the French countryside
[39] that were in the process of demolishing and deserting. So many
wonders are on the way to being demolished. I think that we should
be the gardeners of the planet. We ought to cultivate it, cultivate it as
it is and for itself, and nd our life, our place relative to this. Here we
have an enormous task. And all of this could take up a large part of
peoples free time, people liberated from work that is stupid, productive, repetitive, etc. Now this is clearly very far not only from the
current system but from the dominant imagination of today. The
imaginary of our age is the imaginary of unlimited expansion, it is the
accumulation of junk: a TV in every bedroom, a microcomputer in
every bedroom . . . this is what we must destroy. The system relies on
this imaginary that is here and that functions.
D.M.: What youre continually talking about here is freedom?
C.C.: Yes.
D.M.: Difcult freedom?
C.C.: Oh yes! Freedom is very difcult. [40]
D.M.: Difcult democracy?
C.C.: Difcult democracy due to freedom, and difcult freedom due
to democracy, yes, absolutely, because it is very easy to let oneself go:
man is a lazy animal, it has been said. Here again, I return to my
ancestors. Theres a marvelous phrase from Thucydides: it is necessary to choose: rest or be free. I think its Pericles who says this to the
Athenians: if you want to be free, you have to work. You cannot
rest. You cannot sit down in front of the TV. You are not free when
youre in front of the TV. You believe youre free in zapping like an
imbecile, but you arent free; its a false freedom. Freedom is not only
Buridans ass choosing between two piles of hay. Freedom is activity.
17
And its an activity that at the same time is self-limiting, that is to say,
that knows that it can do anything but that it mustnt do everything.
Thats the great problem, for me, of democracy and of individualism.
D.M.: Freedom is made up of limits? Philosophizing is establishing
limits?
C.C.: No, freedom is activity, the activity that knows how to set its
own proper limits. [41] Philosophizing is thought. It is the type of
thought that knows how to recognize that there are things we dont
know and will never know . . .
NOTES
1
18
The French Translation Workshop is run by Gabriel Rockhill at

Villanova Universitys Philosophy Department. The participants in
this translation included Derek Aggleton, Peter DeAngelis, Jessica
Elkayam, Katherine Filbert, John V. Garner, Patricia Grosse, Alex
Kratchman, Anna Luckini, Summer Renault-Steele, Adrienne
St. Clair, and Richard Strong. This interview, like all of the other
dialogues in this book, is a lively oral exchange that was transcribed into print as a relatively informal discussion, meaning that
it was not polished to abrogate the signs of an oral conversation
(the original interview can be listened to at http://www.la-bas.org/
article.php3?id_article=1530&var_recherche=castoriadis).
The
English translation of this interview and the others in the book
therefore aims at being faithful to the spry, colloquial nature of the
discussions (sometimes at the expense of polished prose, like the
original French text). TR
Cornelius Castoriadis published La monte de linsigniance in 1996
as the fourth volume of Les carrefours du labyrinthe. TR
Madame de Pompadour (17211764) was an inuential mistress
of Louis XV. TR
Aristotle opens Book III of his Politics with the question who is the
citizen? (1274b401275a1), and he later answers: a citizen is
one who shares in governing and being governed (1283b40
1284a1). See The Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2, ed. Jonathan
7
8
10
11
Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984, 2023 and

2037. TR
Socit nationale des chemins de fer franais, or the French National
Railways. TR
We have done our best to capture Castoriadis play on words
and his suggestion that conformist thought (la pense unique) is
unique (unique) precisely because it is non-thought (non-pense).
TR
Theoretically founded knowledge, science.
Castoriadis is surely referring to Aristotles statement at the beginning of Book I (A) of the Metaphysics: All men by nature desire to
know (980a22). See The Complete Works of Aristotle, 1552. TR
This is literal translation of the original French lyrics (Il nest pas
de sauveurs suprmes / Ni Dieu, ni Csar, ni tribun), which were
transcribed in the singular in the printed version of this interview:
Il nest pas de sauveur suprme / Ni Dieu, ni Csar, ni tribun.
In English, these lines of the Internationale are usually rendered as
follows: No savior from on high delivers / No faith have we in
prince or peer. TR
The Grenelle Agreements were negotiated between May 25 and
26, 1968, and led to a 25 percent increase in the minimum wage
and a 10 percent increase in real wages. The base of the movement
rejected these concessions, and the strikes continued. TR
Castoriadis appears to be referring to the following passage in
Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War: The great impediment
to action is, in our opinion, not discussion, but the want of that
knowledge which is gained by discussion preparatory to action.
For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act and of
acting too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance
but hesitate upon reection (2.40). The nal lines of Castoriadis
sentence (il y a ce discours et il y a le discours contraire) suggest that
reectionfor othersleads to hesitation because all views/
speeches (discours) appear to be equivalent. TR
19
PART II
DIALOGUES
Preface: Introduction to Discussants

The four Dialogues that are the subject of this little book, with
Alain Connes (mathematician), Jean-Luc Donnet (psychoanalyst),
Octavio Paz (poet), and Francisco Varela (biologist), are a modest
testimony not simply to the passionate curiosity of Cornelius Castoriadis for all domains of knowledge, but above all to his philosophical determination to think all of what is thinkable.1 It is a unique
testimony, however, since these interviews were at rst radio broadcasts, with the constraints and the limitsbut also with the enthusiasm, polemical vigor, afnity, and friendshipthat this implies.
From time to time, thought drifts onto adventurous and precipitous
paths, leaving itself open, in a way, to the test of the interlocutor.
Several notes were added that will perhaps aid the reader to enhance
his or her own course. But the transcription of the recordings was
limited to a simple work of placement into a format, never seeking
to smooth out the bumps, the approximations, much less the
provocations.
It was Alain Finkielkraut who, in his broadcast Rejoinders (France
Culture) from July 6, 1996, invited Octavio Paz and Cornelius Castoriadis, long-time friends for that matter, to have a dialogue concerning
the theme Facing Modernity. As for the three other interviews, they
are taken with the good graces of . . . Cornelius Castoriadis, and
broadcast on [46] April 20 on France Culture. Several months before,
Katharina von Bulow had proposed that he choose the persons with
22
PREFACE: INTRODUCTION TO DISCUSSANTS
whom he would like to share three hours of programming. Besides

the three interlocutors present here, Castoriadis wished to meet
with Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Jacques Lacarrire, Michal Lvinas, and
Thodore Monod.2 All of the interviews, prepared by Katharina von
Bulow, were recorded in NovemberDecember 1995. Only three
were retained here, for reasons of space and also internal coherence.
But the entire program has already been rebroadcast, and it is only
necessary to write to France Culture in order to procure the tapes.
We warmly thank Katharina von Bulow and Alain Finkielkraut,
rst of all for their initiative as much as for the generosity with which
they permitted us to use their work, and equally Pascal Vernay, without whom this edition would not have been able to appear. [47]
Octavio Paz (19141998), the most signicant contemporary poet
from Mexico, is one of the greatest Hispanic writers. He received the
Nobel Prize for literature in 1999. Among his numerous works are
included The Labyrinth of Solitude, the Other Mexico, and Other Essays.
New York: Grove Press, 1985; The Tree Within, trans. Eliot Weinberger.
New York: New Directions Publishing, 1988; and Itinerary: An Intellectual Journey, trans. Jason Wilson. New York: Harcourt, 1999.
Jean-Luc Donnet, a psychoanalyst, published lEnfant de a. Paris:
ditions de Minuit, 1973; and Surmoi. Paris: Presse Universitaires de
France, 1995.3
Francisco Varela (19462001), a biologist, has written many books,
including Rosch, E., Thompson, E., and Varela, F., The Embodied Mind.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992; and Varela, F., Invitation aux sciences
cognitives. Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1999.
Alain Connes (1947), a mathematician and professor at the
College de France, has published Changeux, J.-P. and Connes, A.,
Conversations on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics, trans. M. B. DeBevoise.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998; and Noncommutative
Geometry, Quantum Fields and Motives. Providence: American Mathematical Society, 2007. [489]
Robert Legros is a Belgian philosopher and a specialist in German
Idealism and Romanticism. His works include Lide dlhumanit. Paris:
ditions Grasset, 1990; Lavnement de la dmocratie. Paris: ditions
23
Grasset, 2000; and La question de la souverainet: Droit naturel et contrat

sociale. Paris: ditions Ellipses, 2001.4
NOTES
1
24
The fth dialogueChapter 6 of this volume, entitled Breaking

the Closurewas added to the English edition. ED
Daniel Cohn-Bendit (1945 ) is a French-German politician who
was a student leader during the May 1968 protests in Paris and
who more recently founded the French political coalition Europe
cologie in 2009. Jacques Lacarrire (19252005) was a French
philosopher and classicist, known for his work on the gnostics.
Michal Lvinas (1949 ) is a French composer and pianist (and
son of philosopher Emmanuel Lvinas). Thodore Monod (1902
2000) was a French naturalist, an explorer of the Saharah, and the
founder of a Unitarian organization in France. TR
One of Donnets works has been translated into English: The Analyzing Situation, trans. Andrew Weller. London: Karnac, 2009. TR
This brief entry on Robert Legros has been added to the English
edition along with the Legros dialogue itself. ED
CHAPTER TWO
Rejoinders: Facing Modernity

Cornelius Castoriadis in Dialogue with Octavio Paz
ALAIN FINKIELKRAUT: Octavio Paz is a poet from a continent where

Europe left its mark, but one that is not solely European: Latin America. Cornelius Castoriadis is a philosopher who was born in Greece,
the cradle of Europe and of philosophy. Through the Spanish Civil
War for Octavio Paz, and through the Greek resistance for Cornelius
Castoriadis, they have each participated in the great experiences and
the great hopes of the twentieth century. Equally, each of them very
quickly came to engage in self-inquiry. Their sojourn within what
Octavio Paz calls the learned darkness of authoritarian socialism was
short-lived; and today they have the ultimate point in common of
not accompanying their passionate denunciations of totalitarian
politics with an unconsidered praise of modern democracies. Castoriadis latest book is entitled The Rising Tide of Insignicance,1 a beautiful title that holds nothing back. And what Octavio Paz is currently
publishing, Itinerary,2 concludes with a disquieting description of the
nihilism of our democracies. Insignicance, nihilism. If you like, we
will start out from this shared disquietude and, more precisely, from
a reection from [50] Baudelaire that you, Octavio Paz, quote in
another text:
The world is coming to an end. [. . .] I do not say that the world will
be reduced to the expedients and the comic disorder of the South
25
American Republics, that perhaps we shall return to the savage

state [. . .]. No [. . .]. The mechanical will so have Americanized us,
progress will so have atrophied all our spiritual side, that naught, in
the sanguine, sacrilegious or unnatural dreams of the Utopians can
be compared to the actual outcome. [. . .] But it is not particularly
in political institutions that there will be manifest the universal
ruin, or the universal progress; for the name matters little. It will be
in the debasement of the heart.3
Now that we have nally been released from the struggle against
totalitarian superstition and we can reect more freely on the world
in which we live, is it to the poet Baudelaire rather than to the
philosophers of the grand avnement that we must give our support?
OCTAVIO PAZ: I think that Baudelaire was not mistaken. I am not
saying that he was a prophet (I detest that title for poets), but he saw
our situation with clarity. Democracy is founded on the plurality of
opinions. At the same time, this plurality depends on the plurality of
values. Advertising and the market destroy these pluralities by
reducing all values to price. In my opinion, this is the complaisant
nihilism of modern society. In this sense, Baudelaire was right: we are
living in a complaisant nihilism, not in tragic nihilism as Dostoevsky
or even Nietzsche thought. [51]
A.F.: Complaisant nihilism and not tragic nihilism. Cornelius Castoriadis, it is somewhat the same question that I would like to pose to
you, but starting from this expression that you use as the title of an
article and of your whole book: the rising tide of insignicance. What
does it signify?
CORNELIUS CASTORIADIS: It means, rst of all, that insignicance is not
simply a state that settled in by itself but is like a kind of desert that
is progressing within the contemporary world. To take up an expression from the book, the desert is, precisely, growing. The same is the
case with insignicance, because, as Octavio Paz said, it is a kind of
nihilism, pathetic nihilism. Furthermore, I was very happy to see in
his book the frequent utilization of an expression that I myself had
employed as the title of a text in World in Fragments, that of conformism.4
It is astonishing to think that there were ideologues and writers
speaking of the contemporary age as an age of individualism, all
26
REJOINDERS: FACING MODERNITY
while, precisely, what we must deplore most of all in the present is

the disappearance of true individuals, given this kind of generalized
conformism.
A.F.: Concerning this generalized conformism, you quote Nietzsche:
The desert grows. Woe, he added, to him who harbours deserts!5
In order to follow up on this quotation, does this have to do with people,
is it men, [52] forces? Who is protecting the desert, according to you?
O.P.: It is difcult to respond to you. Who is protecting the desert?
Nearly all of the institutions, I think; and above all the mechanism of
modern societies. I spoke about the market. The market reduces
values to a single price, to price. In this sense, it substitutes for the
plurality of values a single value, and this value is not founded on a
meta-historical or ethical notion, but on utility. This is a time of the
deterioration of the West, which is contemporaneous with the
development of science and technology. One of the most disturbing
paradoxes in my opinion is this coincidence between the acquired
knowledge of science, the development of technology (one can
criticize it or not, but it is a fact that we are going to debate), and the
profound nihilism, the profound deterioration of all values as subject
to laws of economic exchange, of commercial exchange, of consumption. Modern society changed citizens into consumers.
A.F.: You are describing this change, therefore, starting from the
market and technology, from their concomitant development, from
their unhappy coincidence. But this appears a bit like a power without
a face. As such, when I ask who is protecting the desert, it is difcult
to designate responsibilities or culprits like that . . . [53]
C.C.: Yes, I think that it is necessary to modify Nietzsches expression.
For me, I cited Nietzsche because it is a beautiful phrase; I am not at
all Nietzschean. But it is not, who is protecting the desert; it is, who is
propagating the desert, surely. That is the question. And I think, precisely,
that we have a situation that provides a rebuttal to all the theories of
history that we know of, above all to the history of this latest period.
There is no conspiracy of large capital; there are no particular villains
even if there are villains in abundance, we see it everyday, again
recently in France moreover . . .
27
O.P.: Everywhere!
C.C.: Everywhere, certainly, but what there is, is a sort of historical
Niagara. There is no conspiracy, but everything conspires [conspire] in
the sense that everything radiates [respire] together, everything
radiates in the same direction: the corruption that has become
systematic; the autonomization of techno-scientic evolution that
no one controls; the market, of course, the tendency of the economy;
the fact that we no longer worry about knowing if what we produce
serves whatever purpose it may be but solely about knowing if it can
be sold (and not even about this, because if we produce it, we will
make sure, by way of advertising, that it can be sold). Were
acquainted with all of these phenomena. That is, we have, all at
once, a kind of faceless inhuman power, an explosion of its institutional bearers, and even a servility of these institutional bearers to
this historical tendency. [54]
O.P.: I would like to add something. Yes, there is no one in charge.
This is not a class as Marx wanted it to be. Its not a group; its not a
tyrant. These are impersonal forces. Thus, we nd ourselves confronting impersonal forces, nearly autonomous mechanisms; and, at the
same time, what is confronting them is general passivity. Now, in my
opinion, the disconcerting problem is not that of technology (in the
end, I am not really against technology, why?). No, I think that the
disturbing thing, the phenomenon that must preoccupy us, is the
phenomenon of general passivity. Here, I seeand perhaps Cornelius
Castoriadis is in agreement with methat one of the factors, perhaps
the decisive factor, was the great revolutionary failure of the twentieth century. At the end of the century, after the fall of communism,
we nd ourselves in a kind of historical pause, a kind of void. There is
no historical project, and, at the same time, there is the acceptance of
this situation, which, on the one hand, destroys values, and, on the
other hand, transforms society into a society of consumption.
A.F.: You are certainly in agreement with that assessment, Cornelius
Castoriadis . . .
C.C.: Yes, of course.
A.F.: It is the historical failure that explains the passivity?
28
C.C.: No, I think there is more than that, in one sense. I think that
what Octavio Paz is mentioning is a [55] fundamental factor. There
is this disappointment, this fantastic disillusionment regarding the
transformation of the hopes of a large part of humanity, the
intellectuals, the workers, and the ordinary people . . . Hopes are
transformed into a totalitarian machine of extermination and
oppression or, with social-democracy in the West, into a simple
agency of accommodation to the existent order, small reforms, etc.
Well, thats one thing. The second thing is that there was, nevertheless, an extraordinary adaptation of the regimethat is, of capitalismto a new situation that translates, for example, directly into
the society of consumption. This is to say that, starting from a certain
moment, we understood what we had to do. Octavio Paz cites
Fourier, saying that we have to manufacture, for peoples consumption, indestructible products (Im not talking about vegetables or
fabrics but about other products). But what is precisely characteristic
of modern production is what economists have called incorporated
obsolescence. That is, products are manufactured in order to be used
up very rapidly; all consumers know it. And what is the logic of this
story? One of my friendsa worker in automobile distributionsaid,
in 1954, that a Rolls-Royce was becoming less expensive than a
Renault 4CV. Everyone laughed, but he was right. A Rolls-Royce
lasts almost indenitely and it offers a lot more services because you
dont have to repair it, while the Renault 4CV was something to
throw away after 3 or 5 years. But that goes hand in hand with the
fact that, effectively, in the current social and economic conditions,
you can buy Renault 4CVs [56] with the politics of credit, monthly
installments. Its a small price and so they sell, while the Rolls-Royce
doesnt sell.
O.P.: Im wondering if the passivity isnt also explained by the
amelioration of the material living conditions of society. In this sense,
capitalism won favor because it was able to offer better, less expensive
products to the masses.
A.F.: To that end, I would like to simply illustrate what you are saying
through a joke that was common in Poland during the totalitarian
period. A customer goes into a shop, he asks for a cut of meat, and
they say to him: Oh no, mister, here there is no sh, there is no
29
meat; thats the other side! So, its a joke concerning the shortage
that effectively made it such that the capitalist system was able to
present itself asand to be relatively (vis-a-vis a system where
nothing functioned)a system where things function. One world of
shortage, one world of abundance. Now, must this be creditedor
not, and to what degreeto its account?
C.C.: That is not the problem, to credit it to its account or not.
We must say rst that this had all the more impact since Marxist ideology propagated the idea that capitalism can only condemn people to
misery. But that was refuted day after day by the facts. Capitalism did
not evolve spontaneously; there were the workers struggles, there
were the unions, there were pressures, strikes, etc. But, [57] at a
certain point in time, it accommodated itself to all of that. I would like
to add one thing, and we should, for that matter, be careful here, without making prophecies or renewing apocalyptic predictions: maybe
this period of capitalism has already begun to be behind us. What we
are seeing currently in the industrialized countriesin particular in
Europe, less in the United Statesis a crisis of a new type, one with
this creation of exclusion, with an extraordinary unemployment level,
with globalization that obligates the old industrial countries to enter
into phases where there are no longer jobs for people. And all of this
is, nevertheless, still the futurewell, sureits not the future, its the
present, but I do not want to make predictions . . .
O.P.: But perhaps it isnt necessary to focus on these questions at the
theoretical, or rather the technical, level. It is clear that the economy
of the totalitarian countries was an economy of shortage and that the
economy of capitalism is an economy of abundance.
C.C.: Of relative abundance, yes.
O.P.: Of abundance for the majority, for the majority in the developed
countries. If you are speaking about my country, its the opposite.
The majority is poor and even sometimes miserable. But we are
speaking right now of the most developed, most advanced sort of
country. Now, the question arises of knowing how abundance (Marx
was thinking of abundance) produced negative fruits, from the
spiritual point of view, for the [58] population of the countries of the
West and detrimental fruits for the underdeveloped countries. And
30
that is, for me, one of the great contemporary historical mysteries:
how abundance, in producing conformity, neutered individuals,
transformed people in masses, into satised masses without will and
without direction.
C.C.: It transformed them into totally private or privatized individuals,
as I have been saying for a long time (this has been one of the themes
of my reection since 1960). But I do not believe that it is necessary
to incriminate abundance as such. I believe that it is necessary to
incriminate the mentality that makes the economy the center of
everything. In Marxs work, it was the center of everything because
the capitalist economy was not going to be able to give people what
they were waiting for; only the communists were able to provide it,
communism such as he thought of it. For people in current society,
its the same idea: whats important is the economy, consumption.
But, in fact, the crisis of the current society concerns the signications
that hold this society together, what one calls values or what one
could also call norms. It is not due to the diffusion of material
abundance; it exists in a certain parallel way. What does the crisis
stem from? On the one hand, it stems from what you mentioned,
from the fall of revolutionary ideologies and, on the other hand, from
the very profound crisis of the ideology of progress. For people in the
nineteenth centuryfor the big liberals or the progressivists
progress was not only a question of the accumulation of wealth. [59]
John Stuart Mill thought that progress was going to give people freedom, democracy, happiness, a better morality. But, today, no one, not
even the incense-bearers for the current system, dare to say that
theres nothing to do but let progress do its work and we will all be
happy or better off. That is not true; everyone knows that perhaps we
will have a better television and then thats all.
O.P.: Yes, which is to say that we are all facing a historical project that
is fully tried and tested; its progress. But Castoriadis said some things
that are slightly different. The rst, which touched me profoundly, is
that we have reduced (modern society has reduced) the meaning of
all values to their economic value. So, in order to renew society, it will
be necessary to undertake a critique. The remedies are not solely of an
economic character; they have a character that is more profound,
moral, or spiritual, whatever you want to call it.
31
A.F.: Now, I would like to ask a question that is symmetrical to the

one that I asked just before. I asked you: how can this phenomenon
of insignicance or of nihilism be localized? Are there guilty parties or
people in charge? Who is behind it? And you said, Cornelius
Castoriadis, that there is no who, but everything conspires; you,
Octavio Paz, are going in the same direction. So, I can ask the other
question. You advocate, you hope for, you dream of an exit from
nihilism. An awakening [rveil], its a word you employ again and
again Cornelius [60] Castoriadis. You say: we are living in a moment
of lethargy, it can be stopped, it must be stopped. But is there a who
who can be the bearer of this awakening now that we no longer have
this myth of the proletariat, of a class, or of a redemptive people. On
what and on whom can we count in order to escape from
insignicance?
C.C.: This is precisely one of the great difculties of the current
political thinking, particularly of a political activity, because, as you
said, we have come out of the era of privileged classes. Historically,
the proletariat has become a minority (there are very few true proletariats currently), and there isnt a privileged social class from the point
of view of a political project. I think that what characterizes at once
the depth of the current crisis and perhaps the depth of the hopes that
we can have (it might seem funny, but so be it) is this disappearance
of a privileged bearer. This is to say that the phenomenon affects all of
society, all the social layers, except perhaps a small percentage of
people who are at the summit. I am thinking, for example, about May
1968 (which is gone, for sure) when we saw that those who were
extraordinarily active in the movement productive of ideas and
signications were not really the workers. They were the technicians,
they were the self-employed, they were the intellectuals (if you wish),
the students . . .
O.P.: The students rst of all. [61]
C.C.: The students, of course, and the youth rst of all; and thats very
important even if it created great difculties for action.
O.P.: Yes, 1968 was a ame that illuminated us during a very short
period, but it showed us a certain direction. Something struck me in
32
the universal revolt: it came from a lot of countries, France, the United
States, Germany, my country . . .
C.C.: Mexico . . .
O.P.: Yes. And, for all that, the demands were not economic in
character, nor even social, but, rather, moral in character. And the
predecessors, the prophets (vague prophets) of the movement were
rather poets. Sometimes, in listening to our students or in reading the
inscriptions on the walls, I thought of William Blake, of Andr Breton,
of a lot of poets from the nineteenth centurythe romanticsand
from the twentieth century who were rebelling as Baudelaire had
done. They were not making denunciations in the name of a class,
nor in the name of an economy. What was in play was something
completely different: the position, the place of the human person in
society, I would say. I think that modern society eliminated values,
the very center of the creativity that is the human person. Castoriadis
spoke about the individual; I would like to substitute the word person
for the word individual. [62]
A.F.: I would like to dwell properly for one second on May 1968 and
on the uneasiness regarding the movement that might be the bearer
of this awakening or of this exit from nihilism. Because this movement itself ought to remain ambiguous or ambivalent for us. Certainly,
there has arisen an attempt to get out of economism, a severe and
beautiful critique of the values of consumption. But the fact remains
that one of the most severe symptoms of the spiritual crisis that you
are both describing is the crisis of education, the crisis of transmission
(moreover, you speak about this, Cornelius Castoriadis, in your book).
And here, nevertheless, the movement of 1968 is also somewhat
responsible, given that it had a way of presenting pedagogical mastery
as a form of oppressive mastery; the master who teaches and the
master who oppresses were somewhat identied with each other.
And it is true that, today, the disappearance of culture or the humanities in instruction, in the name of protability, is all the more easily
achieved since this culture was delegitimated in the name of the
revolution. Therefore, even this movement cannot be greeted or
commemorated in a uniquely emphatic way.
33
C.C.: No, but permit me to not be entirely in agreement with that

analysis. I believe, precisely, that the contemporary crisis of production (which is, moreover, universal, and which is not limited to the
countries that went through a phase like that of May 1968) has much
deeper roots. It has roots in the crisis of values. Take these ridiculous
changes in the educational program. [63] In France, each appointed
ofcial of the ducation nationale introduces a new system by introducing new programs. Why? Precisely because they do not know
what to transmit. They do not want to transmit (which is grotesque!)
traditional culture any more, the inherited culture, which is, after all,
an absolute base. They want to render education technical or instrumental so that those who are coming out of instruction can nd a job.
And, of course, that fails ridiculously because between the moment
when the appointed ofcial and his experts have put in place the
programs that are supposed to be adapted to the demands of the
industry and the moment when the people are coming out onto the
market, the demands of the industry have already changed. . . . But
there is something more. Namely, in the crisis of signications in our
current societies, no one invests positively in education any more.
Parents no longer invest in school, students and school children no
longer invest in school, maybe we can also say that even the instructors
can no longer invest in school. This is a serious problem.
O.P.: You are talking about education and, mostly, of education in
France. These are subjects that are entirely foreign for me. But since
we are speaking . . .
C.C.: Im sorry; I believe that it is widespread. For example, in the
United States . . .
O.P.: Yes, everywhere. Youre talking about France in particular, but I
was speaking primarily in general. Its an important subject, but difcult. All the [64] historical phenomena have a kind of double face.
You spoke about the youth revolt in May 1968 against the professors,
against the masters, and, in the end, against classical values. Thats
true, at least in part. But I think that there is another indicator of the
ambiguity of all historical phenomena: that is, the aftermath of 1968
brought the terrorist groups out. But I think that what is most
important is not to speak about the causes of the current crisis . . .
34
A.F.: Excuse me. I would like to say that this cult of youth, in my
opinion, is interesting, and it extends far beyond the case of France.
Youth was being afrmed very strongly in 1968 with a kind of
potential for revolt. But this conformism, about which both of you
tend to agree, is surely exemplied by the cult of youth.
C.C.: It is one of its manifestations.
A.F.: Another manifestation that seems interesting to me is, as Pguy6
said, this way of having a foot in all camps [toucher tous les guichets].
That is, the more one is in the middlethe more one is really in the
norm, the current norm, the norm of current affairs and of the
media the more one presents oneself as marginal, as subversive.
Gay Pride7 can be described like this. You know, the large demonstration that took place several days ago. It was celebrated by all of the
newspapers; it completely took on the appearance of radical
subversion. . . . It seems to me that this is one of the modalities of
contemporary conformism. [65]
C.C.: Sure, but there are several things here. There is the fact that,
from the moment when the systems producers and vendors
discovered that there was, as they say, an enormous youth market, it
ceased to be simply a subversive value or a revolutionary value. And
then, on the other hand, there is one fact that neither the classical
revolutionaries, the reformers, nor the democrats really ever comprehended, realized, or predicted: the fantastic capacity of contemporary society to absorb everything. This is to say that everything
becomes a means for the system. If there were today, for example, an
Antonin Artaudthere are no more of them, but if there were one
it would be a spectacular curiosity if we were to provide funding for
him. So, either he would commit suicide, put himself away in a
psychiatric hospital, or he would, himself as well, become someone
who would end up on television.
O.P.: A television star! I think that we agree in saying that we are
living throughI would not say a crisis (Krisis) because it is a very
exaggerated wordbut we are living in a kind of empty space where
the great hope of the classical liberalisms with the idea of progress and
the hopes of Marxism are dened as a serious historical failure. The
important thing in my opinion will be to see how we can remake
35
human society. On this subject, Castoriadis said something that I

believe is important. He spoke about heteronymous societies and
autonomous societies. Its an idea that is debatable, but quite fruitful.
So he would like (as would I and [66] everyone) this thing that he
calls an autonomous society, which is to say a society founded by
itself and conscious that the founder is itself, and not an exterior
agent, a god, an idea . . .
C.C.: Or the laws of history . . .
A.F.: Yes. But all societies, even autonomous societies, must found
themselves on certain principles. And so, for some time now, I have
been saying (its something that I wrote about in the little book, Itenerary, and in others, primarily a book on love that I had published a bit
before8) that what will furnish the possibility of founding Western
society anew will be the rediscovery of the notion of the person. Yet,
in the past, the notion of the person entailed a duality between soul
and body. In all civilizations we have these dualities, these dialogues,
sometimes these struggles between body and soul. But there is
something important in the current world, namely, the advances, the
discoveries of science. More and more, we are thinking that what we
call mind [esprit] is a dimension of the body.
A.F.: So, there was something like an eclipse of the notion of the
person. [67]
O.P.: I think that the old attributes of the person now take refuge
in another conception of esprit, of mind,9 as the Americans say.
A neurobiologist whom I admire, Edelman,10 said something very
important in my opinion. For him, the human species (in particular
the human mind) is a moment of general evolution; and he added
that one cannot speak of a system of neurons, of a nervous system, as
if it were identical for all individuals. It is different for each individual.
Consequently, it is very difcult to formulate laws susceptible to
generalization while coming to recognize, as is necessary, that each
individual (he does not speak of the person, he speaks of man, but its
the same thing) is a unique individual. This is to say that even the
most materialist modern science, lets say biology, admits that each
person is unique, exceptional. And I think that all politics, all new
political thought, must found itself on the recognition of the fact that
the person, each person, is unique.
36
C.C.: This is why I do not restrict myself to speaking of an autonomous society. I say: an autonomous society where there are autonomous individuals, and I stress the fact that the two are inseparable.
Because those whom you call personswell, in France the word
would not see a big success because it has Christian connotations,
personalists. . . . I know very well that you are not using it in that
sense, but . . . [68]
O.P.: No, but I am not afraid of . . .
C.C.: For good reason, me neither.
O.P.: Because Christianity forms a part of our heritage.
C.C.: Of course, of course. But, in the end, I prefer to speak of
autonomous individuals (or, if you wish, of autonomous personalities). And we can reproach our contemporary society precisely
for killing personality, individuals, the true individuality of people.
Now, if we want to move on to something different, for me, this is
what strikes me as a problem (and here we are facing the abyss):
basically, what does this require? It requires a new historical
creation with new signications, new values, a new type of human
being, all of which has, more or less, to be done at the same time,
transcending, by denition, all possibility of foresight and of
forward planning.
A.F.: A new historical creation that would be a radical alternative . . .
C.C.: Absolutely.
A.F.: Is it necessary to think in terms of a radical alternative . . . ?
[69]
O.P.: If we think in terms of a radical alternative, we are thinking in
terms of creation . . . ?
C.C.: Yes.
O.P.: But there it is; Im a bit indecisive concerning the word creation.
If the word person has Christian echoes, the word creation has even
more theological tonalities (laughs). It confronts us with the idea of a
creator God who takes the world and makes it emerge from nothing.
Historical creation must base itself on already existing givens. We cannot do something purely unheard-of. In each period of history,
37
historical creations are not simply combinations, but also transformations of preexisting elements. Thats why the theory of evolution
seems particularly fertile to me. Thanks to it, we are able, without
betraying the rationality of the universe, to arrive at this strange
being, at this strange appearance in the history of the universe, which
is the human mind.
C.C.: Here, there would be an entire philosophical discussion that
I will abstain from approaching now because it would lead us too far
aeld. In any case, I agree with you in saying that there is, in effect, a
theological past behind this word creation; but we are not obliged to
adopt it, any more than you adopt the theological past that is there
behind the word person. I would say, simply, that when the polis, the
Greek city, emerges, when modernity emerges, etc., theres no God
behind it. Its a creation of men; and it is not a simple [70] reprisal of
elements that were in existence. There is a new form that is not limited to combination. When you write a poem, you use the words of
the language, but what you are doing is not a combination of these
words. Its a new form that you impose on them, through their linkage, through a sense [esprit] that pervades a poem. This is your creative side [ct createur] qua poet.
O.P.: Yes, but you are already speaking of a philosophical denition of
the word creation in saying that it is not like a combination
(but if it is not a combination, what is it?). But that is not what is
important. The interesting idea, in my opinion, is that creation is only
comprehensible as transformation, a transformation that can be
radical, like the transformation from animal to man.
C.C.: . . . For example.
A.F.: But perhaps one can make another objection to the utilization
of this term creation, specically for this period we live in. Each of
you spoke of the failure of a certain hopefulness, and of the consequences that this failure was able to have, in terms of passivity. But
is there not, is it not necessary to take into account, quite simply, a
failure of or a critique of the principle of hope11? And here
Im making reference to the book of Hans Jonas, The Imperative of
Responsibility12 basically [71] the modern program (or paradigm)
was always founded on the surpassing of the given toward something
38
better, and creation also presents itself as a surpassing and sometimes

as an abolition of the given. Now, I would like to cite a phrase of Hans
Jonas that seems to me to dene our current situation well, when we
live under the threat of a more and more powerful technology. He
said,
That which had always been the most elementary of the givens,
taken for granted as the background of all acting and never requiring action itselfthat there are men, that there is life, that there is
a world for boththis suddenly stands forth, as if lit up by lightning, in its stark peril through human deed. In this very light
the new responsibility appears. Born of danger, its rst urging is
necessarily an ethics of preservation and prevention, not of progress
and perfection. (Jonas, 1994, p. 139)
This kind of revolution or existential conversion that obliges us to
conserve, to preserve, to safeguard the planet, to manage itas you
say elsewhere as well, Cornelius Castoriadisas good caretakers [en
bons pres de famille], mustnt all of this lead us away from a paradigm
of all-too-heroic creation?
C.C.: No. I think that there is a misunderstanding here because we are
situating ourselves at different levels and at levels that are heterogeneous. When I speak of creation, I am speaking qua philosopher.
Take the principle of hope, must we hope, [72] etc. One of the most
considerable creations that I know of in history, which still enlightens
us today (I think that everyone will he in agreement here), is that of
the Greeks. The ancient Greeks hoped for nothing, nothing, nothing,
and, in my opinion, that is why they were so free in their creation.
The tragedies already said, youre going to die. The famous choir of
Oedipus said that the best thing is to not be born; and second in quality
is, once one is born, to die as soon as possible. That is not hope.
O.P.: The ancients were not acquainted with the notion of progress.
Its a notion that comes from the Bible; it predates the adoption of
Christianity. Its not possible to imagine it earlier. Its true that the
Greeks did not hope; its clear that this is why they invented tragedy.
But you spoke, in the quotation that you made, of the world that we
have in plain view. I would like to speak about the notion of the
person by trying to integrate it into new conceptions of thought and
39
of modern science. Here, I am also speaking (since every new ethic,

every new politics must found itself here) of the discovery of others,
of our fellow creatures [semblables]. On this subject, in the rst place,
it really seems that self-consciousness [conscience de soi], in children,
comes only after the consciousness of others [conscience des autres].
This is to say that solidarity is an innate given. In the second place, I
believe that, more than philosophical thought, modern scientic theories (which are physics on the one side and biology on the other)
havethrough being combined with this modern reality, with the
[73] destruction of the material world, of the atmosphere, etc.
shown us that we are products of nature. We are sons of the cosmos.
We are brothers not only of living beings, from the simple to the most
complex, but also brothers of the elementary particles, and at the
same time of the stars and of the sun. I think that we can nd here the
base upon which to construct a new society.
C.C.: Yes. Nonetheless, I would like to recapture some points of
this discussion, which are tending somewhat to spread themselves
out in all directions. If, today, a social-historical movement were
advancing itself and, allow me to use the expression, were creating a
new society, why would there be a radical rupture here? Precisely
because it would only be able to create it by breaking with this idea
that God created the world and gave it to man (Genesis, etc.). God did
not create the world; in any case, he did not give it to man. As for
Descartes idea, according to which we are advancing in knowledge in
order to become masters and possessors of nature, it is the greatest
absurdity that a philosopher has ever been able to say (it explains
itself historically). We will never be masters and possessors of nature.
We will, for sure, never be able to invert the rotational direction of the
galaxy. So, we cannot be that. Its the same with Marxs idea, according to which mythology relies on human ignorance. No, mythology is
an attempt to give meaning to the world; it does not result simply
from ignorance. There is a necessary rupture with all of these principles of the domination of [74] nature, of rationality transformed,
from an instrument of man or an instrument of thought, into a nal
dominating principal. And there is a value to substitute for all of that.
I agree with what Octavio Paz said; I would formulate it a bit differently.
What would an autonomous society be able to propose for itself as an
40
objective? The freedom of all and justice. (Not happiness, because

happiness is not a political question, but an individual question.) But
what else, substantively? Well, I think that what an autonomous society would propose for itself, as an objective, is to help human beings
to become the most autonomous and the most creative possible. In a
way that is parallel, if I may, to the culture of good caretakers [en bons
pres de famille] in our natural garden, there is also the bringing up of
the new generations in a spirit of the development of their capacities,
of respect for others, of respect for nature.
A.F.: Octavio Paz, are you in agreement with that program? [75]
O.P.: I agree, but I think that it is necessary to formulate it in a
somewhat different way. I would say that this program, this historical
project (and this is why I do not believe that this is a creation, a radical
rupture), has roots in the past and that the primary exigency is to
recuperate, to recreate the notion of the person, or, if you wish, of the
individual.
C.C.: Yes, absolutely.
O.P.: And I also say that, in this notion of the person, there is always,
in an implicit way, a notion of the other; and, consequently, the
second concept that we must cite is the notion of fraternity, a fraternity that does not found itself on the idea that we are sons of God,
but on the consciousness that we are products of nature, of the universe. I also think that this project must take into consideration a lot
of other things that we are not able to speak about now, for example
the purely quantitative problem, the multitude, this difculty of modern societies. Our listeners are a multitude. Cornelius Castoriadis
spoke about Greek democracy; but Greek democracy was made for
small countries, for cities, and currently we are dealing with enormous nations with millions and millions of inhabitants . . .
C.C.: . . . And even the whole planet.
A.F.: Hence the necessity to resolve, as well, the imposing question of
the multitude.
C.C.: Of course. I think, as I wrote in the past, that this question
is manageable for human beings [ la mesure des tres humains].
41
Humanity can do better; we are not obliged to always swing between

small, self-governed cities and empires submitted to alienating
and oppressing powers. We can invent, create forms of collective government at scales much greater than those that we have known up to
now. [76]
A.F.: Good. So, allow me to say something as well, precisely in order
to reconcile poetry and philosophy, since I had the chance to listen to
a philosopher and a poet. I nd itthis somethingonce again in the
work of Hans Jonas, who maintains that we are led not simply to
manage the planet as good caretakers [en bons pres de famille] but, he
says, to become those responsible for nature, for which we have not
been prepared. And, he adds, a silent plea for sparing its integrity
seems to issue from the threatened plenitude of the living world
(Jonas, 1994, p. 8). It seems to me that poetry has, for a long time,
made comprehensible this silent call and has prepared us for this role
of those responsible, from Ronsard to Octavio Paz, passing through
Yves Bonnefoy, Ren Char, etc. So, there I have come to an end. I
would like to thank you for this discussion and to refer back to your
works with all due seriousness because I believe that these are
important books and that it is necessary to read them and to take
them along on vacation because this age is in need of that.13 [77]
NOTES
1
42
La monte de linsigniance. Carrefours du labyrinthe, Volume 4. Paris:

ditions du Seuil, 1996.
Itenerary: An Intellectual Journey, trans. Jason Wilson. New York:
Harcourt, 2001.
See Baudelaire, C., Rockets, in Baudelaire: His Prose and Poetry,
trans. Joseph T. Shipley. New York: Modern Library, 1919, 222.
Post-modernism as Generalized Conformism, in World in Fragments:
Writings on Politics, Society, Psychoanalysis, and the Imagination, trans.
David A. Curtis. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997.
See Nietzsche, F., Among Daughters of the Desert, in Thus
Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Adrian Del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006, 252. TR

6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
The reference is surely to French poet Charles Pguy (18731914).

TR
In English in the text. TR
The reference is to An Erotic Beyond: Sade, trans. Jason Wilson.
New York: Harcourt Brace, 1998.
In English in the text. TR
The reference seems to be to Gerald Edelman, the American
biologist and winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine. TR
Bloch, E., The Principle of Hope, Vol. 13, trans. Stephen Plaice and
Paul Knight. Boston, MA: MIT Press, 1995.
Jonas, H., The Imperative of Responsibility. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 1994.
A.F. closes the discussion with the following editorial remark: So,
Octavio Paz, you published Itenraire, with Gallimard, and also
with Gallimard another book to which you made reference during
our conversation: La amme double, amour et rotisme. Your latest
work, Cornelius Castoriadis, is entitled La monte de clinsigniance,
and it is published with ditions du Seuil. TR
43
CHAPTER THREE
The Meaning of Psychoanalysis

Cornelius Castoriadis in Dialogue with
Jean-Luc Donnet
KATHARINA VON BULOW: I would like to ask Jean-Luc Donnet what

memories he retains from his initial encounter with Cornelius
Castoriadis, who was known at the time primarily as a political thinker
in an age when Lacan and Lacanianism was starting to nd a major
place in the analytic milieu.
JEAN-LUC DONNET: What strikes me, when I think back on the way
that I met Cornelius Castoriadis, is that he appeared in the psychiatric
and psychoanalytic milieu, which was my own at the time, as someone from somewhere else. There was a shock effect, and also an effect
of fascination, before the expanse of what he was able to encompass
in his human experience and in his political experience, just as much
as in his encyclopedic knowledge. For me, what was doubtless most
striking in the rst readings I was able to make of his texts was
precisely this freedom, this acuity, that he gave to his position, his
epistemological cognizance. And there was also this distance in the
way he looked at analysis, a look from outside (at the time I didnt
exactly know what his position was as an analyst-practitioner). But
also, [78] profoundly informed, he immediately situated psychoanalysis within a whole ensemble of scientic and, of course, philosophical domains. He stood out beyond the fetishism of science,
44
THE MEANING OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
beyond narrow specicities, and this was obviously something very

impressive. As for the political dimension, it is, of course, primarily
through the crisis of May 1968 and the tumult that it instigated in the
analytic institutions that Castoriadis political positionthat is, the
questioning of institutioninterested me.
CORNELIUS CASTORIADIS: Perhaps it would be good to say something
about the reasons that made me come to psychoanalysis. I was always
interested by the work of Freud but, in the beginning, as a work
among others. And this interest turned into a passionate and privileged study at a point in time when two processes came together: a
personal analysis that I had begun in 1960 and, on the other hand,
the profound reconsideration [remise en cause] of the theoretical edice of Marx that I had undertaken, notably of the aspects that seemed
unacceptable to me at the time, like a certain determinism or rationalism of Marx, etc. And for me the junction was achieved with my
discovery, or my rediscovery, of the imagination and of the imaginary,
of the imagination on the plane of the singular human personwhat
I call the radical imagination and of the imagination on the social
and historical plane as the founder, the creator of social institutions.
And, obviously, one immediately picks up on the incompatibility with
any [79] Marxist, Marxian, or Marxisant position. As a result, I dove
into Freud, I frequented certain psychoanalytic circles in Paris,
including Lacans seminars. One thing led to another; I married Piera
Aulagnier,1 as you know, with whom I lived for 15 years. Then I
started working as a psychoanalyst; thats still what I do. And this
interest in Freud has maintained, prolonged, deepened itself since.
These last three years, my seminars at the cole des Hautes tudes en
Sciences Sociales2 were exclusively devoted to the problem of the
psyche. It was an attempt, it is an attempt in progressI am in the
process of composing itto take back up and reconstruct (the terms
are doubtless too pretentious), to reexamine as radically as possible
the Freudian edice, and, notably, the imagination and the imaginary
within it.
So, why has the fascination continued? First of all because the
psyche is fascinating in itself. Heraclitus already said, You will nd
no limits of the psyche even if you traverse all paths.3 It is this
overowing of psychic creativity that always fascinates me, this
45
extraordinary poticit, such as it appears in dreams, for example. This

is a platitude, but it is nevertheless truly necessary to pay close attention to them in the rst [80] person, if you will, in order to see the
treasures of inventiveness and creativity that dreams contain. Or,
take the psychic phenomena which are, for the common perception,
much more rare, but which one does observe in analytic practice,
notably psychosis. Psychic delirium as creation is a fantastic thing.
And, for that matter, you and Green spoke about this in your book on
psychosis, since the very title, you recall, is a phrase from a psychotic
person who said that he was the child of that [lenfant de a].4 Of
course, there is also the other side of the human psyche, that of
repetition, without which there is neither psychic life nor life tout
court and without which there is no analysis, of course.
There it is. We could continue, because once we go into this we are
entering into the whole of the theory of the human. For could this
psyche, left to itself, produce anything other than feral children?
There is Freuds attempt to respond, Totem and Taboo, and so on. . . .
The unsatisfactory character of this attempt at response, at least in my
eyes, stems perhaps above all from Freuds will or a desire to reduce
to the psychic that which is irreducible in the very fact of institution.
And then there are other issues such as, for example, what the psyche
is from the philosophical point of view. In fact we have never talked
about it. In philosophy we do not know what the psyche is; or, rather,
we have talked about it all the time and at the same time we do not
know what it is. And with Freud, obviously, we get a rst great look
at what I call his discovery [81] of an ontological domain, of a domain
of being. Freud did not refer to it in that way because he had something of an extraordinary reservation or a fear of philosophy or
a detestation, I dont know; but he makes us see, with the psyche, a
level of being that did not exist before him: the psyche is not a thing
and it is not a concept. And it is necessary to lend weight to that
phrase. What is it then?
J.-L.D.: I made my own discovery of psychoanalysis as a psychiatrist,
thus within a much narrower perspective than yours. But what you
just said reminds me again of why your texts on the radical imaginary
really struck me at that time, though I did not comprehend all the
implications of it. For what I experienced rst hand with Freud and
through clinical practice is in effect the proper consistency of psychic
46
reality. Only, at the time, I was approaching this psychic reality as a

psychiatric doctor, and, through Freud, from the perspective of its
determination, since, precisely, what this rst approach brought to
light was meaning in free association, sequences of meanings, where
there could only have been disorder. And yet, I then found myself
trapped, facing something aporetic (the juxtaposition: the proper
consistency of psychic reality / emergence of meaning). And this turn
around that you managed, returning, against all Western metaphysics,
against inherited philosophy, to a causality of being as creation, and
thus indetermination, permitted me to pass beyond the aporia that I
found myself facing. And I notice that, now [82], even classical
psychoanalysis conceives the transfer from the perspective of
repetition, of determinism, and, simultaneously, from the perspective
of creation, of eruption, of emergence. And it is profoundly there in
Freuds work when he speaks of the spontaneity of the transfer; it is
certainly determined, but the institution of the cure, the frame
permitting the phenomenon to arise, emerges in its radically creative
dimension ex nihilo, you say, and not cum nihilo.
K.v.B.: The lay person that I am would like to ask you, after this rst
exchange, a perhaps somewhat provocative question. Couldnt one
suspect that there is an hidden danger, for a poet, a writer, a musicianthus someone who is living off of an imaginary in disorder, in
permanent suffering and transgressionof being healed by a
psychoanalytic cure to the point of seeing this creativity disappear? Is
analysis not a form of castration for the imaginary in disorder?
C.C.: I will respond to the provocation with a super-provocation, if
you will. Because I believe, on the contrary, that the task of analysis is
to liberate the imagination. Not such that the subject does just whatever, that he ignores every law, every limit, etc. Besides, autonomy
means: I lay down a law for myself. Nomos is the law, and autonomy is
the law that comes from me. Now, the social extensions, thats another
story. But what is psychic illness in the end, and Im not talking about
psychosis, now, nor about neurosis, essentially . . . ? [83]
K.v.B.: What they used to call hysteria . . .
C.C.: Not only that. Obsessional neurosis and the new forms of psychic
pathology that we meet today, well, they are a blockage of the
47
imagination, they are essentially that. Of course! It means that there is

an imaginary construction existing there, stopping everything else.
Here is an example: woman or man, it is these and nothing else. It is
necessary have these, solely these and nothing else . . .
K.v.B.: This ends up calling into question all artistic creation prior to
psychoanalysis!
C.C.: But why?
K.v.B.: In a certain manner, the imaginary that played into art
with the appearance of psychoanalysis was neither disturbed, nor
limited, nor, annihilated by the absence of psychoanalysis.
C.C.: Of course; but that is not what I am trying to say. That is the
exceptional case and the privilege of artists, of creators, prominent or
small, etc. But psychoanalysis aims also at reestablishing in the subject
another relationship with its unconscious. Permit me to express myself
by way of a formulation about which I would like to know what
Jean-Luc thinks. What was the procedure of society with respect to
the drives that it was able neither to accept nor to control? It did not
consist only of saying (and this is the Superego, moreover, among
other things), you shall not do [84] that. But it cannot say, for
example, you shall never voluntarily think about the death of your
nearest. . . . Lets be serious: neurosis or not, we all think ten times per
year about the death of someone. And, generally, the common individual makes himself feel guilty for that. Im taking a very simple
example. However, it is necessary that I know that my psychic life is
this way, which is to say simultaneously libidinal drives, destructive
drives, self-destructive drives. . . . That I cannot eradicate this, that I
can never eliminate it, that it is even necessary that I let it come to the
surfacethis is what the cure tries to produce. But it is necessary that
I also know, of course, that between desiring a thing and doing it,
between wishing for a thing and acting such that it comes about, there
is a distance, which is the distance of the diurnal world, of the social
world, of the world of relatively conscious, reected activity, etc.
J.-L.D.: In effect, this is a classical question that you are posing,
and in one sense a false question. It is difcult to respond in a quick
and economical way, but the cure itself stems, in a certain fashion,
from a practical-poetic activity. This is to say, to speak properly,
48
that it comprises a dimension that is, if not artistic, then in any

case creative. When you evoke this problem, it is as if you were
suggesting that artistic creation or all other creation would be able to
not have form. However, the whole problem of artistic creation is
obviously that the creative movement [le mouvement crateur] ties itself
to and takes on a form that must, for that matter, nd its social [85]
mediation. In a certain way, it is the same thing for free association on
a couch. It is not a disorganization, nor a you must think this or
you desire this. It is a regulated disorganization, organized, as such,
with an eye to a more free reorganization, more autonomous and
more creative. Now, obviously, what is typical is that there are quite a
few people, creators for whom the capacity for artistic creation is tied
to a certain equilibrium of their functioning, who, in reaching a point
of inhibition, naturally dread the redistribution of their psychic economy. But when they do their analysis, I have never seen a disappearance of the creative capacity.
K.v.B: I am going to formulate the question differently in order to
restart you on the theme of desire.
C.C.: We could have spoken of Rilke, repeatedly tempted by psychoanalysis but who was afraid of losing his sincerity through it.
K.v.B.: Sartre is another celebrated case, who had an extremely troubled relationship with psychoanalysis.
C.C.: I would say that Sartre, in any case, did not lose out on
anything . . .
K.v.B.: Between the transfer and the ban, the freedom of the
subject, his or her autonomy, are they not going to be confronted
with frustration, with a sort of castration? [86]
C.C.: I will say a few words, and Jean-Luc, who has a clinical
experience much more considerable than mine, will respond more
lengthily. What fascinates me in the history of the ban, which goes
along with the transfer, is that it is precisely a totally free ban. One
could say that there are social but not biologicalthat would be
an absurdityreasons such that children do not sleep with their parents, nor brothers with sisters. In one sense, one could not say the
same thing about psychoanalysis. If, during the analytic cure, there is
49
a transition into the sexual act, for example, the cure is dead. There is
no difculty here; the experiences are there and the consequences for
the patient are very serious, thats for sure. And this can no longer be
a psychoanalytic cure.
K.v.B.: Could you specify why?
C.C.: It is precisely because the analyst is a distant, if not impersonal,
authority that he represents a projection surface onto which the
patient can project all his phantasms, the good as well as the bad. He
is the all powerful object. To cite a phrase of Lacan that deserves to be
preserved, he is the subject supposed to know!5 And one sees this
with patients. But at the same time, perhaps, inasmuch as he deprives
the patient of certain satisfactions, notably erotic, he can be a very bad
gure, the foil. In this sense, in both cases, there is, in the transfer, a
certain repetition of the infantile relation. But there is also, of course,
something else. Once the cure is nished, what [87] happens? What
one observes is that a completed cure goes through the transfer
solution. That is to say, the subject drops the analyst, and in a way
that is almost inhuman.
J.-L.D.: I have a comparison in mind. Not long ago, I did some
research on childbirth without [postpartum] sadness, and I went on
nights to observe deliveries. I found myself wrapped up in the drama
that it can be, in the crisis. And the women were turning to me. I
found myself to be positioned to help them psychologically and
sometimes it created a link with an extreme intensity. However, once
the baby was there, it was as if I no longer existed. The deliverers
know well about this. Obviously, the analytic cure, which Freud compared on occasion to a gestation, certainly poses more complex problems. Cornelius stressed well the fact that what ruins all curative
projects whenever there is a transition to the sexual act is precisely
that the transfer is no longer analyzable. And the wager of the cure is
that the transfer is analyzable and that, being analyzed, it dissolves
sufciently according to the needs. I quote that for you, and it is a
formula that matters a lot for me because it permits one to get out of
theoretical schemas. And this is translated through the fact that,
whenever one meets his or her patients, for example in analytic
societies, one avoids establishing immediate relations with them, one
50
honors, in some sense, temporal distances in a way that lets the transfer disappear little by little in life. [88]
C.C.: If I may put a word in, this is a problem that has a particular
importance, but not for the analysis of subjects in general. Because,
either the analysis obtains and the transfer is analyzable, for
better or worse, sufciently according to needs, or else one does not
manage to analyze it and one ends up with interminable cures,
because the patient cannot handle being removed from this link and
because the analyst does not know how to help him remove himself
from it. But there, where it becomes seriousand this is one of the
problems of he psychoanalytic institutionthis distancing, in effect,
becomes a lot more difcult if the patient does an analysis in order to
become an analyst himself, in which case the investment of the
analyst as subject supposed to know acquires a double depth: it is
not only the emotional ties, but it is what allowed me to become an
analyst . . .
K.v.B.: We are coming back to childbirth . . .
C.C.: Yes, my being an analyst depends upon him; thus a tie is
created. And if the analyst who was the analyst of this patient
does not know how to do this, he can create entirely intolerable situations that disturb life in analytic societies.
K.v.B.: Doesnt the subject always need a tutelary reference
exterior to himself? Can one lay down a law for oneself?
J.-L.D.: This is just the founding ambiguity that Freud detects within
the agency that he is led to free up [89] as the Superego (ideal). The
differentiation Ego/Superego within the Ego conveys, primarily and
simultaneously, the genesis of the Superego, starting from the outside, through the internalization of the parental authority, and the
perpetuation of the conditions (dependency, need for love, threat of
loss) of this infantile origin through the internalization itself.
But the work proper to the psychic space of this differentiation
permits the Ego to autonomize itself (to subtract itself from the
authority of the Superego, according to Freud) by de-personalizing
it. But the impulsive alimentation [lalimentation pulsionnelle] of the
Superego (notably in aggression) makes it such that its regression and
51
its re-projection are constantly solicited. Thus we see, for example, a

sick person hide an aggravation from his doctor because he is more
afraid of the disappointment of the doctor than his illness. That is
what Freud has in mind when he points out that few men have the
capacity to entirely de-sexualize the gure of destiny; religious
projection is always attractive in one form or another. This brief
digression serves as an echo of your interrogation concerning the
analytical institution. The risk that you highlight is quite real and it
has come about that the analytical institution is unaware of it. But has
it not thus reproduced the institutional forms of its time? In what way
would an analyst outside of the institution be more free with respect
to the received heritage of the tradition? It seems to me that the
conict of the subject and of the institutionin the sense that there is
something collective about itis alone able to support a true process
of autonomization. As you have conceived it, autonomy has nothing
to do with the abstract liberty of an abstract subject but is a permanent
process of differentiation, which supposes resemblance. [90]
C.C.: I am entirely in agreement with what Jean-Luc has just said.
And I would say that your question is perhaps the most important of
those that we have discussed up to now because it cuts across, at
once, the problem of individual psychoanalysis and the political
problem. To say it in Freudian language, will we ever be able to have
a humanity that does not need the totem? The historical exactness of
totemism matters less. Jehovah, from this perspective, is a totem.
Freud lets it pass in part because he considers Judaical law to be
precisely among the most impersonal laws.
K.v.B.: Something about which he is greatly mistaken.
C.C.: Thats another story. In my opinion, one of the lacunae in the
psychoanalytic conception of this question, which also links back to
the problem of interminable analyses, is that we only look at the
libidinal side of the issuethat is to say, at the fear of being reproached
or of no longer being enlivened (God will no longer love you if
you do this thing) by a gure who is a substitute for the father or
mother gure (moreover, very often maternal)and we do not see
the other side. The other side is death and mortality. Freud, in The
Future of an Illusion, associated the roots of religion with the feeling of
52
powerlessness before the world. Science is replaced by psychology as

one anthropomorphizes destiny, the forces of nature, etc. God loves
me or does not love me. I will act such that he loves me as if he were
a woman, [91] a man, or a lover or a mistress. That is the response to
the most important enigma of all, the enigma of death. Yet, the
ultimate castration, if we wish to use the term, is to comprehend that
there is no response to this question, which is the question of death.
This is to say that it is the radical acceptance by the subject of his or
her mortality as a personal gure and even as an historical gure.
And this is what is very difcult to accept as much by the individual
patient in analysis as by societies. One component of the turmoil in
contemporary society is the attempt, after the fall of religionI am
speaking of the West nowto replace this religious mythology with
an immanent mythology, which is that of indenite progress.
J.-L.D.: The religion of history . . .
C.C.: The religion of history, whether it is in the liberal form or the
Marxist form, fails to see that these are mythological constructions
that do not hold up rationally. Why on earth is it necessary to
augment the productive forces indenitely? So, with the collapse of
the ideology of progress as well as Marxist ideology, there is currently
an enormous void; and it is the void of meaning, because humanity
is abandoning the meaning of death that was provided for Western
humanity by the Christian religion. And it still cannot and perhaps
never will be ablebut this is the most profound question of politics
in my opinionto accept that we are mortal just as much qua
individuals as [92] qua a civilization, and that this does not abolish
the meaning of our lives.
J.-L.D.: It does not abolish the meaning of our lives, because, as
B. Thom said, life is the love of life, and because this is sufcient as
far as meaning goes. This could be sufcient, but, lets not forget, rare
are those who are capable of totally de-sexualizing the gure of
destiny. It is the same Freud who asks M. Schur6 to give him one last
injection because it makes no sense any more.7 To de-sexualize the
gures of destiny is not to de-sexualize ones life; it is to no longer
need to abstractly confer on it a goal beyond the desire for the other.
In Civilization and its Discontents, Freud writes that the pride of man is
53
necessary in order that human life be supposed to have a goal, and

that religion alone puts itself in the position of contributing it.
That said, it is true that, starting from the moment when he puts
himself in position to take into account the set of methods through
which man attempts to render life bearable for himself, Freud nds
the umbilicus of illusion in the incontrovertible character of judgments of value, which always derive from our needs for happiness
and are thus in the service of our illusions.8 The recognition of the
structural link between the principle of pleasure and judgments of
value leads right to asserting the necessity of the recourse to illusion,
which leads Freud to a complex and almost embarrassed dialogue
with himself in the future of an illusion, where the unconscious
truth of the religious turns out to be comparable to the grotesque
truth included in the theories of infantile sexuality. In sum, Freud
encounters the aporetic side [93] of his rationalism in its positivity.
He opens up the dialectic of illusion-disillusion, which, Winnicott9
will show, conditions the impulsive (aggressive erotic) introjection,
which constructs the validity of the relation to reality. It would be
tempting to compare these developments with those suggesting the
notion of the radical imaginary, which I had wanted to link back to
the concept of the Id, despite the non-representational character of
the Freudian Id.
K.v.B.: It is not the immanence of the law, but it is quite simply the
transmission through the interposed child.
C.C.: What has always made me cringe in Christianity is the idea of
this God who could love me. What is it, this innite Being who concerns himself to know if I ate my soup or if I didnt eat my soup, if I
masturbated or if I didnt masturbate, if I desired my mother or if I
didnt desire my mother, who forbids sodomy, this, that, etc. Are these
the subjects worthy of a God? No. Why does God have all these attributes? Because he is there as substitute precisely for the interdictive
stage, with the bonus: If you do that, God will love you. And that is
re-sexualization. Of course, it is not sublimated but idealized sexualization. This is to say that we dont want to make love with God, but
well be in his bosom.
J.-L.D.: Nuns make love with God. . . . [94]
54
C.C.: Lets leave aside the extreme cases; lets say that well be in his
bosom. Who has a bosom? Its the mommy, is it not? Therefore, I do
not accept that idea. And I would like to say something more. It is true
that this is a very hard problem in reality. Like Jean-Luc said, meaning
is the activity of the creation of meaning, and for me moreover, it is a
whole reinterpretation of the philosophical idea of truth that goes into
it. Because truth is not correspondence, is not adequation; it is the
constant effort to break the closure in which we exist, and to think
something other, and to think not only quantitatively, but more profoundly, to think better. This movement is truth. That is why there are
great philosophies that are true, even if they are false, and other philosophies that may be correct and have no interest.
J.-L.D.: Thats the retying of ties.
C.C.: It is, in effect, the retying of ties. What is the phrase from Freud
to Schur at the moment when he asks him to make the fatal injection?
It makes no sense any more. Now, up until then, for Freud, his life
made sense. Why? Because he could work and think. And when he is
taken by an incessant pain, he is in a state of incapacity and he says
that it makes no sense any more.
But, to nish, must we rely upon a radical, ultimate, or positivist
nationalism in order to accept the possibility of an autonomy for individuals? I will take a case, which is not crystal clear, [95] but which
generates thought all the same: ancient Greece and, in particular, the
democratic city. In the democratic city, there is a religion, but this
religion is a civil affair. Its the civil religion, as Rousseau said. There is
no belief in the immortality of the soul. The rst funeral inscriptions
where one sees the hope of another life and where, in a certain way,
one prays to the gods to be favorable to the departed, date from after
the end of the fth century, that is, in a phase of decadence. Until
then, either there was no immortality or there was what Achilles
said to Ulysses when he was visited by him in the land of the dead:
I would prefer to be the slave of a poor peasant on the earth than to
be king of all the underworld.10 Death is worse than life; there is no
hope. This does not prevent the Greeks from creating, in particular,
a democracy where it is clear that the law is laid down by the people.
For sure, this is not pure as an example because there is the rest of
religiosity, a religiosity that doesnt have the same character. We see it
55
in contemporary society. Even if there was not a total de-Christianization with the French Revolution, modern democracies established
themselves on the principle of the secular.
J.-L.D.: I want to return to the ethic, to the specicity of the
psychoanalytic position, which manifests itself fully only in practice,
and which experiences inevitable interferences from the moment
that there is a theorization effort (but the cure is never an application of the theory). This specicity follows from a capacity to listen
that privileges, above all, [96] psychic evenementality in its processural ux, in its contextuality, in its dynamic. This privilege conferred
upon the primary processes transfers the representational contents to
the second plane insofar as they can be appreciated in their validity
from the viewpoint of the secondary processes, and from an ordinary
line of argumentation.
Utilized in applied psychoanalysis, this privilege permits one to
interpret the ensemble of the human minds major constructions
(religions, metaphysics) and even scientic systems, without placing
oneself on the terrain of their validation. All these systems can, in
effect, appear as projections in the external world of certain endoperceptions of psychic functioning, and can therefore contribute to
its knowledge. This is why, echoing back to the choice of the term
meta-psychology, I proposed to speak of the meta operation.
It seems important to me, at least initially, to situate well the
specicity of this approach. It could not aim to reduce these
systems, any more than the other productions of civilization for that
matter, because it in no way purports to substitute itself for them.
Even if, in the last instance, it proves untenable, this point of view
corresponds, for psychoanalysis, to a refusal to produce a conception
of the world.
Thus, when Freud, in Moses and Monotheism,11 speaks of Christianity
as a regression to polytheism and, at the same time, guratively as
a progression in the confession of the fathers murder (a rewarded
confession!), he is referring to psychic functioning; regression or
progression do not take on normative value. However, [97] within his
logic itself, it is indispensable to him to assert the material-historical
reality of the murder of the dominant male in the primitive hoard.
There is a need to construct a mythscientic perhapsin order to
approach the unknown.
56
K.v.B.: The unknown is?

C.C.: The unknown is the horizon, the myth, the groundless.
K.v.B.: The groundless, the famous Uhr of German philosophy.
C.C.: The Uhr that Freud employs often. [989]
NOTES
1
7
8
10
11
She published, among other things: Aulagnier, P., The Violence of

Interpretation, trans. Alan Sheridan. Philadelphia, PA: Taylor &
Francis, 2001.
Cornelius Castoriadis began teaching at EHESS in November 1980.
The last three years of which he is speaking are 19921993,
19931994, and 19941995, following which he provisionally
suspended his seminars.
This is Castoriadis paraphrase of Heraclitus. In the Patrick
translation, the passage reads, The limits of the soul you would
not nd out though you traverse every way. See Patrick, G. T. W.,
Heraclitus of Ephesus. Chicago: Argonaut, Inc., 2006, 102. TR
Donnet, J.-L., Lenfant de a, psychanalyse dun entretien: la psychose
blanche. Paris: Les ditions de Minuit, 1973.
Lacan, J., The Seminar. Book XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis, trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Hogarth Press and
Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1977, 232. TR
Max Schur (18971969) was Freuds doctor who, in 1939, assisted
Freud in committing suicide. TR
Freuds statement to Schur just before his death in 1939. TR
Donnet appears to be paraphrasing generally from Civilization
and its Discontents. New York: W. W. Norton and Company Inc.,
1961. TR
Donnet seems to be referring to Donald Woods Winnicott (1896
1971), theorist of object-relations. TR
Castoriadis is paraphrasing the passage from Book 11, line 486
of Homers Odyssey. TR
Donnet references the text by Freud simply with the title Mose
in the manuscript. TR
57
CHAPTER FOUR
Life and Creation

Cornelius Castoriadis in Dialogue with
Francisco Varela
KATHARINA VON BULOW: First of all, I would like to ask Francisco Varela
how he discovered Cornelius Castoriadis, why he became interested in
him, how he was useful to him in his own works . . . ?
FRANCISCO VARELA: Weve known each other for many years, more
than 15 years, certainly. And the connections between our works are
of various sorts and have evolved and changed historically. In the
beginning, I believe that what interested me in reading his work1
and, in parallel, what Cornelius found in my writingsis that we
were each reecting on the question of autonomy. For me, this was
more from the position of living things, since I am a biologist and, for
him, from the position of the imaginary and the social. However,
these are problematics, each of which obviously refers to the other.
K.v.B.: And the psychoanalytic aspect as well?
F.V.: It was not the psychoanalyst that I read, but rather the theorist
of society and the thinker of the imaginary. For me, that is not the
same thing. [100]
K.v.B.: And from your position, Cornelius, what interested you in the
work of Francisco Varela?
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LIFE AND CREATION
CORNELIUS CASTORIADIS: I really was working for no short length

of time on the question of autonomy, which had rst a political
signication in my writings. It was a political project for an autonomous society made by autonomous individuals, a project that is still my
own, moreover. And, from a certain moment, when I began to
criticize Marx, to reject his conception of history, it quickly occurred
to me that history and the institution of society were the work of an
instituting imaginary, of a radical collective imaginary, parallel to the
radical creative imaginary of the individual and thus that each society creates itself for itself and, in creating itself, creates a proper
world. From 1964 to 1965 onwards it is there, in the rst part of The
Imaginary Institution of Society, and I elaborated on it a lot in the second part of that book, published in 1975. When I discovered the
work of Francisco, above all this tremendous book that I read in English, Principles of Biological Autonomy,2 which was translated3 into
French with the title Autonomie et Connaissance4 (a revised version, for
that matter, which is enriched from the conceptual perspective but
lightly abridged in its [101] mathematics), I immediately discovered
an enormous kinship. Since 1973, Franciscos work (as well as that of
another Chilean biologist, Humberto Maturana5), which I had not
known before then, circled around the same problematic as that
upon which I was reecting. How is it that a unity can arise, can
emergethis latter term is not tting for me, but we will discuss that,
Im surea unity that, in my old philosophical terms, I called being
for-itself? A being for itselfthat is to say, just as much a living
being, which is, in a sense, self-centered (that is, aims for its conservation, its reproduction) as a psychic being or a social being, since all
of society aims at conserving itself, at reproducing itselfhow does
this emerge and in what does its specicity consist? And thats just
where Maturana and Francisco were placing at the fore the concept
of the autonomy of the living organism, a concept that is intricately
elaborated in Autonomie et connaissance and that is radically opposed
to the idea that one could give an account of the living organism
solely beginning from external actions. In the same way, these principles that Francisco formulated, which I approve of entirely, and
which I utilize myself, are in opposition to cognitive closure and
informational closure.
59
What does this mean, briey, for our listeners? I can say a bit
about it; you will correct me if I have badly understood you. In any
case, as for me, I [102] now use the notion of closure a lot.6 Which is
to say that, for a for-itself, a psychic subject or a living being or a
society, there is creation of a proper world (Eignewelt, one would say
in German), and nothing can enter into this proper world if it is not
transformed according to the principles of this world. Thats easy
enough to comprehend. Lets take the example of the living being: it
is sensitive to a certain category of exterior shocks, but these shocks
are never presented to it as they are. Thus, higher living beings
have a perception of colors but, to use a radical albeit entirely correct
expression, the world of the physicist does not have colors; it has
wavelengths. Color is a quality that shows up with certain categories
of living beings, those which do not perceive luminous vibrations as
such, like electromagnetic vibrations, but perceive blue, red, etc.
Furthermoreand this is a point that Francisco has himself stressed
as well not only is there this transformation of what Freud very
rightly called masses of energy, masses of matter in motion, into
qualities for the subject, but there is evidently also the fact that there
is never a term for term correspondence. This means, for example,
that perception of color is always a function of a perceptual context
and, I would also add, always a subjective one, but thats another
story. . . . So, we have this [example]. And the same thing is true in
the psychic system. This is my domain rather than that of Francisco,
but lets take an extreme case, if you will. A paranoiac will interpret
all motion as aiming to destroy him or to persecute him. For example,
this microphone that you are holding [103] in front of me is at this
moment emitting fragrances that aim squarely at derailing my
nervous system. . . . He makes everything come back into his system
of interpretation. It is the same for a society, where this closure
[clture] appears more explicitly in closed [ferme]for example
primitive or traditionalsocieties. For a genuine Hebraic mindset, an
event as catastrophic as the Holocaust will be interpreted as a supplementary test inicted on the Jewish people and on it alone, which
proves its election. The Holocaust is going to enter into the system of
interpretation that is the proper world of this imaginary Jewish
universe. It is with these ideas, above all, that I came together with
Francisco and that I even used him. . . .
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LIFE AND CREATION
F.V.: We should recall, here, the Cerisy Colloquium on selforganization. . . .7 For me, the motivation for this type of reection
was in no way coming from the psychoanalytic, or the social-thinker,
side of Castoriadis. On the subject of autonomy, I remained a biologist.
Why? Because, originally, this investigation on autopoiesiswhich
means, literally, self-construction, self-production . . .
C.C.: . . . or self-creation . . .
F.V.: . . . or self-creation, yes. Thats a Greek neologism invented in
order to designate what Cornelius was just speaking about. Now,
there was, thus, back when we were [104] working on this theme,
the will to be in opposition to what was, toward the 1970s, the dominant way of thinking. It envisioned in the living being a system that
was pretty much a collector of information, capturing information,
the shocks coming from outside in order to impose on them a certain
unitary manipulation. This model, founded on the metaphor of the
computer, seemed to us to be entirely unsatisfactory. But it is necessary to understand well that we were, at the time, really going against
the current and were more or less isolated. Today . . .
C.C.: . . . are we not still, more or less?
F.V.: In my opinion, it has evolved enormously, and this model of
thinking the living beingthis outrageous representationalismnevertheless has a much more weakened existence now. Thus, we forged
this concept of self-production or self-creation or autopoiesis in order
to express this fact founded on the very biology of the organism, on
biochemistry and cellular life. Why? Becauseand this is the second
important point for meit is a gesture that is at the origin, at the very
root of life. It is not even necessary to think it at the level of mammals,
of humans, or of social beings. Life, qua self-constituting process,
already contains this distinctness of a for-itself, as Cornelius would
say, the source offromwhich the imaginary emerges, capable of
giving sense to what is only masses of physical objects. This rootedness of sense in the origin of life is the novelty of this concept of
autonomy, or autopoiesis. Whence came its popularity, at least its success, I think, [105] in the following years. And what I was just sayingthat there is an excess of the imaginary that comes from this
self-construction of the living beingthis is something that I learned
61
from reading Cornelius. And I would never have dared to speak of the
imaginary in the origin of life if I had not had use of this kind of continuity between biological phenomena of the origin of life and the
social domain. I am clearly saying continuity; I am not saying
identity.
K.v.B: In your book, Francisco Varela,8 you talk about philosophy
right from the start. You bring up the importance of phenomenology.
You mention Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty in order to point
out that they at least placed in the body the beginning of their
philosophy, the beginning of their reection on perception, the imaginary, the constitution of the subject, etc. But for you, what is not
pertinent in philosophy is precisely that what is at stake therein is a
process that falls under biology, therefore a science, and that
everything we have thought about mind, the soul, psychoanalysis,
etc., seems to be called into question by this scientic approach.
F.V.: By no means! What I am trying to say in my book is, in a certain
way, the opposite, but in the following sense. Alreadyas a rst side
pointI wrote The Embodied Mind nearly 20 years after that theorization of [106] autopoiesis. Many things happened in the meantime,
and you cannot pass right over the whole evolution of my work. But,
above all, what is the fundamental goal of this reection in The Embodied Mind? It is to raise a question that seems to me still to be very badly
thought out in the sciences that concern themselves with thought or
cognitive and mental phenomena. And, here, Im envisioning the
neurosciences, linguistics, what one calls, roughly speaking, the
cognitive sciences.9 The open question is the abyss that exists between
the mechanisms proposed by the sciences and the incarnate, lived
experience [vcu incarn] of every individual. Short of clarifying the
transition and the complication of these two poles, every effort at a
common reection on the autonomy of the living being and the social
can only remain a dead letter. It is here that phenomenology, in the
Merleau-Pontian tradition, is greatly helpful.
C.C.: I am totally in agreement with what you have just said.
I would simply like to bring to the fore a certain number of points.
And, rst, what is striking when one looks at the tendency that we
called cognitivism, and even connectionism, is thatI am brutal, as
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LIFE AND CREATION
usual!these people are idealists who are completely unaware of each

other. What is the human being for them? Its a computational
apparatus, a system that calculates. Its the model of the computer. The
current arrives, a contact is made or is not made, [107] it is 0 or it is 1,
it is no or it is yes. And the nal result is an enormous accumulation of
yes and no, of 0 and 1, very summarily and briey speaking. Yet, what
is essential in the human being, and what plays an enormous role in
cognition as well, is not there. One cannot consider cognitive activities
detached from other elements that are entirely decisive. As a psychoanalyst, I would say, rst of all, that there is a psychic ux, which is a
ux of representations, of representations not in the sense of cognitivism (that is, of photographs that I would have in me of what is happening on the outside), which would be more or less adequate. That is
an entirely false and contrived image, even if philosophers have shared
it for a long time. But [I mean] representation in the sense that there
is always an image of the world (which is not an image in the sense of
impressions), the creation of an imaginary world at each moment
when I speak; and [I mean] imaginary in the strong sense of the term,
which does not mean ctional. And this representation is always
accompanied by two other vectors: an affective vector, and a vector
that I call intentional in the classical sense of the term, which is to say
desiring, if one is speaking of the human being. To put it succinctly, all
the ideas concerning the possibility for a computer to replace human
thoughtbeyond calculations, computationcan be made clearer by
putting forward a question: will there one day be a computer, by itself
and without instructions, which is sufciently impassioned by the
question of the innitude of primary numbers or by the famous last
theorem of Fermat to embark upon a study of it? [108] As for me, I say
no. Because what is necessary, here, is a passion for the thing. And, in
addition, it is necessary to have an orientation for the study, which
cannot be given by simple calculation. Passion is of the order of affect,
and it is mixed with a desire to know [savoir], to experience [connatre].
. . . This rst facet is, I believe, very important. A second facet, which I
was happy to observe in Franciscos latest book, which was entirely
conceived by him, is naturally the social component. One cannot speak
of a human machine, even if it is not entirely a machine, as an ego that
functions all alone. Already in perception, when I function, social
schemas are implicated, language is implicated, I apprehended the
63
separation of objects little by little following the organization of the

world created by my society. . . . This social component is in no way
secondary; it is entirely essential.
The third pointand, here, I believe that we are stuck out in the
middle of the ocean of our ignoranceis the bodily involvement.
And, here as well, there is a new approach that I have tried to elaborate for 2 or 3 years concerning the Freudian unconscious. What is
at issue here? Freud, certainly, speaks of drives in order to say that
they are the boundaries between the psychic and the somatic, but he
does not envision a dimension according to which the unconscious
would be very profoundly anchored in the body, independently, even,
of the fact that there are drives. The latter formulation is bad because
there always is, following precisely from what I was saying just before,
a tending towards, a drive of the living organism. . . . But, nevertheless, there [109] is something other than the canonical drives
explored by Freud. There is a semi-permeable boundary in both directions between the body and the soul; this way of distinguishing
between the body and the soul is simultaneously inevitable and false.
There is no soul without body, but there is no body without soul, as
Aristotle said: the cadaver of Socrates is not Socrates; the soul is no
longer there, there is no more Socrates, its nished. Underneath the
infrastructure of the Freudian unconscious, therefore, there is, in
my opinion, something worth pursuing: at least a profoundand
certainly sui generisrelationship [liaison] between the human
psychic and biological aspects.
F.V.: In what you have just said, there is one facet about which we are
clearly and profoundly in agreement: the question of this rootedness
of the imaginary, of the connection with corporeality. It is an equally
great, open-ended question for me; I havent a response to propose.
But I would not confuse this question with the description that you
make of the computational model in the cognitive sciences, deprived
of emotions, drives. Personally, I can perfectly envision the construction, the development, by the new cognitive schools, of technological
objects that would be truly full of emotions. Now, one would need to
conceive them on a non-computational model, for example, that of a
dynamic system inseparably integrating history and its constraints,
such that intentionality and desire appear as its objects. Now, perhaps
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LIFE AND CREATION
it will not be impassioned for Fermats theorem, [110] but perhaps it

will be impassioned for other things. . . . This is, in any case, the
implication of the new robotics: having desiring robots in order to do
a good robot job. Its an implication that exists today. At least the
question is being asked.
C.C.: Do you think this task is realizable?
F.V.: In principle, yes.
C.C.: Beyond the trivialities, I mean.
F.V.: Certainly, beyond the trivialities. There remains an empirical
problem, of course, but in principle I do not see the impossibility of
having machines or technological objects wherein what is impulsive
or what is emotional is tied, in a way, to what is cognitive (Im not
saying identically but analogically to that of the living being). But this
in no way responds to the second part of the question you were
raising, which is precisely the problem of the specicity of the mode
of human experience and what that means for man. This is not the
same thing.
C.C.: No, of course not.
F.V.: And it is true that we have, today, more and more proofs of
the possibility of theorizing the emotional in a way such that it is
not a type of residual centrifugation of true consciousness, which
would only exist at the order of abstraction and of [111] logic. And
we currently have models on hand wherein, precisely, what is
impulsive, what is rational, and what is historical are entirely
intermingled. This is similar to what I am trying to designate with
this neologismanother one!of enactive, the enactive vision of
consciousness. This word is, for me, like a ag for signaling this
possibility of seeing this through. It remains to be seen if it is entirely
realizable or not.
K.v.B.: Can you enlighten the layman listener a bit?
F.V.: You are right to ask for a few words of explanation.10 Enactive is
not a neologism of Greek origin; it is an appropriation of the English
word enaction, which designates the gestures that accompany the
making-something-emerge [le faire-merger de quelque chose]. For
65
example, we say that President Clinton enacted his economic

program; he set it in motion. What is at stake is a gesture, a task, and
it is also a conception and also a history. All of this comes together in
the word enaction. For example, also, we say that someone enacted
a theater piece.
K.v.B.: But if man is already so complicated that even the philosopher,
the sociologist, the psychoanalyst, the biologist, the mathematician,
scientists, and philosophers since Aristotle have not succeeded in explaining him, why is it necessary, in addition, to invent a robot? [112]
C.C.: But the response here is easy here. We construct robots in order
to try and understand. In the beginning they are horribly simple
models, now they are more complex, and they will, without doubt, be
more and more complex. . . . As a side note, the rst models, as
Francisco pointed out, were restrained by the architecture of the
computers at the time, which one calls von Neumann architecture.
All the operations were sequential. Having to respond to question B,
it was necessary to respond to question A, and before question A, it
was necessary to respond to question W. . . . Whereas, now, thanks to
vectorial architecture, we envision the possibilitypartially realized,
for that matterof what is called a treatment in parallel. Here,
relatively independent centerswithout being totally independent
(otherwise it would not be a computer)are able to accomplish
certain tasks while other centers accomplish other tasks, etc. And the
machine is made such that the results converge in the accomplishment of a task.
However, I believe the problem is nevertheless more difcult than
this, because the question is not to know if we will one day manufacture a computer that will know how to simulate the passions, but if
we will ever be able to formalize what we know as desires and as
passions and, above all, as imagination. Here, it seems to me that
there is a contradiction in terms. Why? Because, in any event, all
formalization is, as I call it, identitarian. Starting out from a certain
number of axioms, it constructs, with a syntax and a determined
semantics, a [113] sequence of propositions or, lets say, of operations
of the machine. Yet, human psychic and social life is not identitarian;
it is magmatic. One cannot separate it into well-constructed,
well-dened sets [ensembles], etc. It is a totality wherein everything
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LIFE AND CREATION
interacts, though we are not able to simply say that everything interacts with everything, because there is the localizable, there are partial
sets [des ensembles par parties]. . . . And what also characterizes the
social imaginary as well as the radical imaginary of the subject and
the theoretical imaginary is, in the cognitive domain for example, the
capacity to create new axioms, in the most abstract sense of the term
(not necessarily in the mathematical sense), from new bases. All of a
sudden, a new base is created, which, precisely, because it is of this
sort, is not foundable. It is perhaps justiable if it is an issue of a
rational system, but it is not foundable because it is a creation. And a
creation is neither deducible nor producible. It is the real sense of the
new. If it is deducible and producible, it is not new, it exists potentially
in the anterior system.
F.V.: Absolutely, of course.
C.C.: And this, therefore, is the genuine question. The idea that one
can simulate creation seems to me to be contradictory in the terms.
Currently, our friend Henri Atlan, for example, is talking about
networks of connected automatons by saying that there is an
aleatory emergence of meaning. I do not dispute to what extent this
is true or not, but I would say that [114] positive scientists, when all
is said and done, are no longer able to do anything except call aleatory
that which is a creation. Since a creation, by denition, is neither
deducible nor producible, it is perceived as something that appears in
a radically aleatory fashion. What is false in this idea is that the word
aleatory has mathematical meaningor, otherwise, it is simply a
wordonly for a predetermined set of possibles. Yet, precisely, what
is proper to creation is to bring about possibles which did not exist
beforehand. The rst living cell that emerges creates, in a sense,
possibilities of life, which only existed beforehand in an entirely
empty and sophistical way.
F.V.: I am perfectly in agreement that the profound question is truly
this one. Up to what point can one think creation, at least make
a description of it? But where I am no longer in agreement with
Cornelius is with respect to what he quite rightly calls identitarian
logic. And, as he knows very well, here we are touching on a profound
debate, a point of great profundity, at the core of the sciences and
67
modern mathematics: is this identitarian logic a good basis, a good

foundation? Yet, insofar as the proof has not been brought about and,
so far as I know, this proof is not yet there, I do not feel like I am limited to these two options: either identitarian logic wherein, as such, I
am absolutely constrained to deduce these primary principlesand
thus, from a predetermined setor the recourse to this aleatory,
about which you have just exhibited the inadequacy. Because there is
this radically different notion [115], introduced by the theorization of
dynamic systems and so-called non-linear mathematics, which is the
notion of emergence. It is not the aleatory, since, precisely, it is relatively formalizable, not formalizable qua deducible, in the sense of
ensemblist-identitarian, but qua the conditions of the possibility of
emergence. Thus, to bring back up the example of the rst living cell
that you just mentioned, it is true that before the origin of life there
was a whole heap of possibilities, which were not existing, and which,
all of a sudden, it inaugurated. But how does it inaugurate them? One
could say, from the point of view of non-linear mathematics, that
there is a heap of conditions of possibility, then this phenomenon of
self-constitution surfaces, which is itself strongly non-linear, or at
least non-calculable, because it results in part from non-linearity. But,
at the same time, it is not aleatory since I can describe the essential
processes that it is necessary to put into action in order that there be
autopoiesis. I can reproduce them in the laboratory, in particular, and
make, anew and in a repetitive way, autopoieses; if need be, [I can]
invent a style of implementation of life different from those which
have taken place on earth. This is, in my opinion, if not a proof, then
at least a good argument in favor of this option, which is neither the
aleatory nor the calculable, but which is properly this possibility of
creation as the conditions of the possibility of emergence through
non-linear systems.
C.C.: Here, we are perhaps coming to the heart of the problem, where
there is, in the end, a radical philosophical option [116]. . . . First, I do
not like this term emergence, which lets one understand that there is
a property that emerges within what is global and that is not contained
in the parts. But it is not only this. When the life of higher living
organisms makes appear, for example, color, no one, apart from being
crazy, can qualify this phenomenon as illusory, as secondary in quality,
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LIFE AND CREATION
etc. We live in a world of colors, which we create, but which we do

not create entirely arbitrarily because there corresponds to them
something: shocks that we receive from the outside world. And this
creation would not be reducible to the simple gathering of a lot of
local things. Precisely, the fact that numerous objects and their local
connections are conditions leads us to this idea (in my opinion entirely
elementary but surprisingly forgotten in this discussion) of the
distinction between necessary conditions and sufcient conditions. In
order that the Greeks create the polisdemocracy, philosophy,
demonstrative research, etc.there is a hoard, an indenity, of
necessary conditions. These include the big bang, the galaxies, the
formation of the solar system, the emergence of life. . . . Certain of
them are trivial, and it would be idle chatter to emphasize them;
others are not. Thus, Greek mythology, which is a necessary condition, is not sufcient. There is a kinship of signication, but something else was required in order to create the polis and the rest. Yet,
precisely, creation never takes place in nihilo or cum nihilo. With
respect to form, it is ex nihilo. This is the hic, and this is why I think
that non-linear mathematics can do no more [117] than furnish an ex
post facto description of the thing. . . . This is somewhat what Ren
Thom is trying to do with the theory of catastrophes, as well.11
F.V.: This is a way of looking at things, but it is not the only one. And
here, I nd that you prejudice the decision of the jury . . .
K.v.B.: Excuse me, but I dont understand . . .
F.V.: Its a question of knowing if non-linear mathematics is always
post factum.
C.C.: . . . therefore descriptive . . .
F.V.: . . . yes, descriptive or not. And it is too early to tell. I would like
to stress this problem in the following way. A small, preliminary sidenote: the word emergenceI agree with youI do not like it too
much either; its muddy. . . . It would be necessary to invent a new
word. But what I intend by the word emergence is precisely this
non-separability between the globality and the phenomenon, which
is therefore dependent on all parties, and the specicity of each locality. That is what is rich.
69
C.C.: Of course. [118]

F.V.: And thus, for example, in the case of the origin of life, of autopoiesis, I cannot separate the particular properties of nucleic acids, of
proteins, and of lipids that participate in the constitution of cells, any
more than I can separate the global aspects of this constitution, for
example the fact that there is a boundary, and thus conditions of
diffusion that are not by denition local but global. And, here, one
can see that the local and the global go hand and hand. And this
non-separability is the symptom, precisely, of non-linearity. The word
perhaps does not t, but it is what I am designating. And in the case
of autopoiesis, we have an example speaking particularly about
something that I can nevertheless give as descriptive frame, which is
pre factum. Why? Because this description pre factum permits me to
reconstitute it in the laboratory; it is not solely post factum. That said,
we are still too much in the prehistory of these theoretical tools to
know if they would permit us to go farther ahead. Thus, you see, I
remain prudent but at the same time I am not as radical as you, saying
that it is always post factum. For we have examples wherein this
description is productive, in the sense that it puts into place the
conditions of generation, following which the emergence of the
phenomenon is neither a surprise nor an a posteriori explanation. Nor
is it a kind of calculation, which would permit me to know exactly
what is going to happen.
C.C.: Yes, I agree . . . [119]
K.v.B.: Beware, it is necessary to arrive at a decision, because, sadly,
time is going to run out. . . .
F.V.: That is too bad. . . .
K.v.B.: And now I would like to ask you a very stupid question, but
one which, perhaps, claries a bit the stakes of your debate. What do
you each hope to get from your research for the future of society?
You, for example, Cornelius: at the end of this article, which is somewhat your autobiographical intellectual trajectory, published in your
book,12 you conclude, following a severe criticism of Marxism, with a
vision that I would qualify as relatively utopian, of a society to come,
therefore with this idea, nevertheless, that there will one day be a
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new man, an autonomous man, an autonomous society wherein the

subject will be capable of escaping all of the constraints of a society
that makes him suffer and against which we have struggled. I presume
that you as well, Francisco, are a biologist sufciently human to
make the distinction between an entirely scientic society and a
human society. Now, what are you hoping for society in your
works?
C.C.: It is perhaps up to Francisco to respond rst. . . . [120]
F.V.: Your question catches me a bit unprepared because, I confess to
you rather naively, my motivation arises, rst of all, from what
Cornelius analyzed in one of his latest articles.13 It is epistemic
passion, the desire to know. And if the social consequences of what I
am doing are not indifferent to mehow could they ever be?that is
not why I work. I let myself go into this erotic pull of knowledge
[rotisme du savoir] and of understanding. And then, obviously, I try to
give things to my fellow citizens that I judge important. But it is more
qua citizen that I am a political man, that I have always been. I also
have a passion for everything that is happening around me, but not
qua biologist. Qua biologist, what leads me, what gives me that gut
feeling, is this epistemic drive. I really can tell you nothing else. It is
perhaps not very good for politics, but if I want to be sincere, this is
my truth.
K.v.B.: I like very much the erotic pull of knowledge. As for you,
Cornelius?
C.C.: There, Francisco is . . . Platonic! And me, I am a bit more divided
than Francisco, though I do not feel divided. I also have, within the
range of my capacities, this eros for knowledge; I am capable of staying
up a whole night in order to comprehend a theorem, to study a new
physics book (as far [121] as I comprehend it) or to read a history
book, quite simply. But, at the same time, I feel profoundly concerned
by the destiny of the society in which I live. And for me, the two
things are not without relation, in a certain meaning of the term. But
I do not think that one can deduce a politics from a philosophy or
from a knowledge. Because there is, here still, an ultimate decision. . . .
Thus, in contemporary knowledge, there is this great division between,
on the one hand, those for whom all of this fantastic luxuriance of
71
forms that being has created, from the galaxies to the owers and to
the symphonies of musicians, is reducible, can be brought back to
diverse combinations of a form or of several very simple forms (which
is the case with the neuro-psychologist Jean-Pierre Changeux, for
example, in France) and, on the other hand, the idea that being is
creation, that the propriety of being is to make surface new forms.
Now, in what sense does this have a link with politics? I think, quite
simply, that this latter philosophical option liberates us to think politics. It liberates us from social determinisms, from the idea that one
could never do otherwise, that history will never be able to get out of
this circle where it rolls around constantly: oppression, a bit of freedom, re-oppression, etc. It afrms that nothing, in knowledge, is
opposed to the idea that we can one day create a society in which
autonomous human beings can collectively govern themselves in
autonomy. From this point of view, it is not a deduction from philosophy to politics, but it is nevertheless a [122] certain complementarity.
And here, I believe that Francisco will probably agree.
F.V.: I agree, entirely even. But grant me that you reect at the social
level more explicitly than I do. And the possibly deducible relation
between what I do at the level of the living being and mathematics
and politics is less direct. I therefore place more condence in my
intuition as a citizen than in my intuition as a scientist for my political
engagements. Even if these are, of course, things multiply linked
together.14 But such as you phrased your question, I had the impression that you expected something like nalized product from me,
which would have found its place, so to speak, in some sort of utopia,
ideality. And I obviously have nothing of the sort to propose to you.
[123]
NOTES
1
72
An allusion to Castoriadis, C., The Imaginary Institution of Society,

trans. Kathleen Blamey. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998.
A work that Cornelius Castoriadis had rst reviewed in [the journal] Debat, No. XXX, in 1982, following the works appearance in
LIFE AND CREATION
6
7
10
11
12
13
14
English as: Principles of Biological Autonomy. New York: Elsevier

Science Ltd., 1979.
In the French text, following Castoriadis citation of the title of
Varelas book title in English, he then translates the English title
literally into French for the French audience: les principes de
lautonomie biologique. TR
Varela, F., Autonomie et connaissance: essai sur le vivant. Paris: ditions
du Seuil, 1989.
Maturana, H. and Varela, F., De Maquinas y Seres Vivos: una teora de
la organizacin biolgica. Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, Santiago
de Chile, 1973.
Cf. Breaking the Closure, Chapter 6 in this volume. TR
Dumouchel, P., and Dupuy, J.-P., Colloque de Cerisy Lauto-organisation: de la physique au politique. Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1983.
Rosch, E., Thompson, E., and Varela, F., The Embodied Mind.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992.
Varela, F., Invitation aux sciences cognitives. Paris: ditions du Seuil,
1999.
Cf. the denition of the concept in The Embodied Mind, 173.
Predire nest pas expliquer. Paris: Champs Flammarion, 1993.
This concerns Faite et faire, published in the book of the same
title as volume ve of Carrefours du labyrinth. [For the English
translation of the article, see Done and to be Done, in The
Castoriadis Reader, trans. David Ames Curtis. Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 1997. TR]
Castoriadis, C. and Epstein, T., Passion and Knowledge, in
Diogones, 40 (160), 1992, pp. 7593.
Varela, F., Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom, and Cognition.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992.
73
CHAPTER FIVE
The Limits of Formalization

Cornelius Castoriadis in Dialogue with Alain Connes
CORNELIUS CASTORIADIS: I am very happy that you agreed to come to

this broadcast, and for at least two reasons. First of all, while I am not
a mathematician, I have always, since my adolescence, been attracted
by mathematics, and my fascination still endures to this day. Now, for
me, to encounter an important mathematician is a bit like the excitement of standing in front of the Chartres cathedral and encountering
a master-builder who is explaining to you how it was constructed.
And then, through reading the book that you wrote with Jean-Pierre
Changeux, Conversations on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics1 (a very nice
title, for that matter2), I came to realize that we have very close positions concerning what is essential for mathematics (which is to say,
for doing mathematics), what it presupposes, in what it consists, and,
nally, this mystery of the possible and, in my eyes, almost certain
encounter of mathematical constructions with something that we
rediscover, we recreate, of course, but which also constrains us like an
objective realityideal, certainlybut with [124] an amazing internal
coherence, a richness, and an extraordinary range.
To tell the truth, I do not know which subject to ask you about.
They are in fact very numerous, but many are excluded by the
necessity of being understood by every honest man. Now, perhaps
we could commence with the celebrated question of thinking
machines. To begin, I am going to say what I think about it, and next
74
THE LIMITS OF FORMALIZATION
we will see if we are in agreement or not. These machines, to be sure,

are a prodigious human creation and can do things of which man is
incapable. But, for the time being, at least, they are incapable of
operations to the extent of an . . . earthworm, in which the cells, for
example, know how to recognize the stereochemical forms of
molecules that they have to accept, to reject, to process. It is necessary, thus, to take into account these limits, all while knowing that
they are certainly provisional, able to be pushed back, at least. But to
what point? What can we say, a priori, about their limits? In my eyes,
there would never be a genuine thinking machine. And in order
to justify this afrmation, I will reinvoke the fortunate distinction that
you employed, in your discussion with Jean-Pierre Changeux, concerning the three stages of the mathematicians work. The rst stage,
about which everyone will agree, is calculus, algorithms, which,
according to Churchs celebrated thesis on mathematical logic, can be
entrusted to a machine, to what one calls a universal Tring machine.
There are obvious reservations, since someone must construct this
machine, give it a program and tasks to resolve; the machine does not
invent the task to [125] resolve, nor even the methods. This allows me
to pass immediately to the third stage, which you call intuition, which
I myself call the creative imagination. It is this faculty of the human
being, of the human soulbut of the socialized soul, of course,
disposed of language and a historical heritageto arbitrarily invent
tasks for itself, to arbitrarily invent forms (when I say arbitrarily, it is an
initial approximation), and also to invent this particular domain of
mathematics wherein, precisely, it creates this thing that, in my opinion, arises just as much from the imagination: the process of demonstration. And there is, nally, an intermediate stage, which is this
capacity, not entirely creative, but evaluative rather, of coming back to
the path that one has taken, of comparing its method with other possible
methods, of redening, as such, a tactic, perhaps even a strategy, a
capacity that, after some hesitation in your discussion with Changeux,
you call reection, a term with which I am in perfect agreement.
ALAIN CONNES: We can, in effect, ask ourselves a priori the question of
knowing if, effectively, there exist limits to the potential capacity of a
machine. Qua mathematician, I would gladly place the limit in the
distinction between what has a meaning, what is interesting, in
75
opposition to what has no interest, no pertinence. It is really this

notion of meaning, of interest, which is the most difcult to formalize,
to dene in such a way that a machine can have access to it. But before
discussing this question further, I would like to come back to the
different levels of mathematical work that you mentioned. In particular, to this ideato my mind falsethat since calculus is now entirely
accessible to the machine, it is a level that we comprehend perfectly. I
think that we would be wrong to say that. When we have, for example,
a very complicated calculation to do, we can certainly entrust it to a
computer, but this assumes, rst of all, as you specied, that we give to
it the program that is necessary. And then, what is much more
frustrating is knowing how to correctly read the result. Because, if the
computer provides you with ten pages of formulas, we are not, now,
truly advanced, in the sense that such a result precisely . . .
C.C.: . . . is not comprehensible . . .
A.C.: Is not comprehensible, thats it. And my second remark, still on
this rst level of calculation, is that, in fact, when the human mind
learns to do calculations, however simple and mechanical they are, in
doing so it acquires all sorts of mechanisms that, if they are not
acquired, are ultimately going to render intuition dumb, impotent.
Its a bit as if a pedestrian, going from a point A to a point B, were to
lower his head in order not to see the path that he is traveling, the
people he encounters. . . . Here I am thinking, of course, of children
at school. It would be a very grave error to let them use calculators
too early, because learning to do multiplications, additions, etc.,
inscribing these very simple operations [127] in the brain, is fundamental in order that, next to the mechanism itself, an intuition and a
sense of magnitude develops itself progressively. Its an issue that we
would be very wrong to evade.
C.C.: Absolutely!
A.C.: As for the level of reection, its true that we can now formalize
a vague schema of turning back [retour en arrire], of the genre of
those that were discussed with Changeux in our book, which begins
to resemble a genuine reection. But such a description leaves me
wanting for more in the sense that what is missing is the sort of
polarization toward a goal that is relatively badly dened while one is
76
reecting on a problem. In this sense, moreover, the distinction

between the second and the third level is quite fuzzy; we do not know
how to specify it well.
Now, in order to arrive fully at the third level, that of intuition, of
the creative imagination according to you (which, in any case, permits access to that mathematical reality independent of our proper
existence), one follows, whenever one is studying certain objects
through such an axiomatic, a kind of Ariadnes thread. It is extremely
difcult to dene, but it permits one to displace oneself into that
geography of mathematics. And I would like to try to polarize this
displacement by giving two examples of problems, enigmas, that are
my principle motivations in mathematics. The rst enigma is that of
the space in which we live, an enigma that wouldnt obviously be
disconnected from relations between mathematics and physics, [128]
since we cannot separate the perception of that space from physics
and from what it teaches us about it either. And the second enigma is,
lets say, the sequence of primary numbers, those which subtend
arithmetics, the numbers, this whole system constantly present to
our eyes whenever we reect on arithmetic, and even on simple
things. Now, we perceive something truly surprising when we
venture out sufciently far in the elucidation of these two mysteries:
they have an enormous amount of common points; the concepts
developed for one are applicable to the other, etc.; and, in the end, we
cannot really disjoin the perception that we have of the physical
world from this research on the enigmas. Thus, we arriveat least
I arrive (perhaps I am an extremist?)at this certainty: mathematical
reality is the only reality that is precisely, correctly dened. And we
arrive at this challenge, essential for me: to comprehend in what sense
physical reality aligns itself with, species itself within mathematical
reality.
C.C.: I am almost entirely in agreement with you, even if my
agreement or disagreement is of no great interest. Above all, I was
very happy that, by mentioning these two enigmas, you put your
nger on questions that have always lled me with admiration and
fascination as well; we will come back to them. Beforehand, let me
add something about your rst stage of calculation, which is not rst
in time, for that matter, but is logically anterior, if I may speak so. It is
77
always necessary to go back to this stage. That is, a mathematician has

a brilliant intuition. He tries, [129] or others try, to put it on paper. If
it then contradicts well-established things, and the contradiction
stems from the rst level (something is A or is not-A, is the contradictory of A), then, well, the brilliant intuition falls. There are quite a
few examples in the history of mathematics.
A.C.: It is exactly that. And one could compare the period of
calculation, of verication, almost of demonstration to the work of
the experimenter who, so to speak, goes back to his drawing board.
One can have an idea, and this is what replaces experience in
mathematics.
C.C.: Absolutely.
KATHARINA VON BULOW: Thats why a book of philosophy, despite the
base intuition, needs a thousand pages to explain the idea at the
origin.
A.C.: Most of all, there is a need to return to an experimentation;
and, in mathematics, this experimentation is the proof, the
demonstration.
C.C.: Yes. With this difference, that in philosophy we do not have
rigorous demonstrations. We cannot reduce what we say to a small
group of axioms from which we deduce the rest. We do not have a
direct reference to experience. Philosophy works under the constraint
of experience, but, then, its a question of the constraint of human
experience in its totality. And we precisely do not have that hardness,
that [130] crystalline character, which is what is proper to mathematics. That is the enormous difference.
But lets return to our question and to your three stages. I myself
also believe that it is not possible to totally separate reection from
intuition (for you) or from imagination (for me). Let me explain. Lets
suppose that we integrate into a machine what you very correctly call
a function of evaluation, which, as a function in the vulgar sense (for
example, the respiratory function), will permit the machine little by
little, as it effectuates calculations, to see if it approaches a goal or not,
a goal dened in advance, since the machine would not know, itself,
how to set it. But this function of evaluation, if it is itself able to be
78
rendered as an algorithm, will be capable of operating only upon

possibilities dened in advance.
A.C.: Absolutely.
C.C.: Whereas the genuine work of reection is indissociable from
imaginary creation, in the sense that during this work one can make
surface criteria for choices, for example, or other elements that were
not given in advance.
A.C.: I agree, entirely.
C.C.: On the other hand, of course, and for the same reason, at the
moment of such a work of machinal evaluation, one can never see
in it the meaning, as you say, or the fecundity, as I would say. The
meaning is, here again, a contribution of the imagination, without
which the invention [131] of a demonstrative method would lose an
enormous portion of its criteria. Lets take the example of one of the
great methods of demonstration, already there in Euclid and
Archimedes, the method of exhaustion,3 which is the foundation of
an enormous number of things in modern mathematics, in the theory
of limits. . . . What does it allow me to do? To approach as closely as I
can, and to ideally exhaust, that which remains. It was, of course,
invented in the beginning for a precise application, but they realized
at some point in time that it had a fecundity that transcended by far
the objects for whose functioning it was constructed. And, here again,
the imagination is necessary.
A.C.: Absolutely. This method is, furthermore, a very good example,
because in it we see clearly what differentiates the mathematician
from a computer. Exhaustion will give him access to the innite, carry
him to the limit. Thus, despite an innite number of operations, he
will be able, in his mind, to imagine the number , while the computer, it . . .
C.C.: . . . will produce decimals.
A.C.: Thats it; it will accumulate the operations but will never have
that direct access. And that is what is entirely remarkable in mathematics. It gives man an access to the innite, thats to say, an access
beyond a number of nite operations. Lets take up the same problem
79
through another point. [132] In mathematics, things that are quite

paradoxical occur often: thus, in order to study entirely nite groups,
we use tools that were conceived in order to study innite groups,
which one calls Lie groups, which are in fact a lot simpler to analyze
than nite groups because their structure, subtended by the continuum, permits using algebraic means. Thus, pose for yourself a
very present philosophical problem: is the universe that surrounds
us, our mind, etc. a priori nite, a priori limited by nitude? Or, as I
hope, does there exist in a certain manner, beyond the nite, beyond
the real, the tangible, and the material, a reality that one can call
mathematical (but the denomination matters little), the characteristic of which is precisely the innite? It would exercise an attraction
upon us, like a calling, in order to give us access, despite our human
condition, to something that has to do with a certain eternity, a
certain atemporality, a certain independence from space, from the
point of space in which one exists.
C.C.: By the way, this passage already obtains at the level of the simple
living being, which, curiously, utilizes mathematics, utilizes the results
of it: when a dog pursues a rabbit, it solves a differential equation. . . .
A.C.: It does not solve it; it seeks a solution. . . . .
C.C.: Yes, it applies a solution for the equation, which is called the
pursuit curve, but it does not know it; it does it like that. . . . [133]
A.C.: I will take another example. Whenever we do an addition, we
use retention. And retention, it is what mathematicians call a co-cycle
number. . . .4 But, of course, a good knowledge of the terminology
will not help us make correct additions!
C.C.: Of course. Therefore, it is not the living being in general but
the specicity of the mind or of the human psyche and, in particular,
the enormous innovation in the order of being constituted by the
imagination and the imaginary. I believe this is entirely essential.
But, to return to the two enigmas about which you spoke, I myself
also appreciated and worked through the enormous problems that
space poses, Zenos paradoxes, which have lost none of their
relevance, the question of the discrete and the continuous,5 the
approach to the continuum through the discrete. . . . And, here, we
80
are bordering on contemporary physics, with the quantication of

space. . . . As for the primary numbers, one of the things that excited
me the most during my brief studies of mathematics (at my adult
age, alas!) was noticing that a foundational theorem, and even
practically all of the theorems concerning the true arithmetic of the
prime numbers (that is, the numbers that have no other divisor than
themselves and one), utilizes analysis, the chapter of mathematics
that concerns itself with limits and continuity. And [134] they
demonstrate, for example, that the frequency of primary numbers
within the set of natural numbers diminishes following a logarithmic function that has nothing to do with arithmetic, of course. But
these demonstrations, those of Hadamard and La Valle-Poussin, are
replete with integrals! One thus gets the impressionI do not like
this word but, well, I will use it in order to move quicklyof a
certain transcendence of the object of mathematics, because one
begins with the primary numbers, one opens a completely different
chapter of analysis, and with it, by another path, one arrives back at
results concerning the primary numbers. A bit like little Marcel who
takes a walk with his parents in Combray. The path seems long, he
does not recognize the countryside anymore, he feels lost, and, then,
in the midst of a byway that seems to him to be the end of the world,
suddenly there he is in front of the little door at the back of the
yard of his home. . . .6
A.C.: Later, thanks to Atle Selberg, there was an elementary demonstration of that theorem concerning the frequency of the primary
numbers. From a somewhat naive point of view, one could say that
the primary numbers play somewhat the same role as the elementary
particles in physics. That is, in fact, these are the elementary components of the whole numbers from the perspective of multiplication.
The starting point of the theory we owe to Euler is that if one forms a
series of the powers of the whole numbers, [135] one obtains a function that factors into products of terms indexed by the primary
numbers.
C.C.: Happily, for physicists, the number of the elementary particles is
nite, at least they believe. I do not know what they would do with
an innite number of elementary particles; doubtless, they would be
obliged to change methods!
81
A.C.: In fact, they are already confronted with this problem. The
diverse categories of elementary particles are of a nite number, but if
one looks at their possible states, those are of an innite number.
C.C.: That is true. Now, there is a bifurcation that immediately appears
here, since you spoke about physics, which opens two paths. A rst
one, which I would like to eliminate immediately, is that of reductionism. It begins from an observation of evidence: our brain, with
which we do mathematics, among other things, is a physical object
and, in particular, a living object, a biological object. And here is
where the biologists come in to afrm: mathematics is in the brain,
end of story. But, as for me, I do not manage to comprehend how the
innite is within the brain! The innite is precisely an ideality created
by the human imagination, for the functioning of which the brain is
a necessary condition, but by no means sufcient. And we too often
forget that distinction.
The other path leads to what an American physicist, Wigner, has
called the [136] unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics when
one applies it to he real world.7 An enormous problem! In your book
with Changeux, you make a very important remark to which I adhere
entirely, to the effect that physics is not reducible to mathematics.
Likewise, mathematics is not reducible to physics. There are whole
branches of mathematics . . .
A.C.: Of course, like arithmetics, for example . . .
C.C.: . . . yes which do not have physical reality, including the
primary numbers of course, but also the space of innite dimension. . . .
They become tools but do not have physical reality. Thus, there is, in
mathematical language, a non-empty intersection between the physical universe and the mathematical universe; there is a part wherein
they cross over, and within that part, the effectiveness of mathematics
is really diabolical. And, then, there is a part of physics (perhaps it is
the most essential part, in a sense) which is outside of the rest, just as
there is a part of mathematics which is also outside of the rest and is
just as essential. And this is, in my eyes, a very strong argument
against all reductionisms.
A.C.: Absolutely. Moreover, with respect to the human brain, the
materialist point of view is very limited, not only because, of course,
82
the brain is a material, nite object, but, above all, because it purports
to comprehend what matter is, because it is [137] mistaken and shams
us. Certainly, as long as one takes interest in biological phenomena at
the level of the molecule, one can, in effect, have an approximately
valid idea of what one is dealing with. But as soon as one changes
levels in order to be concerned with the elementary particles of quantum mechanics, this very notion of matter, of the material world,
becomes evanescent. Nevertheless, this really is the essential question
that is necessary for us to face: what is external reality? And one can
take the same argument that localizes mathematics in the brain,
paraphrase it for external reality, and end up at exactly the same
conclusion, which is that external reality exists only in the brain. That
hardly advances us.
For me, external realityeverything that is outside of usis essentially, and rst, an inexhaustible source of information and, secondly,
something not able to be bypassed [quelque chose dincontournable], in
a certain way. Yet, mathematical realitywhen one is talking about
the primary numbers, the innity of primary numbershas exactly
the characteristics of being a source of information that is, on the one
hand, unpredictable, unfailing, and, on the other hand, not able to be
bypassed, inevitable. Such is the primary experience that one gets
with mathematics; it is impossible both to capture it all at once and to
bypass the bulk of information that it represents. If someone, one day,
comes along with a very powerful computer and says, I produced the
greatest primary number, we know that he is mistaken because we
have the demonstration of the innitude of primary numbers. [138]
C.C.: Which is, moreover, an admirable demonstration already present in Euclid, and which a normally intelligent, ten-year-old child
must be able to comprehend.
A.C.: But which absolutely would not work on a computer, since you
take the numbers, you take the product of all the preceding numbers,
and you tag on one; and it is something absolutely impossible to do
with a machine. But thats how it is: mathematics is a reality that is
truly unable to be bypassed, perfectly well-dened, and an inexhaustible source of information. While external reality, even in a somewhat
intuitive sense of the material world that surrounds us, is something
that is much more difcult to dene and perceive. Because, whatever
83
be the progress of physics, we are only ever disposed of models of the

external world. In order to apprehend space, for example, a child has,
up to the age of one, one and a half, a sort of archaic model of the
external world that permits him to move around, to not fall in a hole.
He will rene this model, ameliorate it through the course of his
existence, but it will only ever remain a model. And while, just before,
we were talking about the problem of the discrete and the continuous, this shows once again that we perceive the material world that
surrounds us in an intuitive way, without being able to approach it
otherwise than step by step, and by models, which are obviously
mathematical models.
K.v.B.: I would like to return to the pretension of the materialists to
localize mathematics in the brain. . . . [139]
A.C.: But we are not denying that they are present in the brain; we
deny that it is their only site of existence. . . .
K.v.B.: I know that both of you rebut this materialist reduction
and that my question is somewhat provocative. I will pose it again
differently. The body is material. It contains biologically, physically a
mind (I am thinking of Varelas book, The Embodied Mind) that makes
use, unbeknown to itself, of the innite possibilities of mathematics,
of biology, of the human sciences, of philosophy, for example. But, in
fact, everything is already there, and it is only necessary to repeat the
same research without ever coming to an end. What do you think?
C.C.: A coherent materialist or rationalist or determinist thesis should
afrm that everything was already there, not only in the human
mind, but from the big bang. All the mathematical theorems were
virtually there, but also Bachs St. Matthew Passion or Manets Olympia.
In one sense, this thesis is irrefutable, but, at the same time, it is what
Plato would have called an abyss of idle chatter. It has no
meaning.
A.C.: I believe that we cannot discuss this problem of materialism
without coming back to the question of time. One of the reasons for
the virulence of the materialist is Darwinism and its supposed explicative power. But there is, here, an enormous deception, because this
explicative power [140] exists only to the extent that one comprehends
84
the passage of time. Just a few words on this. In contemporary physics, we make time one of the coordinates of space-time, and we thus
believe we understand what it is. But, in fact, there is a total illusion
here. Physics does not explain and never says why time passes, why
time ows. It is a coordinate, but the coordinates of space do not ow.
Time, it ows. For as long as we have not reected in a sufciently
precise way on this owing of time, the Darwinian explanation will
remain a vicious circle. Species disappear because time passes; but
why does time pass? What does this passage of time signify? What
does our perception of this passage signify?
On this essential problem of the relations between the physical
world, the material world, and this access to the innite, this space of
transcendence that makes for the originality of the human soul,
I admit that I have a rather radical view. I trust only in things that
exist independently of time, in order thus to assign to the sole mathematical reality this independence, this atemporality. This allows us to
ensure its existence independently of our comprehension of the owing of time. And I place in it the founding stone upon which to construct my conception of reality. Now, take the question of integration
with the interior of the reality of the physical universe that we know
about, that of the big bang, of the temporality that characterizes us
and that characterizes the universe we live in. And by working on this
problem, by discussing it with physicists [141], I ended up more or
less at the conclusion that the owing of time has nothing to do with
a coordinate in space-time, has nothing to do with this somewhat
naive model that we have of space-time and of physics, but, in fact, it
had something to do with thermodynamics. In a paradoxical, provocative way, I will say that if time passes, it is because we are bathing
in 3 Kelvin rays, this fossil ray that stems from the big bang. For me,
time passes because we are incapable of experiencing [connatre] the
microscopic distributions of what is happening in the universe that
surrounds us, and because this lack of information, this kind of macroscopic perception that we have of it, makes it such that gradually
our body is destroyed, our genetic precision erodes. And in order to
struggle against it, we are disposed of only this discrete phenomenon,
which is the transmission of life, the transmission to other generations of this sort of bible contained in our genetic information, which,
because it is discrete and rigid, will be very difcult to diminish and,
85
on the contrary, will be able to ght and thrive against this owing of
time about which we can do nothing because it is due to destruction,
to friction, and to our incapacity to experience [connatre] all the
details of the microscopic world that surrounds us.
C.C.: I would like to come back to some of the subjects that you just
mentioned and, rst, to what you said about Darwin and Darwinism,
which is entirely correct but insufcient. The core of the question is
that there is no Darwinian explanation [142], there is only a grandiose tautology: survival only to those that are suitable for survivable.
A.C.: But we agree!
C.C.: Now, the essential question is twofold: rst, why are there
different living beings? Secondly, and above all, why do these differences go in the direction of a growing complexication of the living
being? Here, Darwin had no response. He relied upon examples that
had very little value: variations within a species, etc. Then, with mutations, they found not a response, but a stone that was missing for
making the fact of evolution comprehensible: there is evolution
because there is mutation. But these mutations are aleatory, come
about by chance, and the enigma reappears: how is it that aleatory
mutations so oftennot always because some of them that are deadly
and impair the being that carries themproduce coherent forms,
capable of living and even of being the seat of new mutations that will
lead further along on the scale of complexity? On this issue, modern
neo-Darwinism has no response in my view. They speak, here again,
of the aleatory, but in my mind this aleatorynot the trivial aleatory
of the dice throw or of the card one pullsis a pseudonym that deterministic and positivistic scientists give to the fact of creation. Because
its an either/or: either something is a production starting from what
exists, and one can explain it, say how it was manufactured, or it is
not. And determinism calls aleatory that which it cannot explain, that
is to say, the fact of creation.
A.C.: We are entirely in agreement here.
C.C.: And there is the growing complexication, about which
Stephen Jay Gould tried to give an explanation. It starts with a zerocomplexity. A rst living form appears, which obviously cannot come
86
from this side of zero. If, thus, it goes somewhere, it will be toward
complexity, and after a million years there will be very complex
forms. . . . But thermodynamics does not authorize such a reasoning,
which teaches us that there are many chances for these forms to lose
complexity rather than to continue to become more complex. What
they do not see here is that life is a creation, and a permanent
creation of new forms, and that the human species is such a creation
with that which characterizes it in particular, namely, the creative
imagination.
Before coming to the famous question of the universality of mathematics, just a word on what Alain Connes said about time just now.
I do not believe that thermodynamics can explain time to us. The
great problem that it faces up to is obviously the arrow of time, why
there is before and after, why it ows. But, here again, it is necessary
to distinguish two times.
A.C.: Absolutely. [144]
C.C.: There is a time that I will call ensemblist-identitarian, or
algorithmic, for which thermodynamics is valuable. But if this time
were alone, there would have been several initial forms that would
have degraded themselves at the end of about fteen million years.
Yet, what we observe is that there is always the emergence of new
forms. There is thus another time, which is not the simple time of
deterioration but the time of creation, that I call poetic time, because
poiesis means creation. And the true before/after is marked under this.
Do you agree?
A.C.: Entirely. Certainly, this would necessitate a lot more explanation, but lets say that I was speaking here of the owing of time in the
naive sense of the term. And it is quite evident that it would be necessary to make the distinction between at least three or four forms of
time. . . .
K.v.B.: If one reads the absolutely superb pages of St. Augustine or
other great philosophers on time, one observes that what gave them
the greatest fear is the time that ows, deterioration, death, forgetting. . . .
A.C. & C.C.: Obviously, thats the big issue!
87
K.v.B.: Now, Christianity, through the intermediary of Christ and of

St. Paul, very astutely introduced the concept of a cessation of time, a
redemption of time. For all eternity, it has already arrived and is
already redeemed, for all Christians. And you also speak of eternity
and [145] of the innite. Whence comes my question: the sciences,
and above all mathematics, are they not a language that simultaneously opens up the innite and leaves traces such that man can
imagine himself to be eternal . . .?
C.C.: By no means; there is an enormous logical leap there.
A.C.: Of course, and the difference is that, all while knowing very
well that one is not eternal, this owing of time prevents us from
conceiving our being as independent of time. For me, the ideal would
be to have a consciousness of ones own existence, of ones birth up to
the present moment, that would be identical to that which we have
as limited, physical being living in space. The fact that our arms have
such a length has never bothered us. The limited size of our body in
space leaves us perfectly indifferent. But the limitation of the
dimension of our being in time obviously anguishes us. And the
reason for which it anguishes us is that we impotently witness this
owing of time, without being really capable of perceiving ourselves,
of perceiving our totality, independently of time. Now, I think that
one can have experiences that run counter to this, in particular
through the practice of mathematics. Because the objects that one
deals with there, to which one has access, have precisely this character of atemporality, of independence with respect to space and time,
which makes it such that the perception that one has allows access to
something eternal. This does not signify that the person who goes
through such an experience is [146] eternal, of course; it can simply
shine over the whole life of an individual, thicken the present instant
in both directions, simultaneously in the past and in the future. This
is, for me, the essential counterpart to the fact that mathematics is
precisely not a physical object, is not localizable in the physical
world.
C.C.: Thats entirely fair. And one can remark, with respect to
what Katharina said, that Christianity in particularbut also the
majority of religions, nearly allinvented this amazing quirk in
88
order to respond to this anguish of death. There is an eternity somewhere, elsewhere, and in this eternity we personally participate. And
there is an innite, which is not only like the innite number of innities in mathematics, but which is a person, who is good, who loves
us, etc. And it was for centuries that this worked.
As for this experience of eternity, of atemporality, mathematics opens
it up for us, for sure, but so do great works of art, for example. Once
again, the St. Matthew Passion was created in Leipzig, in such and such a
year, by an individual who had 20 children. . . . But all of that is totally
non-pertinent to the meaning and the musical content of the St.
Matthew Passion. Man creates and has access to a world of idealitiesof
the imperceptible, certainlywhich are nevertheless immanent, and
which he manages to let into his proper world. Mathematics is an
excellent manifestation of it, but so is art and even great thinking.
[147]
Just one more word on matter, about which you were very correctly
saying that it became evanescent with modern physics. But there is
more: the categories themselves of our ordinary perception became
evanescent with it, for example, the separability in quanta, or
identity. And I am not talking about causality. Physics thus makes us
discover strata of being that are different from the habitual stratum
in which we live, and this is one of the reasons for the fascination
that it exerts.
Last point before coming to the question of intemporality. I was
very happy to observe our agreement on that. One does not work on
mathematics solely with ones brain in the trivial sense. The psyche,
the human soul, can do nothing if there is not simultaneously
representation, desire, or affect. One does mathematics because one
desires to do mathematics and because doing mathematics procures
pleasure.
A.C.: Absolutely. And also because one is attracted by a mystery. . . .
C.C.: Yes, but this is the case with all three at once; the fascination
exerts the question of meaning. But, in the end, the whole human
being is implicated. And this remains a reason why I do not believe a
machine will ever be able to think. I do not see a machine becoming
passionate for the demonstration of the innitude of the primary
numbers. Why would that interest it?
89
Now, on the question of universality and of intemporality, or of

atemporality, how does it [148] manifest itself? First, I believe, it does
do through a fantastic permanence in the time of our creations.
Secondly, it does so through the certitude that we haveand to
which, for that matter, physics brings a sort of corroborationthat
the Pythagorean theorem is not simply valid starting from 540 years
before Jesus Christ, when Pythagoras, in Samos or in South Italy,
invented it, created the demonstration for it, but that it was already
there from the formation of the solar system . . .
A.C.: Exactly.
C.C.: . . . qua something intrinsic in the functioning of the physical
world, that, there already, the square of the hypotenuse was
equal to the sum of the two squares of the sides. Thirdly, and this is
the most important point, it does so because we know how [savons
pouvoir] to teach and to make any human being concede the mathematical truths. This is not the case with other human, cultural
creations, etc., for which it is impossible, extremely difcult. If I take
a banally intelligent primitive and bring him to the Opera to make
him listen to Tristan and Isolde, will he fall out in ecstasy? Thats not
obvious at all. In order that he understand something, that he should
have an access to that work, a very long process of accumulation
would be necessary. By contrast, I would know how to teach him,
bring him to comprehend, what . . . the Banach spaces8 are and make
him concede them. That seems to me to be obvious and capital. And
[149] that is also why I disagree with your associate Jean-Pierre
Changeux who writes, in your book in common, that perhaps beings
on other planets have other mathematics. He does not realize the
consequences of what he is saying, because if there are other mathematics, there is also another physics . . .
A.C.: . . . and another chemistry, of course . . .
C.C.: . . . and other molecules. Thus, what we say on the earth is false,
the laws of physics are not universal, etc. That is not possible! Are you
in agreement with this distinction between an intemporality specic
to mathematics and an intemporality merely de jure, which is valid
only for some of our other creations?
90
A.C.: Entirely. I will even add that mathematics appeals, according to

me, to a sense that is different from those which one puts into action
in the other domains of human creation. Of course, one utilizes vision
as well, hearing, etc., but these senses have access to something about
which, precisely, the universality is much greater, much stronger,
much more communicable.
K.v.B.: It is certainly going to be necessary to stop . . .
C.C.: One last point, since we have already passed beyond our limits.
. . . To come back the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics,
their applicability to [150] physics, I will formulate the thing thusly,
by soliciting one last time the opinion of Alain Connes, because it is
my ontological thesis. There is, in being in general, a dimension that
is, as one says in mathematics, everywhere dense, everywhere
present, which falls under what I call ensemblist-identitarian logic,
that is, a part of mathematics.
A.C.: Absolutely. And that part of mathematics is present even in
language.
C.C.: Of course, in language, in human creations, in a poem as well,
in a fugue by Bach, in Tristan and Isolde, in a painting, everywhere,
and in particles, etc. But that it is everywhere does not mean that it
exhausts being. And to the extent that it does not exhaust being, it
does not exhaust physical existence, nor human existence, nor
mathematical creation itself. That is the reason for which there is this
intersection, this extremely important partial crossing-over between
the physical world and the mathematical world.
A.C.: I believe that I am entirely in agreement with that.
NOTES
1
Changeux, J.-P. and Connes, A., Conversations on Mind, Matter, and

Mathematics, trans. M. B. DeBevoise. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1998.
The French title is Matire penser, or matter for thinking. TR
91
3
4
5
92
That is, through more and more precise approximations.

This is said of points situated on the same circle.
Cf. Castoriadis, C., Remarks on Space and Number, in Figures of
the Thinkable, trans. Helen Arnold. Stanford, CA: Stanford
Proust, M., Remembrance of Things Past, Volume 1, trans. C. K. Scott
Moncrieff. Ware: Wadsworth Editions, 2006.
Wigner, E., The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the
Natural Sciences, in Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics
13 (1), 1960, pp. 114. TR
Banuch spaces are the objects studied by functional analysis and
are named after the founder of that discipline, Polish mathematician
Stephan Banach (18921945). TR
CHAPTER SIX
Breaking the Closure

Cornelius Castoriadis in Dialogue with Robert Legros
The discussion between Cornelius Castoriadis and Robert Legros reproduced

here took place in March of 1990, within the framework of the broadcast
Rejoinders on France Culture, hosted by Alain Finkielkraut. We thank the
latter for having kindly authorized for publication the re-transcription of this
interview.1
ALAIN FINKIELKRAUT: We will start off with an expression from
Castoriadis that one nds as a leitmotif in Robert Legros book The Idea
of Humanity.2 Up until the Greeks, writes Castoriadis in his book
entitled Domains of Man, and outside of the Greco-Western tradition,
societies were instituted according to the principle of a strict closure.3
What does this expression mean? What is this principle of a strict
closure? And if the Greeks made themselves capable of breaking the
closure in accordance with which the majority of societies have instituted themselves, what is the meaning, for us, of this grand inaugural
gesture?
CORNELIUS CASTORIADIS: There is one thing that we have to establish
rst. In nearly all of the cultures that we know of, it is not merely that
what is valid for each one is its institutions and its own tradition, but,
in addition, for each, the others are not valid. The rupture of closure,
the breaking of closure, begins when the rst Greek philosophers, or
the geographers, or the historians realized that what regulates Greek
93
societies and other societies does not belong to the nature of thingsto
a physisbut to a nomos, which is to say to an institution, convention,
social law. This yields histories, for example in Herodotus, that
ridicule the customs of the Greeks by depicting the king of the
Persians who displays to the Greeks the [274] funeral customs of the
Indians and to the Indians the customs of the Greeks. For each of
these two peoples, the customs of the others are a pure and simple
abomination. But the break also, and above all, takes form starting
from the moment when the philosophers began to demolish the
mythological traditions and to search for a principle of truth and of
reection within their own activity of thinking. And also, this break
immediately extends itself into the sphere of politics with democracy,
the question of the law, the question of justice. Certainly, the putting
into question of the law as falling under physis remainsin particular
in the plane of politicslimited in Greece (with slavery, the status of
women, etc). But it was reborn in modern times. It is not at all a copy.
It is something else. It is a new departure that enacts itself in Europe,
which, starting from a certain moment, is reinspired by the Greeks.
It culminates there, as we know, in the Enlightenment, with the
French Revolution, simultaneously with the will for a self-institution
of society (we make our laws) and for an autonomy of human reection, of knowledge. Religion is a private affair; the Scriptures contain,
perhaps, a revelation or do not contain it, but even this revelation
must pass through the lter of reason. This is already Descartes trying
to demonstrate the existence of God, it is Kant, etc. Yet it continued,
lasting for a certain amount of time. The question that is being
posed today is this one: the rise of another tendency, which is very
important, which manifests itself in modern timesthis is the tendency toward the rational mastery of the world and, in particular, the
placing of the economy at the center of everything, the expansion of
productive forces (it is in this sense that Marx participated in the
capitalist universe), and something that is translated to the level of
concrete individuals (who cannot each be a capitalist or an entrepreneur) as a ight behind a purportedly ever more elevated level of
lifeto what extent is the development of this tendency in the process of eliminating the value of autonomy?
What I mean to say, here, is that we were wrong, lately, to speak
of individualism or of narcissism. Individualism [275] is an empty
94
BREAKING THE CLOSURE
formulation behind which there is a content. Individuals do not valorize the individual as individual; they valorize a content, and this
content is a certain life of that individual. And this life is what we are
accustomed to call the society of consumption.
A.F.: Robert Legros, what is the meaning for you of this formulation
about the rupture of closure?
ROBERT LEGROS: If you will, I will begin with what Cornelius Castoriadis just said by saying that, in our modernity, there are, at bottom,
two antagonistic projects: on the one hand, the project of autonomy,
and, on the other hand, the project of mastery linked to the idea of
individualism. Yet, it seems to me, for my part (and this is a disputed
subject that could incite a discussion) that these two projects are not
so independent; and the search for autonomy can be (I am not saying
must be) at the origin of this society of consumptions search for mastery. But to introduce this debate, Ill go back, thus, to the expression
the rupture of closure, since my book, in effect, claims to be a reection on the meaning of this rupture. The question is: in what sense is
there a rupture? Let us immediately highlight that if there should not
have been the possibility of rupture, what we do as philosophers, our
very interrogation would lose all meaning. To introduce this question,
I would like to begin in the way that Kant presents the problem,
which brings us back to asking about the way the problem is presented in the Enlightenment.4 Kant says this to us: manand it is this
denition which is expressed, in his eyes, by the Enlightenmentis
naturally superior. Which signies that he is originally autonomous,
or, to retrieve an expression of Fichte, only man is originally nothing. Which means that man is a being who does not have a nature,
who, on the one hand, is not destined to imitate an ideal nature and
who, on the other hand, is not reducible to immediate inclinations
[276] that would be natural. And it is precisely because he is nothing,
because he has no nature, that he is autonomous. This is, Kant tells
us, what man originally is: he is naturally superior, thus autonomous by nature, thus naturally without nature. But, Kant adds as
well, throughout human history, man believed that he was not
superior, that he was inferior, which is to say, in sum, that throughout
history, man accepted the principle of heteronomy rather than that of
autonomy. And, in addition, throughout history, men basked in a
95
certain state of inferiority, and this state of inferiority, says Kant, has
thus become almost a nature, which signies, basically (which
rejoins a theme often developed by Castoriadis), that the principle of
heteronomy naturalizes attitudes. It naturalizes attitudes rst in the
sense that it makes them (nearly) spontaneously inferior, submissive.
It is through a certain spontaneity that individuals come to submit
themselves, and thus the attitude is natural (or naturalized) in the
sense that it has something spontaneous. The principle of heteronomy equally naturalizes attitudes in the sense that the principles
that command the attitudes are outside of what could be decided
upon by them, that they pertain to physis. Norms are not decided by
us, they are transcendent, pertain to physis and not to nomos. And,
nally, the attitude is naturalized to the extent that the meaning of
things appears as natural, familiar; it is self-evident. What does Kant
draw as a conclusion? He draws as a conclusion that since man is
nothing by nature, naturalization is an illusion and that, as a consequence, that which pertains to the properly human is the extraction
from naturalization. What interested me is the objection that the
romantics make to this idea from Kant. This seems to me quite strong.
It consists in saying, if man is nothing by nature, one thus cannot
even say that autonomy is original. What is necessary to say is that
naturalization is original, meaning that man becomes human through
his inscription in a particular humanity, which has its norms, which
has its practices [usages], which has its customs. In other words, [277]
man is rst of all naturalized and it is thanks to this naturalization that
he has an opportunity to be human, that is, to singularize himself, to
autonomize himself, to invent himself.
The argument seems strong to me, but the conclusion drawn by
the romantics from this argument seems to me to be false. If naturalization is original, say the romantics, then (here is the conclusion that is abusively drawn in my eyes) the extraction from
nature is a dehumanization. This means that the fact of wanting to
autonomize oneself, of wanting to make oneself independent of the
tradition, culminates in an abstract humanism, in a humanism that
dehumanizes, in the end, since abstract man is no longer anything.
How would abstracted man (from all tradition, from all culture) be
something if man is nothing by nature? And if abstract man is
nothing, has nothing human left, mustnt we understand that the
96
profound meaning of the human is to insert oneself in a tradition, in

a culture?
C.C.: That is the fallacy . . .
R.L.: That is, without doubt, the fallacy; but the difculty arrives, it
seems to me, in that it is supported by an argument that is very strong:
if abstract man is an empty universality, how would there not be the
threat of a dehumanization in the universalist project, in the extraction from concrete particulars?
C.C.: The argument is very strong, and it has been misunderstood by
the entire rationalist current in the history of philosophy. The human
being becomes a human being in socializing himself, and there is no
society in the abstract; there is a concrete sociality. And if we inspect
the history of humanity we see that we are little Western provincials.
Everybody among us, whether it be the French person or the
American [278] of today, believes that it is self-evident that no one
can stop him, that he is free, that he has rights, etc. All of that is by
no means self-evident and is only true for a little period of history
and for a little extension of geography. Most of the time, societies
have lived in heteronomy, in domination, etc., and it was within this
that men socialized themselves, which did not mean that works
moreover, very considerable oneswere prevented from being able
to be created: religions, poems, and all the rest. Only, there is a
rupture in history, and it is this that the romantics do not see. More
precisely, what the romantics do not see are two things. First, that if
one remains in their point of view, one is obligated to place all
traditions on the same footing. Any critical perspective, any political
perspective, any perspective of value [valeur] is forcibly eliminated
because all traditions are equivalent [se valent]. Moreover, this
contains an internal contradiction because no tradition would ever
accept this. Go and tell, for example, an Islamic fundamentalistor
not even a fundamentalistthat all traditions are equivalent. That is
not true, there is only his tradition which is valid . . .
A.F.: And it is there that we come back to the principle of a strict
closure . . .
C.C.: Exactly.
97
A.F.: For a tradition to function as tradition, it is necessary that it be

founded on this principle: only my tradition is valid.
C.C.: Only my tradition is valid. Yet, at this point here, we are simply
approaching the idea that this naturalization of man in a particular
tradition makescannot but makeuniversal [279] history a history
of sound and fury wherein everything is equivalent. That is the
internal contradiction. But, secondly, what the romantics misunderstand, which is in the very foundation of the possibility of their
attitude, is that starting from a certain point is born, appears, emerges
a critical point of view, a point of view that asks the question, precisely as Kant said, quid juris, what right is there in this. In fact,
religion could be admirable. There are very beautiful temples, etc. There
is social organization, wagers, why not? But if the question appears: is
this what we want, is this just, is what the Rigveda tells us true, etc.?
At this point, a point of view emerges that we cannot ignore.
We cannotand this is the error of all rationalist foundationalism,
in my opinionfound this point of view rationally, because its rational
foundation would presuppose Reason once again, and I cannot impose
Reason on Kierkegaard or Pascal if they do not want it, if they tell me
that they have their revelation. But, starting from the point where I
accept the critical point of view, the question what right is there in
this, what truth is there in this?starting from this point,
I must recognize that, in fact, men exist only in socializing themselves
in a given tradition, but that all traditions are not equivalent, and
starting from a certain point, we break or we try to break this closure.
And this is the project of autonomy.
R.L.: I agree entirely in saying that one cannot draw the conclusion
that all traditions are equivalent, the conclusion that the romantics
tend to draw. But what interests me in the argument is basically this:
if we are creations of our society, or if we are manufactured by an
institution that tends to manufacture individuals who reinforce the
norms of the institutionif things are like this, is the rupture possible? Isnt it an apparent rupture? Isnt our desire for autonomy itself
instituted by a form [280] of society? In short, how can one understand the idea of autonomy if the taste for conquering it is itself
socially, politically, historically engendered? These questions were
raised by romantic thinking, which aims at rejecting the idea of
98
individual autonomy by bringing to light the fact that the human is

the fruit and the creation of a tradition, a culture, a history. Furthermore, romantic thought does not limit itself to suggesting that individual autonomy is only ever an appearance of autonomy. It goes so
far as to maintain that the project of autonomy, to the extent that it
goes hand in hand with a denition of man as universal being (abstract
from all tradition), can lead to the threat of alienation. In a society
where the idea of human universality expresses itself, the danger can
arise that this idea ends up designating the biological universality of
man, that men are brought to dene themselves by their belonging to
a space (human space), to no longer recognize themselves as anything but consumers.
A.F.: Yes, here it seems to me that this is the essential point of your
debate with Castoriadis, because, basically, for him, there are two
projects that do not intersect: the project of the rational mastery of
the world, which opens up this society of consumption that we know
about, caught in the vertiginous cycle of manufacture, of the endless
machination of modern technology. And there is, on the other hand,
for Castoriadis, the project of autonomy, which is precisely that which
is covered over, annulled, or caricatured by the project of rational
mastery. Robert Legros, it seems to me, by contrast, that you are
taking up the argument of the romantics, all while reworking this
thinking from inside out, while pulling back from the apology for the
tradition in which it culminates. For you, in effect, these two projects
are linked. There is a relation between this desire for autonomy, this
foundation of man as an abstract being, as universal being, and the
society of consumption. This relation, the romantics, as well as
Tocqueville, tried to think (I hope that we will have the time to return
to this, because the rapprochement between Tocqueville and the
romantics, at least [281] on this point, is one of the most novel, the
most original, and the most subversive aspects of your book). Now,
I would like for us to try to go further with this divergence that places
you in opposition.
C.C.: There would be several things to say. First, I believe that the
objection that Robert Legros presents does not hold. To say that men
would have in common only being consumers does not boil down to
saying that man is reduced to the universality of his biological being,
99
because, from the biological point of view, man, like all living species,
does not seek to indenitely expand the object and the dimensions of
consumption. He would have a level of consumption that would
saturate him and then it would end. The madness of the consumption
of the modern world stems from the purest imaginary; it has nothing
natural about it, it is a historical artifact. What is more, this masks
something else, which is much more important. I do not want to get
into the question of the universality of man. But, in the end, what the
inspection of history and of ethnology reveals to us is not the universality of man qua consumer. It is the universality of man qua creator,
qua producer of imaginary identities, of religions, of signications, of
values, of norms, etc. Yet, evidently, the difculties start here because
his productions are different. The question is, where can one recognize oneself, and to what extent can this rupture of closurewhich
opened itself with Greece, which is so amplied in the Westto what
extent can this opening allow for another type of universality in
which human creativity frees itself [se dgage], and at the same time
maintain the criteria that permit it to eliminate that which, in this
creativity, can just as well surface as monstrous? For the monstrousness engendered by our creativity, this also exists. The second thing
that I would like to say is that it is incontestable that, in the modern
era (and already in the ancient era, but in another way than for the
modern era), the project of autonomy and the [282] project of an
indenite expansion of a so-called mastery have contaminated each
other. The most agrant case being that of the revolutionary movement, which, under the grip of Marxism, supposed that there was
nothing to do but realize the mastery over nature in order to hand
over autonomy to man, which is a total illusion. As for me, I think, on
the contrary, that today, that which we need is not a mastery, but a
control of this desire for mastery, a self-limitation. Autonomy means
self-limitation. We need to eliminate this madness of expansion
without limit; we need an ideal of frugal life, of a management of
the resources of the planet with due care and attention [de bons pres
de familles]. If the two projects have contaminated each other, it is
necessary to know how to begin, and this beginning is obviously
not easy. No one is proposing stopping scientic research under the
pretext that it can bring out very dangerous things; but there are,
nevertheless, very dangerous zones: the passage from research
100
to application, then to the economical application, which raises

questions, and which must be controlled by society.
R.L.: The frenzied pursuit of consumption is obviously instituted; it
has nothing natural about it. But what I would like to say is this: can
society institute itself while explicitly recognizing that it is founded on
the abyss? Put differently, is there a possible social life without
conformism? The romantics tell us: there is no social life that does not
secrete an image of what man is, a positive, apparently natural image.
And if it is so, isnt the wrenching away from all tradition going to
lead to the image of the homme consomateur? How can one grasp man
in his quotidian life if we understand ourselves only as autonomous
beings? Isnt social life led to create the image of man as consumer if
there is no rootedness in a certain tradition? The romantics claimed
this, and, in the end, did not history prove them right in part? Has it
not been since men liked to think of themselves as autonomous
subjects, [283] in the sense that this was understood historically and
socially, that they have claimed to be possessors and masters of nature,
to take up the expression of Descartes; and isnt it since then that the
society of consumption has developed itself?
A.F.: History would demand of us that we take account of the argument of the romantics since, precisely, they prophesied the reality in
which we exist.
R.L.: They in effect announced that the project of autonomy and the
project of mastery could only be contaminated with one another, to
take up Castoriadis expression. The same prediction is found in
Tocqueville, who is not, however, a romantic. The more that leveling
out [egalization] will be achieved, the more the desire for autonomy
will spread and, simultaneously, the greater will be the threat of a
generalized submission to the passion for well-being.
C.C.: I believe, and you show this sufciently well in your book, that
Tocqueville saw precisely that there was a principle danger there. He
did not talk like this, but one could refer to it by speaking of a degeneration or of a complete attening of democracy, of an evacuation of
all true democratic content. This idea of simple desire for well-being
is entirely wedded with the somber perspectives, which Tocqueville
traces out often enough, about what he calls despotic democracy, or
101
of the emergence of a tutelary state (the term despotic democracy

does not work). He again shows the profoundness of his vision, which
was, for that matter, anticipated in a certain way 15 years before
by Constant, when he characterized moderns with a dreadful and
brilliant phrase: From political life, the ancients asked for freedom;
we ask of the State only the guarantee of our pleasures.5 This is the
contemporary French person. All that he asks of society and of the
State is the guarantee of his pleasures; he asks for nothing else. Which
pleasures, thats another story. . . . [284]
I would like to say one more thing about the rupture of closure.
It does not mean the detachment from all tradition but the establishment of another relation to the tradition. Tradition, as it is in a truly
traditional society, when it is considered valid without any contest,
signies very precisely that the question of the legitimacy of the tradition will not be posed. As they say in tribunals, it is forbidden to pose
it. End of story; thats all. Yet, for us, precisely, the question posed is
that of another relation with the tradition; and this other relation
was sketched in Greece. If you consider the way in which the tragic
writers treated mythology, there is a different relation to tradition.
They do not content themselves with repeating; each interprets the
myths, gives it a content completely different. When the moderns
come along, they take back medieval tradition, they take up the
tradition of Faust, if you will, but they also create a new relation to
them. And for us, the problem is precisely one of establishing another
relation with our tradition and the tradition of humanity in general.
In a traditional society, this relation is one of blind obedience. In contemporary society, it is the museum-touristic relation. You spend a
half-hour on the Parthenon, you wait in line for forty-ve minutes in
front of Muse dOrsay and, there it is, youve done some historical
tourism; thats the relation to the tradition. But there are much more
profound things in our past which can nourish us and provide us
with a horizon. The only common thing that we have would be to be
consumers. No, its our participation in this human history to which
we owe nearly all of what we are, to which we also owe this capacity
for breaking the closure, which none of us herenot Immanuel Kant
himselfwould be capable of causing to emerge from himself, if he
were born in the Dahomey in the twentieth century. We owe this
capacity to history. We must therefore maintain it. We have an
102
historical debt and we pay this debt through pushing further along
this tradition of freedom, this exigency of freedom, through transmitting it to new generations. [285]
A.F.: Before Robert Legros responds, I will provide you with several
impressions concerning the relation that we have today with the
tradition and with creation. What strikes me is that the richness of the
heritage [patrimoine] and the vitality of contemporary art are gloried
from now on in the language of consumption. I am thinking here of
an edition of the Nouvel Observateur, which celebrates what it calls the
the feast of culture. To speak of culture, its proliferation, its variety,
and the taste of the public for it, they are speaking spontaneously in
culinary terms. Everything is eaten today, even culture. The society of
consumption knows no limit. The highest and the most rewarding
activities are brought down to the pleasure of feeding oneself.
R.L.: Isnt it here alone that man understand himself as universal and
abstract being who can establish a museum-touristic relation to the
tradition and a relation of consumption with tradition? To throw the
question back out, we could return to Kant and start, this time, no
longer from the text on the Aufklrung but from what Kant calls
genius. Because what Kant calls genius is no longer the subject in the
sense of the conscious and voluntary subject but a being that is
transcended by what it does. It is at once transcended by the meaning
of what it elaborates and overwhelmed by the questions that arise
from what it creates. The artist creates and is even so much the
creator that he does not himself will the origin of what he does. He
wants to give expression to something that transcends him. This could
lead one to think that it is not because we have knowledge that we
are in a society that self-institutes itself, it is not because we would
have this knowledge that we would be more creative [plus createur].
Doesnt creation (or, lets say, in order to generalize, invention, the
faculty to start off, to singularize oneself, to render oneself autonomous) go hand in hand with a certain absence of lucidity? Doesnt
the greatest lucidity, namely that we know ourselves creators of our
norms, go hand in hand with a certain sterility? Isnt there the danger
in contemporary art of producing only to express creation? The art of
a traditional society is [286] certainly a lot less lucid since it does not
recognize itself as art and believes that applied norms are norms that
103
result from physis and have nothing to do with nomos. But wasnt it
sometimes more inventive than an art that claims to be entirely lucid
with respect to its own origin?
C.C.: You are posing very important and complex questions. There is,
notably, the question of contemporary art or alleged contemporary
art, which must, perhaps, be set apart. But I would not say at all that
we can make general the idea that the work of geniusas Kant says,
of the great work of artnecessarily consists of an enormous portion
of non-lucidity in the habitual sense. Here, again, it is necessary to be
understood [sentendre]. It consists of an enormous share of creation
that is, of the radical imaginary, of something that arisesand at
the same time it is never a great work of art (this Kant knew very
well, everyone knows it well), if in this imagination, in this arising, a
fantastic quantity of logic and lucidity is not combined. We should not
believe that Chopin, applying himself to piano in order to improvise,
did just whatever. In his ngers, there are entire volumes of arithmetic and in his head as well. Otherwise, he would not improvise as
he improvises. It is evident. Its a separate question.
There are two questions here. I think that modern art is not a victim
of its lucidity but of its will to create the new for the new. When
I speak of self-institution, I do not at all mean [sentendre] that we
regather all the citizens every morning saying, thats it, were changing the laws because these are the laws of yesterday. . . . No, I understand simply that it is not necessary to have, each time, a revolution
in order to change the laws, whatever they are. It can be that the laws
are tacitly ratied, if not indenitely during long periods of time, quite
simply because they are good, because no one is thinking of others
that are better. Lets take the example of philosophy. Is it that, if there
is a philosopher who has original ideas, lucidity prevents him from
being original? I think this is false. I think that lucidity is an essential
ingredient so that [287] he is precisely able to get started between
what is original and what is not or simply doesnt hold. I think, therefore, that it is necessary to distinguish the domains. And it is above all
necessary to understand one thing. An autonomous society, a society
that gives itself its laws and knows that it gives itself its laws, such a
society can exist only with autonomous individuals. These are two
sides of the same coin. Without autonomous individuals there is no
104
autonomous society. That seems clear to me. What is an autonomous

individual? It is someone socialized; he has, in a certain way, internalized the institutions of society. But which institutions has he internalized? He has internalized the institutions of autonomy. He internalizes
free inquiry, as you say at the University of Brussels, free reection,
free research, and this is internalized as much as the blind obedience
to the Scriptures is internalized. This has to be learned [sapprend] as
well. There is an education in autonomythats for sureand there
is a tradition of autonomy, which must always be reexive, meaning
being able to go back on oneself. Now, beyond what I just said, there
is an enormous problem. I am not saying that, in an autonomous
society, the content of the life of everyone must be an artistic creation;
that would be madness. But these are the questions of the content
of life that an autonomous society will have to resolve for itself.
Autonomy does not sufce: we want autonomy for itself, but we also
want it in order to do things?
To do what? Everyone is not going to write The Art of Fugue; that is
obvious. And it would be perhaps terrible if everyone could create The
Art of Fugue. There is thus a question of the contents of human life
that a thinker, a philosopher, cannot get out of his head, because
these contents can only be the fact of a collective historical creation.
A.F.: Basically, to craft autonomy and not the tradition, the supreme
norm, the supreme value of society, this means to consider that the
properly human in the human is the capacity to invent, to create
something new, to think by [288] oneself. Its the phrase that Arendt
borrows from St. Augustine: Before men there was no beginning; it
is in order that there be beginning that man was created.6 An entirely
naive and doubtless hardly philosophical question poses itself:
beginning with an aim for what? One begins, one thinks by oneself,
but one can think stupidities, one can create things that are not
worth the effort. Can the denition of the properly human avoid
what Castoriadis calls substantive values?
R.L.: I do not think that we can avoid the question of substantive
values. Effectively, we cannot desire autonomy for itself. However,
we attach a price to the substantive values that we wish to defend
only to the extent that they preserve autonomy, that is, to the extent
that they preserve autonomy in the sense of the capacity to think and
105
to act by oneself, the faculty to invent and to create. In truth, I think

that the opposition between an attitude subjected to substantive
values, which renounces autonomy, and an attitude that aims only at
autonomy for itself is a false opposition. For the meaning (of our
actions, of our works, of our words, of what we undergo, the meaning
of suffering, of death, of life) is irreducible to the substantial. It is not
natural, transcendent, given, exterior, because it is always the fruit of
a creation. But it is also irreducible to the conventional; we make
decisions about it not sovereignly or arbitrarily because, in a certain
way, it decides upon us. I mean that we ourselves are what we are
due to [en raison de] our inscription in an already meaningful [sens]
world. Art shows us that the greatest creations are by no means linked
to a will to create with an aim to create. And the society of consumption shows us that a certain search for autonomy can go hand in hand
with the most lifeless conformism.
C.C.: It is necessary to repeat with the greatest possible force that the
contemporary society of 1990, the society in which we live, believes
itself to be innovative, but it is perhaps [289] one of the most conformist societies that has existed in history. The society of generalized
conformism, what one calls postmodernism, this is generalized
conformism.
Furthermore, there is an enormous problem, which is obviously the
end of religion, which is to say the fall of the veils with which men
have always covered over the brutal fact of their mortality. Everything we are saying here, which makes explicit the creation by man
(by collective men, including the contribution of individuals) of the
signications in which man lives, signies that there is no transcendence. Or, if there is transcendence, there is, for that matter, no
socially instituted representative of this transcendence. That we live
in a world that hasnt in itself any meaning; and that we cannot
live except through creating meaning. We know that in creating
meaning, it depends on us, and that in another way it does not depend
on us. Thats the abyss; thats where genius is not especially genius.
Geniusor, quite simply, the boy and the girl who are in lovebrings
about something that comes from elsewhere; that is certain. But
learning to live with this profound consciousness [conscience] of our
mortality, of the very mortality of our works and of the meaning that
106
we have been able to create, that is the prerequisite for all true
democracy. And this is why democracy is the most difcult and most
tragic regime of all.
R.L.: We are indeed aware [conscience] of the mortality of our works
and of meaning, but with the consciousness, as well, that we are not
the masters of the meaning that we make or create, with the
consciousness that we make or create meaning only through being
overcome by it and by being led to the innite questions that it
provokes.
NOTES
1
2
3
This dialogue was originally published in Cornelius Castoriadis:

Rinventer lautonomie, ed. Blaise Bachofen, Sion Elbaz, and Nicolas
Poirier. Paris: ditions du Sandre, 2008, 27389. I would like to
thank Editions du Sandre for giving us the rights for the English
translation.ED
LIde dhumanit. Paris: ditions Grasset, 1990.TR
Cf. Castoriadis, C., Domaines de lhomme. Les Carrefours du labyrinth
II. Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1986. TR
Legros is paraphrasing from Kant, I., What is enlightenment? in
Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Beck, L. W. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959. TR
Castoriadis is paraphrasing from Constant, B., The Liberty of the
ancients compared with that of the moderns, in Political Writings,
trans. Fontana Biancamaria. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988. TR
Finkielkraut is paraphrasing the citation of St. Augustine by
Hannah Arendt in Love and Saint Augustine. Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press, 1998, 55. The actual quote is: In order that there
be such a beginning, man was created, before whom nobody was.
TR
107
Selected Bibliography of Castoriadis

Books in English
Prepared by John V. Garner
Crossroads in the Labyrinth, trans. Martin H. Ryle and Kate Soper.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
The Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. Kathleen Blamey. Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1987.
Political and Social Writings, Volume 1: 19461955. From the Critique of
Bureaucracy to the Positive Content of Socialism, trans. and ed. David
Ames Curtis. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press,
1988.
Political and Social Writings, Volume 2: 19551960. From the Workers
Struggle against Bureaucracy to Revolution in the Age of Modern
Capitalism, trans. and ed. David Ames Curtis. Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press, 1988.
Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy. Essays in Political Philosophy, trans. and
ed. David Ames Curtis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Political and Social Writings, Volume 3: 19611979. Recommencing the
Revolution: From Socialism to the Autonomous Society, trans. and
ed. David Ames Curtis. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
Press, 1993.
The Castoriadis Reader, trans. and ed. David Ames Curtis. New York:
Blackwell Publishing, 1997.
108
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CASTORIADIS BOOKS IN ENGLISH
World in Fragments. Writings on Politics, Society, Psychoanalysis, and

the Imagination, trans. David Ames Curtis. Stanford, CA: Stanford
On Platos Statesman, trans. David Ames Curtis. Stanford, CA: Stanford
Figures of the Thinkable, trans. Helen Arnold. Stanford, CA: Stanford
A Society Adrift: Interviews and Debates, 19741997, trans. Helen Arnold.
New York: Fordham University Press, 2010.
109
Index
abyss xviiixix, xxii, xxxiii n37,

xxxvi n78, 37, 62, 101,
106 see also chaos
affect xvii, xx, xxiv, xxxiv n57,
63, 89 see also intention
aleatory 678, 86
algorithm 75, 79, 87
Americanization 26
Ancient Greece see Greece
ancients 39, 102, 107n5
Anstoss see shock
Archimedes 79
Arendt, Hannah 105, 107n6
Aristotle xvii, 7, 11, 14, 18n4,
19n8, 64, 66
arithmetic xxiv, 77, 812, 104
atemporality 80, 85, 8890
Atlan, Henri 67
Aufklrung see Enlightenment
Augustine, of Hippo 87, 105,
107n6
Aulagnier, Piera 45, 57n1
authority
of the analyst 50
of the Superego 51
parental 51
autonomy xxi, xvxxix, xxxvii
n91, xxxix n96, 47, 49,
52, 55, 589, 612, 72,
946, 98101, 1056
and rational mastery xvi, 94,

99
collective xxxix n96
crisis of xxviii
institutions of 105
of human reection 94
of others xxii
of the living organism 59,
612
of the psyche xx
of the social individual xxii,
55, 989
project of xvxvii, xixxx,
xxviiixxix, xxxviii n91,
95, 98101
tradition of 105
see also heteronomy, society
autopoiesis 612, 68, 70
axiom see ensemblist
identitarian dimension
Balladur, douard 2, 3n1, 5
Banach space 90, 92n8
Baudelaire, Charles 256, 33
Bible 39, 40
big bang 69, 845
biology xxiv, 36, 40, 612, 84
Bloch, Ernst 39
body 36, 62, 64, 84, 85, 88, 89
see also soul 36, 62, 64, 85, 89
111
INDEX
boundary 64, 70
brain 75, 824, 89
break xviii, xxiii, xxv, xxvi,
xxix, xxxvii n88, 40, 55,
93107 see also rupture
bureaucracy x, 12
calculation 63, 70, 768
calculus 756
capitalism xvii, 3, 9, 10, 16, 27,
29, 30, 31, 90, 94
Castoriadis, Cornelius ixxxxix,
1, 23, 223
catastrophe, theory of 69
Cerisy Colloquium 61
Changeux, Jean-Pierre 23, 72,
74, 75, 76, 82, 90
chaos xviiixx, xxii, xxxiii n37,
xxxiv n45, xxxvi n78
see also abyss
Christianity xxii, 37, 39, 53, 54,
56, 88
Churchs thesis 75
closure xii, xxii, xxv, xxix,
xxxvii n88, xxxix n93,
55, 5960, 93107
cognition xxxvii n85, 59, 625,
67
cognitive science 64
cognitivism 62
Cohn-Bendit, Daniel xxxviii
n91, 23, 24n2
communism 2, 8, 28, 31
computer 17, 61, 63, 66, 76, 79,
83 see also robot, machine
condition
necessary 69, 82
of existence xvi, 70
of possibility 68
sufcient 69, 82
112
conformism xvi, xvii, xix, 2, 9,

11, 19n6, 267, 31, 35,
101, 106
connectionism 62
Connes, Alain xiii, xxiv, 223,
7491
consciousness 40, 65, 88, 1067
of mortality 106
of others 40
of self 40, 88
Constant, Benjamin 10, 102
consumer xvii, 27, 99102
consumption xvii, 9, 27, 289,
31, 33, 95, 99103, 106
continuity 62, 81 see also
discrete, discontinuity
contradiction xxiv, xxv, 5, 66,
78, 978
cosmos xviii, xxii, 40
creation xiixv, xix, xxiii, xxiv,
xxv, xxvi, xxvii, xxxii
n16, xxxv n67, xxxvi
n80, xxxviii n91, 30,
379, 41, 469, 55,
601, 63, 679, 72, 75,
79, 867, 901, 989,
1036
artistic xxvixxvii, 489, 105
as fact 86
ex nihilo 47, 69
historical 378
in dreams 46
mathematical 67, 74, 77, 91
of new forms 87
of possible 67
psychic 45
self-creation 61
vs. production 67
see also imaginary,
imagination
INDEX
crisis
of autonomy xxviii
of education 33
of production 9, 34
of signication xii, xvii, 11,
305
of value 34
critique x, xii, xiii, xxv, xxix,
xxx, 10, 14, 31, 33, 38,
978
Darwinism 846
deconstruction xii
deduction
vs. creation 67
defunctionalization xxv
democracy xvxvii, xx, xxix,
xxxvii n89, 67, 1012,
1718, 26, 29, 31, 41, 55,
69, 94, 1012, 107
Athenian 112, 41
pseudo-democracy 67
representative 7, 10
true 7, 10, 107
Descartes, Ren 40, 94, 101
desire xxxxi, xxix, xxxiv n57,
2, 14, 1617, 19n8, 46,
49, 534, 634, 66, 71,
89, 981, 105
for autonomy 989, 100, 101,
105
determination xiii, xiv xvii,
xxiv, xxvixxvii, xxxv
n66, 7, 22, 47, 668
see also creation,
indetermination
determinism xvxvi, 45, 47, 72,
84, 86
differential equation 80
discontinuity xiii
discrete 80, 845 see also

continuity, discontinuity
Donnet, Jean-Luc xiii, 22, 23,
24n3, 447
doxa xvi, 112
drives xxi, 48, 64, 71
dynamic system 56, 64, 68
cole des Hautes tudes en
Sciences Sociales x, 45
economism 33, 94
economy x, xxx, 1213, 28,
301, 33, 94
Edelman, Gerald 36, 43n10
education xvi, 7, 10, 123,
334
ducation nationale 34
education
and democracy xvi, 7, 1213
crisis of 334
in autonomy 105
Ego x, xxi, 51, 63
see also Superego
emergence xiiixv, xxi, xxv,
xxvii, xxix, xxxvi n80,
xxxvii n80, 37, 38, 47,
59, 61, 65, 6770,
87, 102
aleatory 679
enaction 656
Enlightenment (Aufklrung) 10,
945, 103
ensemblist-identitary
dimension xxiv, xxvi,
xxxv n66, 668, 87, 91
and axioms 667, 778
ensidic see ensemblistidentitarian dimension
Euclid 79, 83
Euler, Leonhard 81
113
INDEX
evolution
of society 8, 14
of the sciences xxiii, 28
theory of 36, 38, 86
see also Darwinism
exhaustion, method of 79
Fermats theorem 63, 65
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 95
Finkielkraut, Alain 223,
2542, 93107
rst natural stratum xxiv
for-itself xxiv, 591, 89
formalization xxiv, 66, 68, 74,
76
forms
creation of new xiii, xv, xviii,
xxxii n16, xxxiii n17, 38,
42, 49, 69, 72, 75, 867
institutional 52
perpetuation of xiv
social-historical xv, 98
Foucault, Michel xvi
France 7, 9, 12, 27, 33, 345, 37
France Culture xxxi n14, 223,
93
freedom xvii, 1718, 31, 41, 44,
49, 72, 1023
French Revolution 7, 56, 94
Freud, Sigmund xxxxi, 457,
507
functionalism xi, xxiv, xxv
genius xix, 1036
global xiii, 68, 6970
see also local
globalization 30
God xii, xv, 14, 368, 401,
525, 94
Gould, Stephen Jay 86
114
Greece
Ancient x, xvxxviii, xxix,
xxxv n75, xxxviii n91,
11, 38, 39, 55, 69, 934,
100, 102
contemporary ix, 3, 25, 61, 65
Greek democracy 1112, 41
Greek resistance 5
happiness 31, 41
Hegel, G. W. F. xxii
Heidegger, Martin xii, 62
Heraclitus 45, 57n3
Herodotus 94
heteronomy xvii, xxvixxviii,
957 see also autonomy,
society
history xxviii, xxii, xxvxxx,
xxxv n75, xxxviii n91,
13, 16, 27, 369, 49, 53,
59, 64, 66, 70, 71, 72, 78,
95, 97102, 106
of humanity xxviixxviii, 97
laws of 36
of mathematics 78
of philosophy xxv, xxxv n75,
97
philosophic xxxviii n91
religion of 53
see also Thucydides
Holocaust 60
hope 389, 55
humanism 96
Husserl, Edmund 62
identitarian see ensemblistidentitarian dimension
identity xx, xxiv, 62, 89
ideology
liberal xvii, 10, 13
INDEX
Marxism as 30, 53
of progress 10, 31, 53
of pseudo-science xxxi
illusion 54, 85, 96, 100
imaginary x, xiii, xiv, xv, xvi,
xvii, xviii, xx, xxi, xxvi,
xxxvii n80, xxxviii n91,
3, 17, 458, 54, 5864,
7980, 100, 104
instituting xxvi, xxxviii n91,
59
radical xxvi, 46, 54, 67, 104
social xivxv, xviixviii,
xxxvii n80, 3, 67
imagination xiii, xv, xviixviii,
xxixxii, xxivxxvii,
xxxiv n57, xxxvi n80, 17,
45, 478, 66, 75, 7780,
82, 87, 104
creative xviii, xxvi, xxxvi
n80, 75, 77, 87
radical xiii, xxi, xxii, xxiv,
xxxiv n57, 45
immanence 53, 54, 89
indetermination xiiixiv, xxiv,
xxvixxvii, xxxv, 47
individual x, xiv, xvi, xixxxii,
xxvi, xxxix n94, 16, 27,
31, 33, 36, 37, 41, 48, 52,
53, 55, 59, 62, 88, 89,
946, 989,
1045, 106
individualism xx, 18, 26, 945
innity, of primary
numbers 823, 89
inherited thought xi, xxiii, xxvi,
34, 47
insignicance xii, xvi, xvii, 2,
56, 11, 256, 32
integral 81
intention xvii, xxiv, 63, 64

see also affect
Islam 97
Jonas, Hans 389, 42
Judaism 52
justice 41, 94
Kant, Immanuel 96, 98,
1024
Kierkegaard, Sren 98
Kuhn, Thomas xxiii
Lacan, Jacques 44, 45, 50
law xv, xxi, 13, 27, 36, 47, 51,
52, 54, 55, 90, 94, 104
Lefort, Claude ix, 3n3, 13
legein xxiv see also teukhein
Legros, Robert xxxi n14, 23,
24n4, 93107
liberalism xvi, xvi, 5, 810, 31,
35, 53
ideology of 10
neoliberalism xvii, 2, 9
libido 48, 52
Lie group 80
life xviii, xxi, xxiv, xxv, 39, 46,
53, 55, 612, 6770, 85,
87, 88, 95
cellular 61
human xv, xix, 17, 54, 88, 94,
95, 100, 105, 106
psychic xx, 46, 48, 66
life, social-political 7, 66,
1012, 105, 106
see also living being
limit 18, 38, 45, 47, 48, 57n3,
68, 79, 80, 81, 82, 88, 103
illimitation 16
physical 88
115
INDEX
limit (Contd)
self-limitation xii, 168, 100
limit, to a machines
capacity 75, 79
limit, to philosophy x, xii, xv,
xxv, 94
see also unlimited
limits, theory of 79, 81
linguistics 62
living being xxiv, xxv, xxxvii
n88, 40, 5962, 65, 72,
80, 86 see also for-itself
local 67, 6970, 83, 84, 88
see also global
machine 29, 63, 65, 66, 746,
78, 83, 89 see also
computer, robot
magma xxi, xxiv, xxvi, xxxv
n67, 66 see also
ensemblist-identitarian
dimension
Maoism 1314
market xvii, 9, 268, 34, 35
Marx, Karl 9, 28, 30, 31, 40, 45,
59, 94
Marxism x, xi, xvi, 3n1, 9,
28, 301, 35, 45, 53,
70, 100
mastery see rational mastery,
project of
materialism 36, 80, 825
mathematics xiii, xxiv, 59,
669, 72, 7491
and innity 83, 89
and philosophy 78
and physics 77, 82, 88
and pleasure 89
and reality 77
as creation 75, 82, 84, 91
116
atemporality of 85, 8990

effectiveness of 82, 91
universality of 87
see also set theory
Maturana, Humberto 59
May 1968 xi, 3n3, 13, 14,
15, 19n10, 24, 323,
34, 45
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 62
Mermet, Daniel 1, 3, 518
metaphysics xii, 56
Mill, John Stuart 31
mind xx, 36, 38, 56, 62, 76, 79,
80, 84
model xi, xxiii, xxviii, xxx, 61,
636, 845
modern science 36, 40, 68, 79,
86, 89
monad, psychic xxxxii
morality 31, 33
Morin, Edgar 3, 3n3, 11, 12, 13
mortality xix, xxii, 523,
1067
Moth, Daniel 15
myth
and philosophy 94
Freuds explanation of
567
Greek 69, 102
immanent 53
Marxs explanation of 40
of history 53
of scientic progress xxiii
of the proletariat 32
Napoleon I 6
Napoleon III 14
naturalization, of social
institution xxxvi n75,
956, 98
INDEX
nature xi, xv, xxiv, xxxvi, 19,

402, 53, 94, 100, 101
of art xix
of the human 956
neoliberalism see liberalism
neuroscience 62
neurosis 7, 48
new, creation of the x, xiii, xviii,
xix, xxiii, 368, 40, 60,
679, 71, 72, 867, 94,
1025
Newtonian physics xxiii, 28
Nietzsche, Friedrich 267
nihilism 257, 323
nineteenth century xix, xxvii,
xxxv n75, xxxvii n80, 8,
31, 33
numbers
prime 63, 68, 77, 813, 89
whole 81
ontology xi, xxiv
determinist xxvii
historical xiii
logicist and physicalist xi
paradigm xxiii, 38, 39
Pascal, Blaise 98
passivity 289, 38
Paz, Octavio xiii, 22, 23,
2543n13
Pguy, Charles 35, 43n6
perception xxxvi n78, 46, 56,
60, 62, 63, 67, 77, 83, 84,
85, 88, 89
of a mathematical space 77
of color 60
Pericles 12, 14, 17
person 11, 33, 369, 41, 45,
53, 88, 89
phenomenology xi
philosophy ixxiii, xv, xvii,
xviii, xxv, xxx, xxxv
n75, 6, 46, 47, 62, 78,
97, 104
and democracy xv, xx, 69
and mathematics 78
and myth 94, 102
and poetry 42
and politics 712
and science xviii, xxiii, 84
continental xxv
Western xv, xxvi, xxix, xxxv
n75, 25
physics 40, 71, 77, 812,
845, 8991
elementary particles 81
mathematics and 77
matter xxxii n16, 60,
83, 89
Newtonian xxiii, 28
Plato 11, 12, 71, 84
pleasure xxxxi, 457, 507,
89, 102, 103
pleasure principle 54
mathematical 89
poetry xxxvi n80, 42
poiesis xxii, 87
see also autopoiesis
polis 38, 69
politics xiii, xvi, xxix, xxx, 2, 6,
11, 13, 36, 40, 53,
712, 94
education in 12
specialists and
generalists 1112
totalitarian 25
possibility
conditions of xxvii, 36, 68
non-determined xxvii, 67
117
INDEX
possibility (Contd)
non-existing 67
of articial intelligence
637
of creation 68, 95
primary numbers see numbers
private xvii, 94
privatization 31
production xiv, xvi, xix, 34, 61,
86
capitalist xvii, 94, 29
vs. creation 67, 86
progress xxiii, 10, 26, 31, 35,
39, 45, 53
ideology of 31, 53
mythology of 53
scientic xxiii, 84
progressivism xii
Proust, Marcel 16, 81
psyche xiiixiv, xxxxii, xxiv,
456, 80, 89
see also soul, for-itself
psychic monad see monad
psychoanalysis x, xiii, xx,
xxii, xxx, 3, 16, 22, 23,
4457, 58, 613, 66
analyst as authority 50
analyst-practitioner 44, 45,
502
analytical institution 51
and politics 52
cure xxii, 47, 50
perspective of 56
purpose of xx, xxii,
44, 48
transfer xxi, 47, 4951,
56
psychosis 467
public sphere xvixvii
Pythagorean Theorem 90
118
rational mastery, project of xvi,

94, 99 see also autonomy,
project of
rationality xxxiv n57, 38, 40
reality
external 83
material-historical 56
mathematical 77, 80, 845
objective 74
physical 82, 85
production of xiv
psychic 47
Reason xx, 94, 98
reductionism 824
see also materialism
reform 8, 35 see also
revolutionary, socialdemocracy
relativism xxviii, xxxviii n91,
xxxix n94
religion xviii, xxxvi n78, 14, 52,
536, 88, 94, 978,
100, 106
repetition xiii, 16, 46, 47, 50
representation xvii, xx, xxi,
xxiv, xxxiv n57, 54, 56,
61, 63, 89
revelation 94, 98
revolution xii, xviii, 3, 33, 39,
104
French 7, 56, 94,
revolutionary 3, 8, 13, 35, 100
robotics 656 see also computer,
machine
Romanticism 13, 23, 33, 96101
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 7, 55
rupture xv, xix, xxixxiii, xxix,
40, 41, 93, 95,
978, 100, 102 see also
break, closure
INDEX
Sartre, Jean-Paul xi, 49

Schur, Max 53, 55, 57n6, 57n7
science xvii, xviii, xxiixxiv, 10,
11, 19n7, 27, 36, 44, 53,
62, 64, 667, 72, 84, 88
cognitive 62, 64
modern 36, 40
neuroscience 62
philosophy of x, xiii, xxx
positivistic 67, 86
scripture 94, 105
Selberg, Atle 81
self-consciousness
see consciousness
self-construction 61, 68
self-creation (autocration) xiv,
xv, xxv, 61
self-institution xiv, 94,
1034
self-limitation xii, 16, 18, 100
set theory xxiv, 668, 81
see also ensemblistidentitarian dimension
Shakespeare, William xviiixix,
xxxiii n41, 98
shock (Anstoss) 44, 60, 61, 69
signication
social-imaginary xivxxii,
xxvi, xxxvi n75, xxxviii
n91, 31, 32, 34, 37, 69,
100, 106
crisis of 31, 32, 34
see also insignicance
slavery xxxvii n89, 94
social-democracy 29
social-historical x, xiii, xiv, xv,
40
social institution see institution
socialism x, 5, 8, 25
Socialisme ou barbarie x, 3n3, 15
socialization, process of xiv, xxi,

16
society
autonomous xvxvii, xxvi
xxix, xxxix n94, 16, 367,
401, 47, 49, 52, 55, 59,
712, 94107
closure of xxix, xxxix n93,
55, 5960, 936
contemporary xii, xxvii, 13,
35, 37, 53, 56, 1026
creation of xiv, xv, xxi, xxv,
5960, 64, 72, 94, 98,
101, 103, 1045
heteronymous xvii, xxvi
xxviii, 36, 957
individual and x, xiv, xvi,
xxxxii, 13, 16, 18, 27,
37, 41, 55, 59, 62, 946,
989, 1046
modern xvi, xv, xix, xxvii,
xxviii, xxxvi n79, 7, 11,
16, 257, 29, 31, 33, 38,
41, 56, 94, 95, 99, 100,
102, 104
of conformism 106
of consumption 279, 31, 95,
99, 101, 103, 106
traditional 978, 1023
see also autonomy,
imaginary, imagination,
heteronomy
sociology x, xi, xxx, 3, 66
soul 36, 55, 57n3, 62, 75, 85, 89
see also body 36, 64
Soviet Union 8
space 77, 8085, 88
see also Banach space, time
Spanish Civil War 25
Stalinism 3n1, 14
119
INDEX
structuralism xi, xxxi n8

subject xxii, 4753, 60, 62, 67,
71, 101, 103
Superego 48, 51
teleology xvi
teukhein xxiv
see also legein
theodicy xvi
thermodynamics 85, 87
Thom, Ren 69
Thucydides 17, 19n13
time xiii, xxxi n8, 77, 8490
ensemblist-identitarian 87
of creation xiii, 87
see also space
Tocqueville, Alexis de 99, 101
totalitarianism 8, 256, 2930
totemism 52
tradition
and closure 96103
and consumption 1013
and education 34
and institution 93
and romanticism 96102
liberal xvi
Marxist xi, xvi
Merleau-Pontian 62
mythological 94
of autonomy 105
of continental philosophy xxv
of modern philosophy x
of psychoanalysis xx
of radical critique xii, xxv,
xxx
validity of 989
Western xxix, xxxvi n75, 93
traditional society 52, 60,
989, 103
tragedy, Greek 39
120
transcendence 81, 85, 106

see also immanence
Trotsky, Leon x, 3, 14
Turing machine 75
twentieth century ix, xi, xvi,
xxiii, xxvi, 25, 28, 33, 102
unconscious xx, 48, 54, 64
universal 34, 99
art as xixxx, xxvi-xxix
universalism xxxviii n91, xxxix
n956
universality 98100, 103
mathematical 87, 901, 97
utopia 11, 26, 70, 72
values
as economic value xvii,
268, 31
crisis of 314
normative xxvixxvii, xxxviii
n91, 268, 31, 345, 37,
54, 97, 100, 1056
Vaneigem, Raoul 16
Varela, Francisco xiii, xxiv,
223, 5872
von Bulow, Katharina 223,
4491
von Neumann architecture 66
West xv, xvii, xix, xxvi, xxvii
xxix, xxxv n75, xxxviii
n91, 27, 29, 30, 36, 53,
97, 100
Western philosophy/
metaphysics xxvi,
xxxvxxxvi n75, 47
Wigner, Eugene 82
workers struggles 30
Zenos paradoxes 80

Castoriadis On Insignificance Dialogues

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POSTSCRIPT ON INSIGNIFICANCE

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Edited with an Introduction by Gabriel Rockhill

Continuum International Publishing Group

Eros of Inquiry: An Aperu of Castoriadis Life and Work

PART I: POSTSCRIPT ON INSIGNIFICANCE

No God, No Caesar, No Tribune! . . .

PART II: DIALOGUES

Rejoinders: Facing Modernity

The Meaning of Psychoanalysis1

Cornelius Castoriadis in Dialogue with Jean-Luc Donnet

Life and Creation

Cornelius Castoriadis in Dialogue with Francisco Varela

The Limits of Formalization

Cornelius Castoriadis in Dialogue with Alain Connes

Breaking the Closure

Cornelius Castoriadis in Dialogue with Robert Legros

Selected Bibliography of Castoriadis Books in English

Chapters 3 to 5 had no specic titles in the original French publication.

to thank, in particular, Sarah Douglas for recognizing the importance

In relation to animals, humans are sick beings, because

Cornelius Castoriadis audaciously dened philosophy as the act of

revolutionary group and journal Socialisme ou barbarie (published from

The autonomy exercised by Castoriadis himself in the elaboration

explicit aspirations.9 He also eschews and derides the valorization of

History is creation: the creation of total forms of human life.

THE VICISSITUDES OF POLITICAL AUTONOMY

as of approximately the twelfth century, and the modern era,

present, Castoriadis truculent criticisms of his historical conjuncture

POETIC WINDOWS ONTO THE ABYSS

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

inhabiting the border of Chaos.48 In short, art is not only

AUTONOMY OF THE PSYCHE

object is not separate since I am the source of pleasure and the

can make almost anything out of the psyche (a Christian, a bourgeois,

A PHILOSOPHICAL PASSION FOR THE SCIENCES

creations and what is.60 Furthermore, science should be of central

Castoriadis work is a testament to just such an orientation, but this

to be a characteristic of humanity alone. Man is the only animal,

NOTHING IF NOT CRITICAL

the quasi-totality of Western philosophywhich is philosophy proper

purchase on the ancient Greeks, the Aztecs, Buddhists in the second

[connaissance] from ever being able to acquire the status of complete

Greco-Western tradition, societies are instituted on the principle of a

The Imaginary Institution of Society, 3/Linstitution imaginaire de la

agency of that vis formandi, of that force or that creativity of being

Crossroads in the Labyrinth, 26/Les carrefours du labyrinthe 1, 612

totally dysfunctional being (Conversations with French Philosophers,

ous for Castoriadis, there is excellent research that has demonstrated

that all societies, in the same way, come from a movement of

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In memory of Cornelius Castoriadis, who passed away on December 26,

Preface: Cornelius, Essential Dissident

Missing is the voice of Cornelius Castoriadis; missing is that jubilation

PREFACE: CORNELIUS, ESSENTIAL DISSIDENT

In 1978, he began working on the series Crossroads in the Labyrinth.

No God, No Caesar, No Tribune! . . .

DANIEL MERMET: Why this title, The Rising Tide of Insignicance?2

NO GOD, NO CAESAR, NO TRIBUNE! . . .