Post-Marxism with Substance: Castoriadis and the Autonomy Project

Despite the increased attention to his work since his death in 1997, Cornelius Castoriadis remains a rather marginal figure in contemporary theoretical and political debate. Castoriadis' contribution, I contend, is best gauged by placing it alongside post-Marxist alternatives such as the one presented by Laclau and Mouffe. Both Laclau and Mouffe and Castoriadis reject the attempt at foundationalist legitimation of the socialist project, emphasising instead the primacy of politics. However, in contrast to Laclau and Mouffe, Castoriadis' project of autonomy contains a robust utopian dimension. Receiving his political inheritance from the broad libertarian socialist tradition, Castoriadis continues to challenge the domination of state and capital and to insist on the liberatory possibilities of direct democracy. His vision for an autonomous political community is matched by his turn to psychoanalysis, where he develops an ethics of autonomous being. Simultaneously modern and post-modern, Castoriadis' social and political thought provides a vital planting of flags for the contemporary progressive intellectual.     

Autonomy,Reflexivity, Tragedy: Notions of Democracy in Camus and Castoriadis

Abstract

This paper looks at two 20th century theories of tragedy: those of Cornelius Castoriadis and Albert Camus. The theories that each proffer of this ancient cultural form are striking. Against more standard views, both theorists stress that tragedy is a cultural form that has only arisen historically in cultures whose forms of religious thought have been laid open to question. In this way, both argue that tragedy is an important democratic cultural form, which stages the confrontation between a no longer unquestionable divine order, and human autonomy. The intent of the paper, from the start, is a political one. It wants to place Camus alongside Castoriadis as a ‘post-Marxist’ thinker, who belongs meaningfully to what Dick Howard has called ‘the Marxian legacy’. More than this, it aims to do this by staging Camus' theorisation of tragedy, with Castoriadis', as a powerful riposte to the conservative criticism of democracy as a modern political form, that is, that it cannot muster sacral cultural forms forceful enough to meaningfully unite people beneath its banner.     

市民社会理念与社会自主性发展

本文分析了市民社会理念的传统含义及其在当代的变化,认为它实际反映了人们对在市场经济和现代化过程中社会自主性问题的关注.作者分析了中国历史上国家与社会的关系及经济体制的转型、民主政治的建设对社会自主性发展的意义,揭示了社会自主性发展的表现.     

The Rational Mastery in the Work of Cornelius Castoriadis*

In this article, I make the claim that the notion of rational mastery in the work of Cornelius Castoriadis is of outmost importance for fully understanding his philosophy. Yet, this notion has largely been ignored by the literature thus far. For this reason, I intend to highlight here the importance it assumes in Castoriadis’ philosophy. To this end, I argue that the notion of rational mastery in Castoriadis’ philosophy consists in an imaginary signification of progress that develops from modernity onwards in the form of unlimited expansion of technology and economy. I continue by presenting Castoriadis’ criticism of rational mastery. I then expand his criticism into the broader context of what I claim to be the social-historical perspectivism of Castoriadis’ logic-ontology of Magmas. Finally, I conclude with the demonstration of Castoriadis’ project of individual and collective autonomy as the counterweight to rational mastery of unlimited expansion of technology and economy against nature and society.     

Politics and the Political in Castoriadis

This paper explores the distinction of politics and the political in Castoriadis’ work. Whereas the political refers to the instituted as the management of society in accordance with established laws, politics refers to the instituting as the capacity of the imaginary to constantly challenge established laws on the basis of individual and collective autonomy. The politics of autonomy identify with the regime of direct democracy, established first and foremost at the level of economy and expanding accordingly in all spheres of society. Democracy contains both a psychoanalytical and educational perspective inasmuch as it aims at the conscious self-reflective harmonisation of individual and collective autonomy by means of collective deliberation.     

The Tragic and the Political: A Parallel Reading of Kostas Papaioannou and Cornelius Castoriadis

Abstract

The fundamental difference between Castoriadis' and Papaioannou's accounts of the link between tragedy and the political is that Castoriadis insists on a political form (the democratic regime) whilst Papaioannou insists on a social actor (the masses). The starting point for this essay, then, are two thinkers: one whose main interest was a political and philosophical reflection on the social-historical and one whose main interest was a philosophical reflection on the arts. Surprisingly, however, the end situation is one where Castoriadis gives us a political explanation of the link between tragedy and the political whilst Papaioannou gives us a social explanation of the same phenomenon. How can this difference be accounted for? First, distinguishing their respective conceptualisations of the political allows us to see that where one thinker privileges restlessness and revolution, the other privileges law and regime. Second, looking at their depictions of the essential aspects of tragedy places them on opposing sides of the couple hubris-dike, in a way that leads to two radically different conceptualisations of the relation in question.     

Plato and Castoriadis: The Concealment and the Unveiling of Democracy1

ABSTRACT In the first part of the paper Castoriadis' critical analysis of Plato's Statesman2 is discussed and the main points of this critique, chiefly the concealment of politics and democracy are presented. The second part (which is followed by a short comparison of the projects of autonomy and Inclusive Democracy) briefly deals with Castoriadis' critique of contemporary political practice and theory, and depicts the unveiling of politics and of democracy--views which are particularly significant for us today.     

自治理念与城市社区自治的评价体系

我们讨论城市社区自治,恐怕无法回避自治理念问题。因为如同自由(1iberty)一样,自治(autonomy)也是一个中国化中间“从未尝立以为教”(严复语)的问题。中国,作为一个东方的、具有典型意义的“领土国家”(顾准语),有着悠久的大一统中央集权传统,虽然经历了近代和现代的民主革命,但革命成功以后,国内的现实状况,以及政治、经济和化发展的需要,又承接了这一传统。我们应该看到,传统的影响有碍于自治理念的思想启蒙。     

The Moral Imaginary of Discourse Ethics

Abstract

The central claim of this essay is that Habermas' pro gram of discourse ethics fails to establish the necessary immanent connection between the universality of discourse ethics and the quasi-transcendentalism, which is supposed to provide its ground. Habermas' attempt to avoid the spectre of subjectivism leads him to develop an understanding of universalism that hinges on a critical error, the confusion of subjectivity with ethical sub stance. Using Castoriadis' theory of the imagination to illuminate this failure, I demonstrate the way in which Habermas' moral theory of discourse inadvertently harbours a moral-imaginary horizon, a pre-political kernel which undercuts its capacity to serve as a universalist ethic.     

Ontological Anti-naturalism and the Emergence of Life and Mind: Castoriadis and Deacon

This essay compares the ideas of Cornelius Castoriadis and Terrence W. Deacon. Castoriadis’s anti-Naturalistic ontology, with its conception of radical ontological creation and fundamental indeterminacy, along with his analysis of the category of the “for-itself”, comprising all subjective beings from the living organism to the social-historical, is compared to Deacon’s exploration of the emergence of life and mind, which sees the emergence of teleological beings as resulting from the creation of form-generating constraints that involve new types of dynamic process. Significant parallels and convergences between Castoriadis and Deacon are uncovered and explored.     

Democracy and Troubled Autonomy: Sectarian Politics and Civil Society in Japan

Civil society organizations (CSOs) exist in overlapping fields of influence, often within contentious relationships. Although the autonomy of a CSO is generally considered critical, currently available conceptualizations of civil society tend to focus on its relation to the state and minimize the role of political parties and social movement organizations. Drawing on the case study of the Women's Democratic Club (WDC), a women's organization in Japan established in the period immediately after World War II, this article examines the ways in which CSOs' embeddedness in their socio-political contexts problematizes organizational autonomy. As a non-partisan organization with democratic values, the WDC promoted egalitarianism and embraced heterogeneous membership within the organization. However, its embeddedness in the political left and its members’ divided and conflicting loyalties challenged its autonomy as an organization. This article seeks to contribute to the inclusion of non-governmental organizations in theoretical and empirical considerations of autonomy of civil society.     

The Necessity of Autonomy

A public ethic of care is a powerful tool for understanding and developing ethical and effective social policies. After sketching care theory and its central values and claims, this article identifies hospice programs as embodying a public ethic of care. Then, it scrutinizes the care needs and practices of terminally ill patients and families who are served by hospices. Building on this analysis, I argue that in the United States caregivers are made unduly vulnerable, and that impediments and strains to caregiving can be detrimental to the development and exercise of basic human capabilities. Accordingly, the article makes the case for a right to give care. It also concludes that public efforts to mitigate the burdens of informal caregiving are necessary to make such a right meaningful.     

中国地方自治立法的开端——清末地方自治

20世纪初年,西方列强入侵,中国内忧外患,清政府发布"变法"、"仿行宪政"的上谕,推行"预备立宪"、"修订法律"等项措施,地方自治是其中的重要内容之一,之后清政府颁布了一系列的地方自治章程,在全国各地加以实施。通过这一系列的措施,地方自治形成了初步架构。作为清末新政重要内容之一的地方自治,是中国近代意义的地方自治的开端,也是中国政治近代化的重要条件和基础,虽然有一定的历史局限性,但更有着重要的历史意义。