Castoriadis and the Eclipse of the Symbolic

Suzi Adams

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Chapter 2 Castoriadis and the Eclipse of the Symbolic

于Thinking with Castoriadis: Antipodean Essays

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Suzi Adams

Suzi Adams
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类型:: 章节

Page Range:: 7–27

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004747418_003

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Abstract

A forensic reading of Castoriadis’ first major philosophical work, The Imaginary Institution of Society, originally published in France in 1975. The opening part of that work was adapted from articles originally written in 1964 and 1965. Reflecting on the internal development of The Imaginary Institution of Society across the decade that it took to write, the article addresses Castoriadis’ cautious and decreasing use of the concept of the symbolic—and its replacement with the concept of the imaginary. One of the distinctive characteristics of Castoriadis’ philosophy is that he does not conflate the ideas of the symbolic and the imaginary. His careful differentiation is seen most clearly in an extended discussion in the 1964–1965 section of The Imaginary Institution of Society. In the second, subsequently written, part of The Imaginary Institution of Society—and in later works by Castoriadis—the concept of the symbolic is striking in its absence. What are we to make of this? The article offsets the idea of the symbolic and its fading trajectory in Castoriadis’ work with other developments in Castoriadis’ ontology, notably the growing focus on ideas of the radical imaginary and creation ex nihilo, as well as his discovery of more elementary modes of being, such as the figure of magmas and the metaphor of chaos. Castoriadis folds the idea of the symbolic into a wider figurative (and figurational) framework in which the symbolic loses its conceptual efficacy. Castoriadis’ dual notions of the radical imaginary as instituting society and social-historical creation as (absolutely) generative and “out of nothing” meant that, ultimately, the concept of the symbolic (with its real-rational element and historical-hermeneutic dimension) was eclipsed.

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Thinking with Castoriadis: Antipodean Essays

丛编： Social and Critical Theory, 卷： 35

ISBN:: 9789004747418

出版社:: Brill

印刷出版日期:: 21 Nov 2025

Subjects
- Philosophy
  - Social & Political Philosophy
- Social Sciences
  - Sociology & Anthropology

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Chapter 2 Castoriadis and the Eclipse of the Symbolic

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