Cornelius Castoriadis

Cornelius Castoriadis (French: [kastjadis]; Greek:

[kastoriais]; March 11,
1922 December 26, 1997) was a Greek-French[1]
philosopher, social critic, economist, psychoanalyst, author of The Imaginary Institution of Society, and cofounder of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group.[53]

political science from the School of Law, Economics and

Political Sciences of the University of Athens (where
he met and collaborated with the Neo-Kantian intellectuals Konstantinos Despotopoulos, Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, Konstantinos Tsatsos),[39][60] he got aboard the
RMS Mataroa,[61] a New Zealand ocean liner, to go to
Paris, where he remained permanently, to continue his
His writings on autonomy and social institutions have
studies under a scholarship oered by the French Insti[54]
been inuential in both academic and activist circles.
tute of Athens. The same voyageorganized by Octave
Merlieralso brought from Greece to France a number
of other Greek writers, artists and intellectuals, including Constantine Andreou, Kostas Axelos, Georges Can1 Life
dilis, Costa Coulentianos, Emmanuel Kriaras, Adonis
A. Kyrou, Kostas Papaoannou, and Virgile Solomoni1.1 Early life in Athens
dis.[62][63][64]
Cornelius Castoriadis (named after Saint Cornelius
the Centurion)[55] was born on March 11, 1922 in
Constantinople,[55] the son of Kaisaras (Caesar) and
Sophia Kastoriadis.[56] His family had to move in July
1922[55] to Athens due to the GreekTurkish population
exchange. He developed an interest in politics after he
came into contact with Marxist thought and philosophy
at the age of 13.[57] At the same time he began studying traditional philosophy after purchasing a copy of the
book History of Philosophy ( ,
1933, 2 vols.) by the historian of philosophy Nikolaos
Louvaris.[57]

1.2 Paris and leftist activity

Once in Paris, Castoriadis joined the Trotskyist Parti
Communiste Internationaliste (PCI). He and Claude
Lefort constituted a ChaulieuMontal Tendency in the
French PCI in 1946. In 1948, they experienced their nal disenchantment with Trotskyism,[65] leading them to
break away to found the libertarian socialist and councilist
group and journal Socialisme ou Barbarie (19491966),
which included Jean-Franois Lyotard[66] and Guy Debord as members for a while, and profoundly inuenced
the French intellectual left. Castoriadis had links with the
group around C. L. R. James until 1958. Also strongly
inuenced by Castoriadis and Socialisme ou Barbarie
were the British group and journal Solidarity and Maurice
Brinton.

Sometime between 1932 and 1935, Maximiani Portas

(later known as Savitri Devi) was the French tutor of
Castoriadis.[58]

His rst active involvement in politics occurred during the

Metaxas Regime (1937), when he joined the Athenian
Communist Youth ( ,
Kommounistiki Neolaia Athinas), a section of the Young
Communist League of Greece. In 1941 he joined the
Communist Party of Greece (KKE), only to leave one 1.3 Early philosophical research
year later in order to become an active Trotskyist.[59]
The latter action resulted in his persecution by both the In the late 1940s, he started attending philosophical
and sociological courses at the Faculty of Letters at the
Germans and the Communist Party.
University of Paris (facult des lettres de Paris), where
In 1944 he wrote his rst essays on social science and Max among his teachers were Gaston Bachelard,[60][67][68] the
Weber, which he published in a magazine named Archive epistemologist Ren Poirier, the historian of philosophy
of Sociology and Ethics ( Henri Brhier (not to be confused with mile Brhier),
, Archeion Koinoniologias kai Ithikis). During the Henri Gouhier, Jean Wahl, Gustave Guillaume, Albert
December 1944 violent clashes between the communist- Bayet, and Georges Davy.[67] He submitted a proposal for
led ELAS and the Papandreou government, aided by a doctoral dissertation on mathematical logic to Poirier,
British troops, Castoriadis heavily criticized the actions but he eventually abandoned the project.[38][60] The subof the KKE.
ject of his thesis would be Introduction la logique axAfter earning a bachelors degree in law, economics and iomatic (Introduction to Axiomatic Logic).[38]
1

1.4

LIFE

Career as economist and distancing 1.6 Philosopher of history and ontologist

from Marxism

At the same time (starting in November 1948), he worked

as an economist at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) until 1970, which
was also the year when he obtained French citizenship.
Consequently, his writings prior to that date were published pseudonymously, as "Pierre Chaulieu, "Paul
Cardan, "Jean-Marc Coudray" etc.

In 1967, Castoriadis submitted a proposal for a doctoral

dissertation on the philosophy of history to Paul Ricur
(then at the University of Nanterre).[77] An epistolary dialogue began between them but Ricurs obligations to the
University of Chicago in the 1970s were such that their
collaboration was not feasible.[78] The subject of his thesis would be Le fondement imaginaire du social-historique
(The Imaginary Foundations of the Social-Historical).[78]

In his 1949 essay The Relations of Production in Russia, Castoriadis developed a critique of the supposed socialist character of the government of the Soviet Union.
The central claim of the Stalinist regime at the time was
that the mode of production in Russia was socialist, but
the mode of distribution was not yet a socialist one since
the socialist edication in the country had not yet been
completed. However, according to Castoriadis analysis,
since the mode of distribution of the social product is inseparable from the mode of production,[69] the claim that
one can have control over distribution while not having
control over production is meaningless.[70]

In his 1975 work, L'institution imaginaire de la socit

(Imaginary Institution of Society), and in Les carrefours
du labyrinthe (Crossroads in the Labyrinth), published in
1978, Castoriadis began to develop his distinctive understanding of historical change as the emergence of irrecoverable otherness that must always be socially instituted
and named in order to be recognized. Otherness emerges
in part from the activity of the psyche itself. Creating
external social institutions that give stable form to what
Castoriadis terms the (ontological) "magma[79][80][81] of
social signications[82] allows the psyche to create stable
gures for the self, and to ignore the constant emergence
Castoriadis was particularly inuential in the turn of of mental indeterminacy and alterity.
the intellectual left during the 1950s against the Soviet For Castoriadis, self-examination, as in the ancient Greek
Union, because he argued that the Soviet Union was not tradition, could draw upon the resources of modern psya communist but rather a bureaucratic capitalist state, choanalysis. Autonomous individualsthe essence of an
which contrasted with Western powers mostly by virtue autonomous societymust continuously examine themof its centralized power apparatus.[71] His work in the selves and engage in critical reection. He writes:
OECD substantially helped his analyses.
In the latter years of Socialisme ou Barbarie, Castoriadis
came to reject the Marxist theories of economics and
of history, especially in an essay on Modern Capitalism
and Revolution (rst published in Socialisme ou Barbarie,
196061; rst English translation in 1963 by Solidarity).

1.5

Psychoanalyst

When Jacques Lacans disputes with the International

Psychoanalytical Association led to a split and the formation of the cole Freudienne de Paris (EFP) in 1964,
Castoriadis became a member (as a non-practitioner).[72]
In 1968 Castoriadis married Piera Aulagnier, a French
psychoanalyst who had undergone psychoanalytic treatment under Jacques Lacan from 1955 until 1961.[73]
In 1969 Castoriadis and Aulagnier split from the EFP to
join the "Quatrime Groupe",[74] a psychoanalytic group
that claims to follow principles and methods that have
opened up a third way between Lacanianism and the
standards of the International Psychoanalytical Association.[75]

...psychoanalysis can and should make a

basic contribution to a politics of autonomy.
For, each persons self-understanding is a necessary condition for autonomy. One cannot
have an autonomous society that would fail to
turn back upon itself, that would not interrogate itself about its motives, its reasons for
acting, its deep-seated [profondes] tendencies.
Considered in concrete terms, however, society doesn't exist outside the individuals making it up. The self-reective activity of an autonomous society depends essentially upon the
self-reective activity of the humans who form
that society.[83]

Castoriadis was not calling for every individual to undergo

psychoanalysis, per se. Rather, by reforming education
and political systems, individuals would be increasingly
capable of critical self- and social reexion. He oers: if
psychoanalytic practice has a political meaning, it is solely
to the extent that it tries, as far as it possibly can, to render
Castoriadis began to practice analysis in 1973 (he had un- the individual autonomous, that is to say, lucid concerning
dergone analysis in the 1960s rst with Irne Rouble and her desire and concerning reality, and responsible for her
then later with Michel Renard).[74][76]
acts: holding herself accountable for what she does.[84]

2.1

1.7

Autonomy and heteronomy

Sovietologist

In his 1980 Facing the War text, he took the view that
Russia had become the primary world military power. To
sustain this, in the context of the visible economic inferiority of the Soviet Union in the civilian sector, he proposed that the society may no longer be dominated by
the party-state bureaucracy but by a "stratocracy"[85] a
separate and dominant military sector with expansionist
designs on the world. He further argued that this meant
there was no internal class dynamic which could lead to
social revolution within Russian society and that change
could only occur through foreign intervention.

1.8

Later life

In 1980, he joined the faculty of the cole des Hautes

tudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) as Directeur
d'tudes (Director of Studies).[86] He had been elected
Directeur de recherche (Director of Research) in EHESS
at the end of 1979[87] after submitting his previously published books in conjunction with a defense of his intellectual project of connecting the disciplines of history, sociology and economy through the concept of the social
imaginary[88][89] (see below). His teaching career at the
EHESS lasted sixteen years.[90]

3
ical discontinuities that cannot be understood in terms
of any determinate causes or presented as a sequence
of events. Change emerges through the social imaginary without strict determinations, but in order to be
socially recognized it must be instituted as revolution.
Any knowledge of society and social change can exist
only by referring to (or by positing) social imaginary
signications. Thus, Castoriadis developed a conceptual framework where the sociological and philosophical category of the social imaginary has a central place
and he oered an interpretation of modernity centered
on the principal categories of social institutions and social imaginary signications;[3] in his analysis, these categories are the product of the human faculties of the radical imagination and the social imaginary, the latter faculty being the collective dimension of the former.[98] (According to Castoriadis, the sociological and philosophical
category of the radical imaginary can be manifested only
through the individual radical imagination and the social
imaginary.)[99][100][101]

He used traditional terms as much as possible, though

consistently redening them. Further, some of his terminology changed throughout the later part of his career,
with the terms gaining greater consistency but breaking from their traditional meaning (thus creating neologisms). When reading Castoriadis, it is helpful to understand what he means by the terms he uses, since he does
In 1984, Castoriadis and Aulagnier divorced.[73]
not redene the terms in every piece where he employs
In 1989, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Social them.
Sciences by Panteion University and in 1993 another one
in Education Sciences by the Democritus University of
2.1 Autonomy and heteronomy
Thrace.[91]
He died on December 26, 1997 from complications following heart surgery. He was survived by Zoe Christodi
(his wife at the time of his death), his daughter Sparta (by
an earlier relationship with Jeanine Rilka Walter,[92]
Comrade Victorine in the Fourth International),[93]
and Kyveli, a younger daughter from his marriage with
Zoe.[94][95]

The concept of "autonomy" appears to be a key theme

in his early postwar writings and he continued to elaborate on its meaning, applications and limits until his death,
gaining him the title of Philosopher of Autonomy". The
word itself is Greek, where auto- means 'for/by itself'
and nomos means 'law,' dening the condition of creating
ones own laws, whether as an individual or as a whole
society. Castoriadis noticed that while all societies con[96]
He was known to intimates as Corneille.
struct their own unique laws and institutions, members
of autonomous societies are fully aware of this fact and
explicitly self-institute.[102] In contrast, members of het2 Thought
eronomous societies (hetero- 'other') delegate this process
to extra-social authorities and attribute their imaginaries
Edgar Morin proposed that Castoriadis work will be to gods or ancestors or, in modern ideologies, to historical
remembered for its remarkable continuity and coher- necessity.[103]
ence as well as for its extraordinary breadth which was Castoriadis emphasized the need of societies to legitimize
"encyclopaedic" in the original Greek sense, for it oered their laws or explain, in other words, why their laws are
us a "paideia, or education, that brought full circle our good and just as they claim them to be. Most traditional
cycle of otherwise compartmentalized knowledge in the societies did that through religion, believing that their
arts and sciences.[97] Castoriadis wrote essays on math- laws were given by a super-natural ancestor or god and
ematics, physics, biology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, therefore must be true. Modern capitalist societies legitlinguistics, society, economics, politics, philosophy, and imize their system (capitalism) through 'reason', claimart.
ing it makes 'logical sense'.[104] Castoriadis observes that
One of Castoriadis many important contributions to so- nearly all such eorts are tautological in that they legitcial theory was the idea that social change involves rad- imize a system through rules dened by the system itself.

4
So just like the Old Testament and the Koran claim that
'There is only one God, God', capitalism rst denes logic
as the maximization of utility and minimization of cost,
and then bases its own legitimacy on its eectiveness to
meet this criterion.
As he explains in one of his lectures in the Greek village of Leonidio in 1984,[105] many newly founded societies start from an autonomous state which is usually in
the form of direct democracy, like the town hall meetings
during the American Revolution and the local assemblies
of the Paris Commune. What they end up with, however, is a form of governance by which the citizens do
not legislate directly but delegate this power to a group of
experts who remain in power, largely unchecked by ocial means, for a number of years. The ancient Greeks on
the other hand developed a system of continuous autonomy where the people (demos) voted constantly on matters of government and law and where the elected rulers,
the archons, were mainly asked to enforce them. In such
a system, courts of law were governed by common citizens who were appointed to the degree of judge briey
and army generals were voted in by the people and had
to convince them of the correctness of their decisions.
Taking some poetic licence to expand this point, he says
that in this system, the president of the national treasury
could have been a Phoenician slave, since he would only
be asked to implement the rulings of the demos.

2 THOUGHT
tional society where mans welfare is materially measurable and innitely improvable through the expansion of
industries and advancements in science. In this respect
Marx failed to understand that technology is not, as he
claimed, the main drive of social change, since we have
historical examples where societies possessing near identical technologies formed very dierent relations to them.
An example given in the book is France and England during the industrial revolution with the second being much
more liberal than the rst.[106]
Similarly, in the issue of ecology he observes that the
problems facing our environment are only present within
the capitalist imaginary that values the continuous expansion of industries. Trying to solve it by changing or managing these industries better might fail, since it essentially
acknowledges this imaginary as real, thus perpetuating
the problem.
Thus, imaginaries are directly responsible for all aspects
of culture. The Greeks had an imaginary by which the
world stems from Chaos and the ancient Jews an imaginary by which the world stems from the will of a preexisting entity, God. The former developed therefore a
system of immediate democracy where the laws were ever
changing according to the peoples will while the second a
theocratic system according to which man is in an eternal
quest to understand and enforce the will of God.

Castoriadis also believed that the complex historical processes through which new imaginaries are born are not directly quantiable by science. This is because it is through
the imaginaries themselves that the categories upon which
science is applied are created. In the second part of
his Imaginary Institution of Society he gives the example of set theory, which is at the basis of formal logic,
which cannot function without having rst dened the elements which are to be assigned to sets.[108] This initial
schema of separation[11] (schma de sparation,
2.2 The Imaginary
) of the world into distinct elements and
The term the Imaginary originates in the writings of categories therefore, precedes the application of (formal)
the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (see the Imagi- logic and, consequently, science.
nary) and is strongly associated with Castoriadis work.
To understand it better we might think of its usual context, the "imaginary institution of societies". By that, Cas- 2.3 Chaos
toriadis means that societies, together with their laws and
legalizations, are founded upon a basic conception of the The concept of Chaos that one encounters frequently in
world and mans place in it. Traditional societies had Castoriadis work.[109][110] According to that, the Greeks
elaborate imaginaries, expressed through various creation developed an imaginary by which the world is a product
myths, by which they explained how the world came to of Chaos, as narrated by both Homer and Hesiod. The
be and how it is sustained. Capitalism did away with this word has since been promoted to a scientic term, but
mythic imaginary by replacing it with what it claims to Castoriadis is inclined to believe that although the Greeks
be pure reason (as examined above). That same imag- had sometimes expressed Chaos in that way (as a system
inary is, interestingly enough, the foundation of its op- too complex to be understood), they mainly referred to it
posing ideology, Communism. By that measure he ob- as nothingness. He then concludes what made the ancient
serves, rst in his main criticism of Marxism, titled the Greek society dierent to other societies is exactly that
Imaginary Institution of Society,[106] as well as speaking core imaginary, which essentially says that if the world is
in Brussels,[107] that these two systems are more closely created out of nothing then man can indeed, in his brief
related than was previously thought, since they share the time on earth, model it as he sees t,[111] without trysame industrial revolution type imaginary: that of a ra- ing to conform on some pre-existing order like a divine
Castoriadis writings delve at length into the philosophy
and politics of the ancient Greeks who, as a true autonomous society knew that laws are man-made and legitimization tautological. They challenged these laws on
a constant basis and yet obeyed them to the same degree
(even to the extent of enforcing capital punishment) proving that autonomous societies can indeed exist.

5
law. He contrasted that sharply to the Biblical imaginary,
which sustains all Judaic societies to this day, according
to which, in the beginning of the world there was a God,
a willing entity and mans position therefore is to understand that Will and act accordingly.

the project of individual and collective autonomy, that is to say, of the will to freedom. This
would require an awakening of the imagination
and of the creative imaginary.[113]

He argues that, in the last two centuries, ideas about autonomy again come to the fore: This extraordinary pro2.4 The Ancient Greeks and the Modern fusion reaches a sort of pinnacle during the two centuries stretching between 1750 and 1950. This is a
West
very specic period because of the very great density
Castoriadis views the political organization of the ancient of cultural creation but also because of its very strong
[114]
Greek city states as a model of an autonomous society. subversiveness.
He argues that their direct democracy was not based, as
many assume, on the existence of slaves and/or the geography of Greece, which forced the creation of small city 3 Lasting inuence
states, since many other societies had these preconditions
but did not create democratic systems. The same goes for Castoriadis has inuenced European (especially conticolonisation since the neighbouring Phoenicians, who had nental) thought in important ways. His interventions in
a similar expansion in the Mediterranean, were monar- sociological and political theory have resulted in some of
chical till their end. During this time of colonization, the most well-known writing to emerge from the contihowever, around the time of Homers epic poems, we ob- nent (especially in the gure of Jrgen Habermas, who
serve for the rst time that the Greeks, instead of trans- often can be seen to be writing against Castoriadis).[115]
ferring their mother citys social system to the newly es- Hans Jonas published a number of articles in Amertablished colony, instead, for the rst time in known his- ican journals in order to highlight the importance of
tory, legislate anew from the ground up. What also made Castoriadis work to a North American sociological
the Greeks special was the fact that, following the above, audience,[116] and Johann Pl Arnason has been of enthey kept this system as a perpetual autonomy which led during importance both for his critical engagement with
to direct democracy.
Castoriadis thought and for his sustained eorts to introduce it to the English speaking public (especially during his editorship of the journal Thesis Eleven).[117] In
the last few years, there has been growing interest in
Castoriadiss thought, including the publication of two
monographs authored by Arnasons former students: Je
He sees a tension in the modern West between, on the one
Kloogers Castoriadis: Psyche, Society, Autonomy (Brill),
hand, the potentials for autonomy and creativity and the
and Suzi Adamss Castoriadiss Ontology: Being and Creproliferation of open societies and, on the other hand,
ation (Fordham University Press).
the spirit-crushing force of capitalism. These are respectively characterized as the creative imaginary and the capitalist imaginary:
This phenomenon of autonomy is again present in the
emergence of the states of northern Italy during the
Renaissance,[112] again as a product of small independent
merchants.

4 Major publications

I think that we are at a crossing in the roads

of history, history in the grand sense. One
road already appears clearly laid out, at least
in its general orientation. Thats the road of
the loss of meaning, of the repetition of empty
forms, of conformism, apathy, irresponsibility,
and cynicism at the same time as it is that of
the tightening grip of the capitalist imaginary
of unlimited expansion of rational mastery,
pseudorational pseudomastery, of an unlimited
expansion of consumption for the sake of consumption, that is to say, for nothing, and of
a technoscience that has become autonomized
along its path and that is evidently involved in
the domination of this capitalist imaginary.
The other road should be opened: it is not at
all laid out. It can be opened only through a
social and political awakening, a resurgence of

Original French
Mai 68 : la brche [The Breach], Fayard, 1968
(under the pseudonym Jean-Marc Coudray; coauthored with Edgar Morin and Claude Lefort)
La Socit bureaucratique [Bureaucratic Society] in
two volumes: Les Rapports de production en Russie
and La Rvolution contre la bureaucratie, 1973
L'Exprience du mouvement ouvrier [The Experience
of the Labor Movement] in two volumes: Comment
lutter and Proltariat et organisation, 1974
L'Institution imaginaire de la socit [The Imaginary
Institution of Society], Seuil, 1975
Les Carrefours du labyrinthe [Crossroads in the
Labyrinth], Volume I, 1978

4
Le Contenu du socialisme [On the Content of Socialism], 1979
Capitalisme moderne et rvolution [Modern Capitalism and Revolution] in two volumes, 1979
Devant la guerre [Facing the War], Volume I, 1981
(a second volume was never published)
Domaines de l'homme [Domains of Man] (Les carrefours du labyrinthe II), 1986
La Brche: vingt ans aprs (rdition du livre de
1968 complt par de nouveaux textes) [The Breach:
Twenty Years After], 1988
Le Monde morcel [World in Fragments] (Les carrefours du labyrinthe III), 1990
La Monte de l'insigniance [The Rising Tide of Insignicance] (Les carrefours du labyrinthe IV), 1996
Fait et faire [Done and To Be Done] (Les carrefours
du labyrinthe V), 1997

Posthumous publications
Figures du pensable [Figures of the Thinkable] (Les
carrefours du labyrinthe VI), 1999
Sur Le Politique de Platon [Commentary on The
Statesman of Plato], 1999
Sujet et vrit dans le monde social-historique. La
cration humaine 1 [Subject and Truth in the SocialHistorical World. Human Creation 1], 2002
Ce qui fait la Grce, 1. D'Homre Hraclite. La
cration humaine 2 [What Makes Greece, 1. From
Homer to Heraclitus. Human Creation 2], 2004

MAJOR PUBLICATIONS

Histoire et cration : Textes philosophiques indits,

1945-1967 [History and Creation: Unedited Philosophical Texts 19451967], 2009
Ce qui fait la Grce, 3. Thucydide, la force et le
droit. La cration humaine 4 [What Makes Greece,
3. Thucydides, Force and Right. Human Creation
4], 2011
La Culture de lgosme [The Culture of Egoism]
(transcription of an interview that Castoriadis and
Lasch gave to Michael Ignatie in 1986; translated into French by Myrto Gondicas), Climats,
2012, ISBN 978-208-1284-63-0 (interview about
the topic of the retreat of individuals from politics
toward a concern with wholly private matters)
crits politiques 1945-1997 [Political Writings
19451997] (compiled by Myrto Gondicas, Enrique Escobar and Pascal Vernay), ditions du
Sandre:
La Question du mouvement ouvrier [The Question of Workers Movement] (vols. 1 and 2),
2012
Quelle dmocratie ?
(vols. 3 and 4), 2013

[What Democracy?]

La Socit bureaucratique [The Bureaucratic

Society] (vol. 5), 2015
Devant la guerre et autres crits [Facing the
War and Other Writings] (vol. 6), TBA[118]
Sur la dynamique du capitalisme et autres
textes, suivi de l'imprialisme et la guerre [On
the Dynamics of Capitalism and Other Texts
Followed by Imperialism and War] (vol. 7),
TBA[118]

.
Selected translations of works by Castoriadis
. [Philosophy and Science. A Discussion with Yorgos L. Evangelopoulos],
The Imaginary Institution of Society [IIS] (trans.
Athens: Eurasia books, 2004, ISBN 960-8187-09-5
Kathleen Blamey). MIT Press, Cambridge 1997
Une Socit la drive, entretiens et dbats 1974[1987]. 432 pp. ISBN 0-262-53155-0. (pb.)
1997 [A Society Adrift], 2005
The Castoriadis Reader (ed./trans. David Ames
Post-scriptum sur l'insigniance : entretiens avec
Curtis). Blackwell Publisher, Oxford 1997. 470 pp.
Daniel Mermet ; suivi de dialogue [Postscript on InISBN 1-55786-704-6. (pb.)
signicance], 2007
World in Fragments: Writings on Politics, Soci Fentre sur le chaos [Window to Chaos] (compiled
ety, Psychoanalysis, and the Imagination [WIF]
by Enrique Escobar, Myrto Gondicas, and Pas(ed./trans. David Ames Curtis). Stanford Univercal Vernay), Seuil, 2007, ISBN 978-202-0908-26-9
sity Press, Stanford, CA 1997. 507 pp. ISBN 0(Castoriadis writings on modern art and aesthetics)
8047-2763-5.
Ce qui fait la Grce, 2. La cit et les lois. La cration
Political and Social Writings [PSW 1]. Volume 1:
humaine 3 [What Makes Greece, 2. The City and
19461955. From the Critique of Bureaucracy to the
Laws. Human Creation 3], 2008
Positive Content of Socialism (ed./trans. David Ames
L'imaginaire comme tel [The Imaginary As Such],
Curtis). University of Minnesota Press, Minneapo2008
lis 1988. 348 pp. ISBN 0-8166-1617-5.

7
Political and Social Writings [PSW 2]. Volume 2:
19551960. From the Workers Struggle Against Bureaucracy to Revolution in the Age of Modern Capitalism (ed./trans. David Ames Curtis) University of
Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1988. 363 pp. ISBN
0-8166-1619-1.
Political and Social Writings [PSW 3]. Volume
3: 19611979. Recommencing the Revolution:
From Socialism to the Autonomous Society (ed./trans.
David Ames Curtis) University of Minnesota Press,
Minneapolis 1992. 405 pp. ISBN 0-8166-2168-3.
Modern Capitalism and Revolution [MCR] (trans.
Maurice Brinton), London: Solidarity, 1965 (including an introduction and additional English mate- The journal Socialisme ou Barbarie.
rial by Brinton; the second English edition was published by Solidarity in 1974, with a new introduction
Gdelian argument[119]
by Castoriadis)
Philosophy of praxis
Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy. Essays in Political
Philosophy [PPA] (ed. David Ames Curtis) Oxford
Post-Lacanian psychoanalysis[120]
University Press, New York/Oxford 1991. 306 pp.
Post-Marxism
ISBN 0-19-506963-3.
Crossroads in the Labyrinth (trans. M. H. Ryle/K.
Soper). MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1984. 345 pp.
On Platos Statesman [OPS] (trans. David Ames
Curtis). Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA
2002. 227 pp.
The Crisis of Western Societies. TELOS 53 (Fall
1982). New York: Telos Press.
Figures of the Thinkable [FT07] (trans. Helen
Arnold). Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA
2007. 304 pp. (Also trans. anon. 2005 [FT05].)
A Society Adrift. Interviews and Debates, 1974
1997 (trans. Helen Arnold). Fordham University
Press, New York 2010. 259 pp.
Psychoanalysis and Politics, in: Sonu Shamdasani
and Michael Mnchow (eds.), Speculations After
Freud: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Culture,
Routledge, 1994, pp. 112 (also in: World in Fragments, 1997, pp. 125136)
Postscript on Insignicance: Dialogues with Cornelius Castoriadis (ed./trans. Gabriel Rockhill and
John V. Garner). Continuum, London 2011. 160
pp. ISBN 978-1-4411-3960-3. (hb.)

See also
Autopoiesis
Classical republicanism
Decentralized planning

Post-phenomenology
The French autonome movement
Verstehen
Workers council

6 References
[1] Memos 2014, p. 18: he was ... granted full French citizenship in 1970.
[2] Dosse 2014, p. 94.
[3] IIS, p. 160: We do not need, therefore, to 'explain' how
and why the imaginary, the imaginary social signications and the institutions that incarnate them, become autonomous.
[4] IIS, p. 287.
[5] IIS, p. 274.
[6] IIS, p. 282; confer Freuds term (Vorstellungs-) Reprsentanz des Triebes ideational representative of the drive
(Sigmund Freud, "Die Verdrngung" contained in the volume Internationale Zeitschrift fr rztliche Psychoanalyse,
Vol. III, Cahier 3, 1915, p. 130).
[7] WIF, pp. 131 and 263; Elliott 2003, p. 91.
[8] Les carrefours du labyrinthe: Le monde morcel (1990),
p. 218.
[9] WIF, p. 268. (Confer Fichtes original insight.)
[10] An Eigenwelt that is organized through its own time
(Eigenzeit); WIF, p. 385.

[11] IIS, pp. 2245.

[26] MCR, p. 29.

[12] From the Ancient Greek to say, speak and

to make.

[27] IIS, p. 66.

[13] This is Castoriadis version (IIS, p. 104) of Freuds motto

Wo Es war, soll Ich werden (Where Id was, Ego shall
come to be"; see Sigmund Freud, Neue Folge der Vorlesungen zur Einfhrung in die Psychoanalyse: 31. Vorlesung).
[14] IIS, p. 281.
[15] The institution presupposes the institution: it can exist
only if individuals fabricated by the institution make the
institution exist (WIF, p. 315). Klooger has compared
Castoriadis idea of the 'circle of creation' with Heideggers idea of the 'hermeneutic circle' (Klooger 2009, p.
254). S. Gourgouris (2003) pointed out that the circle
of creation is a circle whose Being is nowhere, since
in itself it accounts for the meaning of Being, a meaning that is always inevitably a human ... aair, and that,
contrary to what Heidegger advocates, the circle of creation is never broken by revelation (by 'unconcealment'
aletheia)" (Stathis Gourgouris, Does Literature Think?,
Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 153).
[16] The paradox arising from the assertion that historical consciousness universalizes historical knowledge; see IIS, pp.
345; Klooger 2009, p. 242; Konstantinos Kavoulakos,
Cornelius Castoriadis on Social Imaginary and Truth,
Ariadne 12 (2006), pp. 201213.
[17] Castoriadis posits that new forms are radically novel; this,
however, does not imply neither that ontological creation
has no prior foundationit is not in nihilonor that it
has no constraintsit is not cum nihilo. Confer: FT07,
pp. 241, 258.
[18] "Being is creation, vis formandi: not the creation of
'matter-energy,' but the creation of forms" (Fait et faire,
p. 212).
[19] For what is given in and through history is not the determined sequence of the determined but the emergence
of radical otherness, immanent creation, non-trivial novelty. (IIS, p. 184.)
[20] "[T]ime is essentially linked to the emergence of alterity. Time is this emergence as suchwhereas space is
only its necessary concomitant. Time is creation and
destructionthat means, time is being in its substantive
determinations. (WIF, p. 399.)

[28] Crossroads in the Labyrinth (1984), pp. 46115: Psychoanalysis: Project and Elucidation"; Elliott 2003, p. 92.
[29] Cornelius Castoriadis, The State of The Subject Today,
American Imago, 46(4) (1989:Winter), p. 371412 (also
in: WIF, pp. 137171). See also V. Karalis (2005). Castoriadis, Cornelius (192297), in: John Protevi (Ed.),
The Edinburgh Dictionary of Continental Philosophy (pp.
867). Edinburgh University Press.
[30] WIF, pp. 273310.
[31] See: Dosse 2014, p.
104; Cornelius Castoriadis, The Destinies of Totalitarianism, Salmagundi 60
(Spring/Summer 1983): 108; Peter Murphy, Romantic Modernism and the Greek Polis, Thesis Eleven, 34
(1993): 4266. For a comparative analysis of Hannah
Arendt and Cornelius Castoriadis, see Gillian Robinsons
The Greek Polis and the Democratic Imaginary, Thesis
Eleven 40 (1995): 2543. Castoriadis criticizes Arendt
in his interview The Idea of Revolution (1989) and in
his talk Athenian Democracy: False and True Questions
(1992).
[32] IIS, p. 401.
[33] Sean McMorrow, Concealed Chora in the Thought of
Cornelius Castoriadis: A Bastard Comment on TransRegional Creation, Cosmos and History: The Journal of
Natural and Social Philosophy, Vol 8, No 2 (2012).
[34] Claude Lefort, Writing: The Political Test, Duke University Press, 2000, p. xxxiii.
[35] P. Chaulieu, "Lukcs et Rosa", Socialisme ou Barbarie
n 26 (November 1958) reproduced in: Daniel Gurin.
Rosa Luxembourg et la spontanit rvolutionnaire. Paris:
Flammarion, 1971, pp. 15758.
[36] FT07, p. 61.
[37] Dosse 2014, p. 237.
[38] Dosse 2014, p. 44.
[39] Dosse 2014, p. 22.
[40] Dosse 2014, p. 441.
[41] IIS, p. 400.

[21] PSW 2, p. 121.

[42] Dosse 2014, p. 223; IIS, p. 396.

[22] C. Castoriadis, From Marx to Aristotle, from Aristotle to

Us (trans. Andrew Arato), Social Research 45(4):667
738, 1978, p. 738.

[43] PPA, p. 56.

[23] Capitalism can function only by continually drawing

upon the genuinely human activity of those subject to it,
while at the same time trying to level and dehumanize
them as much as possible. (IIS, p. 16.)
[24] MCR, p. 46.
[25] IIS, pp. 546.

REFERENCES

[44] Castoriadis: The Living Being and Its Proper World:

entry by John V. Garner, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
[45] Warren Breckman, Adventures of the Symbolic: Postmarxism and Democratic Theory, Columbia University Press,
2013, p. 94.
[46] Furth, H.G., Desire for Society, Springer, 1996. Chapter
11.

[47] Vidal-Naquet et Castoriadis : une anit intellectuelle et

politique, by Olivier Fressard, 25 September 2006.

[71] Peter Osborne (ed.), A Critical Sense: Interviews with Intellectuals, Routledge, 2013, p. 17.

[48] Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, Socialism Today and

Tomorrow: Socialism in Theory and Practice, South End
Press, 1981, p. 384.

[72] Roudinesco, lisabeth. Jacques Lacan & Co. University

of Chicago Press. p. 433.

[49] Carol Atack, Radicalising the Classical Imaginary: Cornelius Castoriadis and the cole de Paris, July 8, 2011.

[73] Piera Aulagnier ne Spairani entry at Psychoanalytikerinnen.de

[74] Tasis 2007, p. 216.

[50] Anthony Giddens, Social Theory Today, Stanford University Press, 1988, p. 110 n. 34.
[51] Dosse 2014, p. 454.
[52] Francisco Varela, Autonomy and closure: The resonances of Castoriadis thought in the life sciences, CNRS
and CREA, cole Polytechnique, Paris.
[53] Cornelius Castoriadis Dies at 75
[54] Tassis 2007, p. 4; Tasis 2007, pp. 278.

[75] Sophie de Mijolla-Mellor (2005). Quatrime Groupe

(O.P.L.F.), Fourth Group. In: A. de Mijolla (Ed.), International dictionary of psychoanalysis, vol. 3 (p. 1429).
Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale.
[76] Dosse 2014, p. 175.
[77] Dosse 2014, p. 264.
[78] Dosse 2014, pp. 2645.
[79] From the contemporary geological term magma, blend
of molten or semi-molten rock, from the Ancient Greek
, thick unguent (Suzi Adams, ed., 2014, ch. 6).

[55] Dosse 2014, p. 13.

[56] Tasis 2007, p. 37.
[57] Cornelius Castoriadis/Agora International Interview
Cerisy Colloquium (1990), p. 2 (French original:
Entretien d'Agora International avec Cornelius Castoriadis
au Colloque de Cerisy (1990)).
[58] Dosse 2014, p. 17.

[80] A magma is that from which one can extract (or in which
one can construct) an indenite number of ensemblist organizations but which can never be reconstituted (ideally)
by a (nite or innite) ensemblist composition of these
organizations. (IIS, p. 343.)

[62] Tasis 2007, p. 43.

[81] Klooger, Je. The Guise of Nothing: Castoriadis on

Indeterminacy, and its Misrecognition in Heidegger and
Sartre, Critical Horizons 14(1), 2013, p. 7: "'Magma' is
the name Castoriadis gives to the mode of being which he
sees as underlying all others, and which is characterized
by an indeterminacy in which particular determinations
come to be, but without congealing into inalterable forms,
and without diminishing the potential for the emergence
of new and dierent determinations.

[63] Dosse 2014, p. 37.

[82] IIS, p. 359.

[64] Franois Bordes, Exil et cration : des penseurs grecs

dans la vie intellectuelle franaise, in Servanne Jollivet,
Christophe Premat, Mats Rosengren, Destins d'exils, Le
Manuscrit, 2011, p. 66.

[83] FT05: Imaginary and Imagination at the Crossroads (essay based on a speech given in Abrantes in November
1996), p. 151. The quote appears in a slightly dierent translation in FT07 (Figures of the Thinkable, trans.
by Helen Arnold, Stanford University Press, 2007), pp.
8990.

[59] At the time, Castoriadis was under the inuence of the

Trotskyist militant Agis Stinas (Tasis 2007, pp. 401).
[60] Cornelius Castoriadis/Agora International Interview
Cerisy Colloquium (1990), p. 4.
[61] Tasis 2007, p. 42.

[65] Castoriadis, Cornelius; Anti-Mythes (January 1974). An

Interview with C. Castoriadis. Telos (23): 133.
[66] Howard, Dick (1974).
Telos (23): 117.

Introduction to Castoriadis.

[67] Dosse 2014, pp. 434.

[68] Tasis 2007, pp. 678.
[69] "[L]e mode de rpartition du produit social est insparable
du mode de production. (P. Chaulieu, "Les rapports de
production en Russie", Socialisme ou Barbarie n 2 (May
1949) reproduced in La Socit bureaucratique - Volumes
1-2, Christian Bourgois diteur, 1990, p. 164.)
[70] "L'ide que l'on puisse dominer la rpartition sans dominer
la production est de l'enfantillage." (La Socit bureaucratique - Volumes 1-2, p. 166.)

[84] FT05: First Institution of Society and Second-Order Institutions (essay based on a lecture presented on December 15, 1985 in Paris), p. 163.
[85] Castoriadis, Cornelius (February 1980).
War. Telos (46): 48.

Facing the

[86] PSW 2, p. 363.

[87] Schrift 2009, p. 112.
[88] Dosse 2014, pp. 30511.
[89] He had proposed in his application form the creation of a
Chair in Recherches sur les rgimes sociaux contemporains,
Research on contemporary social systems (Dosse 2014,
p. 308), which he eventually occupied.

10

8 FURTHER READING

[90] OPS, p. xxi.

[115] Elliott 2003, p. 101.

[91] Dosse 2014, pp. 3501.

[116] Joas, H. 1989. Institutionalization as a Creative Process: The Sociological Importance of Cornelius Castori[92] Tasis 2007, pp. 43 and 85 n. 23.
adiss Political Philosophy, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 4: 5 (March), 118499.
[93] Anon. (2003), Foreword to The Rising Tide of Insignicancy
[117] Arnason, J. P. 1989. Culture and Imaginary Signica[94] Tasis 2007, p. 81.
tions, Thesis Eleven 22, 2545.
[95] Alex Economou:
(19221997)

Obituary Cornelius Castoriadis [118] Ecrits politiques, Cornelius Castoriadis, Livres, LaProcure.com

[96] Dosse 2014, pp. 5145.

[97] Morin, Edgar (1997-12-30). An encyclopaedic spirit.
Radical Philosophy. Retrieved 2008-04-03.
[98] Marcela Tova, The imaginary term in readings about
modernity: Taylor and Castoriadis conceptions, Revista
de Estudios Sociales 9, June 2001, pp. 3239.
[99] IIS, p. 373.
[100] Chiara Bottici, Imaginal Politics: Images Beyond Imagination and the Imaginary, Columbia University Press, 2014,
p. 50.
[101] Nicolas Poirier, Cornelius Castoriadis. L'imaginaire radical, Revue du MAUSS, 1/2003 (no 21), pp. 383404.

[119] Je Klooger, Castoriadis: Psyche, Society, Autonomy,

BRILL, 2009, pp. 226229.
[120] Fernando Urribarri, Castoriadis: the Radical Imagination and the Post-Lacanian Unconscious, Thesis Eleven,
November 2002, vol. 71, no. 1, 4051.

7 Sources
Franois Dosse. Castoriadis. Une vie. Paris: La
Dcouverte, 2014. ISBN 978-270-71712-69.

[102] Castoriadis, Cornelius; Anti-Mythes (January 1974). An

Interview with C. Castoriadis. Telos (23): 152.

Anthony Elliott. Critical Visions: New Directions in

Social Theory. Rowman & Littleeld, 2003. ISBN
978-074-25269-07.

[103] Alienation appears rst of all as the alienation of a society

to its institutions, as the autonomization of institutions in
relation to society. (IIS, p. 115.)

Christos Memos. Castoriadis and Critical Theory:

Crisis, Critique and Radical Alternatives. Palgrave
Macmillan, 2014. ISBN 978-11-37-03447-2.

[104] C. Castoriadis (1999). La rationalit du capitalisme

in Figures du Pensable (Les carrefours du labyrinthe VI),
Paris: Seuil.

Alan D. Schrift. Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: Key Themes and Thinkers. John Wiley & Sons,
2009. ISBN 978-140-51439-43.

[105] C. Castoriadis (1984).

. Athens: Ypsilon
().
[106] IIS, p. 23.
[107] C. Castoriadis (1981) (avec Daniel Cohn-Bendit et le
Public de Louvain-la-Neuve), De l'cologie l'autonomie
[From Ecology to Autonomy], dition de Seuil, Paris.

Theofanis Tasis. .
[Castoriadis. A philosophy of autonomy]. Athens: Eurasia books. December 2007.
ISBN 978-960-8187-22-1.
Theofanis Tassis. Cornelius Castoriadis. Disposition
einer Philosophie. 2007. FU Dissertationen Online.

[108] IIS, pp. 2235.

[109] IIS, p. 46.

8 Further reading

[110] FT07, p. 80.

[111] Castoriadis advocated that the surging forth [surgissement]
of signication covers of the Chaos or, in other words,
signication brings into being a mode of being that posits
itself as negation of the Chaos (WIF, p. 315).
[112] See Renaissance republics.
[113] FT05: Imaginary and Imagination at the Crossroads, p.
146.
[114] FT05: Imaginary and Imagination at the Crossroads, p.
134.

Suzi Adams. Castoriadiss Ontology: Being and Creation. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011.
ISBN 978-082-3234-59-2.
Suzi Adams (ed.). Cornelius Castoriadis: Key Concepts. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. ISBN 978-144-1172-90-7.
Nelly Andrikopoulou. ,
1945 [Mataroas Voyage, 1945]. Athens: Hestia
Printing House, 2007. ISBN 978-960-05-1348-6.

11
Andrew Arato. From Neo-Marxism to Democratic
Theory. Essays on the Critical Theory of Soviet-Type
Societies. M.E. Sharpe, 1993, pp. 12245. ISBN
978-076-56185-35.
Maurice Brinton.
For Workers Power.
Selected Writings (ed. David Goodway). Edinburgh/Oakland: AK Press, 2004. ISBN 1-90485907-0.
Dimitris Eleas. :
[Private Cornelius:
Personal Testimony about Castoriadis]. Athens: Angelakis, July 2014. ISBN 978-618-5011-69-7.
Andrea Gabler. Antizipierte Autonomie. Zur Theorie und Praxis der Gruppe Socialisme ou Barbarie
(1949-1967). Hanover: Ozin Verlag, 2009. ISBN
978-393-0345-64-9.
Jrgen Habermas. The Philosophical Discourse of
Modernity: Excursus on Castoriadis: The Imaginary Institution. Polity Press, 1990, pp. 32735.
ISBN 0-7456-0830-2.
Axel Honneth. Rescuing the Revolution with an
Ontology: On Cornelius Castoriadis Theory of Society. In: The Fragmanted World of the Social. Essays in Social and Political Philosophy (ed. Charles
Wright), SUNY Press, 1995, pp. 168183. ISBN
978-143-8407-00-5.
Hans Joas. Pragmatism and Social Theory, University of Chicago Press, 1993, pp. 154171. ISBN
978-022-6400-42-6
Alexandros Kioupkiolis. Freedom After the Critique
of Foundations: Marx, Liberalism, Castoriadis and
Agonistic Autonomy. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
ISBN 0230279120.

Richard Rorty. "Unger, Castoriadis, and the Romance of a National Future. Northwestern University Law Review, 82(2):33551 (1988).
Alexandros Schismenos. The Human Tempest.
Psyche and autonomy in Cornelius Castoriadis
Philosophy [ .

]. Athens: Exarcheia, 2013. ISBN
978-618-80336-5-8.
Alexandros Schismenos and Nikos Ioannou. After
Castoriadis. Routes for Autonomy in the 21st Century
[ .
21 ]. Athens: Exarcheia, 2014. ISBN
978-618-5128-03-6.
Society of Friends of Cornelius Castoriadis. ,
, [Psyche, Logos, Polis]. Athens: Ypsilon, 2007. ISBN 978-960-17-0219-3.
Yannis Stavrakakis. Creativity and its Limits: Encounters with Social Constructionism and the Political in Castoriadis and Lacan. Constellations,
9(4):522539 (2002).
Yannis Stavrakakis. The Lacanian Left: Psychoanalysis, Theory, Politics. Edinburgh University
Press, 2007, pp. 3765. ISBN 0791473295.
Thesis Eleven, Special Issue 'Cornelius Castoriadis,
Number 49, May 1997. London: Sage Publications.
ISSN 0725-5136.
John B. Thompson. Studies in the Theory of Ideology. University of California Press, 1984, Chapter 1: Ideology and the Social Imaginary. An Appraisal of Castoriadis and Lefort. ISBN 978-0520054-11-0.

Je Klooger. Castoriadis: Psyche, Society, Autonomy. Brill, 2009. ISBN 978-90-04-17529-7

Simon Tormey and Jules Townshend, Key Thinkers

from Critical Theory to Post-Marxism, London: Sage
Publications, 2006, pp. 1337. ISBN 978-1847877-16-1.

Johann Michel. Ricoeur and the Post-Structuralists:

Bourdieu, Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Castoriadis.
Rowman & Littleeld International, 2014. ISBN
978-17-83-48094-4.

Marcela Tovar-Restrepo, Castoriadis, Foucault, and

Autonomy: New Approaches to Subjectivity, Society,
and Social Change, Continuum International Publishing, 2012. ISBN 978-14-41-15226-8.

Mathieu Noury. Cornelius Castoriadis, sociologue

? Critique sociologique de l'ontologie de la cration imaginaire sociale. Revue Aspects Sociologiques,
18(1), March 2011.

Joel Whitebook. Intersubjectivity and the Monadic

Core of the Psyche: Habermas and Castoriadis on
the Unconscious. In: Maurizio Passerin d'Entrves
and Seyla Benhabib (eds.), Habermas and the Unnished Project of Modernity: Critical Essays on The
Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, MIT Press,
1997, pp. 172193. ISBN 978-026-2540-80-3.

Yorgos Oikonomou (ed.),

[The Birth
of Democracy and Contemporary Crisis]. Athens:
Eurasia books. 2011. ISBN 978-960-8187-77-1.

Mathieu Potte-Bonneville, Risked democracy: 9 External links

Foucault, Castoriadis and the Greeks, Radical Philosophy 166 (March/April 2011).
WMF project links

12

EXTERNAL LINKS

Media related to Cornelius Castoriadis at Wikimedia Commons

Cornelius Castoriadis and the triumph of the will

by Alex Callinicos, Chapter 4.3 of Trotskyism, 1990

Quotations related to Cornelius Castoriadis at Wikiquote

Cornelius Castoriadis, critical analysis at the libertarian communist website libcom.org

Cornelius Castoriadis at Wikibooks

An Introduction to Cornelius Castoriadis Work

by Fabio Ciaramelli, Journal of European Psychoanalysis #6, Winter 1998 (access restricted to subscribers)

The dictionary denition of anerithmon gelasma at

Wiktionary
Overviews
Cornelius Castoriadis entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Interviews
Videotaped interview with Chris Marker
Interview with Cornelius Castoriadis for the show
Paraskinio, of the Greek television network ET1
(1984) on YouTube (with English subtitles)
Broadcast information on radio interviews with
Cornelius Castoriadis (in French). Institut National
de l'Audiovisuel. Retrieved 2013-12-17. (The les
and documents kept at the Inathque de France
can be consulted at the consultation centre at the
Bibliothque nationale de France.)
Obituaries; biographies
Cornelius Castoriadis 19221997 at the libertarian
communist website libcom.org, 27 September 2003
Symposium: Cornelius Castoriadis, 19221997,
obituaries and proles by Axel Honneth, Edgar
Morin, and Joel Whitebook, Radical Philosophy
magazine, July/August 1998 (access restricted to
subscribers)
Obituary: Castoriadis and the democratic tradition by Takis Fotopoulos, Democracy & Nature,
Vol. 4, No. 1 (1997)
Bibliographies; analyses; critiques
The Cornelius Castoriadis/Agora International
Website contains bibliographies in many languages
and the complete text of the Socialisme ou Barbarie
magazine series (texts scanned in the original
French)
L'Association Castoriadis with bibliography, news,
media events, original articles (in French)
Castoriadis: entry by John V. Garner, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The Strange Afterlife of Cornelius Castoriadis by

Scott McLemee, Chronicle of Higher Education, 26
March 2004 (access restricted to subscribers)
Full text of the Cornelius Castoriadis symposium
held at the University of Akureyri, from the special
issue of Nordicum-Mediterraneum, e-magazine of
Nordic and Mediterranean studies, December 2008
Houston, Christopher, Islam, Castoriadis and autonomy. Thesis Eleven, February 2004, vol. 76,
no. 1, pp. 4969
Suzi Adams, Castoriadis long journey through
Nomos: Institution, creation, interpretation. Tijdschrift voor Filosoe, 70 (June), 269295 (2008)
Suzi Adams, Towards a Post-Phenomenology of
Life: Castoriadis Naturphilosophie", Cosmos and
History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, Vol 4, No 12 (2008)
Linda M.G. Zerilli (2002), Castoriadis, Arendt,
and the Problem of the New, doi: 10.1111/14678675.00302
The autonomy project and Inclusive Democracy:
a critical review of Castoriadis thought, by Takis
Fotopoulos, The International Journal of Inclusive
Democracy, Vol 4, No 2 (April 2008)
Unities and Tensions in the Work of Cornelius Castoriadis With Some Considerations on the Question
of Organization by David Ames Curtis, talk delivered to Autonomy or Barbarism"-sponsored event
in Athens, 7 December 2007
Exchange of letters between Cornelius Castoriadis
and Anton Pannekoek, originally published in Socialisme ou Barbarie, translated and introduced by
Viewpoint Magazine

13

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