Castoriadis: Psyche, Society, Autonomy (Social and Critical Theory; a Critical Horizons Book, 6)

Castoriadis: Psyche, Society, Autonomy

Social and Critical Theory A Critical Horizons Book Series Editorial Board JOHN RUNDELL, DANIELLE PETHERBRIDGE, JEREMY SMITH, JEAN-PHILIPPE DERANTY, ROBERT SINNERBRINK

International Advisory Board WILLIAM CONNOLLY, MANFRED FRANK, LEELA GANDHI, AGNES HELLER, DICK HOWARD, MARTIN JAY, RICHARD KEARNEY, PAUL PATTON, MICHIEL WIEVIORKA

VOLUME 6

Castoriadis: Psyche, Society, Autonomy By

Jeff Klooger Foreword by

Dick Howard

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2009

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Klooger, Jeff. Castoriadis : psyche, society, autonomy / by Jeff Klooger ; foreword by Dick Howard. p. cm. — (Social and critical theory, ISSN 1572-459X ; v. 6) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-17529-7 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Castoriadis, Cornelius, 1922–1997. 2. Autonomy (Philosophy) 3. Philosophy. I. Title. II. Series. B2430.C3584K56 2009 194—dc22 2009007302

ISSN 1572-459X ISBN 978 90 04 17529 7 Copyright 2009 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

For my mother, who taught me to read and encouraged me to think

Contents Acknowledgments Foreword by Dick Howard Introduction

ix xi 1

Chapter One Self-Creation and Autonomy 1 Autonomy and Heteronomy 2 The Other Self 3 Beyond the Closed World: The Autonomous Subject and its Others

11 11 18

Chapter Two Creation, Society and the Imaginary 1 The Impossibility of Creation and the Logic-Ontology of Determinacy 2 The Failure of Traditional Accounts of Society and History 3 The Imaginary

37

Chapter Three Self and World 1 The Self 2 The World of the Self 3 Representation and its Other

65 65 70 74

28

37 47 55

Chapter Four The Living Body 1 The Life of the Body 2 Self-Creation 3 Many in One: Types of Psyche and Levels of Self

85 85 91 101

Chapter Five The Human Psyche 1 Peculiarities of the Human Psyche 2 The Representational World of the Human Psyche 3 Representational Pleasure and Sublimation

113 113 119 127

viii • Contents

Chapter Six The Whole World and More: The Meaning of the Monadic Psyche and its Fate 1 The Community of Selfs and the Compulsion to Respond 2 The Myth of the Monad 3 The Impossible Object of Desire

145 145 148 169

Chapter Seven Magmas 1 Being as Magma 2 The Mode of Being of Magmas 3 Magmas and Ensembles

179 179 186 196

Chapter Eight Determination and the Logic of Indeterminate Being 1 Ensemblisation and the Ensidic 2 The Ensidic and the History of Creation

213 213 230

Chapter Nine Indeterminacy and Interpretation 1 The Measure of Things 2 Determination Beyond Limits

241 241 259

Chapter Ten Autonomy and Meaning 1 Autonomy, Heteronomy and the Significance of Greece 2 Religion, Meaning and the Abyss 3 Meaning and Truth

271 271 295 305

Conclusion The Legacy of Castoriadis The Journey, and What We Have Made of It

313 313 319

Bibliography Index

329 341

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Johann Arnason, for his scholarly example, his astute advice, his challenging criticisms, and—not least—his great patience; and Dick Howard, for his efforts in bringing attention to Castoriadis’ work, for his encouragement and for contributing the Foreword. I would also like to thank the following people, without whose friendship, support, encouragement and assistance this book could not have been completed: my family—Helen, Maurice, Darren, Michelle, Nathan, Teagan and Vicki Klooger, and Jenyn and Alf Ruhnau; Stephen Williams, whose support and practical assistance in the early stages of this project was invaluable; my friends and fellow students Glenda Ballantyne and Dimitra Van De Garde; my original PhD supervisor, Paul Harrison; my friend Gavin Murray, an activist rather than academic admirer of Castoriadis, who, when I first mentioned to him that I was studying the work of an obscure fellow called Cornelius Castoriadis, almost embraced me as a fellow devotee and revolutionary; and my many friends and colleagues at Quantum Research. I would also like to thank the editors of the Social and Critical Theory series, particularly John Rundell, who helped guide me through the process of preparing the manuscript for publication. He also happens to be the person who first directed my attention to Castoriadis’ writings, and for that I also owe him my thanks. And I would like to thank Suzi Adams for her continuing efforts to promote interest in Castoriadis’ work, and for continuing to invite me to be part of that endeavour.

Foreword by Dick Howard

The publication of Jeff Klooger’s study of Cornelius Castoriadis’ mature philosophical work marks a significant moment in the developing understanding of the tasks of theory and theorists in the new century. Klooger manages at once to present clearly Castoriadis’ theses and the questions that motivate him while never hesitating to criticise and suggest paths for developing more richly these theses and questions. His work will be of interest both to those seeking to understand the originality of Castoriadis—who stands among the great twentieth-century French philosophical and political thinkers—and to those who have already been drawn to one or another aspect of the work of this Greco-French polymath whose thought is constantly enlivened by his concern with politics, its theory and its practice. Klooger captures the richness of Castoriadis’ work nicely when he seeks to link the philosophical questions of Being, Self-Creation and Autonomy with the practical-political questions of Being, Society and Self. Self-creation is the mode of being of society in Castoriadis’ ontology, while autonomy is the project that makes the self human. Because the sophistication of Klooger’s conceptual study gives him little reason to insert the figure and the development of Castoriadis himself into his analysis, I propose briefly to introduce the man whose thought the reader will soon encounter. I had the good fortune to know Castoriadis as a friend for more than twenty-five years, which means that this presentation will be subjective and partial (in both senses of that term). In this way, it will hopefully be a useful pendant to Jeff Klooger’s sophisticated account. While working as a professional economist at the OECD in Paris, Castoriadis joined with Claude Lefort to form a dissident faction within the Trotskyist movement, which they soon left. The name of their group became the title of the journal that the new group published between 1948 and 1965. Although it never reached a mass public, the journal was appreciated by independent

xii • Foreword by Dick Howard

thinkers before it became a hot tip in the wake of the 1968 May movement. It was still possible to find copies in a small leftist used bookstore on the rue Cujas when I first met Castoriadis to request that he write a chapter about the group for the book I co-edited with Karl Klare, The Unknown Dimension: European Marxism since Lenin. Although the chapter was never written, our friendship formed. While some of his early letters to me were written on stationary that had the “Socialisme ou Barbarie” logo at the top, the group never reunited. The last five issues of Socialisme ou Barbarie were largely filled by a long critical analysis of the achievement and limitations of Marx written by Castoriadis under the title “Marxism and Revolutionary Theory.” The thesis of his critique might be summarised by saying that if Marx materialised Hegel’s philosophy Castoriadis philosophised Marx’s political goals. More precisely, his claim was that revolutionary theory was not compatible with Marxism. The immediate result of Castoriadis’ critique was the dissolution of the group and its journal; its longer term consequences were Castoriadis’ retirement from his career as an economist to begin training as a psychoanalyst, and the continued development of his own philosophical system. This phase of Castoriadis’ development came together in The Imaginary Institution of Society (1975), whose first half is a reprint of the essays from Socialisme ou Barbarie. It then went on to formulate the bases of the revolutionary theory that Marxism was unable to provide. In retrospect, it is difficult to say which part of The Imaginary Institution was more controversial, the definitive critique and rejection of not just Marxism but Marx himself, or the new radical ontology that Castoriadis proposed in the second part. I recall the difficulty that I had when trying to convince my fellow editors of Telos to publish my essay on Castoriadis because of the Marx matter; but I remember as well the reaction of Jürgen Habermas to what he saw as an irrationalism when I came to Starnberg in 1974 to present the more ontological side of Castoriadis’ argument. In time, Telos and other English language journals become more hospitable; and Habermas came to respect and to dialogue with Castoriadis. While The Imaginary Institution contained the kernel of Castoriadis’ attempt to formulate that revolutionary theory that he showed Marxism incapable of achieving, he did not throw away the baby with the bath water. He had

Foreword by Dick Howard • xiii

already begun the publication of a collection of ten paperback volumes that contained mainly articles that he had written during the Socialisme ou Barbarie years, regrouping them by subject matter, from the critique of relations of production in the Soviet Union to the nature of modern capitalism, from the experience of the workers’ movement to the nature of French society and content of what socialism would have to be in reality. It is striking that, although he and at least some of his readers had seen the limits of the Marxist paradigm within which he had written these essays, they were considered sufficiently rigorous and insightful to merit republication in this widely read paperback series. At the same time that he was republishing his earlier works (with critical introductions), Castoriadis began the publication of a series of his more recent essays in what would eventually become six volumes under the title Crossroads in the Labyrinth. This collective title refers to the fact that Castoriadis’ apparently diverse essays (and interviews), regrouped under the headings “Koinonia,” “Polis,” “Logos,” and “Psyche,” shared a common ontological foundation—as the reader of Jeff Klooger’s book will see. Looked at simply and from the outside, it is clear that Castoriadis’ political (and his polemical) concerns never slackened; he remained as always alert to the new, taking part with Lefort and others in the publication of the journal Libre in 1977, and, after it ceased publication, publishing the texts of a debate about the future of Green politics that he conducted with Daniel Cohn-Bendit in 1981, the same year that he published a pessimistic analysis of the Soviet threat to a western world that appeared incapable of understanding and defending its democratic life against a new, militarised form of totalitarianism that Castoriadis called a “stratocracy.” His public lectures illustrated his theoretical points with concrete examples that would be familiar to the reader of the daily newspaper. The crossroads that Castoriadis detected in the labyrinth were not only political; perhaps it would be better to say that these intersections, of which there were many, were political insofar as they were philosophical; and they were philosophical insofar as they concerned what Jeff Klooger calls Being, selfcreation and autonomy. I said that Castoriadis was a polymath. As I recall some of the times we spent together, aside from shared philosophical concerns, particularly with the Kantian theory of judgment, psychoanalysis, and critical comments on what passed at the time for political thought and action,

xiv • Foreword by Dick Howard

I still remember his attempt to explain the French mathematical theories of Bourbaki, as well as the recommendation of this man who had a grand piano in his study and a splendid collection of jazz records to my son that he learn to play the piano correctly by using Bartok’s Mikrokosmos as his guide. During one visit to Long Island, I arranged for a visit to the Brookhaven National Laboratories, where he discussed the most recent research in advanced physics with the scientist who guided our tour. Indeed, at colloquia devoted to his work, it was not unusual to meet biologists, cyberneticists or physicists who found that they could talk to classical scholars or political activists about shared values and projects. Until his sudden death in 1997, Castoriadis continued to practice psychoanalysis as well as to teach his regular seminar at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Although he is no longer with us, this work continues to enlighten me and others through the publication by a group of friends of the seminars that he taught at the École. The four volumes that have appeared thus far have concerned what is perhaps the true love and inspiration of his life: Greece, its language and lore, its democracy and its tragedies, its politics and philosophy. Reading these volumes, even for those who never had the luck to experience him, brings back the fullness of the man and the excitement of the thinker. This man, whom his friends called “Corneille,” remained an heir of classical Greece precisely in his ever-renewed pursuit of the project of autonomy that was ultimately the defining characteristic of the “revolutionary theory” that The Imaginary Institution began to outline once its incompatibility with Marxism had been shown. Dick Howard

Introduction

If infanticide is the fate of revolution, then patricide has been the fate of the Enlightenment, particularly in recent times. Beginning in the 1960s, many of those intellectuals whose practice was formed and informed by the ideals of rational critique which had their birth in the Enlightenment turned that critique back upon Enlightenment itself, upon the modernity which was in part spawned by the Enlightenment. Subject to this critique was not just the reality of modernity, with all its imperfections, shortfalls, distortions and plain evils, but the principles of Enlightenment which in part (always in part, never in their entirety) drove the developments that have resulted in our modern world, and which in particular underpinned the various movements of emancipation that have flourished over the past two centuries or so. The Enlightenment was certainly never, nor is it today, a monumental and undifferentiated force for good. However, what those critiques of modernity and Enlightenment that came to be grouped under the heading of postmodernism criticised was not just peripheral aspects or impurities contained within the Enlightenment project, but the very core of that project itself. Some, like Foucault, clearly

2 • Introduction

embarked on this critique in defence of some idea of freedom, though such thinkers generally eschewed any clear definition or conceptualisation of this freedom. This was because they believed that such intellectual maneuvers inevitably worked against freedom, distorting and imprisoning it, that being the nub of their criticism of the Enlightenment project. Others, like Derrida, seemed to defend their approach by reference to the validity of critique itself, with intellectual rigour being the raison d’être for a project of unmasking the pretense of modernist claims to intellectual rigour. If these critiques were ultimately self-contradictory, they were nevertheless powerful, because they managed to convince readers that the demand for seamless consistency was itself part of the problem and ultimately antithetical to freedom. This intellectual and cultural development had a powerful effect at its height, and its influence continues to be felt today. Some revel in the liberty it seems to grant, a licence to intellectualise with abandon, while remaining free from constraints of rigour, consistency, even sense. Others experience deep and genuine depression at the loss of more radical and encompassing hopes for the future. Some, like myself, while initially attracted to the cleverness of the movement, as well as the important insights it offered into until-then unacknowledged tendencies of thought, became frustrated with the seeming inability to go beyond mere critique to posit anything new or to offer some hope for change to replace the grand narratives that had been abandoned. Such people soon began to cast about for something else, something more; not a mere defence of or return to the old ways of thinking, but something that incorporated an awareness of the newly revealed limitations of traditional modes of thought while nevertheless offering positive ways forward. One thinker who represented such an alternative was Cornelius Castoriadis. Castoriadis was never a part of the post-modernist milieu, but his own intellectual development took him on a parallel trajectory to that of many of the prominent post-modern thinkers. Though never one to rest easy within the conventions of established ideologies, he made important contributions to intellectual debate on the meaning of socialism and to the understanding of social and historical formations such as the Soviet Union, the modern workers’ movement and modern bureaucratic capitalism, all as an avowed and

Introduction • 3

committed Marxist.1 Then in the 1960s his restless drive to re-examine the assumptions of his own intellectual tradition forced him to acknowledge flaws in the Marxist understanding of society and history, flaws which were fundamental enough for him to conclude that the project of Marxism itself was no longer tenable. If he ever felt crushed by such a turn of events, tantamount to a loss of faith, it did not immobilise him as it has some others, or not for long. Even as he was bidding a respectful but unavoidable farewell to Marxism (if not entirely to Marx), he was embarking on his own project to re-imagine the problems of history and society. This eventually led him on a journey through fields of inquiry which would become familiar to those touched by postmodernism. He describes his own journey towards a new understanding of society and history as involving three elements: a re-examination of the philosophical tradition, particularly Greek philosophy and the Enlightenment philosophy of Immanuel Kant; an investigation of the problem of language; and a reexamination of Freud and psychoanalytic theory. (The latter eventually led to Castoriadis himself qualifying and practicing as an analyst.)2

1

Castoriadis was one of the founders of the journal Socialism ou Barbarie. As well

as many other contributions to the understanding of socialism and the analysis of modern capitalism and of workers’ movements throughout the world, the journal distinguished itself by being the first, and for a long time virtually the only, voice from the Marxist Left prepared to engage in a critical analysis of the Soviet Union. Castoriadis was at the forefront of this movement, with his detailed analyses of Soviet society as ‘bureaucratic capitalism’. See for example “On the Regime and against the Defense of the USSR,” “The Problem of The USSR and the Possibility of a Third Historical Solution” and “The Relations of Production in Russia,” all in C. Castoriadis, Political and Social Writings, Vol. 1, 1946-1955: From the Critique of Bureaucracy to the Positive Content of Socialism, trans. and ed. D. A. Curtis, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1988; as well as “The Social Regime in Russia” in The Castoriadis Reader, ed. Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., Oxford University Press, 1997. For Castoriadis’ Socialism ou Barbarie writings generally, see Political and Social Writings, Vols. 1 and 2, trans. and ed. Curtis, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1988. 2

See Castoriadis’ own account of his intellectual journey in the preface to C. Casto-

riadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. Kathleen Blamey, Oxford, Polity, and Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1987.

4 • Introduction

The product of this personal and intellectual odyssey was a radically new approach to the understanding of society and history, with its own rich conceptual vocabulary and a vast potential for development and application. This approach has at its basis a critique of traditional modes of thought which in many respects parallels that found in post-modern critiques. But far from being the end-point of the argument, this critique is a springboard into the development of new attempts to conceptualise and elucidate what traditional approaches have distorted and hidden. What emerges most strongly is the importance of imagination, which Castoriadis recasts in the form of the concept of the imaginary, an aspect of the human condition, and of society and history in particular, that traditional thought has always ignored, downplayed or obscured. What the existence and importance of the imaginary in turn implies is the reality and significance of creation, also anathema to traditional modes of thought concerning both history and being, and its centrality to the human mode of being. And what the concept of creation requires us to acknowledge is the importance of indeterminacy as a fundamental characteristic of being generally and of human forms of being in particular. With the idea of the imaginary, Castoriadis seeks to emphasise the constitutive role of meaning, as opposed to the merely regulative or mediating roles generally accorded it in prevailing accounts of society. Beyond society’s functional imperatives, and beyond the rules and constraints imposed by its symbolic structures, society is constituted by and through its positing of core meanings, or social imaginary significations, which organise and deploy the constellations of ideas, values, aims and identities which animate the society. The imaginary, in this core context, has two meanings: it is the crucial capacity of a society for creating meanings/significations—so, in this sense, it is the imagination recast as a social rather than a merely psychological capacity—; and at the same time it refers to the central constitutive social meanings that are posited by this creative capacity. (Castoriadis speaks of a society’s imaginary or central imaginary, meaning the core meanings around which that society is organised and animated.)3

3

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 146-153.

Introduction • 5

It seems reasonable to surmise that Castoriadis’ insistence on the importance of the imaginary as a dimension of society somehow evolved out of his recognition of the importance of the imagination to the life of the psyche. His exploration of the human psyche through his own appropriation and development of psychoanalytic theory represents another important contribution to our understanding of the total human condition. What marks Castoriadis out, however, from his psychoanalytic confreres is his steadfast refusal to reduce the social to the psychical or to conflate the two. He admits (as he must) that what he has called the radical imaginary, the fundamental capacity of a society to create meanings/significations through and by means of which it brings itself into existence as a society, draws on the radical imagination, the same capacity for creating, and for creating itself in and through, meanings possessed by the psyche. But he denies any question of reducing one to the other. This cannot be achieved, he argues, because the mode of being of meaning in the social context, the social signification, is absent from the psyche, and is something which the psyche in and of itself is incapable of producing. Human life as we find it, therefore, is a creation with two sources, psyche and society. These sources are at the same time conflicting and complementary; they engage in an often fraught and tension-ridden co-operation, a tenuous accommodation which never results in true peace and harmony. Out of this tension much that is valuable and rewarding may emerge, as well as serious dangers. Recognising the importance of the imagination/imaginary entails recognising creation as fundamental to the human condition, in both its psychical and social dimensions. That the imaginary, understood as the capacity and activity of positing images/meanings, entails creativity should be obvious. The only question is how that creativity is to be understood. Castoriadis contends that it should be understood in the strongest sense possible, that this creation is the emergence of forms which are in no sense or manner determined by what preceded them. This creation therefore involves the emergence/positing of the genuinely new. Castoriadis’ critique of preceding accounts of society and history centres on their failure to acknowledge and allow for this emergence of the new. This failure stems from the refusal to countenance creation in its fullest sense. For Castoriadis, society is essentially creation; it is, in fact, selfcreation, an ongoing activity whereby societies bring themselves into being by

6 • Introduction

the creation of the social imaginary significations they embody and around which they organise themselves. The ongoing, continual nature of this activity is crucial. History is not something accidental to society, a circumstance that somehow befalls a society occasionally or contingently. It is the essential mode of being of society, a reflection of the fact that the creation of imaginary significations through which society brings itself into being is not exhausted by any one act of creation/positing, but continues as an inexpungible dimension of the life of any society. The result is that social change, hence history, is inevitable. Some societies change quickly, others slowly, but for all change is unavoidable. Castoriadis coined the term social-historical as an alternative to the term society in recognition of the essential and universal character of this self-transformative aspect of the social. What gives Castoriadis’ work its politically progressive character, so conspicuously lacking in the post-modern tradition, is the central place within it of the concept of autonomy. Though Castoriadis justifiably maintained that he was writing about autonomy long before his break with Marxism,4 it acquires a prominence and centrality in his later writings that it had not possessed previously. It represents an effort to distill the core of a radical, emancipatory politics so that it might be defended against the positivistic aspects and tendencies of radical political thought, particularly Marxism. It is a deceptively simple idea which leads to the most profound complexities. I/we give myself/ourselves my/our own laws. Every term in this short statement calls for further elucidation, giving rise to a series of questions—about the nature of the self, of society and history, and of being—which go far beyond the realm of the political, even if politics remains their ultimate raison d’être. Castoriadis perceived that if autonomy is to be upheld as a viable political aim it must be disentangled from deterministic approaches to society and history. We do not truly make our own laws if the laws we make are determined beforehand by other laws over which we have no influence. The contention that society is a

4

See for example “Socialism or Barbarism” and “On the Content of Socialism I” in

Political and Social Writings, Vol. 1; and “On the Content of Socialism II” and “Proletariat and Organisation I” in Political and Social Writings, Vol. 2, 1955-1960: From the Workers’ Struggle Against Bureaucracy to Revolution in the Age of Modern Capitalism, trans. and ed. Curtis, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1988.

Introduction • 7

form of self-creation immediately posits that the laws which govern a society are creations of that society itself. As such, they are at least potentially open to examination, assessment, re-formulation, rejection and replacement. The idea that society is self-created contrasts with the idea which preponderates throughout human history and across most societies that society’s laws are in fact given by some other beyond society: by a God or gods, or by universal and unbreakable natural or metaphysical laws, however variously conceived. This view—the idea that society is heteronomous—coincides with the existence of institutions which in various ways deter or prevent the interrogation and alteration of social laws and institutions. In other words, this heteronomous world-view coincides with, endorses and supports an institutional structure which is itself heteronomous. Societies which exhibit such a structure can in this sense be said to be heteronomous societies. Here, however, is where conceptual difficulties begin to intrude. How can we reconcile the idea of heteronomous societies with the insight that all societies are self-creating? And if all societies are self-creating, including heteronomous ones, in what would the specificity of autonomous societies reside? Although this is more extensively discussed in the book, I shall simply say here that unraveling this conundrum leads us to posit a multiplicity of selfs and others, and of senses of selfhood and otherness, and that it forces us to acknowledge that heteronomous world-views capture, albeit in a distorted manner, a reality which cannot be transformed merely by the substitution of one view of society for another, no matter how essential such a substitution might be for the realisation of the goal of autonomy. Reflection on the manner in which the categories of self and other might be deployed in both the social and psychical contexts, but particularly in the social context, also leads to insights into the nature of ineradicable tensions within society, tensions which must be taken into account and dealt with if the project of autonomy is to be advanced. One of Castoriadis’ most important insights in his efforts to uncover the roots of social heteronomy is his recognition that deterministic approaches to society and history are but the tip of an iceberg which extends into the depths of both human thought and the institutional structure of society, that they reflect a deeply entrenched ontology and associated logic which equates ‘being’ with determinacy, and which therefore ends by denying the possibility of genuine novelty and difference even if it begins by recognising and defending it. If

8 • Introduction

the concept of autonomy is to be defended against determinism in a more than superficial manner, the roots of this determinism must be dealt with. It is this which leads Castoriadis to develop and defend his radical notion of creation as the undetermined emergence of genuinely ‘other’ forms, to an understanding of the self generally—from the living being to the human psyche and society—as self-created and self-creating, and to the development of an alternative ontology which excludes complete determinacy while encompassing determination. This book traces that intellectual path. It takes the form of a circle. Beginning with an examination of Castoriadis’ thesis that society is a form of selfcreation, it attempts to elucidate what autonomy consists in and how it may be differentiated from its antithesis, heteronomy, given that both must be regarded as forms of social-historical self-creation. It then explores Castoriadis’ concept of creation ex nihilo against the background of his critique of traditional logic-ontology and of traditional theoretical approaches to society and history. The concepts of the ‘imaginary’ and of ‘social imaginary significations’, as the form of self-creation and mode of being specific to society respectively, are then introduced. There follows an exploration of the nature of the self and its relations with the world, centering on the problem of elucidating the relationship between the images created by the self in an essentially undetermined fashion and the world which they must nonetheless represent. This discussion continues with an exploration of the concept of the psyche and the deeper ontological implications of the notion of self-creation. I then examine Castoriadis’ analysis of the mode of being of the human psyche and its relationship with the body. I attempt to explicate and critique Castoriadis’ account of the original state of the human psyche, which he labels ‘monadic’, as well as the continuing influence he ascribes to this original state. A large part of the second half of the book is devoted to dealing with the enormously complex issues raised by Castoriadis’ ontological reflections. The primary aim throughout is to attempt to reconcile the postulate of a fundamental ontological indeterminacy with the reality of determination, to highlight the dynamic and ‘historical’ nature of the relationship between these two aspects of being, and to show how determinacy and indeterminacy operate within the human domain as opposing tendencies, with far-reaching consequences for the mode of being of both the human psyche and the social-historical, as

Introduction • 9

well as for the development of the project of autonomy. In pursuing this overarching task, I explore the implications of Castoriadis’ concept of ‘magma’ as a mode of being which precludes the possibility of complete determinacy, but which exhibits and allows for an indefinite multiplicity of ‘partial’ or incomplete determinations. The task of rethinking the concept of determination is begun in the context of an essential and inextinguishable indeterminacy. The hermeneutical dimension of the problem is explored, in its ontological as well as its epistemological aspects. The book concludes with an exploration of the cultural and historical dimensions of the issue, which aims to return us to the problems of society, history and the relationship between autonomy and heteronomy, armed with the insights and perspectives developed in the intervening chapters. The circle is thus completed—though not, I hope, closed; for like all good hermeneutical circles, it should not end at the point at which it began, but somewhere else, which is, at least potentially, a new starting point. The reader will see that I do not shirk from criticising Castoriadis where I think this is necessary. None of my criticisms, however, involve a rejection of his central insights. On the contrary, they are motivated by a desire, on the one hand, to defend these insights against the weaknesses and inconsistencies in his writings which, in my view, threaten to undermine them, and on the other, to build on these insights. The gravitational pull of the logic-ontology of determinacy is formidable, for all the reasons Castoriadis elucidates, so it is hardly surprising if his own ground-breaking attempts to escape it are not entirely successful. Castoriadis also makes continuing use of a number of stop-gap concepts—the concept of ‘leaning on’, for example—which he never adequately explores or develops, and these constitute recurring weaknesses in his arguments. It is true, of course, that Castoriadis’ views changed over time, though he seldom took the trouble to explicitly acknowledge or explicate these changes, an approach he defends in his preface to The Imaginary Institution of Society. Though I have endeavoured to take this into account, it is possible that some of my criticisms may centre on views he himself would not have cared, finally, to defend.

Chapter One Self-Creation and Autonomy

1

Autonomy and Heteronomy Society is a form of self-creation. Until now, however, its instituting has been a self-instituting which is occulted from itself. This self-occultation is, as a matter of fact, the fundamental characteristic of heteronomy in societies. In heteronomous societies, that is to say, in the overwhelming majority of societies which have existed up to the present time—almost all of them—we find, institutionally established and sanctioned, the representation of a source of the instituting of society that only can be found outside of this society: among the gods, in God, among the ancestors, in the laws of Nature, in the laws of Reason, in the laws of History. In other words, we find imposed upon the individuals in these societies a representation to the effect that the instituting of society does not depend on them, that they cannot lay down for themselves their own law—for that would mean autonomy—but rather that this law is already given by someone else. There

12 • Chapter One is therefore a self-occultation of the self-institution of society and this is an integral part of the society’s heteronomy.1

Autonomy only emerges as a project where there are already laws, where there is already an established order of rules, customs, beliefs, ways of thinking and acting, values, goals, and so on; in short, where there is already society. Anyone who adopts autonomy as an aim must confront this existing order, the instituted structure of society, both as a possible obstacle to the establishment of a truly autonomous society—one in which institutions are authored and authorised by those whose existence they mould and regulate—and as a fact to be accounted for. Although this second task is not peculiarly related to the project of autonomy—every culture contains an account of the nature and origins of (its own) society and its (own) institutions—it acquires a new significance and urgency in this context. No-one would attempt a deliberate transformation of the social order unless they believed that such an enterprise was both possible and desirable. More specifically, no-one would attempt—or even conceive of attempting—to adopt autonomy as an aim if they believed that human beings were unable or unfit to design their own institutions, to give themselves their own laws. In most societies—almost all of them, Castoriadis suggests—this is precisely how things stand. If the individuals of such societies conceive of themselves as incapable of the task of formulating their own laws and thereby determining their own way of life, this is deeply related to the accounts such societies give of their own existence and origin. These societies may be described as ‘heteronomous’ in a variety of senses, the first of which is that they explicitly posit themselves as such. For such societies, their nomoi—their laws, their institutions—have their origin in a source outside society and have been given to society by this ‘other’ (Greek: heteros). In terms of our present concern, it matters little whether this ‘other’ is personal or impersonal, whether it is conceived of as a benevolent agent or as the blind operation of faceless and indifferent forces. The effect is the same: to exclude the actual members of such societies from challenging and reconstructing their institutions. This is not just because of the idea such an

1

C. Castoriadis, “The Nature and Value of Equality,” trans. David Ames Curtis, in

Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, ed. David Ames Curtis, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 132-133.

Self-Creation and Autonomy • 13

account gives individuals of themselves, their capabilities and their role in the world—although this is obviously crucial. It is also because of the way in which this fundamental tenet is built into the institutions of such societies, so that even where the extraordinary and radical idea that human beings might actually live by their own laws happens to emerge, a myriad of barriers are already in place to thwart all efforts to put this idea into practice, while at the same time vast and entrenched forces are quickly mobilised to expunge the idea itself. We should avoid viewing such a situation as invariably involving the suppression of autonomy, as though the project of autonomy were present in some form or another in all societies. This interpretation reflects our own quite unusual situation, in which not only may the project of autonomy constitute the explicit rationale for our investigation of society and history, it is, whether we acknowledge it or not, the necessary precondition for such investigations. If we so easily fall into the trap of projecting our own situation onto other societies, this is in part because in societies like our own, societies in which the project of autonomy does exist, heteronomous accounts of society do indeed act to undermine and suppress this project. Where the project of autonomy does emerge, it necessarily involves a challenge to heteronomous visions of society. This challenge may be direct and explicit, or it may be indirect and only partially understood, even by those directly involved. In either case, wherever the immutability of existing institutions begins to be denied, in practice as well as in thought, and wherever people begin to actively construct new institutions according to principles which are not inherited, but grounded in the will and reasoning of the participants themselves, the idea that not only these specific institutions but institutions in general have their source outside society is liable to become increasingly untenable, and an awareness of the role of human beings in the creation of their own institutions will tend to grow.2

2

This account may convey the impression that the conceptual changes follow on

the heels of the practical activities, the questioning and reconstruction of specific institutions. This may be so for many individuals whose faith in established dogmas is shaken by the spectacle of radical institutional change. On the other hand, the rejection of a heteronomous world-view is more than just a precondition for the adoption

14 • Chapter One

This, according to Castoriadis, is precisely what happened, first in Greece, where this revolution saw the birth of both philosophy and the democratic polis, and later in the modern West. For good reasons Castoriadis locates the beginnings of the more recent movement prior to the modern period proper; as early, in fact, as the twelfth century, from which time it is possible to discern the emergence of the project of autonomy in the push for self-government in the new and growing cities, in the increasing willingness to accept and value innovation in opposition to the authority of tradition, and in more direct— though often disastrous for those involved—challenges to the legitimacy of the established powers of church and state, all of which aided and was fueled by the rediscovery of Europe’s Roman and, especially, Greek heritage.3 It is, however, in modernity proper that the project of autonomy reaches its zenith as a self-conscious movement (or plurality of movements) radically critiquing the existing organisation of society and pursuing the goals of individual and collective self-determination. Modern social theory was born of this world, not just as a response to it but as an integral part of this vast historical and cultural transformation. In the words of Roberto Unger, whose work displays remarkable affinities with that of Castoriadis,4 “modern social thought was born proclaiming that society is made and imagined, that it is a human artifact rather than the expression of an underlying natural order.”5 According to Unger, it was this insight which

of autonomy as a project, since the act of questioning the established view already signals—to some degree, at least—the emergence of this project. The important point is that on a societal scale these two go—and grow—together. 3

C. Castoriadis, “The Retreat from Autonomy: Postmodernism as Generalised Con-

formism” in World in Fragments, ed. David Ames Curtis, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997. 4

For comparisons of Unger and Castoriadis, see R. Rorty, “Unger, Castoriadis, and

the Romance of a National Future” in Philosophical Papers Vol. 2. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1991, and P. Murphy, “To Create Anew the Universe: Political Romanticism and the Promethean Vision of Roberto Unger,” Thesis Eleven 28: 113-126, 1991. 5

R. M. Unger, False Necessity: Anti-necessitarianism: Social Theory in the Service of

Radical Democracy. Part I of Politics, New York and Cambridge, Mass., Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 1.

Self-Creation and Autonomy • 15

“inspired the great secular doctrines of emancipation: liberalism, socialism, and communism.” In one way or another, all these doctrines held out the promise of building a society in which we may be individually and collectively empowered to disengage our practical and passionate relations from rigid roles and hierarchies.6

Despite this, as Unger laments, “[n]o one has ever taken the idea of society as an artifact to the hilt.” On the contrary, the social theories that provided radical politics with its chief intellectual tools balanced the notion that society is made and imagined against the ambition to develop a science of history, rich in lawlike explanations. This science claimed to identify a small number of possible types of social organisation, coexisting or succeeding one another under the influence of relentless developmental tendencies or of deep-seated economic, organisational, or psychological constraints. Marxism is the star example.7

What Unger describes as ‘balancing’ might just as well be described as ‘distortion’ or ‘degeneration’. Marx’s intellectual journey from the notion that men make their own history to the ‘discovery’ of the laws of historical development is one which can hardly be said to have left his original insight intact. Indeed, in Marxism and elsewhere it would seem that the freedom opened up by the recognition that society does not express an underlying natural or divinely ordained order is more often than not used (one is tempted to say, abused) not merely to discover the parameters of this freedom but to fix the rules according to which it supposedly operates. Emancipation, if it remains an aim at all, is thus given a necessary content. It ceases to mean freedom in the sense of a venturing forth into a future which is uncharted because it is yet to be made, becoming instead ‘development’, ‘progress’, and so on, the embracing of a ‘true’ or ‘essential’ destiny. In such ways, the traditional deterministic vision of society is overthrown only to be replaced by a new

6

Ibid.

7

Ibid.

16 • Chapter One

version, one which is, if anything, even more constraining because it is more systematic, more ‘rational’. Why this drift towards determinism? One suspects that there are deep motivations at play here, tendencies of thought and culture which are essentially heteronomous, and which continually strive to discover or to create a fully determined and deterministic world. I shall explore this question at length throughout this book. More immediately though, how are such tendencies able to gain a foothold even in the seemingly hostile terrain of the modern project of autonomy? One of the central tasks confronting the project of autonomy being to account for the existing order of society, if the only type of account which is deemed adequate is one which consists in identifying the combination of forces and conditions which have produced this order—where ‘produced’ means ‘determined’, and ‘to determine’ means ‘to render inevitable’—then the pursuit of this task will inevitably lead away from rather than towards autonomy. Unfortunately, this is precisely the type of account that is generally sought. If we are to develop an alternative approach, we will need to uncover the roots of this tendency, both in the Western tradition and more broadly. There is, however, an additional element intrinsic to the idea of autonomy which serves to exacerbate this fundamental tendency towards determinism. Society is made and imagined, Unger insists. Made and imagined by whom? The question is an unavoidable one in the context of the project of autonomy, since this project itself makes the question of who rules, who makes society’s laws and institutions, a central one. Even when we wish to reject a heteronomous vision of society—that is, one which asserts that individuals cannot give themselves their own laws—we often have great difficulty in answering this question in a way which does not in the end resolve itself into just such a vision. This danger is further exacerbated by the fact that heteronomous world-views do express an undeniable truth, a truth without which the project of autonomy would be quite simply redundant. Societies are not autonomous; individuals do not give themselves their own laws. Heteronomy is a real condition, experienced and correctly identified as such by individuals and cultures. We may wish to overcome this condition, but we also need to account for it. Indeed, our prospects for overcoming it may be largely dependent on our ability to understand it. How can we do so in a manner which does not simultaneously deny the possibility of autonomy?

Self-Creation and Autonomy • 17

Castoriadis’ radical re-thinking of the nature of society offers a possible solution. Like all genuinely innovative theoretical solutions, it opens up a multitude of further questions, the most important of which I will endeavour to address in the following pages. The broad outlines of Castoriadis’ position can be traced in the passage quoted at the head of this chapter. “Society,” Castoriadis asserts, “is a form of self-creation.” Self-creation signifies, first, that social forms are not the product of forces external to society but are determined within and by society itself. No physical, biological or psychological laws determine the shape and function of society. The operations of the natural world, the needs of the human organism as such, as well as the demands of the human psyche all have an impact on this self-creation, constraining and compelling it. What emerges as society, however, can be understood neither as a result of these forces nor even as a mere response to them, since societies differ where no difference in such factors is present and societies change where these factors remain constant. The self-creation of society must therefore be understood as an essentially spontaneous activity, one which must, to some degree, take the non-social into account—using it, transforming it, and incorporating it into the social world—but in a manner which is determined by the society itself. Even if one is prepared to concede that nothing external to society determines how a society operates and develops, one might still postulate the existence of laws intrinsic to the social domain which play a similarly deterministic role. Such a view would still be at odds with Castoriadis’ notion of society as self-creation. For Castoriadis, ‘creation’ signifies that which entirely eludes a deterministic paradigm, the emergence of forms which are in no way determined by that which preceded them or that into which they emerge. To place creation in this sense at the centre of an understanding of society is to say that there can never be any question of explaining the form or development of a society by reference to fixed laws of succession or causation. (Insofar as Western thought has construed explanation to mean precisely this and this alone, there can be no question of ‘explaining’ society at all.) This does not mean that causal relations play no role in society and in history, or that social institutions obey no logic in their operation and even, within limits, their development. Creation is, after all, determination, the bringing or coming into being of forms embodying specific principles and adhering to specific rules. However, if creation is the essence of society, no established determination—no

18 • Chapter One

institution, no set of social rules, and so on—can exclude the possibility of the emergence of alternative determinations. New institutions, new forms of life with new and entirely different rules and dynamics, may always emerge; and, according to Castoriadis, will always emerge, and do so continually, since creation is not merely a perpetual possibility for society but society’s essential mode of being.

2

The Other Self

Who is the Other? Before examining Castoriadis’ thesis in more detail, we need to address what would seem to be a serious contradiction at its very heart. If Castoriadis is right and society is indeed a form of self-creation, how can a society ever be said to be heteronomous? If society always gives itself its own laws, it would seem, on the contrary, that society is essentially autonomous. According to some definitions of autonomy—that adopted by Francesco Varela in his discussion of the self-organisation of the living being, for example8—this would indeed be so. However, as Castoriadis argues, when it comes to the human domain autonomy may be said to signify not only something more than this basic self-constitution but something quite contrary to it: “the state in which ‘someone’—singular subject or collectivity—is explicitly, and, as far as possible, lucidly (not ‘blindly’) author of its own laws. This implies . . . that this ‘someone’ instaurates a new relation with ‘its law’, which signifies, among other things, that this singular or collective ‘someone’ can modify that law, knowing that it is doing so.”9 This is the very opposite of the ‘blind’ self-constitution of the living being, a self-constitution which is, as Castoriadis puts it, characterised by operational, informational and cognitive closure, by the organism’s incapacity to deliberately modify its mode of being and its rep-

8

C. Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” trans.

David Ames Curtis, in The Castoriadis Reader, ed. David Ames Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 308-309. 9

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 308.

Self-Creation and Autonomy • 19

resentation of the world.10 If a society does not recognise itself as the author of its own institutions, that society cannot be said to be autonomous in this stronger sense. It is ‘closed’ in a manner similar to the living being. But in what sense can such a society be said to be heteronomous? Does ‘heteronomy’ in this context refer only to the illusion of heteronomy, the erroneous positing of an extra-social source of society’s institutions and the accompanying closure of the social world? Is there in fact no ‘other’ at all? Even if we accept that the self-occultation of society’s self-institution and the associated closure of the social world are the essential characteristics of what we call ‘social heteronomy’, we still need to account for the experience of heteronomy, of being ruled or determined by an ‘other’, an experience which, as I have already indicated, may be said to underlie both the occultation of society’s self-institution and the desire for autonomy. Who, then, is the ‘other’ of social heteronomy? There are of course myriad specific others, persons or groups who, overtly or covertly, rule over the rest, in their own society or in other societies—a situation which is clearly antithetical to the project of autonomy. What is at issue here, however, is a more fundamental heteronomy which authorises and manifests itself in the various forms of social stratification and domination. Kings, chiefs, elites, and so on, possess real power, but they do not wield this power in their own names alone, nor do they rule just as they please. Their power is always based on principles or models derived from a source which transcends themselves, the same agent or force which has determined the institutions within which they, too, must operate, and by which they, too, have been formed, whether they acknowledge this or not. (This means, of course, that although the project of autonomy requires that the power to rule be wrested from such persons and groups, this in itself can never lead to social autonomy unless the entire sociocultural structure upon which such a power rests is also dismantled.) Who is the author of these principles, these models, these structures? In a sense, we have already answered this question. If society and society alone gives the law, then society itself must be this ‘other’. But if this is so, who is the ‘self’, the autos of ‘autonomy’, the ‘someone’ for whom the societal ‘other’

10

Ibid.

20 • Chapter One

lays down the law? From what has been stated thus far, this too would seem obvious. The ‘someone’ in question is the “singular subject or collectivity”; that is, living individuals, singly and in association. The temptation at this juncture—a temptation to which modern thinkers have too often succumbed—is to develop an understanding of autonomy (or of freedom) and hence its antithesis, heteronomy, based on a supposed opposition between society and the individual. Such an approach proves inadequate, however, for a variety of reasons.

The Individual and Society As Castoriadis points out,11 as soon as we speak of ‘individuals’ we are dealing with entities which are more than mere biological organisms of the species Homo Sapiens; and as soon as we speak of ‘society’, we are dealing with something more and other than an assembly of such organisms. Individuals are made by society. The characteristics and abilities which we recognise as those of the human individual arise only in and through society, the result of processes of socialisation through which each society produces not merely individuals of a specific type or types but individuals as such. Socialisation does not merely affect the direction of a development which would occur spontaneously in the absence of society, it effects a transformation of the human animal which, while drawing on inherent capacities and tendencies, is not determined by these. On the contrary, socialisation constitutes an imposition in many ways alien to the human organism’s innate tendencies. Put simply, ‘the individual’ is a social institution; the most fundamental institution, since society only exists in and through individuals. If individuals are made by society, it is nonetheless true that, as Castoriadis puts it, “[t]he individual as such is not . . . ‘contingent’ in relation to society. Society can exist concretely only through the fragmentary and complementary incarnation and incorporation of its institution and

11

C. Castoriadis, “Power, Politics, Autonomy,” trans. Cornelius Castoriadis, in Phi-

losophy, Politics, Autonomy, ed. David Ames Curtis, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 143-146.

Self-Creation and Autonomy • 21

its imaginary significations in the living, talking, and acting individuals of that society.”12 Taken together, these two points—individuals are made by society and society only exists in and through individuals—preclude any simple juxtaposition of individual and society. Castoriadis himself has gone so far as to argue that “[t]he individual is not, to begin with and in the main, anything other than society. The individual/society opposition, when its terms are taken rigourously, is a total fallacy.”13 If the ‘self-other’ opposition fundamental to both the idea and the experience of heteronomy cannot be equated with any simple opposition between the individual and society, where might we locate it? If the individual qua social institution is indeed an imposition, this suggests a possible answer; one which, at first glance, Castoriadis would seem to endorse. For Castoriadis, the fundamental opposition within the human domain is not between the individual and society, but between psyche and society.14 There is more to the singular human being than the individual qua social institution. ‘Within’ or ‘beneath’ that dimension of the human being which has become the social individual a psychical dimension persists, a world which is radically other both in its content and in its mode of being than that of the social individual or—it amounts to the same thing—society. For Castoriadis, the production of social individuals begins when the psyche is wrenched from its private world and thrust into a shared world of socially instituted meanings. As this description suggests, Castoriadis believes socialisation to include an unavoidably violent dimension inasmuch as it must force the psyche to relinquish the ‘total mastery of meaning’ which it possesses in its unsocialised state.15 It is important to recognise, however, that the result of socialisation cannot be understood except as

12

Castoriadis, “Power, Politics, Autonomy,” p. 145. The meaning of the term ‘imag-

inary signification’ will be explained later. 13

C. Castoriadis, “Individual, Society, Rationality, History,” trans. David Ames

Curtis, in Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, ed. David Ames Curtis, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 61. 14

Ibid.

15

This proposition is explained and critically examined in later chapters.

22 • Chapter One

a co-product of society and psyche, that socialisation is only possible because the psyche is not a passive material upon which this process is worked, but an active participant in the process. Socialisation is only possible because the psyche contains within itself a capacity for self-alteration. Society takes advantage of this self-creative capacity, coercing and cajoling the psyche into partially transforming itself, and offering as reward and compensation for the partial loss of the psyche’s self-subsistent world of meaning the substitute of social meaning. The psyche never gives up its private world entirely, however. In psychoanalytic terms, the social individual may be said to correspond roughly to Freud’s Conscious or conscious Ego.16 Underlying this there exists a vast region which remains essentially asocial. Between this radically asocial and entirely recalcitrant Unconscious and society an ineradicable tension persists. Society, in the form of the social individual, deals with this tension through the twin mechanisms of repression and sublimation; where these fail, more overt measures of social control are brought into play. This array of strategies constrains and shapes the expressions of this private world so that they almost never disrupt the instituted order; on the contrary, they are more often than not enlisted to reinforce it. What no strategy of society can achieve, however, is the elimination or absorption of either the Unconscious and its asocial mode of being or, what is perhaps more important, its independent capacity for creation and self-transformation.17 Unfortunately, far from solving our problem, this dichotomy of psyche and society further complicates it. The psyche may be the ‘other’ vis-à-vis society, but this very fact indicates that it cannot be the ‘other’ of social heteronomy. It is society which, by and large, manages to impose its rules and its logic upon the psyche, not vice versa; certainly where social institutions are concerned, it is society, not the psyche, that is the author and law-giver. Given this, we might be inclined to shift our perspective so as to regard the psyche as that ‘self’ whose cause we would wish to champion against the burdens and constraints imposed on it by society—a position adopted by those interpreters of

16

C. Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” trans. David Ames Curtis, in

World in Fragments, ed. David Ames Curtis, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997, p. 156. 17

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 273-339.

Self-Creation and Autonomy • 23

Freud who come to see the Unconscious as the victim of unwarranted social and cultural repression. While there is nothing illegitimate in this reversal of perspective—the psyche has as much claim to the title of ‘self’ in this relationship as does society—it cannot help us here, because the psyche per se—that is to say, the psyche in isolation from society—is not and can never become the ‘self’ of autonomy. The unsocialised human psyche is no more capable of lucid and deliberate self-government and self-transformation than is the psyche of any other animal. It is only insofar as the human psyche has been moulded and transformed by society, thereby partially becoming social—in a sense, becoming society itself in the form of the social individual—that autonomy becomes a possibility for it. What is more, it is only for such social individuals—and not just any social individuals, but individuals socialised in a specific manner, by and within a specific type of society—that autonomy becomes an issue and a possible goal. Equally, the experience of heteronomy, which we have already observed is essential to the emergence of the project of autonomy and, as the background to any such emergence, more extensive than this project itself, is an experience of social individuals, not of unsocialised psyches. What the psyche represents, then, is neither the ‘self’ of autonomy nor the ‘other’ of social heteronomy, but a second ‘other’ (and perhaps, if we accept the validity of Freud’s modeling of the internal structure of the psyche, more than one). This complicates the situation because it suggests that we may be subject to multiple heteronomies, but it does not answer our initial question.

Creation and the Created: Society as Instituting and Instituted In order to find a more satisfactory answer we need to examine more closely Castoriadis’ contention that the individual is nothing other than society. Although on the face of it this suggest a simple identity between the individual and society, the qualifications which Castoriadis laboriously appends to his assertion—“The individual is not, to begin with and in the main, anything other than society. The individual/society opposition, when its terms are taken rigourously, is a total fallacy.”—point to something less clear-cut. It may be a mistake to oppose the individual to society, as though these were two entirely separate entities, but it is nevertheless true that society transcends the individual; and not just the singular individual (which is obvious), but any possible

24 • Chapter One

association of individuals. It is wrong, Castoriadis suggests, to simply say that “society produces the individuals, which in turn produce society.”18 Society transcends the individual in the sense that it creates—and constitutes—the very medium in which individuals can exist, those fundamental institutions which individuals could never create for themselves because the very existence of individuals presupposes them. Language is the example Castoriadis most often cites in this connection. In this relationship between an instituted society—which infinitely transcends the totality of the individuals that “compose” it, but which can actually exist only by being “realised” in the individuals it manufactures—on the one hand, and the individuals on the other hand, we witness an original, unprecedented type of relationship which cannot be thought under the categories of the whole and the parts, the set and its elements, the universal and the particular, etc. In and through its own creation, society creates the individual as such and the individuals in and through which alone it can actually exist. But society is not a property of composition; neither is it a whole containing something more than and different from its parts, if only because these “parts” are made to be, and to be thus and not otherwise, by this “whole” which, nevertheless, can only be in and through its “parts.” This type of relationship, which has no analogy elsewhere, has to be reflected upon for itself, as principle and model of itself.19

A society cannot be reduced to its member individuals. It is more than these individuals, even if it can only exist in and through them. It is ‘everyone’, but at the same time it is ‘no-one’; a collective and anonymous ‘dimension’ which, Castoriadis observes, “initiates for each and every one of us a simultaneous relation of interiority and exteriority, of participation and exclusion, which can in no way be abolished or even ‘controlled’, in any definite sense of the term.”20 As such, it can truly represent—and be represented as—an ‘other’ vis-à-vis the individual and individuals. It is hardly surprising, then, that individuals should experience the social world as given to them by an ‘other’. If

18

Castoriadis, “Power, Politics, Autonomy,” p. 145.

19

Ibid.

20

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 111.

Self-Creation and Autonomy • 25

heteronomous world-views are wrong, they are wrong primarily in situating this other outside—above or beyond—society and its individual members. Two further questions now arise. First, what is the basis for this self-occultation of society’s self-institution? Why should it happen that in most societies the social other is distanced and elevated in a way which precludes individuals from challenging its edicts or entering into the process of creation for and as themselves? Secondly, why should there be tension between the individuals and the social other or ‘collective anonymous’? Reflection reveals that both of these phenomena can be traced to the same ultimate source, so that answering either of these questions effectively involves answering both. Since our primary concern at this point is to clarify the distinction between self and other as it relates to conceptions of social autonomy/heteronomy, I shall begin with the second question. In most strictly heteronomous—that is, traditional—societies what we witness on the surface is a close identification of individuals with the established order, as well as with the putative source of this order, which is generally conceived of as creator and kin. Nonetheless, some degree of tension between individuals and the existing institutional order may be discerned in every society. This tension may be more overt in those societies in which the project of autonomy has emerged; but a similar tension exists even in traditional societies, where it is manifested chiefly in myth and in ritualised—and therefore, for the most part, highly controlled and contained—activities of transgression. Even were such empirical evidence lacking, the heteronomous world-view itself, inasmuch as it distinguishes between, on the one hand, the law and the law-giver, and, on the other, those who are ruled by or required to obey the law, openly proclaims the existing order to be an imposition (whether just and therefore justified or merely unavoidable is immaterial in this context), and in so doing recognises the possibility of a variance between individuals and this instituted order.21 One could argue—as has, in essence, been done for thousands of years—that this variance reflects the opposition between society and

21

This makes it seem as though there is but one heteronomous world-view; and

indeed, despite the variations he identifies, and despite the stress he generally places on the originality of each particular society, this is the impression Castoriadis’ analysis conveys. Later I will have cause to question this monolithic view of heteronomy, and

26 • Chapter One

psyche, between the collective law and individual desires. Insofar as society’s ‘domestication’ of the psyche is only ever partial—indeed, one could with some justification describe it as superficial—there is without doubt considerable truth in such a view. This does not mean that we are justified in reducing the tension to this opposition alone. The variance between individuals and social institutions does not exclusively or even primarily centre around a conflict between the social and the purely personal qua psychical. The ‘objects’ at issue in such conflict are social rather than psychical; and although at times this conflict may be construed by individuals as a revolt against social institutions per se, what is at stake is not the existence of society, but the preservation or alteration of a specific institutional order. If the individual and society cannot be placed in strict opposition to one another, if the individual is essentially social, an instituted manifestation of the particular society in question, then any tension between the individual and society beyond that which is traceable to the opposition between society and psyche must be seen as a tension within society. Castoriadis has attempted to elucidate this intrasocietal tension through the concepts of instituting and instituted society. ‘Instituting society’ refers to the creative dimension of society, manifested in the ceaseless creation of new institutions as well as in the creation of the institution and society per se. ‘Instituted society’ refers to that which is thereby created, the instituted world which constitutes each specific society at a specific time. We must avoid thinking of these twin aspects of society as though they were separate and distinct entities battling for control of a society’s destiny. As Castoriadis explains, instituted society is not “opposed to instituting society as a lifeless product to an activity which brought it into being; it represents the relative and transitory fixity/stability of the instituted forms-figures in and through which . . . [instituting society] . . . can alone exist and make itself exist . . .”22 Society always exists as this specific society; but inasmuch as it is also and essentially self-creation, it never ceases to exceed the limits imposed by its existing mode of being, to re-create itself and to become other.

our understanding of the relationship of individuals to the imputed source of social and cosmic order will need to be modified accordingly. 22

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 371-372.

Self-Creation and Autonomy • 27

It is in the tension between these two aspects of society that we discover both the basis of social heteronomy and one of the chief sources of the tension between the individual and society. As suggested earlier, to create is to determine, to bring into being forms embodying specific principles and adhering to specific rules. By the same token, if creation is the essence of society, no established determination—no institution, no set of social rules, and so on— can exclude the possibility of the emergence of alternative determinations. Nonetheless, and despite the fact that it thereby opposes itself—that is to say, opposes the ineluctably creative aspect of its being—this is precisely what society endeavours to do: to resist transformation. And insofar as society’s self-creation involves as one of its essential moments self-determination—that is to say, becoming and being this constellation of institutions, this society—to do so is, paradoxically, perfectly consistent with its self-creating character. For a society to be this society, it must produce and reproduce itself as this society. The self-creation of society thus includes a basic tendency towards self-perpetuation as the perpetuation of a specific mode of being. Here we find the basis for the closure of heteronomous societies, for the multifarious barriers to transformative activity which are characteristic of such societies. Here, also, is the basis for the self-occultation of society’s self-institution: by separating and distancing itself from the source of creation, society—that is, instituted society—seeks to protect itself from the threat of destruction, which, for it, is precisely what transformation represents. The collective ‘anonymous’ in its instituting dimension is divorced from the actually existing collectivity, given a ‘pseudonym’, and made not only to determine the existence of what is but to command its preservation. In effect, the alienation and elevation of the source of creation form part of a strategy for domesticating it. Tension between individuals and society arises because individuals are necessarily participants in this conflict between the transformative and selfperpetuating tendencies of society. Castoriadis’ analysis suggests that this participation is by and large on the side of instituted society. The individuals which are made by instituted society can only make the society which made them; they can only reproduce what already exists.23 As representatives—or rather, manifestations—of instituted society, they stand opposed to

23

Castoriadis, “Power, Politics, Autonomy,” pp. 145-146.

28 • Chapter One

the forces of transformation. It would be wrong, however, to view individuals as entirely and always hostile to such forces. To do so would be equivalent to placing instituting society ‘outside’ instituted society, a view which, if we are to follow Castoriadis, we must reject. Rather, individuals should be viewed as participating in this conflict on both sides, as agents of institutional transformation as well as institutional preservation, and, to varying degrees in different social and historical contexts, torn between the two.

3 Beyond the Closed World: The Autonomous Subject and its Others Given all this, might we not conclude that society is essentially heteronomous, that heteronomy is society’s ‘natural’ condition and therefore its inevitable destiny? We might, if we had not already understood that the self-creating character of society precludes such an inference. If the resistance to transformation and the occultation of society’s self-institution have been fundamental characteristics of most hitherto existing societies, this can only mean, as Castoriadis points out, “that an almost necessary condition for the existence of the institution such as it has been created, such as we have known it till now, is that it affirms its own inalterability in order to stabilise itself; that, as product of the creative activity of society, it gives itself an origin external to society, attempting thus to avoid alteration. But . . . in saying this, we are moving within the circle of already accomplished creation, we are explaining merely that its points hold together.”24 To seek the basis for society’s occultation of its self-institution is merely to elucidate the pattern of relations which operate in societies as they have thus far instituted themselves. Nothing in this fact forces us to conclude that such a pattern is inevitable. Indeed, our own history, a history which includes examples of the rupturing of heteronomy, of the emergence of the possibility of challenging and deliberately transforming institutions, suggests otherwise. A question nevertheless remains: to what extent are the tendencies manifested in social heteronomy peculiar to societies of this type and to what extent are

24

C. Castoriadis, “The ‘End of Philosophy’?” in Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, ed.

David Ames Curtis, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 328.

Self-Creation and Autonomy • 29

they inherent to society qua self-creation? Is the tendency toward closure, for example, something we might expect to disappear with the recognition of society’s self-creating character, or should we expect it to persist as a continual threat to autonomy? Many of Castoriadis’ comments suggest the latter. For instance: Any being-for-itself exists and can only exist in a closure. Thus also society and the social individual. Democracy is the project of breaking this closure at the collective level. Philosophy, creating self-reflective subjectivity, is the project of breaking the closure at the level of thought. But of course, any breaking of the closure, unless it remains a gaping “?” which does not break anything at all, posits something, reaches some results, and, thereby, risks erecting again a closure.25

The project of autonomy does not eliminate this threat of closure, it combats it by a “continuation and renewal of reflective activity,” by “the putting into question of previous results . . . ”26 Much the same could be said in relation to the opposite tendency, that for which all closure—all boundaries, all rules, all limits—is anathema, and whose ultimate, phantasmatic goal would be a state of structureless flux. Since all determination is limitation, the self-determination of an autonomous subject is necessarily a self-limitation. Castoriadis rightly ridicules those who insist on a freedom from all limitation, the “thunderlike freedom” of a “free-floating being-for-itself disconnected from everything”.27 While we may reject the desire for such a freedom as absurd, impossible and ultimately self-contradictory, we would be wrong to ignore either its reality or its capacity to corrupt the project of autonomy. This tendency, like the tendency towards closure, is ultimately grounded in the self-creating character of both society and psyche. Self-creation inevitably involves both a striving for determination and against it, the establishment of boundaries as well as their rejection, the struggle to escape and transcend them. This dichotomy merely represents twin aspects of one and the same activity: self-creation as a perpetual mode of being.

25

Castoriadis, “The ‘End of Philosophy’?” p. 21.

26

Ibid.

27

Castoriadis, “Power, Politics, Autonomy,” p. 173.

30 • Chapter One

Autonomy does not represent a transcendence of this dichotomy, but, rather, an alternative deployment and organisation of its components, a new mode of being a self-creating being. Emancipation and self-determination remain its cardinal aims. The specificity of autonomy lies in the recognition and balancing of these potentially conflicting aspirations and the more basic tendencies which underlie them. Heteronomy, too, represents a sort of balance between these tendencies: a balance between instituted society’s demand for complete closure and the upsetting of this demand by the continuing instituting activity of the society itself, which perpetually destabilises, and ultimately destroys and replaces, all existing institutions. This balance, however, is a balance of extremes, the tenuous balance produced by the blind interplay of opposing forces. By contrast, the balance aimed at in autonomy is one which involves the mutual tempering of these extremes. Recognising their mutual inherence, it also recognises that the pursuit of one must always also involve the other. In this context, freedom comes to be seen as dependent upon self-limitation, and self-determination comes to be seen as predicated on a freedom to reexamine and re-institute which no determination may be permitted to prohibit or proscribe. What is thereby introduced into the process of self-creation is choice—a burden, of course, as well as a prize. To say that autonomy does not herald the transcendence of this fundamental dichotomy is to say that it does not and cannot eliminate the distinction between instituting and instituted society. As Castoriadis observes: There will always be a distance between society as instituting and what is, at every moment, instituted—and this distance is not something negative or deficient; it is one of the expressions of the creative nature of history, what prevents it from fixing itself once and for all into the ‘finally found form’ of social relations and of human activities, what makes a society always contain more than what it presents.28

These two moments of social self-creation can never be collapsed into one. On the other hand, to speak of the continuation of this ‘dialectic’ in the context of an autonomous society merely in terms of the starkly opposed categories of ‘closure’ and ‘opening’, as Castoriadis has a tendency to do, seems rather

28

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 114.

Self-Creation and Autonomy • 31

too simplistic. As Castoriadis himself points out, social autonomy must entail “positing/creating not only new institutions, but a new mode of instituting and a new relation of society and of individuals to the institution.”29 Laws which have been given by God or decreed by the ineluctable nature of things differ intrinsically from laws which we have explicitly given ourselves in the context of an on-going project of autonomy. Laws of the latter variety will also inevitably produce individuals and social relations of a specific and determinate type, but the ‘closure’ which this consciously acknowledged and deliberate self-determination produces is always and essentially ‘open’ to modification. This ‘closure’ itself must be of a type that entrenches ‘openness’, that permits, enables, even encourages, re-evaluation and transcendence of existing forms. With this in mind, Castoriadis has described the autonomous subject as “a pseudo-closed sphere that can dilate on its own”.30 ‘Pseudo-closed’ still seems a rather inadequate way of describing a form of ‘being-thus’ which enables rather than precludes the possibility of ‘being-otherwise’. Here Unger’s reference to a type of institution which diminishes the distance between contextpreserving routine and context-revising freedom is perhaps more useful.31 I will return to this question later. The development and preservation of this type of institution is heavily dependent on a rejection of deterministic visions of society and a recognition that society is self-creating. It also requires an acceptance of responsibility on the part of existing communities and individuals for the institutions which they themselves create, as well as a responsibility to re-evaluate and, where necessary, to dismantle or modify the institutions which their history has bequeathed them. This acceptance of responsibility should not be confused with a requirement to achieve total control or mastery over the social landscape, past, present and future. It is not uncommon for proponents of the project of autonomy to be seduced by this chimera of absolute mastery, but the consequence is always the corruption and degeneration of autonomy itself. Balancing the sense of responsibility which must be assumed

29

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 373.

30

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 169.

31

Unger, False Necessity: Anti-necessitarianism: Social Theory in the Service of Radical

Democracy. Part I of Politics.

32 • Chapter One

by members of an autonomous society is a necessary humility, the acceptance of some absolute limits imposed on human activity and aspirations by virtue of our social nature and the self-creating character of society. The latter, for example, necessarily renders futile any attempt to fully determine the future form of society, even where this means attempting to ensure that a society will remain autonomous. Though it cannot eliminate the distinction and the tension between instituting and instituted society, autonomy does imply a transformation of the relationship between these two aspects of the social, and this itself presupposes the creation of a new type of institution, one whose stability is not predicated on the repudiation and alienation of the source of social self-creation. The ‘closure’ of such an institution will therefore differ qualitatively from that of heteronomous institutions. Inasmuch as the individual is also an institution, and, as we have stated already, the most fundamental institution of all, this transformation must also encompass the individual. The development of an autonomous society implies a radical alteration of the nature of individuality itself. (The beginnings of such a transformation coincide with the re-emergence of the project of autonomy in the modern West, as can be seen in the new interpretations and cultural constructions of the self and its relationships which emerged during this period. Castoriadis describes this process as the ‘individuation’ of the individual.)32 These considerations point to an additional layer of complexity which must be taken into account when discussing the categories of ‘self’ and ‘other’ in this context. Our natural tendency is to assume that the content of these categories remains the same and that only the relationship between them alters over time. What the concept of self-creation implies, however, is that the content of such categories may also change; indeed, that history consists of such transformations, along with the creation of entirely new categories. In attempting to clarify the concepts of ‘heteronomy’ and ‘autonomy’, and asking, therefore, who is the ‘self’ and who is the ‘other’, we cannot assume a simple identity of categories across cultures and histories. When we speak of the individual, for example, and the relationship of the individual to his or her society, we need

32

Castoriadis, “Power, Politics, Autonomy,” p. 146.

Self-Creation and Autonomy • 33

to be aware that what changes in the passage from heteronomy to autonomy (or vice versa, for that matter) is the very nature of this ‘individual’ as well as the society of which s/he is a member. This does not make comparison impossible, nor does it mean that there are no categories with trans-historical and trans-cultural significance; but it does mean that we need to be vigilant if we are to avoid mistaking the specific and merely factual for the universal and essential. Keeping this in mind, we can, on the basis of our discussion thus far, draw the following conclusions. The ‘selfs’ of heteronomy/autonomy are individuals and concrete collectivities comprised of individuals. These individuals are coproducts of society and psyche. They register the edicts and demands of both the collective anonymous and the Unconscious, and may, to varying degrees depending on the context, experience these as alien impositions. They have the potential for autonomy, a potential which devolves from the self-creating character of the collective anonymous of which they remain a part. The realisation of this potential requires a transformation such that the autonomous individual or collectivity will, in significant respects, no longer be the same as the heteronomous individual or collectivity. It is the capacity for such a transformation that makes autonomy possible. The ‘others’ of heteronomy/autonomy are society qua collective anonymous and the psyche qua Unconscious. They are ‘others’ vis-à-vis ourselves inasmuch as they may act independently of our will and desires, pursuing ends to which we have not assented and which are, in that sense, not ‘our own’. From this perspective—which is, of course, the perspective of the project autonomy, the only vantage point from which we can begin to pose these questions—they are ‘other’ even where our desires and aims as individuals are entirely (or almost entirely) those of the collective anonymous and the Unconscious; for in such a case, the very possibility of assent or dissent, of judgment and choice, is absent. It should by now be obvious that the ‘otherness’ of these others is far from absolute. The individual is not just a product of society and psyche, it is society and psyche, a metamorphosis of and within both, through which is brought into being an entity, a self, which is no longer purely identical with either. (In fact, it would seem to be a fundamental characteristic of self-creation per se that it produces this kind of internal discontinuity and differentiation. It would seem, in other words, that self-creation involves the creation

34 • Chapter One

not of a self, but of selfs, of other selfs, and therefore of others and otherness. We will return to this later.) This means that autonomy can never be a matter of ‘liberating’ the self in the sense of eliminating these others or the self’s ties to them, for to do so would mean eliminating the self also. Nor can it be a matter of purging the self of the products of these others; not only because, as we have already noted, the project of autonomy is among these products, a social-historical creation which the individual discovers within and around him or herself, but because these products are the very stuff of and in which society, psyche and the individual—whether autonomous or not—exist. To imagine that one could eliminate this is to imagine that one could abstract the individual subject’s capacity to judge, to will and to act from the concrete social and psychical (and, for that matter, biological/somatic) existence of the individual—equivalent to imagining that one could abstract a society’s instituting capacity from its actual existence as instituted. Put simply, subjects— real subjects—are always specific—this subject, rather than the subject—and any capacity they may have for self-transformation is a capacity belonging to them as specific entities. In Castoriadis’ words: The subject in question is . . . not the abstract moment of philosophical subjectivity; it is the actual subject traversed through and through by the world and by others. The Ego of autonomy is not the absolute Self, the monad cleaning and polishing its external-internal surface in order to eliminate the impurities resulting from contact with others. It is the active and lucid agency that constantly reorganises its contents, through the help of these same contents, that produces by means of a material and in relation to needs and ideas, all of which are themselves mixtures of what it has already found there before it and what it has produced itself.33

If the products of the autonomous subject are perforce mixtures, if in what the subject finds within and around itself “there is always to be found, directly or indirectly, the other and others;”34 if, therefore, “there can never exist any truth that would be the ‘subject’s own’ in any absolute sense,”35 this is because

33

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 106.

34

Ibid.

35

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 107.

Self-Creation and Autonomy • 35

the subject itself is always a mixture, because, as Castoriadis puts it, “[i]n the subject as subject we find the non-subject,”36 the other and the world, and their presence, their incorporation and participation in the subject (and vice versa), is the efficient condition not just, as Castoriadis suggests, for the subject’s activity,37 but for the subject’s very existence. To purge the self of the products of history will therefore never produce a tabula rasa on which the autonomous subject would be free to write its own script from scratch; it would (were it possible) only result in a void into which the subject itself, as a product of this same history, would also disappear. If this seems obvious, one needs to remember that the impossibility of such a purification of the self has not prevented people dreaming of it and acting upon these dreams. Much of the philosophical treatment of subjectivity is imbued with such phantasies of the pure or absolute self. And the twentieth century has provided ample evidence of the consequences which ensue when such madness acquires the status of a political project. As Castoriadis observes: a subject that would loosen all of its inherent ties to history—even if this be by recovering ‘the integral meaning of history’—and that would take a tangential line with respect to society—even if this be by exhaustively ‘controlling’ its relation to society—is not an autonomous subject, it is a psychotic subject.38

And yet, autonomy, under whatever name, is often the professed aim of those who embark on such projects of ‘liberation as purification’. Indeed, so frequently is this the case that the connection between the project of autonomy and this ‘psychosis’ would seem to be far from accidental. It would seem, in fact, that there is a very real tendency for the project of autonomy to degenerate into this kind of madness, a madness of power and control, of a quest for self-sufficiency that aims to exclude or to absorb the other and otherness entirely. This particular variety of madness already has a name: paranoia. If we are to defend the project of autonomy from this sort of

36

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 105.

37

Ibid.

38

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 113.

36 • Chapter One

degeneration we will need to discover what if anything predisposes it to such a transformation. Such a defence of the project of autonomy requires us to develop a more detailed analysis of the content of the categories of ‘self’ and ‘other’ as they pertain to our conceptions of autonomy and heteronomy. In particular, we will need to evaluate the implications of the notion of self-creation for our understanding of selfhood and otherness in the human domain. If autonomy is to be a viable goal, we must preserve the distinction between self and other while at the same time recognising that this distinction is not an absolute one. This will require a conception of the human subject which allows for the existence of real and not merely apparent others within it, a subject which participates in a dimension which exceeds it and can act against it, but is not, for all that, alien to it; a dimension which is, on the contrary, the subject’s own birthplace and inescapable element. Only then will we be able to reconcile the truth of the experience of heteronomy, of being determined by an other, with the idea that this is nonetheless a form of self-creation, though one which differs from autonomy in a profound rather than a superficial way.

Chapter Two Creation, Society and the Imaginary

1 The Impossibility of Creation and the Logic-Ontology of Determinacy In the previous chapter I noted the significance of the concept of creation in Castoriadis’ work and explored some of the issues which arise out of the conjunction of the idea that society is a form of self-creation and the contention that it has thus far been almost exclusively heteronomous. We now need to explore this concept in more detail, to clarify its meaning, both in general and in the specific context of society. What precisely are we to understand by ‘creation’? How are we to understand society if creation is, as Castoriadis contends, its very essence? Why should we accept the notions of creation and of social self-creation at all? What prompts the introduction of these ideas, and what are the consequences of their acceptance? At first glance, Castoriadis’ insistence on the importance of creation in human affairs might not seem terribly radical. After all, we commonly speak of human creativity, most often to laud it as one of our species’ most precious capacities. When we use the term ‘creation’ in this way, however, we usually

38 • Chapter Two

have in mind a generative process compatible and consistent with a range of others: production, growth, development, and so on. In this way we are able to ignore the full implications of the ideas of novelty and originality which the term connotes. In order to focus our attention on the radical and heterodox aspects of the concept of creation, Castoriadis draws a distinction between ‘difference’ and ‘otherness’, creation signifying the emergence of forms or figures which are truly ‘other’ rather than merely ‘different’. For example: a figure, B, merely differs from a figure, A, if it derives from a different arrangement of A—“as a circle, ellipse, hyperbole or parabola derive from one another and so are the same points arranged differently”—so that some “law, or group of laws, [would be] sufficient to produce B starting from A.”1 Figure B is ‘other’ than figure A only if no such derivation is possible. Thus: To say that figure B is other than A means . . . in the first place that it cannot be deduced, produced or constructed on the basis of what is ‘in’ A, whether implicitly or explicitly, or on the basis of what is posited, mediately or immediately, ‘with’ A. This is to say that when I have drawn out of A all the presuppositions, implications and consequences that it requires or leads to (in the sense in which practically all of mathematics is directly or indirectly implied by 1,2,3 . . .), made explicit all the laws to which it refers and which determine A in its fact-of-being and in its being-thus, I could never on the basis of all this construct, deduce or produce B. It amounts to the same to say that, inasmuch as and to the very extent to which B is determined, its determinations cannot themselves be determined on the basis of A’s determinations, that they are, then, other determinations; or that the being of B does not derive from the being of A, that as being (both as a fact of being and as a being-thus which itself is other, the two being indissociable) it comes from nothing and out of nowhere, that it does not have a provenance but is an advent, that it is creation.2

Interpreted in such a rigourous and uncompromising manner, the concept of creation suddenly becomes far less palatable. Why? Because it challenges some of our most deeply held assumptions. Despite all our casual talk about creativity, ‘everyone knows’ that nothing can come from nothing, that every-

1

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 195.

2

Ibid.

Creation, Society and the Imaginary • 39

thing that comes to be comes from somewhere or something. The very fact of its appearance, its arrival—for this is in fact what ‘advent’ means—signals its prior existence elsewhere and/or in some other form, even if this be that of a mere potential inherent—that is to say: already present—in that which already exists. It is of course precisely this view which Castoriadis seeks to challenge and to unmask as construction and prejudice—a laborious, perhaps interminable task given that, as we have just seen and will see again repeatedly, so deeply entrenched is this way of perceiving the world that language itself seems to conspire to thwart attempts to oppose it. Indeed, how could we fail to resist when, one by one, all the available, accepted means for thinking the ‘emergence’ of a thing are removed, leaving us with the bare, inexplicable fact that what once was not now is? How is it? How did it come about? For Castoriadis, however, this is precisely what creation is, what creation means: this coming to be out of nothing and from nowhere. Here again, the formulation is in some respects less than felicitous, since formally it still seems to designate a thing or place out of or from which that which is created emerges. Thus we may be led—and we are certainly permitted—to imagine this ‘nothing’ and ‘nowhere’ as some ‘non-thing/place’ wherein the creation resides until the moment of its appearance—the very view which Castoriadis wishes to oppose. Essentially, creation means that there is no coming from or out of in any of the accepted senses of these terms. This is what the concept of creation challenges, and with it is challenged our entire conception not only of ‘coming to be’ but of ‘being’ itself. If that challenge were to be successful—a formidable task—we might yet be able to speak of creation simply as coming from or out of ‘what is’, though the meaning of such a proposition would then have altered radically. Initially at least, the scandalousness of the picture of creation which Castoriadis paints is that it would seem to rule out any relation between past, present and future. It is not just that B is unrelated to A, it is that B is unrelated to the entire universe of A: all that is posited ‘with’ A, all its presuppositions, implications and consequences, all the laws to which it refers and which determine it. The emergence of B would seem to represent a rupturing of the existing universe and, in effect, the emergence of an entirely new universe: that of B. In fact, Castoriadis’ description discounts only one type of relation between A and B: that of determination. That this may lead us to conclude the absence of any relation at all only highlights the assumptions we ourselves bring to the

40 • Chapter Two

question: first, that the only relation which counts here is one of determination; and secondly, that the unity of the universe depends upon a homogeneity which must involve a thoroughgoing determinacy. The most sophisticated formulation of this view is to be found in Kant’s first critique. Beginning from the assertion that all possible objects of experience must be connected to one another according to laws, this being the transcendental condition for the unity of experience,3 Kant proceeds to reduce succession, and therefore time itself, to relations of determination, whereby “that which follows or happens must follow in conformity with a universal rule upon that which was contained in the preceding state.”4 According to the same principle, coexistence is defined by Kant in terms of a mutual interaction whereby “[e]ach substance . . . must . . . contain in itself the causality of certain determinations in the other substance, and at the same time the effects of the causality of that other . . .,”5 so that all “substances must stand, immediately or mediately, in dynamical community”—that is, in a community constituted by their mutual determination.6 As Kant argues, these two considerations (together with a third, which we shall examine shortly) amount to a declaration “that all appearances lie, and must lie, in one nature, because without this a priori unity no unity of experience, and therefore no determination of objects in it, would be possible.”7 Understood in this way, unity is equivalent to homogeneity, or what Castoriadis calls ‘identity’. Difference is possible and permissible only insofar as each and every one of the ‘different’ elements can be traced and ultimately reduced to what is common to them all; in other words, only to the extent that they are all exemplars of the same: the same substance, the operation of the same laws (whether these be causal or logical), the same end or telos. On this model, determinacy must be complete and universal: it must be at once a determinacy of each and of all. ‘If A, then B’, the essential rule governing deterministic relations, is unlimited in its operation.

3

I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, London, MacMillan,

1933, pp. 136-137. 4

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 226.

5

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 235.

6

Ibid.

7

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 237.

Creation, Society and the Imaginary • 41

Thus, ‘if A, then B, then C and so on’; so that the positing of any one element necessarily brings everything else with it, either as a consequence or by implication. This applies, of course, not merely to all that is, but to all that has been and all that will be—that is, to all of history, past and future. Indeed, in this context distinctions between past, present and future become meaningless, the successive and the simultaneous being essentially indistinguishable. If succession is determined or necessary, it is given as soon as are given its law and its first term; it is itself but an order of being-together. Time is then simply a relation of order that nothing permits us to distinguish intrinsically from other relations of order, for example, from a spatial arrangement or from relations of ‘greater and lesser’. And, to the extent that the terms are necessarily taken up in this order, they are no more than ‘parts’ of the OneWhole and co-exist as parts of One-Same. In the intemporal always, there can be, at most, an order of coexistences but not an order of successions; and in the omnipresent always of determination, the order of determination, the order of succession is simply a variant of the order of coexistence, for succession can and must be reduced to a particular type of coexistence.8

This reduction of succession to coexistence is already evident in Kant’s analysis. It is evident, too, why Castoriadis should describe this type of thought as ‘ensemblist’ or ‘set-theoretical’, as well as ‘identitary’. Essentially, Being is treated as though it were a set. We shall return to this later. Such an ontology necessarily prohibits creation, as Kant himself recognises: “For if coming to be out of nothing is regarded as the effect of a foreign cause, it has to be entitled creation, and that cannot be admitted as an event among appearances, since its mere possibility would destroy the unity of experience.”9 Having dismissed creation as a possibility, the perpetual problem for this ontology is to account for change; or rather, as Castoriadis would argue, to excise change, to demonstrate that the apparently new is in fact merely the

8

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 184.

9

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 230. Kant’s definition of creation as “the effect of

a foreign cause,” when considered alongside Castoriadis’ notion of self-creation, is in itself provocative. The complex issues raised by this apparent discrepancy will be addressed in a later context.

42 • Chapter Two

same under a different guise. This way of putting the issue already indicates one of the principal strategies employed to this end. In order to discover the same in the different (or the ‘other’, to use Castoriadis’ terminology) one must set at nothing, ontologically speaking, that which constitutes their difference: their specific determinations, or form. Once again it is Kant who provides the most rigourous example of this approach. “All appearances contain the permanent (substance) as the object itself, and the transitory as its mere determination that is, as a way in which the object exists.”10 According to Kant, this is the third of the rules which, together with those governing succession and coexistence, guarantee a priori that unity— essentially a unity of time—without which experience would be impossible. Under the aegis of this rule, alteration is understood as but a mode of persistence. “Coming to be and ceasing to be are not alterations of that which comes to be or ceases to be. Alteration is a way of existing which follows upon another way of existing of the same object. All that alters persists, only its state changes.”11 If it were merely a matter of elucidating how we define and discern the identity of an object, we would have to admit that we do so in a manner consistent with Kant’s account; that is, we define an object as ‘the same’ insofar as that which (for us) makes it ‘this’ object persists despite changes. Thus, the chair is ‘the same’ chair before and after it has been re-painted; or the book is ‘the same’ book whether published in hardback or paperback (despite the multitude of palpable differences which would seem to make it manifestly not the same). Kant, however, is saying something more and something else: that in all change one necessarily discovers the same; that if one did not, no perception of change would be possible. We may readily acknowledge the necessity for some framework or point of reference if any particular change is to be perceptible, but Kant goes much further than this when he insists that this framework must be all-encompassing, “an underlying ground which exists at all times . . . ”12

10

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 212.

11

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 216.

12

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 213.

Creation, Society and the Imaginary • 43

What all this implies is that the way in which an object exists—its mode of being, its form—does not affect the ‘being’ of the object itself. However it may alter, its essential identity remains untouched, since this identity is unrelated to its specific determinations, defined as ‘accidental’. Kant’s assertions are tautologous, of course, (as he well knows) since the object is defined from the outset as ‘the same’. This prompts the question: In what sense is it ‘the same’? What makes it this object rather than another if not its ‘mere’ determinations? In contrast, the creation Castoriadis speaks of is precisely this: the creation of forms. It is this and this alone which counts as creation for Castoriadis, because, in his view, it is form alone which makes a thing what it is; and to make a thing what it is is at the same time to make it be. It is this eidos, this form that makes of wood a table, of bronze a statue, and of earth a vase. Now bronze is bronze regardless of its form.13 But the statue is a statue only due to its form; its being-a-statue, its essence, is its eidos. So, to say that someone creates the statue (ontologically) is meaningful only if we say (which is true, at least for the sculptor who is not copying any other sculptor) that someone creates the eidos of the statue, that what is created is this eidos. The statue is brought into being as a statue and as this particular statue only if its eidos is invented, imagined, posited out of nothing. If we imprint upon a mass of bronze an eidos that is already given, we are merely repeating what essentially, as an essence—eidos—was already there, we are creating nothing, we are imitating, we are producing. Conversely, if we ‘make’ another eidos, we are doing more than ‘producing’, we are creating.14

For Castoriadis, ‘being’ and ‘form’ (or, as formulated in an earlier quote, the fact of being and of being-thus) are indissociable. The invention of the eidos of

13

Though this does not seriously affect Castoriadis’ argument here, it is perhaps

worth pointing out that, ultimately, this assertion is simply incorrect. Bronze is bronze because of its form; that is, its chemical structure: the alloying of (predominantly) copper and tin. This form, however, is not related to any particular shape. The assertion might be more appropriately made in connection with Kant’s ‘substance’; though even here it is questionable, and for basically the same reasons as those which make it inapplicable to any particular substance. We will return to this issue shortly. 14

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 197.

44 • Chapter Two

the statue brings the statue into being absolutely, which means bringing it into being as this particular statue. Obviously, eidos, form, is not to be understood here in the limited sense of a mere blueprint for a possible organisation, but, as Castoriadis puts it, in the full sense of the union of the organisation and the organised.15 (If this seems to leave aside the question of the status of forms which remain, or so long as they remain, merely within the realm of thought, one perhaps ought to ask oneself why the organisation of thought— or, more broadly, of representation—should be accorded a lesser status than the organisation of, say, bronze. While the idea of a statue is not a statue, it is not nothing.) Granting form this ontological status forces us to recognise that the genuinely new does indeed exist. This is precisely what Kant refuses to admit and what forces him to devalue form and to equate new ‘things’ with new ‘substances’.16 As Castoriadis points out, creation is thereby reduced to the creation of matter, and “Man’s” supposed inability to create means only “that he cannot make an electron exist out of nothing.”17 The flip side of this devaluation of form is its absolutisation, the proposition that forms—that is, genuine forms—are immutable and eternal, that they constitute a complete system immune from alteration. This may seem paradoxical until we reflect that Kant’s ‘substance’ does not represent mere formlessness, but rather the persistence of an essential and immutable form throughout and despite accidental changes of state. This form persists, and due to its persistence we are able to perceive the changes suffered by the object thus constituted. What we find, then, not only in Kant but in Western philosophy generally, is the division of forms into the genuine and the false, the ultimate and the derived. The criterion for this division is mutability, those forms

15

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 310. The

conceptual framework Castoriadis brings to bear on this question is largely derived from Aristotle; specifically, the Metaphysics. To some degree, this is also true of Kant. One might say that Castoriadis is playing Aristotle against Kant, though Castoriadis’ conclusions go beyond Aristotle’s. 16

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 216.

17

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 199.

Creation, Society and the Imaginary • 45

which are subject to alteration, which do emerge or disappear, becoming by definition non-genuine. In this way traditional Western ontology and its associated logic, grounded as it is in the notion of being as determinacy, establishes from the outset the impossibility of creation in its fullest sense and is driven to ignore, conceal or reduce everything that points to its reality, since to acknowledge this reality would threaten the very foundations of thought as it is conceived within the framework of this same logic-ontology. If creation is, as Castoriadis argues, the very essence of the social, then clearly the application of this traditional logic-ontology to society must have disastrous consequences for our understanding. Instead of addressing the complex problems associated with a phenomenon over which determining structures can only ever have a partial and impermanent hold, a phenomenon in which change as the undetermined emergence of genuinely new forms is an essential characteristic, such thought is driven to deny a priori the possibility of such a phenomenon, subsuming society under models consistent with its ontological assumptions but inappropriate to society as we actually encounter and experience it. Such an approach inevitably ignores or distorts what it examines, burying or destroying any genuine insights which, if reflected upon seriously, would expose the poverty of traditional logic-ontology. This is why the burgeoning awareness of social self-creation so often degenerates into a search for, as Unger puts it, “a science of history, rich in lawlike explanations,”18 and theorisations of society, rather than expanding and deepening our understanding, as often as not impoverish it. Throughout his writings Castoriadis endeavours to show that although the manifestations of this self-mystification may be multifarious they are all organically related to the logical and ontological postulate of determinacy. The customary distinction between society and history, for example, which relates society to some pre-given and essentially asocial norm or end, and which reduces history either to a contingent deviation from this norm or to a necessary development towards it, allows us—even forces us—to evade any serious reflection on the peculiar character of society as always and essentially

18

Unger, False Necessity: Anti-necessitarianism: Social Theory in the Service of Radical

Democracy. Part I of Politics, p. 1.

46 • Chapter Two

historical. “In this way,” Castoriadis writes, “the object in question, the being proper to the social-historical, is constantly shifted towards something other than itself and absorbed in it.”19 That such a shift should occur is hardly surprising; indeed, given the assumptions of traditional logic-ontology, it seems almost inevitable. How could there be a ‘being’ peculiar to the social-historical that differed from the ‘being’ of Being in general? If Being is ‘One’, there can be no question of any ontological differentiation within it. The mode of being of society, the manner and sense in which it exists and can be said to exist, must be not just consistent with but identical to ‘being’ elsewhere. The specific context is irrelevant, since the meaning of ‘being’ is everywhere and always the same. It is no wonder, then, that, as Castoriadis observes, inherited thought should have “been led to reduce the social-historical to the elementary types of being that it knew or thought it knew—having constructed them and hence determined them— from somewhere else . . .”20 This importation of categories from other contexts or regions, far from constituting an illegitimate imposition, becomes a requirement for rational thought. If the social-historical is conceivable by means of the categories that are valid for other beings, then it cannot help but be homogeneous with them; its mode of being poses no particular question, and it allows itself to be absorbed within total being. Reciprocally, if being means being determined, then society and history exist only to the extent that their place within the total order of being (as the result of causes, as means to an end, or as a moment in a process), their internal order, and the necessary relation between the two are determined; these orders, relations and necessities take the form of categories, that is to say, of determinations of all that can be inasmuch as it can be (thought).21

The shortcomings and failures of this mode of thinking cannot be recognised as such within the confines of that thought. If ‘being’ is defined as ‘determinacy’, the univocality of ‘being’ and the homogeneity of Being follow immediately and unavoidably. The examination of society and history cannot occasion

19

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 168.

20

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 169.

21

Ibid.

Creation, Society and the Imaginary • 47

a re-thinking of the meaning of ‘being’, because ‘being’ can have only one meaning, and that meaning is already known. To suggest that ‘being’ acquires or should be given a different meaning in the context of the social-historical than that which it possesses elsewhere is simply unthinkable. However awkwardly, however imperfectly, it must be made to fit the universal model, since the only alternatives are silence or nonsense. As we have seen, it is Castoriadis’ contention that the being of the social-historical cannot be subsumed under this paradigm of determinacy. The fact of social-historical self-creation precludes this. It suggests that society escapes such a determinacy in two ways: first, its forms and transformations cannot be reduced to the operation of laws encompassing the totality of Being—that is, it is not subject to any external determination—; and secondly, even its self-determination is transitory and imperfect—that is, it does not and cannot exclude the emergence of other determinations along with the disappearance of established ones. The ontological implications of such facts are far-reaching and profound. Not only do they suggest that a univocal definition of ‘being’ is inadequate—for in the social-historical we encounter a phenomenon for which the definition of ‘being’ employed elsewhere is clearly inappropriate—they suggest (not surprisingly, given that the two are bound together by mutual implication) that the traditional definition of being as determinacy must be suspect in all contexts. If ‘being’ were anywhere ‘determinacy’ in the traditionally understood sense, creation ought to be impossible—in this Kant was perfectly correct. To acknowledge the reality of creation, then, forces us to question even the determinacy of the apparently determinate. Ultimately, it is the very notion of ‘determinacy’ that must be put into question.

2

The Failure of Traditional Accounts of Society and History

The Determinism of Explanatory Models of Society We do not need to venture beyond the realm of the social-historical to begin this interrogation. On the contrary, since it is the question of the being of the social-historical which forces this interrogation upon us, it is here that we must begin to search for answers. And we can begin this search by following Castoriadis’ own quest for a more adequate alternative to traditional models of society and history.

48 • Chapter Two

The distinguishing feature of such models is their tendency to construe society as a closed system. As we have seen, this is a direct response to the theoretical imperatives of a deterministic logic-ontology. Where these models differ is in their understanding of the nature of this closure. Castoriadis divides the available models of society and history into two basic types: the physicalist and the logicist.22 The physicalist type is characterised by the ultimate reduction of society and history to nature. As Castoriadis argues, it matters little whether this nature is seen as residing in individual human biology or psychology, some notion of a ‘species being’, or simpler physical mechanisms. In each case, social organisation is explained by reference to needs or imperatives which are posited as fixed and determined. This remains so even where some account is taken of social change, for such change is then typically reduced to a ‘development’ which is itself determined by these same or some other ‘overarching’ imperatives. Functionalism is, of course, the purest expression of this approach. The logicist type includes all those approaches which attempt to explain society and history by reference to an underlying logic (meaningful or otherwise) which determines the generation and/or arrangement of a finite number of elements. For Castoriadis, structuralism represents the most impoverished form of the logicist approach, seeking merely to determine the rules governing the combination of elements without ever asking about the origin of these elements or why their arrangement should not be always and everywhere the same. At the opposite end of the spectrum we find the rational finalism exemplified by Hegelianism and Hegelian Marxism, in which the logic governing the organisation and development of social structures is identified with the necessary unfolding of an hypostasised Reason.23

22

It may be objected that not all approaches to the study of society and history

can be fitted neatly into one or other of these categories, or that there are some which cannot be assigned to either. Whatever the merits of this classification, Castoriadis’ assertion remains that all available approaches share common ontological assumptions which blind them to essential characteristics of their object. My principal aim here is to trace the logic of Castoriadis’ own argument in favour of this assertion, and to show whence it leads him. 23

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 170-174.

Creation, Society and the Imaginary • 49

To say that both types of approach ultimately fail because both remain trapped within a deterministic framework begs the question: In what way does such a framework fail to account for society and history? Thus far we have answered this question in very broad terms only. We now need to embark on a more detailed examination of the issues involved. One way of approaching this problem is to ask, as Castoriadis does, what questions about society and history such a framework not only leaves unanswered but makes it impossible to answer. Castoriadis suggests the following: “in what way and why are there many societies and not just one; in what way and why are there differences between societies?”24 What traditional approaches to society and history fail to account for is the diversity of societies and, therefore, the specificity of each. This failure is systematic rather than accidental. It flows from an inability to acknowledge the existence of genuine diversity, of genuinely different (that is, ‘other’ in Castoriadis’ sense) societies and histories. In keeping with the general movement characteristic of a deterministic/identitarian logic-ontology, such ‘differences’ must be reduced to an underlying ‘sameness’. In this way differences can be dismissed as ‘superficial’ or ‘inessential’. However, as Castoriadis points out, rather than resolving the problem this merely relocates it. Now, instead of asking why differences exist, we find ourselves asking “why does the identical appear different?”25

Functional Determinism Traditional approaches provide no satisfactory answer to this question either. Functionalism, for instance, although based on the obviously valid observation that certain of a society’s institutions fulfill functions essential to the continued existence of that society, starts to obscure the true nature of institutions as soon at it seeks to reduce them to these functions—which, of course, it does from the very outset. Henceforth it can provide no explanation for those aspects or dimensions of the social which exceed or are unrelated to functional imperatives. That such dimensions exist is attested to most spectacularly by those instances in which institutions persist despite changes in internal or

24

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 170.

25

Ibid.

50 • Chapter Two

external conditions which strip them of their functional utility and which may even render them socially destructive. Even in relation to ‘functionally healthy’ societies, functionalism buys its capacity to explain institutions only at the cost of willfully ignoring or dismissing the concrete richness of social life. As I have suggested already, the problem—not just for functionalism, but for any attempt to account for the social—is the bewildering diversity of social institutions. In view of this, if institutions are to be explained by reference to their function alone, one must either postulate a plurality of functional needs corresponding to the diversity of institutions which have developed to fulfill them, or one must postulate a fixed set of needs which are susceptible to various modes of satisfaction.26 It is the second of these options that functionalism adopts, the first being unacceptable primarily because it leaves one with the thorny problem of how to account not just for an open plurality of needs but for the presence and absence, hence the emergence and disappearance, of these needs in different societies; a problem which is hardly soluble unless we postulate that these needs are in fact created (and annihilated) in a non-deterministic manner. If we take the more congenial route, however, all that is required to arrive at a ‘satisfactory’ explanation of an institution is to relate it to the specific need which it is supposed to fulfill. Why this need should be fulfilled in this specific manner rather than some other, either from the existing catalogue of possibilities represented in other societies or beyond, is a question which can be answered only by entirely inadequate referrals to external conditions or the contingencies of developmental paths. In effect, that which cannot be explained according to its function functionalism renders immaterial, discounting it as sheer contingency, random and accidental. Unfortunately, this ‘contingent’, ‘immaterial’ stuff constitutes much of the substance of social life, which is consequently left unexplained and unexamined. For Castoriadis, the fundamental defect of functionalism is its (implicit or explicit) strategy of positing a fixed set of human needs.27 “The essential fact

26

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 170-171.

27

Castoriadis’ analysis of functionalism, parts of which date from 1964-5 and parts

of which dates from circa 1975, does not take into account more recent developments of this tradition, most notably the systems analytical approach of Niklas Luhmann.

Creation, Society and the Imaginary • 51

is thereby covered over: human needs, to the extent that they are social and not simply biological, are inseparable from their objects, and both these needs and their objects are in every instance instituted by the society considered.”28 One can therefore never identify a determined set of human needs, or an exhaustive catalogue of society’s functional imperatives. (There is a difference between these two which Castoriadis tends to gloss over. Although some anthropologists—most notably, Malinowski—have tried the first approach, functionalist sociology—Durkheim, Radcliffe-Brown, Parsons, Luhmann— generally adopts the second.) There are indeed needs and imperatives which are satisfied by social institutions, but these needs and imperatives cannot be abstracted from the institutions which satisfy them. Castoriadis’ view is summed up in the following passage. Man is not this need which contains its ‘proper object’ as its compliment, a lock with its key (to be found or to be made). Man can exist only by defining himself in each case as an ensemble of needs and corresponding objects, but he always outstrips these definitions—and, if he outstrips them (not only as a permanent possibility but in the effectivity of the historical movement), this is because they spring out of him, because he invents them (not arbitrarily, to be sure, for there is always nature, the minimum coherence required by rationality, and previous history), and hence because he makes them by making things and by making himself, and because no rational, natural or historical definition allows us to establish them once and for all.29

According to this view, all institutions might be interpreted as fulfilling a functional role, but only if we are content to adopt a definition of ‘functional’ quite at odds with that which is in fact the basis of functionalism, for in this

Luhmann could not be accused of positing a fixed set of human needs in the manner of his predecessors, but his reformulation of the functionalist approach, founded as it is on similar ontological and logical assumptions, is subject to similar criticisms. I cannot offer here a detailed analysis and critique of Luhmann’s work. Suffice it to say that Luhmann’s attempt to analyse social institutions as systems and to account for social history as a history of system development bears the indelible stamp of the ensemblistic-identitarian logic-ontology which is the ultimate object of Castoriadis’ critique. 28

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 171.

29

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 135.

52 • Chapter Two

case we would no longer be concerned with functions essential to the continued existence of a society per se, but to the continued existence of a specific society as this society. Functionalism’s inadequacies are not simply due to its positing a uniformity or universality which society does not possess. Rather, it is that the very type of explanation sought by functionalism is inappropriate to society. Societal needs and institutional functions cannot be related as cause and effect if both arise together. Quite simply, the traditional category of causality fails us and leads us astray if we attempt to apply it in any general way to society and history.

Symbolic Determinism To go beyond the limitations of the functionalist approach requires, above all else, a recognition of the fundamental role of meaning in social life. The social world is a world of meaning. This is so not merely or primarily in the sense that it is in and through the social world that we discover and/or construct meaning for ourselves. Rather, meaning is the fundamental element of the social, that in and through which society and its institutions exist and operate. Though functionalism cannot entirely ignore the role of meaning in the operation of social institutions, it tends to diminish and obscure the importance of this role, construing it as merely instrumental and therefore subservient to the functional.30 In doing so, it fails to recognise the profound implications which the fact of meaning carries for the very notion of social function. It is as the symbolic that the role of meaning in the operation of social institutions is most obvious. As Castoriadis observes, everything in the social world is inextricably tied to the symbolic.31 Even social actions which cannot be said to be strictly symbolic in terms of their aim or their content are nevertheless made possible only through the symbolic. While language is the first and remains the most fundamental symbolic system we encounter in a society, all institutions, Castoriadis argues, must be seen as constituting symbolic networks.

30

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 118.

31

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 117.

Creation, Society and the Imaginary • 53 A given economic organisation, a system of law, an instituted power structure, a religion—all exist socially as sanctioned symbolic systems. These systems consist in relating symbols (signifiers) to signifieds (representations, orders, commands or inducements to do or not to do something, consequences for actions—significations in the loosest sense of the term) and in validating them as such, that is to say in making this relation more or less obligatory for the society or the group concerned.32

From a functionalist perspective, symbolic systems can be viewed only as instruments of mediation between patterns of social action and a society’s functional requirements. As Castoriadis points out, this assumes that such systems are entirely subservient to their ‘content’; that, in themselves, they are perfectly ‘adequate’, or at least ‘neutral’, with regard to the task of ensuring the performance of ‘real’ functions.33 On closer inspection, this assumption is revealed as untenable. Symbolic systems have a life of their own, incorporating constraints, tendencies and imperatives which are irreducible to their supposed functional role. First, symbolic systems obey a logic or rationality which is not tied to the functional needs of institutions or of society. That symbolic systems exhibit a certain rationality is hardly a surprising observation: this is the essence of their ‘systemic’ character, the basis for the coherence of their various elements and their mutual interaction. Functionalists must assume that this rationality coincides with functional imperatives, but this is not always the case. There are plenty of examples of institutions which, under their own weight and in obedience to their own internal imperatives, persist despite functional redundancy or even develop in directions which are patently dysfunctional from the perspective of the society as a whole. More commonly, this internal rationality of the symbolic yields consequences which have no bearing on the ‘functionality’ of institutions but nevertheless establish the preponderance of the rules and structures which govern the actual life of a society. The situation is rendered all the more complex by the fact that, although all symbolic systems share certain core logical features (which we will examine in some

32

Ibid.

33

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 121.

54 • Chapter Two

detail later), the concrete rationality of any particular system is substantially peculiar to that system. In other words, there is not a single ‘rationality of the symbolic’ but an open-ended plurality of such rationalities. This makes general predictions about the logical implications and developmental consequences of specific types of institution hazardous, if not entirely useless.34 Secondly, the actual symbolic systems which operate within any society are never, as Castoriadis puts it, ‘freely’ constituted.35 This is not to suggest that they are determined—a notion that would be quite foreign to Castoriadis’ position. Rather, it is a recognition of the fact that much of the material which constitutes symbolic systems is borrowed, either from nature or from previously existing systems. However completely such borrowings are appropriated they can never be entirely denuded of the associations which they have already acquired or which follow from the connections which obtain between natural objects—nor would they be of any use if this were achieved, since such borrowings are made largely because of these associations.36 What this means, however, is that “[t]he constitution of symbolism in real social and historical life has no relation to the ‘closed’ and ‘transparent’ definitions of symbols found in a work of mathematics”; rather, “[b]y its virtually unlimited natural and historical connections, the signifier always goes beyond a strict attachment to a precise signified and can lead to completely unexpected realms.”37 Taken together, these two characteristics of symbolic systems yield a picture of the symbolic as far too fluid, open and independent to be reconciled with claims of its subservience to the functional. Not only can there be no guarantee that a symbolic system will be, or will remain, functionally ‘adequate’, but to attempt to account for such systems on the basis of their relation to the functional roles of institutions is to ignore the true complexity of social life. Structuralism distinguishes itself from functionalism in that it grants meaning an independent role and significance in social life which functionalism

34

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 117-126.

35

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 121.

36

Ibid.

37

Ibid.

Creation, Society and the Imaginary • 55

cannot. It resembles functionalism, however, in that it seeks to reduce meaning to a single dimension. In effect, it reduces meaning to the symbolic; or, to put it another way, it reduces signification to a code. Castoriadis rightly points out that although institutions are impossible outside of symbolic networks they cannot be reduced to such networks. There is always something within an institution, or within any symbolic network, which goes beyond the symbolic. Structuralist analyses may identify the rules which govern the relations between signs within any particular symbolic system, but this will always leave open two crucial questions: “Why this system of symbols and not another? What are the meanings conveyed by the symbols, the system of signifieds to which the system of signifiers refers?”38 The structuralist method effectively entails reducing significations to the signifying structures which carry them, treating them as a result of such structures. In opposition to such a method, Castoriadis rightly observes that, while significations can only exist through signifying structures, “this does not mean that they can be reduced to these, that they result from them in a univocal manner, or, finally, that they are determined by them.”39 It is impossible to hold that meaning is simply what results from the combination of signs. One could just as well say that the combination of signs results from its meaning, for the world is not made up solely of people who interpret other people’s discourses; if the former are to exist, the latter must have first spoken, and speaking is already choosing signs, hesitating, and correcting the signs already chosen—in relation to a meaning.40

3

The Imaginary

Social Imaginary Significations What, then, is the additional component, the source of meaning beyond the symbolic? This is what Castoriadis has termed the ‘imaginary’. By this he

38

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 136.

39

Ibid.

40

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 137.

56 • Chapter Two

means, in essence, that which is invented, and which, as such, is neither determined by nor reducible to the ‘real’ (though, as we shall see, this does not mean that it can bear no relation to ‘reality’). As Castoriadis insists, the ‘imaginary’ in this sense is never a mere reflection of that which already exists, it is not the image of something. On the contrary: It is the unceasing and essentially undetermined (social-historical and psychical) creation of figures/forms/images, on the basis of which alone there can ever be a question of ‘something’.41

Because the imaginary cannot exist outside the symbolic—or because there can never be a signification which is not encoded, bound up with and carried by a structured system of signifiers—there is a natural tendency to conflate the two. That such a view is ultimately untenable becomes clear as soon as we begin to reflect on the problem of the origin of the symbolic itself. As Castoriadis puts it, insofar as symbolism entails the positing of images or figures whose purpose is to represent or ‘stand for’ something other than themselves, symbolism must be recognised as presupposing “the capacity to see in a thing what it is not, to see it other than it is,”42 a capacity which can only be described as ‘imaginary’ in the sense outlined above. There is nothing in the symbolic itself which can explain or account for either the origin of this basic symbolic or signifying relation whereby one thing is made to stand for another or any specific system of signifiers and its relation to a given set of significations. We must therefore look beyond the symbolic to some “elementary and irreducible capacity of evoking images”43 and establishing relations between them. This capacity Castoriadis dubs the ‘radical imaginary’—as distinct from the ‘actual imaginary’, the particular constellation of significations to be found in any specific institution or society. This ‘radical imaginary’ is the source of both the actual imaginary and the symbolic (both symbolism per se and each specific symbolic system). We see, then, that significations, or meanings, cannot be reduced to the status of mere products of signifying systems, but that both are ultimately ‘imagi-

41

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 3.

42

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 127.

43

Ibid.

Creation, Society and the Imaginary • 57

nary’; that is to say, invented or created. As suggested previously, this is not to say that significations can bear no relation whatsoever to ‘the real’. On the contrary, this is often precisely their role: to represent, to denote. This is not always the case, however; nor, Castoriadis would argue, is it essentially so. At this juncture Castoriadis introduces alongside the ‘radical imaginary’ as the creative source of meanings and the ‘actual imaginary’ as the created world of social significations a third level of meaning to the term ‘imaginary’. There exist, he argues, significations which cannot be understood in terms of their correspondence to either that which is perceived (the world of sensory experience) or that which is thought (ideas, concepts, intentions, and so on). This category of significations, which is in practice so closely linked to the other two that we habitually fail to distinguish its independent reality, Castoriadis labels ‘imaginary’. ‘Imaginary significations’ are those significations we arrive at when, having pursued “the possibility of penetrating the labyrinth of the symbolisation of the imaginary”—that is, the ‘actual imaginary’, that constellation of meanings which, as Castoriadis puts it, “abounds immediately on the surface of social life”—we “arrive at significations which are not there in order to represent something else, that are like the final articulations the society in question has imposed on the world, on itself, and on its needs, the organising patterns that are the conditions for the representability of everything that the society can give to itself.”44 By their very nature such significations are elusive, defying straightforward description. They are not themselves ‘images’ or ‘representations’; nor are they the ‘sum’, the ‘common part’ or the ‘average’ of those images which we can grasp and which we can trace back to this common core. “Imaginary social significations,” states Castoriadis, “—at any rate, those that are truly primary—denote nothing at all, and they connote just about everything.”45 If such a signification cannot be neatly abstracted from the network of significations which it organises, this is because it is not merely one element among others; rather, it is the organising principle which gives rise to the pattern of the whole—“the invisible cement holding together this endless collection of real, rational and symbolic odds and ends that constitute every society, . . . the principle that selects and shapes the bits and pieces that

44

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 142-143.

45

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 143.

58 • Chapter Two

will be accepted there.”46 As an organising principle, it is visible only in and through its products. It goes beyond these, however. It can never be reduced to the ‘actual’, to what has thus far been produced, since it also represents the capacity for extending, multiplying and modifying the prevailing system of significations in accordance with this fundamental pattern.47 Given the elusive and nebulous nature of what Castoriadis is here attempting to describe, one might be tempted to ask whether we should be talking about a ‘signification’ at all. The question reveals something important in that it points to an assumption about the nature of significations which would exclude the nebulous or the indefinite as alien to this nature. As we shall see later, nothing could be further from the truth. The justification for using the term ‘signification’ in this context is quite simple: what is in question is a meaning, one which is so fundamental and pervasive that it is impossible to distill into a simple statement or series of statements, but which is a meaning nonetheless. This becomes clear when we ask what social imaginary significations do. This is no less than to determine ‘what’ a society is: its mode of being, its life, its manner of relating to itself and to the world. Castoriadis suggests that we might think of this in terms of the provision of a coherent set of answers to certain fundamental questions; for example: “Who are we as a collectivity? What are we for one another? Where and in what are we? What do we want; what do we desire; what are we lacking? Society,” Castoriadis goes on to say, “must define its ‘identity’, its articulation, the world, its relations to the world and to the objects it contains, its needs and its desires. Without the ‘answer’ to these ‘questions’, without these ‘definitions’, there can be no human world, no society, no culture—for everything would be an undifferentiated chaos.”48 As Castoriadis recognises, the terms ‘question’ and ‘answer’ may be somewhat misleading in this context. What is at issue is an answer which precedes all questions, which determines what questions shall and may be asked as well as how they may be answered; not an answer at all, then, but a core of sense which determines an order providing the general framework within which questions and answers become possible (most questions in most societ-

46

Ibid.

47

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 140-141.

48

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 146-147.

Creation, Society and the Imaginary • 59

ies being no more than the occasion for a rehearsal of already established and sanctioned answers). According to Castoriadis, society is essentially this core of sense, this meaning. The order of society, then, is an order of meaning; or, to put it another way (since what we are dealing with is a process rather than a product—instituted society representing, as stated in the previous chapter, only the ‘relative fixity/stability’ of social forms within the context of a selfinstitution which is continuous and open-ended), the ordering of society is an ordering of, through and in view of meaning. This is why the term ‘definition’ must also be placed in inverted commas; for this is not simply a process of identifying what already exists but of determining what shall be. The ‘imaginary’ is not to be understood as comprising alongside the functional and the symbolic a trinity which together determines the specific form of a society. As Castoriadis states, “Functionality borrows its meaning from outside itself; symbolism necessarily refers to something that is not symbolic and that is not simply real or rational either.”49 Both the functionality and the symbolism of any given society are imaginary creations. If we wish to develop a more adequate understanding of society, it is to this fundamental and hitherto neglected dimension of the imaginary that we must turn our attention. In particular, we need to inquire more deeply into the nature of signification. If society exists only in and through significations, and if society therefore institutes itself primarily by instituting a world of significations, then signification is, so to speak, the essential substance of society. To understand what signification is, therefore, is to understand what society is; the mode of being of society is that of imaginary significations.

Social Imaginary Significations and the Social World Before we consider what Castoriadis says explicitly about the nature of social significations, and therefore about the nature of society, we would do well to explore a few of the more important ramifications of the argument up to this point. In the first place, significations may seem to some to be too insubstantial to constitute the essential and constructive core of the social. Those who would raise such an objection might be inclined to dismiss Castoriadis’

49

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 145.

60 • Chapter Two

view as idealist. It is not. Indeed, inasmuch as idealism remains as firmly entrenched within the framework of a deterministic logic-ontology as materialism, Castoriadis’ view is far more scandalous than the most thorough-going idealism. The accusation of idealism has its roots in this logic-ontology. If significations are seen as too ‘insubstantial’ this can mean only that they are regarded as incapable of constituting the ultimate factor in a chain of determination. This ultimate factor must therefore be sought elsewhere, in the material world, physical or organic, or in formal laws of structure and function, all of which are determined or determinable in themselves. Castoriadis departs from this orthodoxy in two ways: first, in that he posits a rupture of the chain of determination in the form of the creation of imaginary significations; second, in that he affirms imaginary significations as determining, but in a sense and a manner which differs significantly from the traditionally accepted model of determination. As I have already indicated, the crux of Castoriadis’ position is his insistence that the absence of determination in this classical sense does not imply the absence of any relation whatsoever. What we need to ask is what sort of relations do obtain between imaginary significations on the one hand and both the social and non-social orders on the other. One aspect of the relationship between social imaginary significations and the social order has to do with the relation between the former and what Castoriadis terms the ‘abstract materiality’ of society; that is to say, the palpable social world of concrete entities, objects and individuals. According to Castoriadis, such ‘social things’ “are what they are depending on the significations they figure, immediately or mediately, directly or indirectly.”50 Society brings these ‘things’ into being by making them “at once as concrete entities and as copies or instances of an eidos created (imagined, invented, instituted) by society.”51 This means that social things exist, not merely in this particular form but in an absolute sense, only by virtue of their relationship to social significations. On the other hand, we must also recognise that social imaginary significations can exist “only through their ‘incarnation’, their ‘inscription’, their presentation and figuration in and through a network of individuals and objects,

50

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 355.

51

Ibid.

Creation, Society and the Imaginary • 61

which they ‘inform’ . . .”52 “What we have here,” suggests Castoriadis, “are not significations that would be ‘freely detachable’ from any material support, purely ideal poles; rather, it is in and through the being and the being-thus of this ‘support’ that these significations exist and are such as they are.”53 We have already encountered this type of reciprocal dependence in our discussion of the relationship between individuals and society. There it was argued that the relationship between a society and the individuals of which it is composed cannot be thought under categories of whole and part, set and element, universal and particular, because although society creates the individual, it is only in and through individuals that society can exist. This relationship between concrete instances and those forms or models which give rise to them but which at the same time cannot be said to exist apart from their realisation or incarnation in such instances is mysterious because it defies the logic we have come to accept as governing all relations, a logic which demands that the related terms be clearly separable and distinct. We will need to explore this mystery further, for it impacts on what is for us a central problem: the relationship between subject and object, creator and creation, in a context—that of self-creation—in which the self clearly belongs to both poles, as both agent and result. The other aspect of the relationship between social imaginary significations and the social order concerns the nature of such significations and the relations between significations themselves. I will return to this question later.

Social Imaginary Significations and the Non-Social: Creation and Leaning On First, let us look at the other side of the problem: the relation between imaginary significations and the non-social. As has been stated repeatedly, this relationship is not and cannot be one of determination. The evidence against such a view is as abundant as the variety of societies and cultures which have thus far existed. The natural conditions of human life, including the biological constitution of individuals, being largely the same everywhere and virtually identical across vastly differing societies, we can posit these conditions

52

Ibid.

53

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 356.

62 • Chapter Two

as causes of social organisation only if we are willing to accept the preposterous (because oxymoronic) notion of a constant cause which produces variable effects. Nonetheless, it is, as Castoriadis suggests, self-evident that while society’s self-creation is not “dictated by an indubitable, in-itself, being-thus of the natural stratum,” neither is it “‘absolutely free’ in relation to the latter”.54 Society’s self-institution, which is at the same time the institution of a world of significations, is ‘supported’ and ‘induced’ by a certain being-thus of this natural stratum which must be ‘taken into account’. How are we to understand this ‘support’ and ‘inducement’, this ‘taking into account’, without reducing the relation to one of determination? This is the problem Castoriadis seeks to solve through the concept of ‘leaning on’. The term is borrowed from Freud: Anlehnung in German, in English traditionally rendered in psychoanalytic literature as ‘anaclasis’—by analogy, as Strachey points out, “with the grammatical term ‘enclitic’, used of particles which cannot be the first word in a sentence but must be appended to, or must lean up against, a more important one”; and sometimes also by the term ‘attachment’.55 For Freud, the term refers to the relationship between basic somatic functions and the subsequent choice of sexual objects. As Castoriadis explains: What the idea of anaclasis, of leaning on, states is: in the first place there can be no oral instinct without mouth and breast, no anal instinct without an anus—and the existence of the mouth and breast, or of the anus, still says nothing about what becomes of the oral instinct in general, the anal instinct in general, about what becomes of them in a given culture, even less, what becomes of them in a given individual.56

According to Castoriadis, these somatic supports are more than mere ‘external conditions’ without which psychical functioning as we know it would be impossible. Oxygen, he suggests, might be regarded in this way, since with-

54

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 353.

55

S. Freud, “On Narcissism: An Introduction” in On Metapsychology: the Theory of

Psychoanalysis, The Pelican Freud Library Vol. 11, trans. ed. J. Strachey, ed. A. Richards, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1984, p. 81. 56

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 290.

Creation, Society and the Imaginary • 63

out it there would be no psychical life (indeed, no advanced organic life at all), although oxygen in itself contributes nothing to the form or development of that life. The mouth, the breast, the anus, on the other hand, do; they are—and it would seem, must be—taken into account by the psyche. But this taking into account is non-deterministic: it does not yield the same results everywhere. This can only be understood if we acknowledge the creative role of the psyche in taking up, transforming and incorporating such privileged somatic data.57 Similarly (although there are some important differences here to which we shall return later), the self-institution of society may be seen as leaning on what Castoriadis calls the ‘first natural stratum’—the biological organisation of the human individual as a living being and the natural world in which it participates and with which, qua living being, it interacts—finding in this natural stratum a series of conditions, supports, and stimuli which it takes up, takes account of, uses and transforms, but in a manner determined creatively by itself, according to its own ends and consistent with its own self-constitution.58 For Castoriadis, the relationship between society and psyche is, in turn, also of this type. These observations lead Castoriadis to propose that we should regard ‘leaning on’ as a type of relation as fundamental and irreducible as causation.59 To appreciate the full significance of this proposition, we will need to explore further the fundamental questions raised by this idea of a relation founded upon creativity.

57

Ibid.

58

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 233-234.

59

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 290.

Chapter Three Self and World

1

The Self

Society and signification are consubstantial. “[N]othing exists as social-historical which is not signification, caught up in and referred to an instituted world of significations.”1 On the other hand, nothing exists as signification which is not social-historical. Not only is signification essential to the social, it is peculiar to the social: there are no significations outside society. (There are no significations, but there are meanings. As we shall see, wherever there is a self there is necessarily meaning, but each type or level of self inaugurates its own idiosyncratic form of meaning. Social meanings—or significations—differ substantially from those forms of meaning belonging to the unsocialised psyche or the living being. In the absence of society, this type of meaning does not exist; in the absence of some form of self, no meaning exists at all.) What significations do exist must therefore be created by/with/as society.

1

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 354.

66 • Chapter Three

This has profound implications for the question of the relationship between society and the non-social world. “[I]n the ‘passage from the natural to the social’, we find the emergence of another level and another mode of being . . .”2 What belongs to the non-social world cannot be simply ‘given’ to the social; nor, as Castoriadis observes, can it be ‘taken up’ by the social, except in and through the world of significations instituted by each specific society.3 (At one point Castoriadis suggests that in the process of taking up what belongs to the natural stratum society ‘transubstantiates or ontologically alters’ that which is taken up.4 This manner of putting things might be misleading. Nothing that belongs to the natural stratum is ontologically altered; nothing, indeed, is ‘taken up’. Nothing passes from the natural to the social—which is presumably the point of the inverted commas Castoriadis employs when he speaks of such a ‘passage’. What is in question is not, after all, the changing of water into wine, but the creation and institution of the signification ‘water’, in all its forms and with all its connotations, in view of—induced by and utilising, but not determined by—the physical properties and effects of liquid H2O.) If this is true of social significations, it is, according to Castoriadis, also true of psychological representations, of representation per se, of ‘meaning’ in all its forms and at all levels of complexity, from cultures to the simplest sensory information. What all these have in common is their relation to a ‘subject’ or ‘self’, the fact that they exist only for a self and so must be constituted by this self. To recognise this is, of course, to follow in the footsteps of Kant. In Kant’s terms, the material that reason has to work with in constructing knowledge does not consist of ‘things-in-themselves’ but of ‘appearances’ which exist only for a subject and which must be constructed by this subject according to the rules of his/her/its own reason. One hardly need mention that this view of things is not without its problems. For our purposes here, these may be presented as twofold: first, we must show that this (or something similar) is indeed the case; second, we must explain how that which is constructed by and for the subject can be related to that which must forever lie beyond such a construction.

2

Ibid.

3

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 235.

4

Ibid.

Self and World • 67

Castoriadis’ approach is to begin with a broad analysis of the category of the ‘self’. According to him, the self—or the for-itself, as he frequently refers to it, for reasons which will become clear—may be distinguished by the following characteristics.5 1. It possesses self-finality. This means, first, that it acts on its own, that it is an ‘automaton’ in the Aristotelian sense of that which “has within itself the principle of movement”.6 (‘Movement’ here signifies—for Aristotle, certainly, but even more explicitly for Castoriadis—something more than mere ‘locomotion’, or movement in space. It includes, in addition, the capacity for generation and self-alteration.)7 Secondly, it means that the self pursues its own ends, that it alone determines the goals of its own actions. 2. Chief among these goals is self-preservation. The self endeavours to perpetuate itself. This relates less to the self’s empirical existence than to its mode of being. Indeed, where these two come into conflict (as when parents risk or even sacrifice their own lives to ensure the survival of their offspring; or when individual organisms sacrifice themselves to ensure the safety of their progenitors and siblings—for example, ants—; or when empirical existence is terminated because its continuation would mean the destruction of an individual’s sense of a meaningful identity—that is, in some types of suicide), it is often the second which prevails. (Castoriadis deals with each of these examples somewhat differently than I have here. In relation to the first, he associates the goal of individual self-preservation with the individual organism and the goal of reproduction with the species.8 This distinction cannot be disregarded—it is part of the standard paradigm of modern biology. There are, however, conceptual difficulties associated with juxtaposing species and specimen which might be avoided were the problem approached via the distinction between empirical existence and mode of

5

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 142.

6

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 309. The

reference is to Aristotle’s De Anima, trans. Hugh Lawson-Tancred, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1986; see esp. Book I. 7

Ibid.

8

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 145.

68 • Chapter Three

being. Castoriadis examines suicide in a slightly different context, as we shall see later.) 3. The self reasons. The precise nature of this reasoning may vary widely, but all entities belonging to the category of the ‘for-itself’ engage in some form of calculation. 4. The self incorporates a world of its own. To each self belong objects and modes of relation and valuation which are peculiar to it. Each creates this world for itself, and must do so, since the characteristics of this world must be related to the self’s own goals, and because that of and in which such a ‘world’ consists cannot exist outside the activity of a self. As we shall see, this provision of a ‘world’ is both essential and integral to the constitution of the self: in making a world for itself, the self makes itself, and vice versa. It should be immediately obvious that, understood in these terms, the self or ‘for-itself’ exists outside as well as within the human realm. In fact, we find entities answering the above description across, as Castoriadis puts it, “a multiplicity of regions, and even levels, of being”.9 These levels or regions need to be distinguished if we are to clarify both their common features and the specificity of each. Castoriadis identifies six such regions of the for-itself.10 1. The living being. All living beings, from the most complex organism down, at least, to the level of the single living cell, belong to the category of the foritself. 2. The human psyche. Castoriadis includes here not only the human psyche taken as a whole but the plurality of intrapsychical ‘instances’ (in psychoanalytical terms, the ego, id and super-ego—though the precise enumeration and identification of such agents is not as important as the recognition that some such plurality exists), each of which must also be recognised as a ‘self’ in its own right. 3. The social individual. The individual as constructed or fabricated by society through its transformation of the psyche.

9 10

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 142. Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” pp. 143-144.

Self and World • 69

4. Society. Society must be considered a ‘self’, Castoriadis argues, because it clearly displays the essential characteristics of the for-itself: self-finality, the drive towards self-preservation, a form of reasoning or logic and the construction of a world of its own. The proposition may be disturbing if we are unable to rid ourselves of the inherited prejudice which would accord ultimate reality to the individual as opposed to society. We examined some of the confusions to which this view gives rise in chapter one. From that discussion it should be clear that Castoriadis is not speaking of something which can be said to exist independently of social individuals, though neither can it be reduced to any specific individual or collection of individuals. He is not suggesting that we should regard society as a ‘subject’ or ‘hypersubject’, a collective consciousness or, for that matter, unconsciousness. On the contrary, he insists that we avoid thinking of society as a subject.11 This is because we tend to associate the term ‘subject’ with a level of self-awareness and, consequently, a capacity for self-reflection and deliberate action which neither society as such nor any of the preceding regions or levels of the for-itself may be said to possess. This brings us to the last two regions identified by Castoriadis. 5. The human subject and 6. Autonomous society. I have grouped these together for two reasons. First, because, as Castoriadis observes, whereas in the first four we are dealing with the ‘merely real’—it just happens to be the case that there are living beings, and so on—these last two represent projects, aims which, while they draw on certain intrinsic human characteristics, are in no sense given as developmental ends but arise as purely contingent historical creations. (Castoriadis sometimes speaks of these projects as actualising universal human ‘possibilities’ or ‘potentials’. In a sense this is undoubtedly true; but we would do well to remember that ‘characteristics’ only become ‘potentials’ after the fact; that is, in view of an already given end.) Secondly, the two imply one another, logically and practically. To speak of the human subject in Castoriadis’ sense without speaking of autonomous society, or vice versa, is meaningless. The ‘human subject’ is, in Castoriadis’ terminology, the autonomous subject, a subject characterised by ‘self-reflection’ and by the capacity for deliberate self-government and self-transformation. As was argued in the

11

C. Castoriadis, “The Imaginary: Creation in the Social-Historical Domain” in

World in Fragments, ed. David Ames Curtis, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997.

70 • Chapter Three

first chapter, such a subject is impossible outside society. The ‘human subject’ qua autonomous subject is a form (albeit a highly unusual one) of social individual, and as such is impossible in the absence of that transformation of the psyche through which society produces individuals. Given this, the human or autonomous subject necessarily aims at and is incomplete without autonomous society. This is so in two senses: first, because as a social being the human subject’s autonomy, his or her self-reflection and capacity for deliberate action, must necessarily address the social. Social institutions define and delimit the possibilities for thought and action for all individuals; and, more fundamentally, since the autonomous subject is a social individual, the very being of the autonomous subject is social—not just ultimately, but immediately. Secondly, the appearance and continued flourishing of individual autonomy is dependent on the existence of institutions which develop and foster it. The autonomous subject is a social-historical creation coinciding with other social forms and types of institution—one is tempted to say, ‘and dependent on these for its existence’, but this would be misleading if it suggested that the institutions must somehow precede the individuals, when what is in question is a coherent social world consisting of a network of interrelated and interdependent institutions, including individuals of a specific type. If we now look at the question from the perspective of autonomous society, we can immediately see that such a society is autonomous only through its production of a type of individual capable of autonomy (since, as we have seen, it is only in and through the individuals it produces that a society not only is what it is but is at all). An autonomous society, one capable of selfreflection and deliberate action, can therefore only be one in which the human or autonomous subject is the instituted norm.12

2

The World of the Self

Having identified these various regions or levels, Castoriadis proceeds to offer an analysis of what he calls the initial or archetypal for-itself, the living being. As ‘for-itself’, the living being possesses self-finality; that is, it deter-

12

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy”; “Power,

Politics, Autonomy”.

Self and World • 71

mines the goals of its own actions, chief among which is its own self-preservation—or rather, as I suggested earlier, the perpetuation of its peculiar mode of being, which may and often does entail the sacrifice of individual organisms in favour of their preservation as a species. “With self-finality,” Castoriadis argues, “goes a world of one’s own.”13 In fact, “these two determinations— self-finality on the one hand, the construction of a world of one’s own on the other—require each other in a reciprocal manner.”14 Clearly, if a living being is to succeed in its aim of self-preservation it requires an awareness of its environment. If any entity whatsoever is to preserve itself as it is . . . it must act and react in its environment, it must give a positive value to what favours its preservation and a negative value to what disfavours it; and for all this it must be aware of . . ., of this environment, be it only in the vaguest of senses.15

Although Castoriadis does not say so explicitly, the other side of the equation is, of course, that without such an aim there could be no awareness. At this most fundamental level at least—and perhaps at any level—awareness is essentially interested (it is intentional, to use a phenomenological term). Without aims there would be no motive for action and no need for an awareness of one’s environment. To become aware of one’s environment is no simple matter, however. For the parts, the elements, of this environment to exists for it, they must be present for this entity and therefore represented by it. Now, such representations can be neither “objective” nor “transparent”—each of these would be a contradiction in terms. Representation cannot be “objective” since representation is representation through and for “someone,” and therefore necessarily “adjusted,” to say the least, to the finalities of that someone; neither can it be “transparent” since the manner of being of this someone participates as an involved party in the constitution of this representation.16

13

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 145.

14

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” pp. 146-147.

15

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 147.

16

Ibid.

72 • Chapter Three

As Castoriadis points out, representation is necessarily highly selective. The living being only ‘perceives’ a tiny portion of its environment, and only a part of this is, as Castoriadis puts it, ‘transformed’ into information. The rest, if it exists at all for the living being, remains mere ‘noise’: irrelevant, meaningless stimulation. What is and is not relevant will depend on the specific aims of the living being; what is and is not perceived will therefore also depend on these aims and on the specific capacities and limitations of a perceptual system which is adapted to these aims.17 More fundamental than this selection and classification of stimuli, however, is the constitution of representation itself. As Castoriadis observes, there is in the environment of the living being no ‘information’. Living beings inform themselves of their environment through senses of sight, of hearing, of smell, and so on. In the environment itself, however, there are no ‘visual images’, only light, no ‘sounds’, only the vibration of molecules, no ‘smells’, only airborne chemicals. Of course, such distinctions can be made only on the basis of our own vision, our own hearing, our own sense of smell, only so long as we are content to presuppose these, to take them for granted. If we abjure this for a moment, we find that we can say nothing about what is ‘outside’, except that it is not any of these things, for which our presence and active participation are essential. This ‘beyond ourselves’, Castoriadis, following Kant, designates ‘X’. It [X] “informs” one only of the following thing: that “there is”. It is mere shock, Anstoss (we will return to this later). As soon as anything more could be said about it, it would have already entered into the play of “subjective” determinations; and ultimately, even this emptied, eviscerated limit case of “there is” is not exempt from the following question: For whom is there something? Nature contains no “information” waiting to be gathered. This X becomes something only by being formed (in-formed) by the foritself that forms it: the cell, immune system, dog, human being, etc., in question. Information is created by a “subject”—obviously in its own manner of doing so.18

17

Ibid.; Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 232-233.

18

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 145.

Self and World • 73

The for-itself lives in a world of its own. What the preceding discussion suggests is that to live in a world at all—to be aware, to perceive, to experience— is necessarily to live in a world of one’s own, since the only way one may have a ‘world’ in this sense of the term is if one makes this world for oneself. As I have suggested, this is essentially a restatement of the Kantian problematic, though Castoriadis proceeds to develop it in a radically different direction. A ‘world’ in this sense consists fundamentally of ‘presentations’. A presentation is essentially a ‘setting into images’—‘images’ here meaning not just visual images but any arrangement that embodies and conveys meaning. All presentations involve the bringing into relation of distinguishable elements. The being of these elements can never be entirely separated from their interrelationship in an image, but neither can we reduce the image constituted by this interrelationship to its organisation. According to Castoriadis, these two aspects of presentation—imaging and relating—may be analytically distinguished, but in practice they are indissociable. “There is always a ‘logical’ organisation of the image just as there is always an ‘imaged’ support for every logical function.”19 We may put this another way: just as the elements which constitute the image do not exist as elements except by virtue of their relations and the ‘picture’ which their ordering produces, no rules of organisation will suffice either to produce these elements or to determine what ‘picture’ they may combine to form. The ‘meaning’ of the image cannot be reduced to its logic, to its organisation. Although the image would be impossible without some logical organisation, this logical organisation would itself be impossible in the absence of some image. If this type of relationship sounds familiar this is because we have already encountered something very similar in the form of the relationship between the imaginary and the symbolic. What Castoriadis does in this context is to trace the peculiarities of this relationship to its roots in the fundamental exigencies of presentation. As Castoriadis observes, this setting into images must to a certain degree obey established rules, for if this imaging did not exhibit a sufficient regularity it could not serve the living being’s ends (and the organism would not survive). Similarly, what is presented must be given a value—at the simplest

19

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 146.

74 • Chapter Three

level, positive or negative, good or bad—thereby becoming the support for or correlate of a specific affect. This affect must in turn be related to the formation of an intention leading to the appropriate action. These elements— presentation/representation as imaging and relating/ordering, affect and intention—are universal characteristics of the for-itself, found not only in the living being but in all ‘selfs’ of whatever type and level of complexity.20

3

Representation and its Other

How may we describe the relationship between this ‘world’ of presentations, of images, and the ‘X’ which lies beyond it? “Quite obviously, the construction/creation of this world supports itself each time—it leans, to take up Freud’s term (lehnt sich an . . .)—on a certain being-thus of that which is.”21 This, then, would seem to be the primordial instance of that relationship of ‘leaning on’ which we discussed previously in connection with the world of imaginary significations. (In fact, it is not entirely clear what Castoriadis’ view on this point is. In some texts other than the one whose argument we are following here, Castoriadis seems intent on reserving this term for the relationship between the first natural stratum and the world of social imaginary significations. In one essay at least, he makes this point explicitly. “The living being organises for itself a part or stratum of the physical world; it reconstructs this part or stratum to form a world of its own . . . Up to a point, the situation is the same with society. But the type of relation with the ‘presocial’ world (what I call the first natural stratum) that society creates and institutes is different. It is an ‘anaclitic’ relation, a ‘leaning on’ (Anlehnung, étayage).”22 The fact that the German term Anlehnung is specified in this context might suggest a conceptual distinction between a relationship of the ‘anaclitic’ type and the sort of ‘leaning’ we may posit in the case of the living being, though this seems too fraught with confusion to be likely. It is more plausible to surmise that this inconsistency reflects a real change in Castoriadis’ view of the matter—the two texts were written some five years apart, the one whose arguments we are

20

Ibid.

21

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 148.

22

Castoriadis, “The Imaginary: Creation in the Social-Historical Domain,” p. 10.

Self and World • 75

following being the more recent. In any case, it seems to me that one cannot legitimately restrict the concept of ‘leaning on’ to society, or even to humanity. As we have seen, ‘leaning on’ designates a relationship which is not one of determination because it is one in which creation mediates between the related terms. If what we have said thus far is accepted, this clearly applies to the relationship between the ‘X’ of the environment and the representational ‘world’ of the living being.) Up to this point I have emphasised the negative side of ‘leaning on’, the fact that it is not determination. Its positive side concerns the supports and inducements which, in creating a world, the for-itself ‘finds’ in its environment. It is this positive aspect which represents the greatest conceptual problem, and we must attempt to clarify it as best we can. The twin dangers we face in this are, on the one hand, a disguised determinism, and on the other, blatant solipsism. Of the being-thus of that which is, Castoriadis asserts that “we can say strictly nothing—except that it must be such that it allows precisely for the on-going existence of living beings in their unending variety.”23 For now I shall merely note that, as Castoriadis’ use of italics suggests, this exception is enormous in its significance and its scope. Now let us consider the passage which follows. Nevertheless, we are talking about it. How are we talking about it? In this specific case, we are talking about it qua meta-observers who are capable of observing at one and the same time the living being and that which happens outside the living being and of noting that an element X of our world triggers, in some living being, an element X1 of our world which we call “reaction Y” of the living being. We are saying then, if we are not careful, that for the living being in question, the element X furnishes information Y. This is a dreadful abuse of language. That which, “in itself,” corresponds to X is not information, nor does it furnish information: all that we can say about it is that it creates a shock (Anstoss, to take up Fichte’s term) which sets in motion the formative (imaging/imagining, presenting and relating) capacities of the living being. It is only after this enormous process of elaboration that the undescribable correlate of X becomes “information”. But, at the

23

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 148.

76 • Chapter Three same time, this “beyond X” to which we can attribute no form (every form being “subjective”) cannot be absolutely formless: the shock cannot be, in itself, absolutely undetermined and totally undifferentiated, for if that were the case we would be able to hear paintings and see perfumes.24

Castoriadis’ final illustration is perhaps ill-chosen given that there are some human beings who claim to be able at least to hear colours and to see sounds (the condition known as synaesthesia). More seriously though, the fundamental reason for assuming that our environment (X) possesses at least a certain degree of order is inevitably experiential: our experience shows that ‘X’ is not chaos, that it is at least organisable, and that it is not organisable in just any manner, that there are limits to our freedom to attribute any particular organisation to it or to impose a specific organisation on it. (As we shall see subsequently, experience also shows that, in certain fundamental respects, that which is defies any and all organisational models we might seek to project onto it.) Earlier I suggested that it is only by, as it were, ‘bracketing’ the information we apparently ‘receive’ from our environment that we can come to recognise the distinction between that environment and our own representation of it. As was also stated then, our capacity to make such a distinction inevitably presupposes such representations. There is, then, no way for us to escape our own representations except via other representations which are also ours; there is no way we can step outside our representations altogether. This is why Kant and Castoriadis designate that which lies outside representation ‘X’. So far, so good; but to suggest that we can therefore know and say nothing about this ‘X’, about what it is ‘in itself’, seems a highly suspect inference. If what is being said is that, since ‘to know’ entails the creation and projection of representations, we cannot know without doing this, then this is true by definition, but it tells us nothing about our capacity to know anything. It only makes sense to conclude from this that there is something which we cannot know if we also hypothesise that it is possible to know something without the mediation of representations, and that it is only beings such as ourselves who are limited in this respect. This is Kant’s initial position. The concept of

24

Ibid.

Self and World • 77

a ‘noumenon’ must be taken in its negative sense, Kant argues, as designating “a thing so far as it is not an object of our sensible intuition,” theoretically abstracted from our mode of intuiting it, and therefore as a merely limiting concept which establishes the essentially empirical nature of our knowledge, not in the positive sense of “an object of a non-sensible intuition,” “a true object, distinguishable from all phenomena;” for to think of it in such terms “it is not enough that I free my thought from all conditions of sensible intuition; I must likewise have grounds for assuming another kind of intuition, different from the sensible, in which such an object may be given.”25 Kant himself subsequently fails to abide by his own admonition, treating the concept of a noumenon as though it did designate a ‘true object’ and attributing all manner of positive qualities to it; and, in the second critique, discovering reasons to assume the existence of a non-sensible intuition which gives access to a purely intelligible world—that of the moral law—thereby giving himself a warrant for what he had at first declared to be illegitimate. We need not follow him in this. If there are limitations associated with our knowledge, this is not because knowledge involves representation but for entirely different reasons relating to our capacity to construct representations which are more adequate to our needs and aims, whatever these might happen to be. It is possible, of course, for our knowledge of an object to be distorted; it may even be true to say that all representation inevitably involves some such ‘distortion’. What we must above all avoid, however, is the idea that true knowledge requires a transcendence of representation. To suppose this is, at its base, to demand a ‘knowledge’ that would not involve ‘knowing’, to efface, therefore, the distinction between knower and known, between subject and object. This phantasy is a powerful and pervasive one, and for this reason it should not be dismissed before we ask ourselves what the sources of such a desire might be. I will return to this question later. For now we need only recognise that this phantasy, however profound its psychological and sociological roots and

25

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 268 & 270. The first two quotations are from

the second edition—p. 268 in the Kemp Smith translation—the last two from the first edition—p. 270. The argument is the same in both editions, though its presentation varies.

78 • Chapter Three

ramifications, cannot be permitted to form the basis for our assessment of our capacity to know or to experience. We need to remember at this point that we are not endeavouring to prove that there is . . .: ‘X’, an external universe, something. This we do and must assume. Solipsism may or may not be philosophically refutable, but it can certainly be shown that those who attempt a philosophical defense of it cannot avoid inconsistency,26 and that those who are mad enough to show by their actions that they truly do believe that the world is their idea also believe that this world is real. In any case, we would have neither the conceptual tools nor the motivation for asking the sorts of questions about the self that we have been if we did not assume the existence of something beyond the self. (We are, after all, discussing the constitution of the for-itself in general, which immediately assumes a multiplicity of ‘self’s, each of which is ‘not-self’ vis-à-vis the others.) Our aim here is to elucidate how, given that there is something beyond the self, the self constitutes its knowledge of this something. To return to Castoriadis’ account: the first thing we need to note about the passage under consideration is that here ‘X’ does not signify what it had only a few pages earlier in the text. It is no longer that which lies beyond representation, it is simply an unnamed element of our world (for example, sunlight, water, a rock, an elephant, and so on). Castoriadis’ argument is that that which corresponds to this element is not information and does not furnish information, it creates a shock (Anstoss) “which sets in motion the formative (imaging/imagining, presenting and relating) capacities of the living being.” We need to investigate this notion of ‘shock’, or Anstoss, further. As Castoriadis acknowledges, the term is borrowed from Fichte. In fact, the affinities between Castoriadis and Fichte go far beyond the borrowing of this one term. A systematic exposition of Fichte’s ideas would detain us too long here, but the following list of some of Fichte’s principal conceptual and thematic concerns will give some indication of the extent of what Castoriadis shares

26

According to Derek Denton, The Pinnacle of Life: Consciousness and Self-Awareness

in Humans and Animals, St Leonards, Allen and Unwin, 1993, p. 42, “Bertrand Russell remarked that he was cured of solipsism for life by receiving a letter from a woman saying, ‘I’m so glad you think there is something in solipsism. I wish there were more of us’.”

Self and World • 79

with—and, to some degree undoubtedly, owes to—Fichte: the supreme importance of the imagination qua creative imagination; the notion that all subjective presentations/representations must be posited by the subject in question; the insistence that the self, which consists entirely in its on-going creative/positing activity and the products of this activity, exists only in and through such a ‘positing’, so that all ‘selfs’ must be regarded as self-positing; the idea of a constitutive antagonism between the principles of determinacy and indeterminacy, grounded in the self-creative/self-positing activity of the self, analyzed by Fichte in terms of the conjunction of two fundamental drives, the ‘practical’, which aims at the ‘infinite’ (essentially, non-determinacy), and the ‘theoretical’, which aims at ‘unity’ (essentially, determinacy).27 (We have encountered this last idea already in Castoriadis’ work in the form of the antagonistic relationship between the instituting and instituted dimensions of the social-historical. We shall encounter it again in other connections, all of which are linked to the central issue of self-creation.) There are also significant similarities between Fichte’s understanding of the development of the subjective distinction between the self and the not-self/objective world, and how this is related to the emergence of consciousness, and Castoriadis’ psychoanalytical account of the development of the human psyche from an original ‘monadic’ state—a topic we will take up later. Castoriadis goes on to say that “[i]t is only after this enormous process of elaboration that the undescribable correlate of X becomes ‘information’.” This is a highly questionable manner of speaking, one which seems to undercut Castoriadis’ initial and more radical position. What was only the sentence before described as “formative” is now styled as a “process of elaboration”. It now appears that by this process of (mere) elaboration the undescribable correlate of X actually becomes information. (In fact, it is not entirely clear from the text what Castoriadis imagines is elaborated. Is it ‘X’, that which is (beyond representation)? Or is it the shock created by this ‘X’? Sometimes Castoriadis seems to treat these two as identical, and sometimes he treats them as distinct and separate. For now, we will adopt the first interpretation. Later it will become clear that even in relation to the concept of shock—Anstoss—‘elaboration’ is

27

J. G. Fichte, Science of Knowledge, trans. and ed. Peter Heath and John Lachs, Cam-

bridge, U.K., Cambridge University Press, 1982.

80 • Chapter Three

far too weak a term.) If, say, a rock (or that which corresponds to our representation of a rock) is not information, then nothing in our forming a representation of it will make it information. Here we find ourselves once again within the schema of ‘transformation’, which I suggested earlier is inappropriate in the case of the relation between the first natural stratum and social significations, and which is no more appropriate in this more general case of the relation between non-representational being and representation. In fact there is no transformation of X (= environment), there is only the formation of representations, the creation of representational forms. If anything is ‘transformed’ in this process it is not the object represented but that which fuels the capacity to form representations, the substances which, through digestion, absorption and chemical recombination, supply the energy utilised by the living being in this and other activities. The crucial point is that, in forming representations, the living being makes something that is entirely alien to the object represented, something that is entirely other than this object. In itself, this is not a ‘problem’. It reflects no deficiency in the processes by which we create knowledge; this ‘other’ happens to be precisely what is required and is something that the object itself can never provide. Castoriadis has something like this in mind when, in the following sentence, he observes that every form is subjective. But even here there is a lack of precision which forces Castoriadis to contradict himself immediately. Since every form is subjective, we can attribute no form to that which is beyond X (that is: beyond representation); but, on the other hand, this ‘beyond X’ cannot be absolutely formless. This last point is undoubtedly correct, though, as I suggested earlier, not because we cannot hear paintings and see perfumes. That which is cannot be absolutely formless because if it were no form could be successfully attributed to it. If Being were truly chaos, no form could gain a purchase on it, not even partially or temporarily. The very fact that there are living beings shows that the representations which guide their actions have some grasp of that which is, sufficient at least to allow them to survive and reproduce. It is nonsense, then, to say that we can attribute no form to that which is. Indeed, we must do so; this is in large measure what representation consists in. What we should endeavour to avoid is confusing the forms of our representations with the forms of the objects represented. Ultimately (and pretty obviously), it is not true to say that every form is subjective, only that the forms of representational images are inevitably subjective, created by subjects for themselves rather than being

Self and World • 81

imported, borrowed or in any way derived from the objective form of whatever is represented via these images. This brings us back to our original problem. How, given that they are not determined by it, are the representations of living beings related to that which is? The concept of ‘shock’ (Anstoss) is clearly crucial in this connection. As we have observed, Castoriadis commonly speaks of this shock as though it were an aspect of the environment alone, as though it were equivalent to the X of ‘beyond representation’ (“X is not information . . . It is mere shock, Anstoss”). This is clearly a misinterpretation (and, surely, unintended by Castoriadis). The shock is the encounter of the living being with its environment; it is the collision and conjunction of the two. This is made clear in Fichte’s original development of the concept. Literally, Anstoss is a ‘stimulus’, or ‘push’. ‘Shock’ would therefore seem a quite orthodox and adequate translation of it. In their translation of The Science of Knowledge, however, Heath and Lachs give Anstoss as ‘check’. In fact, this less-than-obvious rendering conveys a dimension of the concept which is missing from more literal translations. According to Fichte, Anstoss represents a check on the self’s activity of self-assertion or self-positing which is inherently unlimited and which aims at its own infinite extension.28 As Fichte points out, without some such characteristic, it is not at all evident why the self’s encounters with its environment should constitute anything that might be described as a ‘shock’. Only if something is disturbed or disrupted, some process or activity belonging wholly to the self, can we understand why such encounters ‘shock’ and, because of this, impel. The task at hand is not to explain how the living being as for-itself is determined by its environment (it is not) but to explain how the living being’s selfdetermination is affected by this environment, for affected it must be if there is to be any relationship between it and that which lies beyond its representations. Castoriadis observes that the shocks suffered by the living being cannot be absolutely undetermined and totally undifferentiated. This is clearly true, for if this were the case, the form of the living being’s representations would be entirely arbitrary and without any relation to its environment. We must assume that that which is gives something in its encounter with the living

28

Fichte, Science of Knowledge, pp. 190-191.

82 • Chapter Three

being, something that is not representation (because it cannot be), but which, beyond merely setting in motion the process of representation, affects the formation of these representations, but without thereby determining them. For Fichte, Anstoss, as a ‘shock’ or ‘check’, signifies this capacity of the self for being affected. It is crucial to recognise, however, that this capacity is dependent on the self’s own intrinsic propensities. According to Fichte, these include not only the self’s striving after the infinite extension of its representational or positing activity but, equally, the opposite, a drive towards determination, an intrinsic propensity to create and establish determinate forms. As we have already noted, there is, according to Fichte, a fundamental conflict between determinacy and indeterminacy, between the finite, or bounded, and the infinite, and this conflict is intrinsic to and constitutive of the self. It is only on the basis of this conflict that both the self and the not-self/objective world become determinable for the self.29 In some sense, this is clearly also Castoriadis’ view. The psyche is, to be sure, ‘the receptivity of impressions’, the capacity of being-affected-by . . .; but it is also, and more importantly (for without this the receptivity of impressions would produce nothing) the emergence of representation as an irreducible and unique mode of being and as the organisation of something in and through its figuration, its ‘being put into images’. The psyche is a forming, which exists in and through what it forms and how it forms; it is Bildung and Einbildung—formation and imagination—it is the radical imagination that makes a ‘first’ representation arise out of a nothingness of representation, that is to say, out of nothing.30

The psyche forms, it organises, it (in a sense we shall have to clarify later) determines; and it is only because of these inherent characteristics of the psyche that its encounters with its environment can result in the formation of representations.

29

Fichte, Science of Knowledge, pp. 189-195.

30

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 283.

Self and World • 83

But let us take a step back here. I have just spoken of the psyche’s encounters with its environment. Is this equivalent to speaking of the living being’s encounters with its environment? Obviously, the answer will depend on what we mean by ‘the psyche’. What do we mean? When Castoriadis poses this question, he immediately turns to Aristotle, reminding us that, for Aristotle, all living things possess a psyche, or ‘soul’. This ‘psyche’, says Castoriadis, is what he has chosen to call the ‘for-itself’. On the other hand, when Castoriadis speaks of ‘the human psyche’, he would seem to be referring to something more specific and limited than the ‘psyche’ or ‘self’ of the human organism. In fact, Castoriadis draws a sharp distinction between this ‘psyche’ and the human organism qua living being. As we have already noted, the crucial issue that emerges via this distinction is that of the relationship between ‘the psyche’ and ‘the body’. In this context at least, the term ‘psyche’ clearly does not designate a ‘for-itself’ in general but rather a specific type of for-itself. Not only is this for-itself associated specifically with mental processes, it is associated with mental processes of a quite specific kind. In this case, it is clearly not legitimate to simply equate the psyche’s capacity for being affected with the living being’s openness to stimulation. On the other hand, in both instances the notions of Anstoss and anaclasis, or ‘leaning on’, would seem to be relevant. This suggests that, at least in some contexts, we need to recognise representation as a two-stage process, the first stage being ‘somatic’, the second, ‘psychical’ qua ‘mental’. The two-stage nature of this process would reflect, first, the development of a distinct mental realm within the living being, and second, a disjunction between this mental realm and the somatic in the case of human beings. We should not, however, allow ourselves to imagine that the absence of such a mental realm means the absence of representation in its broad sense. Representation is, as Castoriadis has argued, an essential characteristic of the for-itself. It cannot be simply identified with ‘the mental’. This leaves us with the problem of how to distinguish ‘the mental’, or the ‘psychical’ in this more limited sense, from the psyche in its broader sense: that is, the ‘for-itself’. If we are to resolve this question, we cannot confine ourselves to a consideration of the ‘psyche’ qua ‘mental’ (nor even, as we shall see, the ‘psyche’ qua ‘representational’), for in order to identify the essential characteristics of this ‘psyche’ we need to be able to state how it differs from the ‘psyche’ qua ‘for-itself’. In each of these contexts it is the question of the relationship between ‘the psyche’ and ‘the body’ which emerges as the central problem. Only by first

84 • Chapter Three

considering this problem at the most fundamental level—that of the ‘psyche’ qua ‘for-itself’—will we be able to deal with it adequately in the more limited cases of ‘the mental’ generally and the human ‘mind’ in particular. It is to this task that we must now turn.

Chapter Four The Living Body

1

The Life of the Body

For much of Western philosophy, and especially following Descartes, the question of the relationship between the psyche (the ‘soul’ or ‘mind’) and the body has centered on the problem of identifying and explaining the connection between the two. Castoriadis’ analysis of the ‘for-itself’ suggests the need for a radical reformulation of this question. Parts of Castoriadis’ own writings betray the need for just such a reformulation. For example, on first taking up the concept of anaclasis, or ‘leaning on’, in The Imaginary Institution of Society, Castoriadis observes that in order to account for the psychical representation of biological drives an “initial bridge must be postulated between the ‘soul’ and the ‘body’”.1 Based on his own (later) account of the living being, however, we are forced to point out that as soon as there are drives there must already be representation, so that even if we were to satisfactorily resolve what Castoriadis calls “the mysteries of the

1

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 282.

86 • Chapter Four

‘bonding’ between the soul and the body”2 at the level of the human psyche, this would only leave us to face the same mysteries at a more fundamental level. Even if we felt we possessed a satisfactory answer to the question of how biological drives come to be for the human psyche (that is, the human ‘mind’), this would still leave us with the task of explaining how they come to be in the first place, for the body or for the human organism qua living being. Here the notion of a ‘bond’ or ‘bridge’ between two distinct entities is clearly inappropriate. What, in its being-for-itself, does the body qua living being need to ‘bond’ with? Only, perhaps, itself; but what sort of ‘bonding’ is this? It is certainly not that which might join together two distinct and essentially separate entities. If the notion of a ‘bond’ is inadequate at this level, perhaps it is no more adequate at the level of the relationship between mind and body. “Perhaps no one will ever be able to add anything to what Aristotle said about the psyche as existing only as ‘form’ or ‘entelechy’ of the body . . .”3 On the strength of this recommendation, if for no other reason, it would seem worthwhile for us to inquire what Aristotle might have meant by such an assertion and what its implications might be. In fact, Aristotle’s concerns in investigating the nature of the psyche are closer to ours in this context than are those of many modern thinkers, for Aristotle’s subject matter is the problem of the living being generally rather than the human mind in its specificity. Hugh Lawson-Tancred suggests that the literal meaning of entelechy (entelecheia) is “something like ‘intrinsic possession of an end’.”4 This roughly corresponds to Castoriadis’ notion of self-finality. To appreciate its full significance, however, one needs to understand how this concept of entelechy relates to Aristotle’s notion of ‘form’ and, in turn, the fundamental distinction between ‘form’ and ‘matter’ with which Aristotle operates. The kernel of Aristotle’s view of the psyche is expressed in the following proposition: “It must then be the case that soul is substance [ousia] as the form [eidos] of a natural body which potentially has life, and since this substance

2

Ibid.

3

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 300.

4

Aristotle, De Anima, p. 119.

The Living Body • 87

is actuality [energeia], soul will be the actuality of such a body.”5 Given our previous discussion of Kant’s treatment of the concept of substance, it may seem strange to find the soul described as, at one and the same time, ‘substance’ and ‘form’. Despite the fact that Kant, like many Western philosophers following Aristotle’s reappropriation, draws on Aristotle’s philosophy as a model, Aristotle’s conception of ousia differs significantly from Kant’s substanz. While traditionally translated as ‘substance’, ousia encompasses the additional meanings of ‘primary being’ and ‘essence’. Aristotle’s treatment of the concept is also far more nuanced and open than Kant’s—doubtless due in part to their very different approaches: where Kant seeks to strip away experience in the hope of uncovering the a priori bases of knowledge, Aristotle constantly strives to avoid excluding any of the plurality of experiences which might possibly bear upon the topic at hand. In some ways, Kant’s ‘substance’ has more in common with Aristotle’s ‘matter’ (ule) than with ousia. Like Kant, Aristotle associates ousia (substance, primary being, essence) with persistence through change, but unlike Kant, he does not therefore exclude ‘form’ from the category of ousia. In fact, understanding ousia as that which we recognise as the essence of a thing, that which makes it what it is despite superficial changes, Aristotle concludes that matter, form and their combination may all constitute ousia, depending on the context and the specific nature of the thing under consideration.6 According to Aristotle, then, the soul/psyche is the ousia (substance/primary being/essence) as the form of a natural body which potentially has life, and since this ousia is actuality (energeia), the soul will be the actuality of such a body. The second part of the proposition indicates that what Aristotle intends by ‘form’/eidos is something far more than simply ‘structure’. Aristotle says that the psyche is ‘actuality’/energeia. Energeia is ‘actuality’ in the sense that it is the realisation of a potential. For Aristotle, the distinction between matter and form is associated with a distinction between potentiality (dunamis) and actuality.7 But this actuality is not (ironically) what we would be inclined to

5

Aristotle, De Anima, 412a, p. 157.

6

Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. Richard Hope, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan

Press, 1960, Books Zeta & Eta. 7

Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1045a, p. 178.

88 • Chapter Four

describe as ‘static’. Energeia is ‘activity’, ‘operation’, ‘employment’, ‘putting into use’. The psyche, we may then say, is the form of a natural body (of a certain type: that is, that which potentially has life) as the activity/operation of that body. What does this view imply about the relationship between the psyche and the body, and about the question of a possible ‘bond’ or ‘bridge’ linking the two? Aristotle himself addresses this very question. In the Metaphysics: . . . others say that living is a synthesis or connection of the soul with the body. . . . But, as has been said the proximate matter and the form are merely two aspects of the identical reality, the one with respect to a thing’s capacities, the other with respect to its actual operation. Therefore, to seek a reason for their unity is like explaining how one is one; for each individual is a unity, and its powers and actual functioning are somehow united. Hence, there is no other explanation needed, unless it be the moving factor which effects the change from a power into an actual operation.8

And again in De Anima: We should not then inquire whether the soul and the body are one thing, any more than whether the wax and its imprint are, or in general whether the matter of each thing is one with that of which it is the matter. For although unity and being are spoken of in a number of ways, it is of the actuality that they are most properly said.9

This conceptual framework, centered around the fundamental distinction between matter/potentiality and form/actuality or activity, seems the most promising for tackling the problem of the relationship between the psyche and the body, not because it provides us with all the answers we might seek, but because it allows us to formulate questions which go to the root of the problem. If we wish to understand how the psyche is related to the body, what we must ultimately ask is how this activity—as Castoriadis puts it, this

8

Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1045b, pp. 179-180.

9

Aristotle, De Anima, 412b, p. 157.

The Living Body • 89

form which is itself “a forming, which exists in and through what it forms and how it forms”10—is related to the body as matter. As soon as we begin to reflect on this question, however, certain limitations and aporias associated with Aristotle’s approach become apparent. Aristotle seems to relieve us of the obligation to explain how the soul might be ‘connected’ to the body. Body and soul are ‘matter’ and ‘form’, two aspects of the one reality. To seek to explain this unity is, Aristotle argues, like trying to explain how one is one. And yet, as Aristotle concedes, mysteries remain. A thing’s powers or capacities and its actual operation, its activity, are “somehow united”. How? We say that the wax and its imprint are ‘one’, but this does not eliminate the question of how they are one. Aristotle acknowledges the legitimacy of one aspect of this question when he suggests that we might reasonably seek an explanation for the change from a power into an actual operation. For him, this means searching for the moving factor which effects this change. What Castoriadis’ conception of self-creation suggests is that such a ‘moving factor’ cannot be sought outside the operation in question, that this operation somehow gives rise to itself, that it emerges as a form whose activity consists principally in creating forms and thus forming itself. Aristotle identifies ‘matter’ with ‘potentiality’ or ‘power’. Castoriadis argues that, if we are to apply Aristotle’s notion of entelechy to the psyche (that is, the ‘for-itself’ in general), we need to strip the concept of potentiality of its connotations of predetermination. The psyche should not be understood as the realisation of a fixed, pre-given end but as the activity through which ends are created.11 This carries broader implications for Aristotle’s fundamental dichotomy, because it forces us to question the ways in which it might be legitimate to speak of potentiality in the absence of actuality. The body is potentiality, says Aristotle; but the ‘body’ in question is a body of a particular type—according to Aristotle, it is a body with organs.12 A rock cannot be said to possess a potential for life, whereas other natural bodies, such as plants and animals, do. The crucial difference between these two types of body is

10

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 283.

11

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 300-301.

12

Aristotle, De Anima, 412a–b, p. 157.

90 • Chapter Four

obviously one of form. For Aristotle, this centres on the presence or absence of organs; for us, it might centre on the presence or absence of organic molecules—amino acids or proteins. In either case, it is a question of form. Form, then, would seem to determine power, potentiality devolving from actuality, and Aristotle’s dichotomy is immediately turned on its head. We might try to rescue it by seeking some more basic candidate for the role of ‘matter’, but the deeper we go in this search—back to fundamental particles, or, ultimately, to some nominal conception of matter-energy—the more empty and uninformative the notion of potentiality becomes. One could try to argue that Aristotle accounts for this potential conundrum through his notion of gradations of actualisation. As Lawson-Tancred points out, Aristotle argues that “a composite particular may have a first and second actualisation. It is in virtue of the first of these that Matter is so arranged as to render it capable of performing its characteristic functions and it is in virtue of the second that it ‘actually’ performs them.”13 (Aristotle explains this distinction—somewhat obscurely—by analogy with the distinction between knowledge and contemplation; that is, the first actuality is like the possession of knowledge, the second like its use.)14 However, if we ask in what sense matter might be said to be potentiality prior to a first actualisation, we find that we are no better off than before. Matter ‘as such’ (whatever this might mean) is simply that which can be arranged so as to be capable of performing a function, a purely abstract ‘potentiality-ingeneral’. In terms of the living being, Lawson-Tancred suggests that the concept of a second actualisation should be seen as referring to the activity of living things, while the concept of a first actualisation refers to their structure and material arrangement.15 Aristotle himself explicitly identifies the psyche as the first actualisation of a potentially living body. According to Lawson-Tancred’s interpretation, this would make the psyche the structure and material arrangement of the living thing: in effect, ‘psyche’ would be anatomy. But the psyche is not just this first actualisation, this structure; it is also the second actualisation, the activity or activities of the living thing. The psyche encompasses both

13

Aristotle, De Anima, p. 70.

14

Aristotle, De Anima, 412a, p. 157.

15

Aristotle, De Anima, pp. 70-71.

The Living Body • 91

of these moments of actualisation—in fact, the two senses of ‘form’/eidos: form as ‘structure’ and as ‘activity’. The crucial question that then emerges is that of the relationship between these two. One can easily see how the second might presuppose the first. The potentially living body is this first actualisation, and its potential for life is a consequence of its structure. But should we not also say that this first actualisation presupposes the second? Aristotle quite rightly perceives the problem of the living being to include the problem of its generation as well as its animation. It is the most obvious thing in the world—if the most difficult to explain—that the structure and material arrangement which grants the potential for life is itself the product of an activity of structuring, of forming. The living world is a world of generation, growth, regeneration and reproduction (and, it should not be forgotten, of dissolution and death). The psyche, as ‘principle of life’, cannot be merely the ‘putting into use’ of a body already fit for life any more than it could be just the fitness for life of this body. It must also be that activity which makes something that is fit for life. Recognising this leads us to ask how this activity might be related to those activities which are—or, until now, had seemed to be—merely a ‘putting into use’. This is where Castoriadis enters the argument in a decisive way.

2

Self-Creation

Life as Self-formation and Self-creation For Castoriadis, the activity of the for-itself is essentially an activity of self-formation. This is true of all levels of the for-itself. In chapter one we noted that for Castoriadis the activity of society qua instituted cannot be divorced from the activity of society qua instituting. Society is essentially self-institution, and even those activities which seem to involve no creativity participate in a hidden, subterranean manner in the self-instituting activity of society. The living being, too, is essentially self-formation. This is so in a number of senses and at a number of levels. First, the living being is self-constituting. Earlier we observed that the living being’s constitution of a world of its own is inseparably bound up with its selfconstitution, that the two should be regarded as aspects of a single process. The constitution of an idiosyncratic world clearly depends on the organisation

92 • Chapter Four

of the living being: as Castoriadis puts it, nothing can be given or appear to the living being except insofar as it is formed/informed by this organisation.16 How is this organisation achieved? It is a product of the living being itself. As we know, the living being makes itself on the basis of the ‘blueprint’ contained in its genetic material. But this is not the end of its self-formation. Beyond the initial process of conception and development and the myriad continuing activities of biological regulation and maintenance, the living being is engaged in an activity of self-formation whenever it represents—whenever it forms a representation of something, whenever it establishes a connection between this representation and an affect, and whenever it forms an intention on the basis of this connection—which is to say, constantly. When we think about this activity of representation, the focus of our attention is and should be the images that are produced and the process of their formation, since this is what is crucial to the understanding of representation itself. This should not lead us to imagine, however, that these forms are somehow incorporeal or insubstantial, that what we are dealing with in the case of representation is ‘pure’ form divorced from matter. The question, ‘What is formed?’ remains as relevant in this case as in any other. The answer, clearly, is ‘the self’. However we might decide to ‘flesh out’ the details of such an answer—by reference to neural connections and pathways in higher organisms, in terms of more basic physical or chemical structures in the case of organisms which possess no nervous system as such—the answer stands. Representation, in all its aspects, is a forming of the self, a self-formation. This view lies at the heart of my earlier objections to Castoriadis’ talk about ‘transformation’ and ‘transubstantiation’. It is not the external world that is transformed in this process (at least not immediately or essentially), it is the self. (As we have seen, Fichte takes much the same approach when he argues that the real question to be answered with regard to the relationship between the self and the non-self concerns the self’s self-determination.) This self-constitution of the living being is also a self-creation. I stated above that the living being makes itself on the basis of the ‘blueprint’ contained in its genetic material. One might be inclined to regard this as an essentially ‘mechanical’ or ‘deterministic’ process, one which would be reducible to the

16

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 308.

The Living Body • 93

blind operation of purely causal laws. Putting to one side the question of the merits of such a view from the perspective of the biological sciences, such a position clearly begs the question of the origin of the genetic ‘blueprint’ itself. If one is still intent on adopting a deterministic approach to such problems, one must then contend that this origin itself is also reducible to the operation of causal laws. In Castoriadis’ terminology, this is to argue that the self-constitution of the living being is consistent with the operations of a strictly ensemblistic-identitary system. What would this mean? Castoriadis explains. For example, one could say that the living being is only an ensemblistic-identitary automaton if the “primitive significations” for a given living species (those that constitute its organisation and its closure) can be constructed by classes, properties, and relations in another ensemblistic-identitary system. Thus, a dog would be such an automaton if one could construct the forms and partitions that constitute the world of the dog by ensemblistic-identitary operations in a system that would be external to the dog and that would not itself be that of the living being.17

In other words, it would be possible to regard the dog as such an automaton if it were, at least theoretically, possible to construct a dog based on purely physical laws. Or would it? Castoriadis immediately puts the matter in doubt. The problem is that even if it were formally possible to perform such a construction, “one would have neither the reason nor the criterion for doing so if the dog did not already exist.”18 All that is necessary to imagine constructing a dog as a formal possibility is that this construction in no way contravenes physical laws, and this it assuredly does not—as the existence of dogs proves. It is a different matter to show how such a living being, or any living being, can have originated purely on the basis of these same laws. “To fabricate a dog,” writes Castoriadis, “one would have to have the idea of a dog. Idea: eidos, ‘form’ in the full sense of the term (union of the organisation and the organised).”19 The question of the origin of the living being is ultimately the question of the origin of this eidos, this form. What a deterministic approach claims is that

17

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” pp. 309-310.

18

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 310.

19

Ibid.

94 • Chapter Four

the emergence of this form is determined by the laws of “a vaster domain”:20 that is, the physical universe. To accept this view means accepting that the emergence of living beings, as a category and in their bewildering variety, is determined in the same way that the emergence of all inanimate matter from quarks to galaxies, from hydrogen atoms all the way up to the most complex non-organic (as opposed to ‘inorganic’) molecule may be said to be inevitable given the quantity of matter present at the instant following the big bang and the small array of forces governing the subsequent distribution of this matter. However, the assertion that the same laws which determine the emergence of hydrogen also determine the emergence of every other naturally occurring element, molecule and physical structure differs profoundly from the assertion that the laws which determined all this also determined the emergence of living beings, for while the former entails (or rather, at the most fundamental level, assumes) a strict homogeneity as regards the mode of being of the various entities considered, the latter represents the advent of a mode of being altogether different (entirely ‘other’, as Castoriadis would say) from anything which preceded it: that of the for-itself. As Castoriadis argues, to suppose that the emergence of the living being could be accounted for in such a way would “imply that one accepts the idea that the self is rigourously deducible from the nonself and according to the laws of the nonself . . .”21

The Circle of Creation The emergence of the living being, and, thereby, of the eidos of the for-itself, can only be understood as a creation. For Castoriadis, the living being is an instance—the primordial instance—of self-creation. That the living being is a creation means, as we have said, that its emergence is not determined by already given laws. Biology, while it in no way contravenes physical laws, cannot be reduced to physics. The physical universe and its laws may be regarded as the necessary condition for the emergence of the living being, but they are not its sufficient condition; they determine neither that life shall emerge nor what shall emerge as life. The fact that the living being is self-creation means

20

Ibid.

21

Ibid.

The Living Body • 95

that, whether or not the genome of a given organism might in some sense be seen as ‘determining’ the self-constitution of that organism, the existence of this genome cannot be understood as the product of a causal sequence from which the organism itself is absent. In other words, there are no eggs without chickens. Of course, there are no chickens without eggs, either. This is what Castoriadis terms ‘the circle of creation’. The concept of self-creation forces us to acknowledge the ultimate seriousness of this riddle and its apparent insolubility. If a self creates itself, what comes first? The self? But until it creates itself, it does not exist. Nothing, then. Castoriadis says as much; though, more precisely, what he calls ‘nothing’ is simply ‘something else’, ‘something other’. But since this ‘other’ does not contain and cannot produce this self, it is ‘nothing’ so far as the emergence of this self is concerned. This conundrum, inherent in the idea of self-creation, may be seen most clearly in connection with the living being because the origin of the living being is the origin of the for-itself as such. However, if all levels of the foritself are instances of self-creation, and if some at least—the human psyche and society—are instances of on-going creation, this puzzle retains its relevance far beyond the question of this initial emergence. Before returning to the question of the nature of the psyche and its relation to the body, let us take this opportunity to explore a little further the concept of self-creation and see whether it might be possible to throw some light on its more obscure dimensions and implications. Essentially, the conceptual difficulties associated with the idea of self-creation concern the notion of origin, of absolute beginning, a notion which obviously lies at the very heart of the concept of creation. Why do we speak of ‘selfcreation’? Less obviously perhaps, we do so because that which is created is a ‘self’—and because that which creates is also a ‘self’. More obviously, we speak of ‘self-creation’ because there is an identity (yet to be fully clarified) between that which creates and that which is created. In speaking of self-creation, we are also considering creation as a ‘doing’. When we say that society is self-creation, we are saying that the forms of society, the world of significations and institutions which constitute this society, are the work of the society itself, that they are instances of social doing/making which reflect the capacity of society in its radical imaginary aspect to create such forms and thereby to transform itself. The fact that the emergence of these forms is not,

96 • Chapter Four

in the classical sense, determined would not in itself be sufficient to compel us to talk of self-creation. If we were to imagine the emergence of new forms as simply some sort of ‘blinking into existence’ we would have no reason for positing the notion of self-creation. We do so only because we believe that that which constitutes the self—in this case, society—cannot be understood except as the work of that self. (This understanding of the concept of self-creation is important not least because it constitutes the ground upon which the project of autonomy is built: it is because society is self-creation that it has the potential for autonomy.) This is where the problems start. If the self is to be seen as the work of the self and of the self alone, this work would seem to be possible only if we assume that it is already done. If the self is to make itself, to make itself be, it must be already. In this way, “creation presupposes itself”.22 However mysterious it may seem, this figure of the circle, of the “self-presupposition of the origin,”23 is in most instances open to further elucidation. To say that the self—the living being, the human psyche, the social-historical—‘presupposes itself’ amounts to this: the transformation of a self which results in the emergence of another self can occur only insofar as the self acts as if it were already what it is to become; and in acting in this fashion, it is already what it is to be, it is already other than what it was. In fact, there is no distinction in this context between ‘as if’ and ‘actuality’, because it is this ‘acting’ alone that makes the self what it is, it is this ‘acting’ that makes the self be. Such an account of self-creation relies on the capacity of a self to create

22

C. Castoriadis,—“The Crisis of Culture and the State” in Philosophy, Politics,

Autonomy, ed. David Ames Curtis, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 94. For another exploration of the issues raised by Castoriadis’ notion of the circle of creation, see F. Ciaramelli, “The Self-Presupposition of the Origin: Homage to Cornelius Castoriadis,” trans. David Ames Curtis, Thesis Eleven 49, 1997, pp. 45-67. I agree with Ciaramelli’s analysis; except, perhaps, that I would wish to place greater emphasis on the importance of the distinction between the self and the non-self as this relates to the question of creation. Where Ciaramelli speaks of an “abyssal ‘self’ that creation alters, transforms, transfigures but does not create since creation presupposes it” (p. 49), I would argue the need to recognise in addition an abyssal ‘non-self’ and to carefully distinguish between the two. 23

Ciaramelli, “The Self-Presupposition of the Origin: Homage to Cornelius Casto-

riadis”.

The Living Body • 97

new forms and to generate other selfs. We are already quite familiar with the second of these from biology. The living being is characterised by its capacity for reproduction, its ability to multiply itself, thereby giving rise to new selfs, each of which is self-constituting. All we need to add in order for this to serve as an account of self-creation as opposed to mere self-reproduction is the idea that these new selfs possess the capacity to make themselves genuinely other than that which gave rise to them. In principle, such an account could accommodate the emergence of new forms as well as new levels of the self: that is, both the emergence of new species and the passage from the living being to the human psyche, from the human psyche to the social-historical, and from heteronomous society to autonomous society. However, it will not serve to account for the origin of the self in general; that is to say, of the living being as archetype of the for-itself. As soon as we try to think about this we are confronted with Castoriadis’ circle in its most primitive and vicious form: creation being an act, and all acts presupposing agents, if all agents are the product of acts, how is a first agent possible? This original creation cannot be understood as an act among others, since it is the origin of action itself, the emergence of agency in a universe from which action as agency has until then been entirely absent. And yet, it cannot be conceived of as anything other than an act; agency must begin with an action, its origin is nothing other than this first act.24 What is true of this first creation is, as we have suggested already, true of all creation. All acts that are truly originary, all acts of creation, are first acts. My aim here is not to demonstrate that the idea of self-creation makes no sense but to show that its difficulty ultimately stems from the inability of traditional logic-ontology to accommodate the apparently mundane idea of ‘beginning’. The self, the for-itself in all and any of its various forms, can be, but it cannot begin, for if it is to be it must already have begun. According to such a logic, however, nothing can begin, and everything that is must be what it always was and will remain. The circularity of what Castoriadis describes as the circle of creation would seem to stem as much from the logic it ultimately seeks to

24

There are strong similarities between this notion of the originary nature of

action and Castoriadis’ interpretation of praxis (see The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 71-78). Unfortunately, I cannot explore these similarities further here.

98 • Chapter Four

undermine (indeed, in its original, Derridean sense, to deconstruct) as it does from the exigencies of the phenomena of which it seeks to give an account. The circle is established around a distinction between agent and act which the phenomenon of creation suggests is ultimately untenable, but which seems to remain logically necessary for any lucid account. We may wish to regard this as a further indication of the way in which language itself inevitably retains and depends upon an ensemblistic-identitarian dimension which cannot be eliminated even when what is under discussion escapes such a logic. At the same time, we could also argue that this conundrum stems from our own contingent inability to invent a more adequate formulation, one in which the distinction between agent and act is too fluid to support the circle of creation, of self-presupposition, which would then collapse upon itself.

Creation and Indeterminacy This discussion also serves to confirm our already stated views regarding determinacy. In a truly determined and deterministic universe creation would be impossible. If we accept that genuinely new forms do emerge, we are obliged to reconsider and reject many of the fundamental tenets of that traditional ontology which equates being with determinacy. Minimally, we are forced to posit that being cannot be such as to disallow the emergence of other forms, and therefore that it cannot be fully determined. However, beyond this merely negative conclusion, we are led to posit as a positive characteristic of being a fundamental indeterminacy, one which is not merely a lack, a falling-short of what it ought to be (determined), but something fecund; not merely a gap into which creation inserts itself, but a ferment which gives rise to creation itself, a coming-into-being of forms amidst and through a flux of formation which never fully congeals into a determinate form or set of forms. This is what Castoriadis sometimes refers to as the vis formandi,25 and it is a recognition of this that leads him to speak of a creativity of Being in general.

25

C. Castoriadis, “From the Monad to Autonomy,” trans. David Ames Curtis, in

World in Fragments, ed. David Ames Curtis, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997, p. 184.

The Living Body • 99

Given that we have just identified an essential connection between creation and agency, one might question the legitimacy of extending the concept of creation in this way.26 Of course, if the various levels of the for-itself are creative, it cannot be denied that Being as a whole—whatever that might mean—encompasses creativity as an attribute. In this sense, the emergence of creativity in the form of the self-creating self might be glossed as a ‘creativity of Being’. The danger of such a formulation is that it might lead us to imagine some overarching or underlying agency beyond that of the for-itself. Castoriadis recognises this danger. “Not only is creation for this ontology and logic a dirty word . . . but also this ontology is inevitably driven to ask: Creation by whom?” Oddly, the very next sentence in this passage would seem to show Castoriadis himself to be a victim of this compulsion. “Yet creation, as the work of the social imaginary, of the instituting society . . . is the mode of being of the social-historical field, by means of which this field is. Society is self-creation deployed as history. To recognise this and to stop asking meaningless questions about ‘subjects’ and ‘substances’ or ‘causes’ requires, to be sure, a radical ontological conversion.”27 In all fairness, it is unreasonable to expect other people to stop asking a question if one insists on answering it oneself. The fact is that the concept of creation as Castoriadis himself employs it in relation to the social-historical and the psyche constitutes an answer to the same type of question for which in the past ‘subjects’, ‘substances’ and ‘causes’ have served, or have been thought to serve, as answers. If, when confronted with the concept of creation, one is driven to ask ‘Creation by whom?’, this may not be due to the pull of traditional logic-ontology, but because the concept of creation itself gives rise to this question. What is more, sometimes, as Castoriadis shows, there exists a reasonable answer; for example, when the creation is the work of the social imaginary, of instituting society. Perhaps we could even employ this as a test. Where it is impossible to imagine an answer to this question, perhaps we should no longer speak of ‘creation’. The inapplicability

26

Axel Honneth makes precisely this criticism of the ontological turn in Castoriadis’

thought. A. Honneth, “Rescuing the Revolution with an Ontology: on Cornelius Castoriadis’ Theory of Society,” trans. Gary Robinson, Thesis Eleven 14, pp. 62-78. 27

Castoriadis, “The Imaginary: Creation in the Social-Historical Domain,” pp. 13-

14. Initial emphasis added.

100 • Chapter Four

of the concept of creation in such contexts need not imply determinacy. Just because we view certain forms as essentially the result of acts of creation does not mean that we are obliged to view all forms and all alteration of form in this way. The idea of a general indeterminacy qua formative flux might be sufficient in itself to account for the coming-into-being of forms where this coming-into-being is not consistent with the concept of creation. Creation would then represent a specific mode of this more general phenomenon. This fecundity of Being is most obvious in the human domain, in the form of both the human psyche and the social-historical, but it cannot be regarded as peculiar to this domain, for that would leave us with the impossible task of accounting for the emergence of indeterminacy out of a previously existing determinacy. In this way, as we have seen already, a non-deterministic view of society and the psyche necessarily casts doubt on a deterministic biology, just as a non-deterministic biology—viewed correctly—casts doubt on a deterministic physics.28

28

One might object that modern physics is not deterministic, that it has not been so

since the invention of quantum mechanics and Heisenberg’s formulation of the uncertainty principle. There is some truth in this; at least it is true that more and more over the past century physicists have found themselves confronting fundamental questions concerning the determinability and determinateness of the objects they study. However, this questioning is by no means universal amongst physicist, let alone natural scientists, and it has not as yet resulted in any definitive overturning of the ontological assumptions inherited from classical physics and philosophy. (The loose talk indulged in by so many scientists concerning a so-called ‘Theory Of Everything’, the imminent discovery of the formula that will simply and elegantly explain and encapsulate the workings of the physical universe in toto, completing the task of physics and signalling its demise (triumph?) as a science, reinforces this impression.) Quantum mechanics itself operates by assigning definite probabilities to a fixed number of alternative states. Einstein’s famous objection to quantum mechanics—that God does not play dice—shows how far this remains from the view of determinacy-indeterminacy Castoriadis propounds and towards which our investigations of the concepts of creation and self-creation are moving us: creation is not in any sense a matter of playing dice, since the alternatives are not pre-set, and the outcomes cannot be fixed, not even in probabilistic terms. Similar warnings could be given in relation to chaos theory, in which an acceptance of the unpredictability of natural phenomena is accompanied

The Living Body • 101

3

Many in One: Types of Psyche and Levels of Self

Psyche-Soma: The Living Being as Activity and Structure Returning now to our central concern: how does the idea that the living being is to be understood as essentially an activity of self-formation impact on the question of the relationship between psyche and body? As Aristotle argues, psyche and body are not two distinct and separable entities whose synthesis is the living being, they are two aspects of a single reality. Aristotle distinguishes between these two aspects of the living being on the basis of the dichotomy of ‘form’ and ‘matter’, the psyche being ‘form’ as ‘actuality’, the body being ‘matter’. But as we have seen, this dichotomy soon breaks down. Its fundamental flaws may be seen in contexts other than that of the living being. As I suggested in chapter two, bronze is fit material for a statue only because its inherent form makes it suitable for casting into a variety of shapes. Of course, insofar as the form-matter dichotomy is merely relative, this need not be a problem in such cases, though its regress will eventually lead to an aporia which forces us to question the ultimate usefulness of the dichotomy. The situation is quite different in the case of the living being, however. The form of bronze, which makes it bronze as opposed to some other material, and which makes it fit for the making of statues, is quite independent of its being cast. The body, however, only exists by virtue of the self-formative activity of the living being; its potential for life is impossible outside the actualisation of life. In this context, Aristotle’s distinction between first and second actualisations, corresponding to the two senses of the term ‘form’—as ‘structure’

by a zealous search for new examples of a universal pattern—a search from which the fields of history and society have not been immune. Of course, even were it the case that physicists had jettisoned all their old ontological prejudices, the assertion would stand: doubt cast on the determinacy of being in one domain necessarily casts doubt on the determinacy of being in all domains. For Castoriadis’s discussion of these issues, see “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation” in Crossroads in the Labyrinth, trans. and ed. Kate Soper and Martin H. Ryle, Brighton, U.K., The Harvester Press, 1984. I discuss these issues and Castoriadis’ approach to them in more detail in chapters 7 and 8.

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and as ‘activity’—seems more useful. The psyche, then, is activity, essentially an activity of forming and creating forms; the body is that which is formed through this activity; but also and equally, it is the indispensable seat of such an activity. Here again we encounter the figure of the circle: the psyche is the activity of a living body, but the body is a living body—and the body exists—only through and by virtue of this activity. It is, as we have seen, useless to try to extricate ourselves from this conundrum by reference to the distinction between activity and agent. Rather, we must accept that the living being creates itself as activity (psyche), as structure (soma), as both (psychesoma). The distinction between psyche and body is not arbitrary—no more than the distinction between activity and structure. But neither is there any ‘gulf’ between the two that would have to be bridged in order for them to be united. Significantly, this manner of viewing things would seem to remove much of the mystery from the fact that what impacts on the living being’s body should affect its psyche, for it can hardly be surprising that what affects a thing as structure should also affect it as activity. (The mysteries that remain concern the mechanics of this process: how certain structures are sensitised while others are not, and so on.)

Representation as Self-Formation What we have been discussing up to now is the psyche in its broadest sense, the ‘for-itself’, in Castoriadis’ terminology; though the term ‘for-itself’ would seem more appropriately to encompass both activity and structure—in the case of the living being, both psyche and soma. A psyche in this sense is a universal aspect of the ‘for-itself’; so that we may with equal legitimacy speak of the psyche of an organism, the psyche of a living cell or biological system within that organism, and even the psyche of a society. This psyche is the self’s activity of self-direction, self-formation and self-creation. It is the positing of ends and the constitution of means to those ends. The latter includes the constitution of a representational world. At one point, Castoriadis says of the psyche that it is nothing other than representation and the emergence of representations.29 But this ‘psyche’ is not the psyche; it is, as we have already pointed out, some-

29

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 282.

The Living Body • 103

thing far more specific, associated with a distinct mental realm. The specificity of this ‘psyche’—‘the mind’—is obviously bound up with representation. If what we have thus far said about the psyche is accepted, then representation must be seen as but one of the psyche’s essential activities. How may we distinguish this activity from others? The psyche is responsible for all aspects of self-formation, for the constitution of the body as well as the formation of representations. As Castoriadis argues, these two are intimately related. The constitution by the living being of a world for itself cannot be divorced from the self-constitution of the living being, its self-organisation or self-formation. I have already suggested that representation must be seen as a specific type of self-formation. The images, affects and intentions Castoriadis speaks of are not to be understood as immaterial entities. The formation of a representation is a physical event involving the alteration of material structures, an organisation or re-organisation of the body. What, then, distinguishes this type of self-formation from that which relates to the development, operation and maintenance of organic structures generally? Obviously, the specificity of representation is bound up with the enigmatic notion of having a ‘world’ of one’s own, of creating this world for oneself; in short, of ‘awareness’. This is where Castoriadis begins his analysis of the for-itself. A world exists for the self. This world, as Castoriadis has shown, must be created by the self. What I am saying—not in opposition to Castoriadis but by way of emphasis—is that this world which is made by and for the self is also made of the self. As we have seen, Castoriadis argues that the existence of a world for the self must presuppose a capacity of the self to create presentations (that is, meaningful images), since presentations do not exist outside the self and cannot be assembled from elements alien to the self. What is more, this capacity must be intrinsic to the self. If the self did not possess from the beginning this capacity/propensity for creating presentations, no encounter between the self and its environment could bestow upon it such a capacity. It is fruitless, therefore, to look beyond the self for an explanation of this capacity. It is for this reason that Castoriadis objects to all those accounts of representation which begin with and take as their model the phenomenon of perception, seeking to discover in the relationship between subject and object, perceiver and perceived, the key to an understanding of representation. Not only does this

104 • Chapter Four

exclude or downgrade much that is essential to the representational world as we encounter it in the human mind—fantasy, dreams, the ‘imaginary’ as the creation of forms which have no correlate in the ‘real’ world—but in failing to recognise that any possibility of such a relationship (between perceiver and perceived) already presupposes a capacity for image formation, it inverts the true order of the relationship between perception and presentation. Any capacity to represent what is necessarily presupposes and is based upon an imaginary capacity to create that which is not and could not be except by virtue of such a creation. Recognising that representation owes its origin entirely to the self brings us face to face with the true problem of perception, and it is in the context of the problem of perception that the viability of the concept of ‘anaclasis’, or ‘leaning on’, must be judged. The crux of this problem is not how images are formed, nor why impacts suffered by the living being should affect its activity, but how the relationship between such impacts and the essentially spontaneous image-formation of the living being is regularised such that a specific type of impact will always evoke a specific activity of image-formation. Another way of putting this question would be to ask how the activity of image-formation becomes functional, how it comes to be submitted to the functional requirements of the organism. This regularisation, this determination of its activity, must be the work of the living being itself. The de facto achievement of this task by all living beings indicates a capacity/propensity of the living being for such a self-determination.

One Amongst Many: Psyche as Mind, and the Many Selfs of the Living Being This self-determination occurs across two dimensions: a gross anatomical dimension involving the formation of physical structures which optimise sensitivity to specific classes of physical event and a representational dimension involving the organisation of imaged responses to stimulation. Castoriadis’ ‘psyche’, the mind, would seem to be associated specifically with the second of these dimensions. On the other hand, as I have already pointed out, representation can hardly be confined to this ‘psyche’. In the first place, the ‘psyche’ in this sense is associated with specific bodily structures which some organisms—organisms which, as living beings, must nonetheless form representations—do not possess. Secondly, there are clearly activities of self-formation

The Living Body • 105

which occur independently of the activity of the cerebral cortex, of the brain, of the central nervous system, or whatever structure or structures one might wish to identify as the ultimate seat of mental activity. And while there is no doubt some sort of unity underlying all the multifarious activities of selfformation identifiable within a single organism, this unity is a complex matter involving multiple processes of interaction and co-ordination, processes which are by no means always successful, and which, successful or not, cannot be viewed simply as the work of a single, overarching ‘mind’. There is unquestionably some justification for viewing this situation in terms of a hierarchy, with the ‘psyche’, or ‘mind’ constituting the apex. The caveat that needs to be attached to such a picture concerns the fact that the occupant of the highest position in this hierarchy ‘rules’ only in an extremely limited and tenuous fashion. It affects, to some degree perhaps co-ordinates, but it does not control. Much—perhaps most—of what goes on ‘below’ does so quite independently. What is more, its position as well as its existence is predicated on just this independence of ‘lower’ functions. If it affects other activities, it is likewise affected by them.30 One might also be inclined to view the relationship between the ‘psyche’ and the various other activities and systems of the body in terms of a functional differentiation, or division of labour. This approach, too, has its merits. This division of labour cannot mean, however, that the ‘psyche’ has exclusive responsibility for representation within the organism. Representation is essential to all organic activity. Where there is self-formation there must also be representation. No directed activity is possible without some monitoring of this activity and its results. Insofar as physiological activities are independent of the ‘psyche’/mind, they must incorporate an independent representational dimension. The relationship between specifically mental representations and biological drives, or any manner of bodily activity beyond the mental realm, is best

30

On reflection, much the same could be said of any hierarchy. The belief that the

occupant of the apex of a hierarchy completely controls or subsumes everything below him or her is simply delusional. This delusion is remarkably common, of course, and can have quite serious consequences for both ‘rulers’ and ‘ruled’.

106 • Chapter Four

seen as a relationship between different levels or arenas of self-formation and representation. According to the principles already outlined, we might also describe it as a relationship between different psyches, psyches which together constitute the living being. This suggests a picture of the living being as consisting of a plurality of ‘selfs’, and, what is more significant, multiple levels of ‘self’. Although Castoriadis’ own observations on nature of the self would seem to point towards such a view, for Castoriadis himself the problem of the relationship between psyche and soma remains, for the most part, dualistic. This dualism is paradoxical, since it involves both an interdependence which in certain contexts is difficult to distinguish from simple identity and an apparent independence of each of the ‘entities’ vis-à-vis the other. Thus, Castoriadis insists that “[t]here cannot be, on the philosophical level, any essential ultimate distinction between soul and body, psyche and soma”31 and observes that physiological events—for example, the consumption of alcohol—have obvious psychological effects.32 On the other hand, he notes that one has “no control over the innumerable organic processes going on all the time within [one’s] body, some of which prepare [one’s] death,” and that “even under the most horrible tortures, there are people who will not hand their comrades over to the police”.33 In response to this paradox, however, Castoriadis offers only what he himself characterises as “tentative, embryonic thoughts”.34 These thought point to a broadening of the concept of ‘psyche’ to encompass the somatic as well as the strictly ‘mental’. Human physiology is already soul-like . . .35 The body creates sensations. Therefore, there is a corporeal imagination. . . . . . . The body is already imagination, because it transforms external shocks into something.36

31

Castoriadis, “From the Monad to Autonomy,” p. 177.

32

Ibid.

33

C. Castoriadis, “Radical Imagination and the Social Instituting Imaginary” in The

Castoriadis Reader, ed. David Ames Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 330. 34

Castoriadis, “Radical Imagination and the Social Instituting Imaginary,” p. 331.

35

Ibid.

36

Castoriadis, “From the Monad to Autonomy,” pp. 180-181.

The Living Body • 107 We should posit ‘behind’ or ‘below’ the Freudian Unconscious (or the Id) a Nonconscious which is the living body qua human animated body in continuity with the psyche.37 There is, therefore, a sort of globality to the human being that is both body and soul, wherein the body is always, in a sense, psychical and the psyche always, in certain regards, somatical.38

If we are to get beyond such ‘embryonic’ reflections, we must, I believe, develop a picture of both psyche and soma which recognises the plurality of each in a manner which immediately throws doubt upon the adequacy of such terms as ‘continuity’ and ‘globality’ as Castoriadis employs them here. The living body is not just, as Castoriadis suggests, a psyche-soma; it is a multiplicity of psyche-somas, of active structures and of constructive actions. If there is a question of independent and even conflictual action within the living body, this can never be reduced to a simple opposition between the psyche and the soma. Refusing to betray one’s comrades under torture is a physical act (if one is unwilling to concede that remaining silent under such circumstances constitutes a physical action, one might think of a situation in which an individual continues to perform a strenuous physical activity despite pain and exhaustion; and, to remove all possible objections, imagine that this individual is certain that the activity in question will result in his/her death), and the pain in the face of which this silence is maintained is psychical—what is more, it is psychical even before it becomes conscious, it is psychical as soon as pain receptors act in response to a trauma. The conflict involved here is not a conflict between the psyche and the soma, it is a conflict between one psychesoma—that which Castoriadis calls the human psyche—and others. Castoriadis’ failure to develop a more differentiated picture of both psyche and soma leads to significant aporias when he comes to investigate the origin and development of the human psyche qua ‘mind’. I will return to this in the following chapter.

37

Castoriadis, “Radical Imagination and the Social Instituting Imaginary,” p. 331.

38

Castoriadis, “From the Monad to Autonomy,” p. 182.

108 • Chapter Four

Although Castoriadis does not explicitly recognise the living being as consisting of a plurality of psyches—or psyche-somas—his investigation of the ‘for-itself’ nevertheless results in the identification of ‘levels’ of ‘selfs’, and his reflections on these highlight important questions concerning the interdependence of the various activities-structures which comprise the living being. This notion of ‘levels’ is intended to indicate that the ‘selfs’ in question are not all of the same type and that the relations between them are therefore more complex and of a different kind than mere bilateral interaction. Castoriadis alludes to this when he suggests that the world of each for-itself “is constituted each time in and through a series of encasements and interlacings of various kinds; the world belonging to the dog ‘participates’ in the world belonging to the species dog, the world belonging to some cell of this dog is simply a condition for the world belonging to the dog without explicitly ‘participating’ in it.”39 These terms—encasements and interlacings—encompass a multitude of mysteries, and we cannot explore all of these fully here. The basic issue, however—that of how the various levels of self and the various worlds associated with each are interrelated within a single organism—is relevant to our enquiry, and, as such, cannot be avoided altogether. The world belonging to some cell of a dog, for instance, may not ‘participate’ in the world belonging to the dog, but does that mean that we should regard the former as simply a ‘condition’ for the latter? The dog and the world belonging to it would be impossible without the individual cells which constitute the dog; on the other hand, the existence of these cells and their worlds would be equally impossible in the absence of the organism they constitute. There are, of course, cells that do not belong to the dog, but the cells that do are not just any of these myriad pre-existing cells, they are specifically ‘dog cells’, cells found only in, because fabricated by, the dog. If the world belonging to a cell of the dog is a condition for the world belonging to the dog, must we not also assert that the world belonging to the dog is a condition for the world belonging to a cell of the dog? This (by now, familiar) mutual presupposition would seem to indicate a relationship far more complex than the term ‘condition’ would suggest.

39

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 145.

The Living Body • 109

I suggested earlier that self-creation entailed not merely the creation of a self but the creation of multiple selfs, and, what is more, of ‘other’ selfs. We now need to add to this a recognition of the creation of levels of self. Each ‘higher’ level in some manner ‘incorporates’ (in Castoriadis’ terminology, ‘encases’) ‘lower’ levels, but this ‘incorporation’ does not amount to a subsumption or absorption of these. Each level is self-created; but this self-creation builds on, uses and is supported by ‘lower’ levels. While there is undoubtedly some value in thinking of the emergence of these various levels in ‘historical’ terms—the living cell certainly precedes the multicellular organism, which initially ‘lacks’ (though, of course, only in retrospect) a central nervous systems out of which the cerebral cortex develops—there is also some danger in this, given that, as I have just argued, the specific cells which constitute the ‘lower’ levels of a given organism are peculiar to, because fabricated by, this organism itself. However we may view the relationship between these various levels, it seems doubtful that it can be understood as one of pure exteriority. It would seem inadequate to think of the relationship between the cells of an organism and the biological systems constituted of (of, not simply by) these cells in terms of the relationship between a self (or a system) and its environment. These various forms ‘belong’ together. This ‘belonging’ is multifaceted, mysterious and complex. It involves practical interdependence; but also, and more importantly, it involves complementarity and questions of identity. We might describe this ‘belonging together’ as the overarching ‘form’ of the living being. This form, however, cannot be equated with the psyche; and it is most definitely not equivalent to ‘the mind’. (One might be inclined to regard this situation as peculiar to multicellular organisms. It should be remembered, however, that even the simplest living being, a single-celled organism, is a complex, internally differentiated and articulated structure. Even in such an organism, there is the problem of coordinating the activity of various constituent parts. This provokes a series of questions which I cannot pursue fully here. I will, however, outline briefly two of the most obvious. 1) It would seem that some sort of internal differentiation is essential to the living being and to the self generally. Without some such articulation, action would be impossible. This applies to all action, including the specific type of action involved in representation. All images are

110 • Chapter Four

composites. The minimal requirement for any image is, as Castoriadis points out, a distinction between a figure and a ground; in reality, of course, most images are much more sophisticated than this, involving multiple elements related in various, often quite complex ways. This intrinsic character of the image is, in a manner, repeated when it comes to the matter of constructing an image of something, a ‘representation’ in the more conventional sense of the term. Here the differentiation inherent to the image must somehow incorporate a distinction between subject—perceiver—and object—perceived, between the self and an ‘objective’ world. The question which then arises is whether and to what extent the possibility of such a distinction between subject and object, self and world, is predicated on an internal differentiation/ articulation of the self. 2) If we conclude that some kind of internal differentiation/articulation is essential to the self, and if we also conclude that any such articulation is associated with a plurality of at least relatively independent, self-directed activities, each of which might be regarded as indicative of ‘selfhood’, we are likely to find ourselves staring into the abyss of an infinite regression in which all selfs consist of other selfs. The key to avoiding such an absurdity clearly lies in the definition of ‘self’ and the degree of independence and self-directedness of the activities internal to any given ‘self’. The characteristics identified by Castoriadis as essential to the category of the self—selffinality, self-preservation, reasoning and an idiosyncratic world—might serve as indices of ‘genuine’ or ‘full’ selfhood. It is possible that entities may exhibit some of these and not others, or that they may possess each to a greater or lesser degree.)

The Two Types of Leaning On This relationship between various levels of self within a single living being is one aspect of what Castoriadis calls ‘leaning on’. The relationship between the psyche (that is, ‘the mind’) and the body is, according to Castoriadis, of this type. As we have seen, it is from Freud’s reflections on this relationship that Castoriadis borrows the term. In this connection, Castoriadis argues that bodily forms must be taken into account by the psyche, that they support and induce a creation which is nonetheless undetermined. He also argues that such bodily forms cannot be regarded as mere external conditions—a view we have now arrived at ourselves via a somewhat different route. Castoriadis contrasts these with those aspects of the environment—oxygen, it will be recalled, is the

The Living Body • 111

example he offers—without which psychical life would be impossible, but which do not, as he puts it, contribute to the form of that life.40 Having made this distinction, Castoriadis proceeds to use the same concept to describe the relationship between a self—a living being, a society—and its environment. The living being, we are told, ‘leans on’ a certain being-thus of that which is. If it is to survive, the living being must take into account those aspects of its environment that are essential to its survival. These aspects may be said to support and induce its creation of its representational world, without thereby determining that world. The concept of ‘leaning on’ would seem appropriate in this context also. Should these two instances of leaning on be regarded as equivalent? Castoriadis is right to draw a distinction between ‘external’ conditions and elements which are not, however we might describe them, simply ‘external’. This suggests that there is a significant difference between, on the one hand, the relationship between psyche (mind) and body, and between society and psyche, and on the other, between self—living being, psyche, society—and environment, a difference which the indiscriminate application of the term ‘leaning on’ to both types of relationship risks masking. To be fair, Castoriadis does note that the meaning of ‘leaning on’ changes according to its context, so that the sense in which the psyche ‘leans on’ the body differs from the sense in which society ‘leans on’ the natural world, and so on. But Castoriadis never clarifies this adequately, nor does he recognise the need for a general division of the concept of the type I am suggesting here. Dividing the concept of leaning on in this way shifts the ground upon which the problem of the relationship between the psyche and the body stands. If psyche and soma, as activity and structure, are best viewed as twin aspects of a single form, then the relationship between the mind and the body cannot be understood simply in terms of the relationship between psyche and soma. In the context of the mind-body dichotomy, the body is not merely structure, it is also activity; and the mind, though defined in terms of activity rather than structure, is nonetheless the activity of a specific structure or structures. Given this, the relationship between mind and body might equally well be described as a relationship between psyches or between bodily structures as a relationship between psyche and body. In any case, it can no longer be a question of

40

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 290.

112 • Chapter Four

the relationship between a singular psyche, on the one hand, and a singular body, on the other. The psyche we are concerned with here, ‘the mind’, is not the only psyche belonging to the living being. Insofar as this psyche does seek to somehow encompass the totality of the living being’s activities, it succeeds only in a very partial and imperfect manner. One might say that it is not the ‘whole’ of the psyche of the living being—remembering that the manner and the sense in which the various self-forming activities of the living being do indeed constitute a ‘whole’ remains problematic. Much the same might be said of the unity of the mind itself. Is the mind one or many? If many, do these many together somehow constitute one? To what degree and in what sense do they do so? How does this division of the concept of ‘leaning on’ affect our initial problem, that of the relationship between the self—the living being, the psyche, society—and its environment? Clearly, it complicates matters. In most, if not all, instances, relations between self and environment will also involve relations between various levels of self. If we limit ourselves to a consideration of the human organism, we can say that for the human psyche perception inevitably involves relations with and between a variety of bodily structures and processes. Any ‘shock’ experienced by this psyche is, to say the least, ‘mediated’; in fact, these shocks are constructed. My approach will be to ask what these shocks amount to for the human psyche. What form do they take, and how are they constituted for and by the psyche itself? We need to remember that such ‘shocks’ do not revolve exclusively around what is ‘given’ to the psyche; they also and essentially concern what the psyche ‘makes’. In responding to shocks, the psyche inevitably re-makes itself. If the psyche is to respond effectively, it must make of itself something that is capable of responding in such a manner. This applies to all psyches; indeed, to all selfs. In the case of the human psyche, however, the question of how this occurs is brought into sharper focus than elsewhere. This is because in this case the transformation remains so obviously incomplete. Since the human psyche partially escapes this transformation, we are obliged to ask why it should not escape it entirely. In answering this question, we may hope to gain some understanding of how and why such a transformation should ever occur.

Chapter Five The Human Psyche

1

Peculiarities of the Human Psyche

The Defunctionalisation of the Human Psyche In his essay ‘The State of the Subject Today’ Castoriadis identifies a number of traits which distinguish the human psyche from the psyches of other animals.1 These are as follows: 1) a defunctionalisation of psychical processes in relation to the biological substratum of the organism; 2) a domination of representational pleasure over organ pleasure; 3) an autonomisation of the imagination; 4) an autonomisation of affect; 5) a defunctionalisation and autonomisation of desire; 6) a stratification involving a multiplicity of psychical ‘instances’.2 The first five of these traits point to a general defunctionalisation and autonomisation of the psyche. The sixth is a consequence of this general development. Castoriadis’ account of these traits is rather

1

The comparison is with other ‘higher’ animals: a class of indeterminate scope,

but one which would include at least all mammals. Needless to say, the differences would be even greater if the comparison were with ‘lower’ life forms, including those in which a realm of properly mental activity is not distinguishable. 2

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” pp. 150-154.

114 • Chapter Five

sketchy and provisional. In what follows I will endeavour to clarify his account and to show how the various traits he identifies are related to each other. I have argued that all living beings should be seen as encompassing a plurality of ‘selfs’ as well as multiple levels of self. In most living beings the activities of these ‘selfs’ are co-ordinated in a manner which suggests the pursuit of shared, or at least complementary, ends. What the defunctionalisation of the human psyche signifies is the emergence within the human organism of a genuinely other self, one which possesses its own ends posited by itself independently of the ends of the human organism as a whole. Given what has already been said about the relationship between self-finality and the construction of an idiosyncratic world, it follows that this psyche also necessarily constructs a world of its own. The fact that the ends of the human psyche are not the ends of the human organism introduces the possibility of conflict between the two. As Castoriadis observes, this is seen most dramatically in suicide, where the psyche’s efforts to preserve its own self-image directly oppose the organism’s goal of physical survival.3 Even where there is no such overt conflict, what the selfhood of the psyche implies is that it is impossible to account for the actions of the psyche by reference to the ends of the organism; that is, according to some notion of their supposed biological functionality. Where there does seem to be a concordance between the activities of the psyche and biological goals, this must be explained by reference to a concordance between the psyche’s own ends and those of the organism. Castoriadis regards this defunctionalisation as unique to the human psyche. The psyches (‘minds’, ‘mental processes’) of other animals are, in contrast, tied to a general biological functionality. It seems reasonable, however, to assume that the emergence of distinct and increasingly sophisticated neurological structures and processes contains from the outset the potential for such a development. The more that activities of global representation and self-direction become specialised and centralised so that they form a distinct domain within the organism’s overall activity, the more the integration of these activities and their subjection to general goals must become a problem for the organism. In fact, many of Castoriadis’ frequent attempts to distin-

3

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” pp. 150-151.

The Human Psyche • 115

guish humans from other animals by identifying psychological characteristics which are unique to the former are open to question.4 Castoriadis is hardly alone in pursuing such a course. Notwithstanding his attempts to puncture our inflated pride by observing, for example, that human beings are radically unfit for life,5 or that what marks the human psyche out is not its capacity for reason but its fundamental madness,6 in his case as in others one might legitimately wonder to what extent this approach reflects an adherence to the logical principle which links understanding to the establishment of clear distinctions (a principle which might itself be regarded as open to question from the perspective of a critique of ensemblistic-identitary logic) and to what extent it reflects a desire to establish a human uniqueness which is difficult to divorce from notions of superiority. It may be that the passage from the psyches of higher animals to the human psyche is best seen as—in its true sense—a quantum leap: a relatively small change with radical global consequences. In any case, we should remember what is too often forgotten in such contexts: that the being of the entity we are seeking to understand cannot be

4

Unfortunately, there will not be sufficient space here for this assertion to be argued

in any detail. An example of what I am thinking of, though, is Castoriadis’ claim that animal psyches are not stratified, that they have no psychical history and no intrapsychical conflicts. Castoriadis admits that the latter, at least, can be made to appear via experiment, but argues that this demonstrates that they do not otherwise exist—presumably on the basis that what appears only through an experiment was not present prior to the experiment (Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 153). I am not sure that either the original assertion or the assumption are soundly based. Certainly, the fact that intrapsychical conflict can be produced in some animals suggests the presence of a potential which might be activated by events other than human experimentation. I suspect that we generally tend to have a vision of the natural world as being far more harmonious and less problematic for the organisms which inhabit it than it is in reality. If we observe behaviour we would tend to describe as ‘neurotic’ in our pets but not—or not as frequently—in animals in the wild, this may just be because we observe the former far more closely than we do the latter. 5

C. Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” trans. David Ames Cur-

tis, in World in Fragments, ed. David Ames Curtis, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997, p. 311. 6

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 299.

116 • Chapter Five

reduced to those characteristics which distinguish it from others but is every bit as much a reflection of characteristics which are not peculiar to it. In any case, we need to develop a clearer understanding of what defunctionalisation actually involves. As we shall see, this soon forces us to confront the more fundamental problem of the psyche’s ‘original’ functionalisation, a problem which cannot be confined to the human realm.

The ‘Autonomisation’ of the Imagination According to Castoriadis, the defunctionalisation of the human psyche presupposes what he calls the ‘autonomisation’ of the imagination. Given the more rigourous and restrictive interpretation of the term ‘autonomy’ which Castoriadis generally advocates, his use of the term in this connection is unfortunate. One will understand almost nothing of what Castoriadis intends by ‘autonomisation’ if one tries to make it consistent with what he says elsewhere about the autonomy of the human subject or of society. The autonomisation of the imagination does not, for instance, imply lucid self-reflection; though it is assuredly that which opens up the possibility of autonomy in this fuller sense. The imagination Castoriadis is referring to is what he calls ‘the radical imagination’, the fundamental capacity to posit images. As we have seen, this capacity is a general characteristic of the for-itself, one which originates in or with the self independently of any encounter with the ‘external’ world, and which is irreducible to perception, since perception already presupposes it. What Castoriadis wishes to point to via the phrase ‘autonomisation of the imagination’ is the radical difference in the way this imagination operates in (or ‘as’) the human psyche compared with how it operates in other living beings. The living being makes an image (a “perception”) be where X is (and even where there is nothing at all, as in the case of shadows). But it makes the image once and for all, always, “in the same fashion,” and it makes this image by subjecting it to the requirements of functionality. For the human psychism, there is unlimited and unmasterable representational flux, a representational spontaneity that is not subjected to an ascribable end, a rupture of the rigid correspondence between image and X or a break in the fixed succession of images.7

7

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 151.

The Human Psyche • 117

The significance of this spontaneity and irregularity can hardly be overstated. It gives the human psyche a plasticity and an openness to transformation without which most of what we recognise as characteristically human would be impossible. As Castoriadis suggests, our capacity for language presupposes this plasticity, an ability to see something where there is something else; to see, for example, “a monkey in the five phonemes and six letters of this word, but also not always to see the same thing, therefore the ability to understand the expression ‘I’ve got a monkey on my back’;”8 in other words, an ability to form new representations and new associations between representations which is inexhaustible because it is not and can never be constrained by an unalterable canonical order. The capacity for language is but one consequence—albeit a privileged one—of this general characteristic of the human psyche. Enabling—or rather, implying—as it does the unlimited creation of new forms—by which we should understand not simply new structures, but new forms of activity, which in certain instances may themselves be activities which are formative and creative—this same property is what makes both socialisation and, therefore, society itself possible. If this ‘autonomisation’ of the human psyche is of singular importance, it also raises some difficult questions. How can human beings exist? How do they manage to survive? In his initial consideration of the living being, Castoriadis states that any representational world must exhibit a certain regularity if it is to serve the living being’s fundamental goal of self-preservation. What is more, if the organism is to construct an awareness of its environment which is sufficiently reliable to guide its actions, this ‘internal’ regularity must be associated in a regular fashion with those shocks which are the living being’s only ‘contact’ with its environment. The goals of the human psyche may not be identical with the goals of the human organism qua living being; we might even hypothesise that, at least at a certain stage of its development, the human psyche attributes neither value nor meaning to the goal of physical survival. Castoriadis goes so far as to suggest that the human psyche may sometimes be seen to treat the body as a sheer encumbrance from which it struggles to free itself—a struggle which can, of course, ‘succeed’ only in death.9 Nevertheless, the fact is that human beings do survive and do become capable of effectively

8

Ibid.

9

Castoriadis, “From the Monad to Autonomy,” p. 180.

118 • Chapter Five

acting in the world. How does this happen? What is more, how can it happen without entirely expunging the very characteristic (‘autonomisation’, spontaneous and irregular representational flux) which would seem to make us so unfit for life in the first place? We will examine Castoriadis’ account of how this happens later.

Originary ‘Autonomisation’ and the Problem of Functionalisation First, though, we need to address a second issue raised by this notion of the ‘autonomisation’ of the human psyche. Castoriadis states that the defunctionalisation of the human psyche presupposes its autonomisation. If there were not a rupture in the rigid correspondence between image and X, if all representation were subjected to ascribable ends, there could never emerge in the form of the human psyche a separate self with its own world and its own ends, distinct and different from those of the human organism. However, the same observation could be made with regard to all selfs. I have argued that in all living beings a plurality of selfs and levels of self may be identified. This pluralisation, the emergence of new selfs and levels of self, is only possible on the presumption of a rupture essentially identical to the one Castoriadis describes. The emergence of new selfs, even if these selfs are functional from the perspective of the organism as a whole—that is to say, even if their activity comes to be submitted to a regulation which integrates them with the functional imperatives of the living being to which they belong—presupposes, at a minimum, what one might call a ‘moment’ of autonomisation. On reflection, we can see that some such ‘autonomisation’ is directly implied by the concept of creation as Castoriadis develops it. Creation presupposes indeterminacy; self-creation, self-determination, is only possible if the ground upon which it occurs is not already fully determined. The for-itself emerges out of an indeterminate flux. It does not emerge as determinate, but as selfdetermining. Therefore it emerges not only out of but as indeterminacy. If the self-determination of the for-itself completely expunged this indeterminacy, then there could be no self-alteration and no pluralisation—in biological terms, there would be no mutation, hence no evolution. The first living being would also be the last; or rather, there might be any number of living beings, but each would be a singular self-creation unrelated to all the others. Of course, to

The Human Psyche • 119

imagine such a situation is to suppose that it might be possible in principle to establish a complete determinacy, which is far from obvious. Castoriadis argues that the representational activity of the living being, in contrast to that of the human psyche, exhibits a regular organisation and that this regularity may be attributed to the fact that in the case of the living being representation is submitted to the requirements of functionality. The transition from this situation to the unregulated representational flux of the human psyche clearly calls for some sort of explanation or account. But the more fundamental mystery concerns the transition from an unregulated representational flux to a regulation tied to functionality. Earlier I argued that the problem of perception should be approached in just this way; that it is, at base, the problem of how an essentially spontaneous activity of image-formation comes to be submitted to the functional requirements of the organism. In answer to an earlier question, the foregoing suggests that it might be possible to draw useful generalisations for all living beings from an account of the way in which the human psyche ‘solves’ the problem of perception, since in both cases it is a matter of submitting a representational flux to some form of regulation. The crucial difference concerns the result of this process. In other living beings this indeterminacy or flux is more or less effectively contained by a self-determined functionality. In the human psyche this determination is, to some degree at least, avoided. From this perspective, one might even describe the human psyche as a case of ‘arrested development’. The regular organisation of representation which is for other living beings the outcome of the process of self-determination is somehow averted or evaded by the human psyche. The truly remarkable thing is that this should nevertheless coincide with a degree of regularisation, without which, as stated previously, human beings would simply be incapable of survival. It would seem that we humans really do somehow manage to have our cake and eat it too.

2

The Representational World of the Human Psyche

In view of what follows, some remarks need to be made at this point concerning the peculiarities of Castoriadis’ use of the term ‘representation’. Given that this term suggests an image which ‘stands for’ something else (an image

120 • Chapter Five

of ), precisely the sort of image which, according to Castoriadis, characterises the living being’s regularised and functionalised image-formation, ‘representational flux’ would seem a highly inappropriate description of the spontaneous image-formation encountered in the human psyche, an image-formation which is distinguished by its rupturing of the rigid correspondence between image and X. In ‘The State of the Subject Today’, Castoriadis introduces a distinction between presentations and representations which might potentially have been used to mark the difference between these two classes of images (to a limited extent, I have tried to use it in this way myself; shortly, I will suggest an alternative method of marking this distinction), but he never develops this distinction in any systematic way. This may seem odd, given that one of the fundamental tenets which emerges from his analysis of the for-itself is that the images formed by the self are not intrinsically representational; that they are, by nature and origin, spontaneous ‘presentations’ which only become ‘representations’ insofar as they are subsequently regularised and submitted to functional imperatives. If this is so in relation to the living being, it is all the more evident and important in relation to the defunctionalised and autonomised human psyche. Castoriadis is well aware of this problem. His dilemma stems from the context in which he first discusses these issues, an exploration and critique of Freud’s analysis of the human psyche. The term ‘representation’—employed by Freud almost as many times as the number of pages in his writings—lends itself to debate to the extent that it leads one to understand that ‘that which’ is posited in and through representation represents something else (Vertretung in German). The German word Vorstellung (from vorstellen, ‘put’, ‘pose’, ‘place before’) would be less liable to mislead . . . I was tempted by the terms ‘position’, ‘presentation’ or, even more so, by phantasma. But it is best to limit as far as possible any changes in vocabulary . . .10

So much for the justification; the consequence is that, not only in The Imaginary Institution of Society but throughout Castoriadis’ writings, ‘representation’ comes to signify, for the most part, the images formed by and constituting the

10

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 400, n. 2.

The Human Psyche • 121

human psyche, and this is most often contrasted with ‘signification’, referring to image-formations which are essentially social in origin and nature. Much of Castoriadis’ discussion of ‘representation’ is then devoted to demonstrating that such representations are not essentially or invariably ‘representational’ in the conventional sense. Adding to this confusion is the fact that Castoriadis sometimes uses the term ‘representation’ to refer specifically to images, as distinct from affects and intentions, and at other times uses it in a way which suggests all three together. Given that I am drawing on Castoriadis’ writings extensively throughout this discussion, it would not be feasible to simply substitute my preferred terms for those used by Castoriadis. Thus Castoriadis’ dilemma is duly bequeathed to me. All I can do is to try to highlight the specific meaning of the term in each of the contexts in which it appears, and to hope, as Castoriadis confidently asserts, that “the reader who knows how to read will quickly understand in what sense the term is used here.”11 If the imagination is ‘autonomised’ in the specific sense Castoriadis gives to this term in the present context, then it follows that both affect and desire will also be autonomised. If we recall that image, affect and desire (or ‘intention’) constitute essential and inter-related dimensions of any representational world, it is hardly surprising that this general development should involve all three. According to Castoriadis’ account, the autonomisation of affect involves a rupture in the correspondence between representations (images) and affects, so that specific representations do not invariably and automatically evoke specific affects. Instead, particular affects can attach themselves to a potentially infinite range of representations. (As evidence Castoriadis points to the phenomenon of depression, in which it seems that the depressive state need not always involve a fixation on particular representations or types of representation, but, on the contrary, all and any representations may serve as a support for an intractable affect.)12 That such an autonomisation of affect should follow from an autonomisation of the imagination may be easily appreciated if we reflect on the problems associated with maintaining a rigid correspondence between image and affect where neither the production of images nor the relations between them conform to a fixed pattern. Much the

11

Ibid.

12

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 152.

122 • Chapter Five

same could be said in relation to the autonomisation of desire, which implies a capacity to establish new associations (hence also to break, or otherwise modify, old associations) between goals and representations, including presentations/representations which are themselves novel. If our earlier analysis of the relations between images, affects and intentions still holds good in this context, then the establishment of such connections must invariably involve affects, since affects are necessary mediators between representations and desires. The general point to be drawn from this is that the autonomisation of imagination, affect and desire ought not to be understood as a separation of the three. All presentation/representation involves these three dimensions of image, affect and desire. What autonomisation would seem to signify is just a plasticity in the relations between these dimensions. On the other hand, if we take into account what Castoriadis says elsewhere about representation,13 ‘plasticity’ would seem to be an entirely inadequate description. In ‘The State of the Subject Today’, too, Castoriadis repeatedly notes that the terms he distinguishes in his analysis of representation are, in reality, indissociable. Thus, according to Castoriadis, the ‘elements’ of an image are indissociable from their mode of co-belonging, and the ‘logic’ of this mode of co-belonging, the manner in which the ‘elements’ of the image are related, cannot be dissociated from the image which realises this order.14 This indissociability applies also to the three dimensions of the presentational/representational world we have been discussing; namely, image, affect and intention. If for the moment we take the analogy with spatial dimension literally, we can easily perceive what Castoriadis means by the indissociability of these dimensions. While we might analytically distinguish the height of a three-dimensional object from its length and its breadth we know that in reality not only can we not separate one of the object’s dimensions from the other two but the existence of each of these dimensions presupposes the others. To imagine them as actually separated is simply to imagine a different object (albeit in certain respects a similar one; for example, a two-dimensional analogue of a three-dimensional form). Similarly, to regard an affect in isolation from an image and an intention, as a pure affect untainted by imaged and

13

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 273-339.

14

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 146.

The Human Psyche • 123

intentional aspects, is to construct a pure fiction which corresponds to nothing real in psychical life. With this in mind, Castoriadis describes the autonomised human psyche as an indissociably representational/affective/intentional flux. We know already that this flux involves the connections between these various dimensions, that, for example, a particular representation (that is to say, image) might be associated with a specific affect at one moment and another the next. This already strains the analogy with spatial dimensions. Could we imagine the height of, say, this chair becoming the height of this table? Even supposing the two objects were the same height to begin with, what sense could we make of the notion of a transfer of the height of one to the other? Now consider the possibility that this chair could be said to possess a plurality of heights, and also of lengths and breadths, some of which it shared with the table—which is not to say that the two would be of equivalent dimensions, but that the very same breadth or length or height was shared by both the chair and the table. Suppose also that it was impossible to specify the precise range of dimensions either the chair or the table might possess. Consider, then, the difficulty of identifying the chair from one point in time to the next and of distinguishing it from the table. Indeed, in such a context the significance of the terms ‘the chair’ and ‘the table’ must soon come under question, not only in regard to their definite form—the chair, this table—but in regard to the adequacy of the terms ‘chair’ and ‘table’ as descriptions of ‘objects’ which undergo radical transformation affecting the very characteristics which form the basis of such descriptions, ‘objects’ which cannot be distinguished from one another in any way which would enable us to be sure that what we identified as ‘the chair’ was not also, in some respects and to some indeterminate degree, also ‘the table’. This bewildering situation is, according to Castoriadis, precisely what confronts us when we begin to consider seriously and on its own terms the representational world of the human psyche. Up to this point, one might have imagined the autonomisation of the psyche to consist chiefly in a shattering of the order governing the relations between the various elements of the representational world, so that each of these elements becomes free to form a potentially infinite number of new associations. However, this atomised view of the representational world is itself shattered as soon as one considers the problem of identifying these elements. I have

124 • Chapter Five

suggested already that the elements of a representational image cannot be said to exist in isolation from the image they constitute, that the image could just as easily be said to constitute the elements of which it is composed. In fact, it is difficult to see how one could argue that either constitutes or ‘causes’ the other, since both must come into being together. This same argument would seem to be applicable to the representational world taken as a whole. If we attempt to distinguish and separate from all that surrounds it a particular representation—an image, an affect, an intention; or rather, an image-affectintention—we find, first, that any such representation can, on further analysis, be made to yield other representations, so that at no point do we attain anything that might be considered a fundamental representational unit, and second, that all representations ‘entail’ an indefinite range of other representations in such a manner that it is impossible to specify what in this network of associations belongs essentially to the particular representation in question and what does not. Each representation we might wish to single out is what it is only by virtue of its, as it were, ‘organic’ connection with the whole.15 This is most strikingly illustrated by the analysis of dreams. Castoriadis cites Freud’s famous passage dealing with what he calls the ‘navel’ of the dream, the point in the dream where “there is a tangle of dream-thoughts which cannot be unravelled”. The dream-thoughts to which we are led by interpretation have to, in an entirely universal manner, remain without any definite endings; they are bound to branch out in every direction into the intricate network of our world of thought. It is at some point where this meshwork is particularly close that the dream-wish grows up, like a mushroom out of its mycelium.16

15

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 276-277.

16

S. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, The Pelican Freud Library Vol. 4, trans.

J. Strachey, trans. ed. J. Strachey and A. Tyson, ed. A. Richards, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1976, p. 672, qoted in Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 279. The translation has been amended by Castoriadis. James Strachey’s English translation differs as follows: “The dream thoughts to which we are led by interpretation cannot, from the nature of things, have any definite endings . . .” [emphasis added]

The Human Psyche • 125

Insofar as we do determine a meaning in or of the dream we do so by providing something which is essentially alien to the dream and the unconscious processes that produced it. According to Castoriadis, the same may be said of representation in general—or at least, ‘representation’ as we encounter it in the human psyche. Representation—whether conscious or unconscious—is, in fact, unanalysable (without thereby being simple). Every decomposition into elements is here a provisional artefact, every positing of separating-unifying schemata an awkward attempt to recover a being with an indefinite number of dimensions by means of a few scraps that have been ripped out of it. Representation has no borders, and any separation that is introduced into it can never be held to be pertinent—or rather, it will always be certain to be non-pertinent in some essential aspect.17

If representation cannot be decomposed into elements which are distinct and separate, this is because representation is not composed of such ‘elements’. It is hardly surprising, then, that all our attempts to specify the relations between these ‘elements’ should ultimately fail. As Castoriadis expresses it, “the actual, essential ‘relation’ between representations, what is called association, is not a relation, properly speaking…”18 One can speak of a ‘relation’ in this ‘proper’ sense only between terms that can be identified as distinct and separate, and in the case of representation this is impossible. In short, representation does not conform to an ensidic logic-ontology, a logic and ontology of well-defined or definable sets composed of distinct and determined elements. (The term ensidic is a neologism Castoriadis has coined by fusing ensemblistic and identitarian.) Its mode of being is other than this. This mode of being is what Castoriadis has dubbed ‘magma’. This crucial concept will be explained and analyzed in later chapters. One further point concerning the autonomisation of the various dimensions of representation: the autonomisation of desire implies a capacity/propensity to create new orientations, new goals and aims. In this it parallels the autonomisation of the imagination. This raises an intriguing question, which I can do

17

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 276.

18

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 276-277.

126 • Chapter Five

no more than touch upon here. Does the autonomisation of affect imply the creation of new affects? What would constitute a ‘new’ affect? How would we recognise one? How would we—how do we—distinguish new affects from old, one affect from another? Most languages seem crude and impoverished when it comes to naming emotions and identifying what are often not at all subtle distinctions between emotional states which are recognised as somehow kindred. The most obvious example is, of course, ‘love’. Even if one is convinced of the presence of an erotic component in all forms of love, one can hardly deny the reality of the differences in terms of subjective experience between the love one might feel for one’s mother, for one’s father, for one’s siblings, for a lover, for a spouse, for a friend, for one’s country, for a piece of music, for one’s god, and so on. If we add to this the dimensions of cultural and historical difference, we can soon see how dangerous it might be to assume that the same term necessarily refers to the same emotion when used in different cultural and historical contexts. (Castoriadis touches on this question in ‘The Crisis of the Identification Process’.)19 This question need not revolve around—and should not be reduced to—one of comparing the relative power of emotions in different cultural contexts; and it can never be a question of pronouncing upon the relative ‘validity of such emotions, which is what happens, for example, when people argue (usually in order to justify their own cruelty) that in other societies parents do no love their children in the way ‘we’ do. Rather, it is a question of recognising the possibility that these emotions might in themselves be substantially different, and in a way which cannot be reduced to the differences between the constellations of meaning with which they are associated and which naturally differ between cultures and historical periods—that is to say, in a way which cannot be reduced to different interpretations of the same. If there are true differences, does this not in itself suggest their emergence, their creation? To think otherwise would be to suppose that this entire repertoire of possible emotions had somehow always been present—by now, a familiar assumption, which should be rejected in this context for exactly the same reasons it should be rejected in others.

19

C. Castoriadis, “The Crisis of the Identification Process,” trans. David Ames Cur-

tis, Thesis Eleven 49, 1997, pp. 85-98.

The Human Psyche • 127

3

Representational Pleasure and Sublimation

Pleasure and Imaginary Representations It seems strange that where Castoriadis speaks of the defunctionalisation and autonomisation of desire he should speak only of the autonomisation of affect. This odd asymmetry may be explained if we reflect that what the domination of representational pleasure over organ pleasure amounts to is just this defunctionalisation of affect.20 It is worth dwelling a little longer on this question. If Castoriadis singles this characteristic out for special attention it is because he for one regards it as being particularly important. At the same time, his brief account of it begs many questions and calls for considerable clarification. Before we can ask what Castoriadis means by the domination of representational pleasure over organ pleasure we need to pose a more fundamental question: what is the basis for the distinction between representational pleasure and organ pleasure? On the face of it the answer seems obvious: on the one side we have pleasure derived from or associated with mental representations and on the other we have pleasure derived from or associated with bodily sensations. This may be essentially what Castoriadis intends, but it is inadequate as it stands. The distinction between representational pleasure and organ pleasure cannot be, as this formulation would seem to suggest, a distinction based on the presence or absence of representation. As we have observed repeatedly, awareness presupposes representation. To say that bodily sensation necessarily involves representation would be far too weak. Bodily sensation is a type of presentation/representation. The pleasure associated with bodily sensations is therefore a pleasure associated with representations. Indeed, based on what we have said thus far about the essential relationship between the for-itself, its representational world and the various dimensions

20

In a later essay (“Logic, Imagination, Reflection,” trans. David Ames Curtis, in

World in Fragments, ed. David Ames Curtis, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997), Castoriadis presents the domination of representational over organ pleasure as one of the two bases, alongside the autonomisation of the imagination, of the afunctionality of the human psyche.

128 • Chapter Five

of that world, we would have to conclude that to speak of pleasure in the absence of representation is simply nonsense. Not only is the pleasure associated with bodily sensation a pleasure associated with representations, it is a pleasure associated with mental representations. One might wish to argue that not all bodily sensations are associated with mental events, but whether this is true or not, these are not the types of sensations Castoriadis is concerned with. On the contrary, he is concerned precisely with those bodily sensations which do involve mental representations, sensations of physical pleasure and pain which exist for the psyche qua mind. If representational pleasure dominates over organ pleasure for the human psyche, this does not and cannot mean that organ pleasure simply ceases to exist for the psyche, that such pleasure, along with the whole domain of physical sensations and corporeal impulses, no longer have a place within the representational world of the psyche.21 Rather, it means that such representations are eclipsed or appropriated by representations of another kind, representations which are not associated in the same way with the physical ‘shocks’ experienced by the body. The peculiarity of these representations is not, then, that they are mental, but that they lack this connection with a physical ‘shock’ and, because of this, require no referent beyond themselves and the network of connections and associations they institute. They are, to adapt Castoriadis’ terminology, ‘imaginary’ in the same sense that imaginary social significations are ‘imaginary’. When Castoriadis speaks of the domination of representational pleasure over organ pleasure, what he is referring to is the domination of such imaginary representations and of the dimension of the human psyche associated with their creation—the radical imagination—over other types of representation and other dimensions of the psyche. This analysis adds some flesh to our understanding of the defunctionalisation of the human psyche. In relation to society it was argued that functionality was an imaginary creation, and much the same has been said of the functionality of the living being; that is, that it is a creation of the living being itself undetermined by universal laws or external forces. However, just as it was

21

C. Castoriadis, “Done and To Be Done,” trans. David Ames Curtis, in The Castoria-

dis Reader, ed. David Ames Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 380.

The Human Psyche • 129

possible in the case of society to distinguish between a category of significations which are tied to external referents (the ‘perceived’) and a category of significations which are not, and which can therefore be described as ‘imaginary’, so it is possible in the case of the psyche to distinguish between representations which are and are not tied to physical ‘shocks’. The functionality of the living being is dependent on the former: if it is to survive, it can do so only by tying its representations, its affects and its desires to physical shocks. The defunctionalisation of the human psyche breaks this connection, and the domination of representational pleasure over organ pleasure, as the principal consequence of the defunctionalisation of affect, is a fundamental aspect of this rupture.

Sublimation and the Origin of Drives The significance of this domination of the pleasure associated with imaginary representations is obvious. It is the basis (the necessary, though not the sufficient, condition, as Castoriadis insists) for the creation of social imaginary significations, and hence, society. If the autonomisation of the imagination is the precondition for the creation of language, then the domination of representational pleasure over organ pleasure is the precondition for the learning and use of language, since this requires that language itself become a source of pleasure and an object of desire. This capacity to adopt language as an object is representative of a general capacity of the human psyche to adopt and to derive pleasure from social significations, to make such significations its own and thereby to re-make itself as social, to socialise itself, or to be socialised. (As I have already remarked, this process, however conflictual it may be, is unthinkable except as a co-operative achievement of both psyche and society). From a psychoanalytic perspective, transformations such as this are understood as instances of sublimation, and in this connection Castoriadis points out that to speak is already to sublimate.22 Freud’s discussions of sublimation are notoriously sketchy. It is nevertheless true that from his first published use

22

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 161.

130 • Chapter Five

of the term in the “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,”23 Freud seems to regard sublimation primarily as a diversion of the aim and an alteration of the object of sexual drives, and that he always envisions it as involving the adoption of social (‘socially valued’, ‘civilised’) objects and modes of satisfaction.24 For Castoriadis, this second point is crucial. For him, sublimation is the psychical side of the process of socialisation, “the process by means of which the psyche is forced to replace its ‘own’ or ‘private objects’ of cathexis (including its own ‘image’ of itself ) by objects which exist and which have worth in and through their social institution, and out of these to create for itself ‘causes’, ‘means’ or ‘supports’ of pleasure.”25 Understood in this way, sublimation is “neither simply nor necessarily the ‘desexualisation’ of drives, but the establishing of a non-empty intersection between the private world and the public world, conforming ‘sufficiently as to usage’ to the requirements posited by the institution of society as this is specified in each case.”26 Castoriadis accuses psychoanalysts of focusing too much on the issue of the conversion of aims— the replacement of sexual with non-sexual satisfaction—to the exclusion of the question of the alteration of objects. Given that the ‘object’ of the drive is inevitably subjective—that is, it exists and is what it is only as it is for the subject—sublimation is always also a transformation of the drive’s object. “The transformation of the mother as sexual object into the tender mother is not simply the conversion of the aim of the drive but a modification of the object of the drive: the tender mother is not and cannot be the mother as sexual

23

Freud, “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,” pp. 69-70.

24

S. Freud, New Introductory Lectures On Psychoanalysis, The Pelican Freud Library Vol. 2,

trans. J. Strachey, ed. J. Strachey and A. Richards, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1973, p. 129; S. Freud, Introductory Lectures On Psychoanalysis, The Pelican Freud Library Vol. 1, trans. J. Strachey, ed. J. Strachey and A. Richards, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1974, p. 390; S. Freud, “Civilisation and its Discontents” in Civilisation, Society and Religion, The Pelican Freud Library Vol. 12, trans. ed. J. Strachey, ed. Albert Dickson, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1985, pp. 286-287. 25

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 312.

26

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 312-313.

The Human Psyche • 131

object . . .”27 This involves the creation of a new representation of the mother, and hence a new ‘mother’ in the only sense which matters in this context. The form of this psychical creation is, however, dictated by society. [T]he institution of society . . . renders obligatory for the innumerable individuals of society particular objects of sublimation to the exclusion of others, and these objects are caught up in relations which not only give them their signification but which make the life of society possible as a relatively coherent and organised life. This is precisely the very opposite of the ‘variability’ or ‘vicariousness’ of the objects of drives as this was posited by Freud, which has a meaning only in the field of the individual, narrowly considered. Society can exist only to the extent that the objects of sublimation are at once typical, categorised, and mutually complementary; in the same way as, correspondingly, the identificatory roles socially presented to individuals have to be both typical and complementary.28

The concept of sublimation is crucial to Castoriadis’ understanding of socialisation and, therefore, the relationship between psyche and society. However, his elucidation of the concept leaves many questions unanswered. When we speak of sublimation, we invariably speak of transformation; but what, precisely, is transformed? The psyche is transformed: of that there can be no doubt. But how is it transformed; what does this process of transformation entail? By all accounts, it would seem to entail a transformation of the psyche’s drives. There is, as Castoriadis explains it, a “conversion” of the drive’s aim and an “alteration” of the drive’s object. This would seem to amount to the creation of a different (‘other’) drive. And indeed, this seems to be Castoriadis’ central thesis concerning sublimation: sublimation is the adoption of new drives by the psyche, drives which are created by society to be re-created in/by the psyche (if the psyche is to ‘adopt’ a social drive, it can do so only by creating a drive of its own which effectively—‘sufficiently as to usage’, as Castoriadis puts it—corresponds to this drive). Such drives may or may not ‘lean on’

27

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 313.

28

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 318.

132 • Chapter Five

the biological constitution of the human organism,29 but they can never be explained or reduced to these somatic supports and inducements.

The Capacity for Transformation and the Coexistence of the New and the Old This said, there is also in Castoriadis’ discussion of sublimation the suggestion of a continuing connection between old, psychically indigenous drives and new, socially created and endorsed drives. When considering the question of the transformation of the object of drives, for example, Castoriadis argues that these successive and other objects/representations co-exist and refer to one another. Thus: . . . the erotisation of the objects of cathexis never entirely disappears. The subject never wholly abandons the positions it once occupied (cathected, invested, besetz [sic]); this is also its history. These positions, however, subsist, ‘normally’, only as mostly unconscious. Repression and sublimation are not fates of the drives which mutually exclude one another [contrary to Freud’s oft repeated view]30 but ways of distributing the energy of cathexis among

29

Castoriadis (The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 317) argues that the ‘anal’ drive,

as opposed to the ‘oral’ and ‘genital’ drives, cannot be said to lean on the human being’s biological constitution. His argument is based on the observation that the anal drive depends not merely on the ‘erotogenicity’ of the anus, but on the fixing of this erotogenicity due to the faeces being “posited as a significant object in the relations between the child and the mother.” I am not sure that this is true; that is, I am fairly confident that faeces do constitute a ‘significant object’ for some other animals, and, therefore, I am not confident that they do not already constitute a ‘significant object’ for the human infant before the intervention of parents. Nevertheless, the faeces which become significant by virtue of their negative association with cleanliness (with all its connotations beyond the merely functional) are no longer the faeces with which some animals mark their territory or express aggression, and the determination of this object is, as Castoriadis asserts, “totally arbitrary from a biological point of view.” My scepticism with regard to this specific claim does not mean that I believe that all drives must lean on biology, as will become clear in the discussion which follows. 30

Freud, “On Narcissism: An Introduction” p. 89; S. Freud, “A Child is Being

Beaten” in On Psychopathology, The Pelican Freud Library Vol. 10, trans. ed. J. Strachey, ed. A. Richards, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1979, p. 166.

The Human Psyche • 133 ancient representations and new and altered representations/significations. The sublimation which makes the Oedipal mother a tender mother not only does not prevent but always accompanies the persistence of the mother as a repressed erotic object.31

The recognition of some such connection lies at the heart of the concept of sublimation as it is traditionally conceived in psychoanalysis. The orthodox Freudian interpretation of sublimation regards it as a transformation which, however radical it may appear, implies an essential and continuing identity. Freud distinguishes four principal characteristics of a drive: its pressure (Drang), its aim (Ziel), its object (Objekt) and its source (Quelle).32 Sublimation is thought to involve a modification of the drive’s aim and object.33 Pressure, as a purely quantitative factor, is of course variable. For Freud, however, the source of the drive remains the same, and it is the source that gives the drive its ultimate identity across its multitudinous transformations.34 Castoriadis’ work suggests something much more radical than this. Sublimation is not simply or essentially a transformation of already existing drives, it is the creation and adoption of new drives. Whereas for Freud the source of drives is invariable, in that all drives “originate in the body and operate on the mind,”35 for Castoriadis drives (intentions/orientations/desires) may also originate in the psyche or in society, inasmuch as both psyche and society constitute independent—that is, self-creating—selfs. (As far as the psyche is concerned at least, one might be able to reconcile Freud’s view with Castoriadis’ by pointing out that, since the mind/psyche is also part of the body, Freud’s observation that drives have their source in “the somatic process which occurs in an organ or part of the body”36 need not be interpreted as excluding the possibility of drives whose origins are

31

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 314.

32

S. Freud, “Instincts and their Vicissitudes” in On Metapsychology: the Theory of Psy-

choanalysis, The Pelican Freud Library Vol. 11, trans. ed. J. Strachey, ed. A. Richards, Harmondsworth Penguin, 1984, pp. 118-120. 33

Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, p. 129.

34

Freud, “Instincts and their Vicissitudes,” p. 120.

35

Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, p. 120.

36

Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, p. 119.

134 • Chapter Five

mental/neurological; though this might be to interpret Freud ‘against the grain’, and would entail an acceptance of the arguments against any absolute distinction between psyche/activity and soma/structure—a view Freud himself leaned towards, but was never able to satisfactorily theorise. The rejection of this variety of psyche-soma dualism, though Castoriadis purports to share it, would also cast doubt on the adequacy of many his own observations, such as his assertion that, in the case of hallucinated pleasure, “one sees the psyche realise the possibility of satisfying itself with something that no longer concerns the state of an organ.”37 What one should say, rather, is that, in hallucinating, the psyche realises the possibility of satisfying itself with something that concerns the state of an organ—the brain, or part thereof—other than the organ which was the ultimate source of the drive. The drive may be satisfied in a variety of ways, but its satisfaction must inevitably concern the state of an organ, since it involves the transformation of a self which never ceases to be corporeal. These comments concern phantasising, and hence the domination of representational pleasure over organ pleasure, rather than sublimation. It is important to distinguish between the two—for all sorts of reasons, of course, but in the context of our present discussion—because, as we have already asserted and as Castoriadis himself argues,38 the achievement of at least some degree of domination of representational pleasure over organ pleasure (or imaginary representations over functional representations) by the psyche is a necessary precondition for sublimation. Castoriadis tends at times to conflate these two processes, with, as we shall see, unfortunate consequences. The connection between the two is that both represent instances of leaning on. The psyche creates representations—and also, we should not omit to mention, orientations and affects—which lean on both the body and society. We will return to this shortly.) Recognising this preservation of old representations alongside and associated with new representations suggests that the plasticity of the human psyche, while immense, is nonetheless limited. One of these limitations would seem to be the requirement that if an ‘element’ of the psychical world—a drive, a representation, an affect, and so on—is to be supplanted by another, this cannot

37

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” pp. 161-162.

38

Castoriadis, “Logic, Imagination, Reflection,” p. 263.

The Human Psyche • 135

be done by a simple destruction of the former. Rather, there is a substitution which is always based on the establishment of a connection or association, however tenuous and convoluted to our eyes, between the old and the new. How are we to reconcile this persistence of the old with the capacity for transformation which would seem otherwise to characterise the autonomised and defunctionalised human psyche and which grants this psyche its extraordinary plasticity? Why should it be that in the case of the human psyche the creation of new modes of being coincides with the preservation rather than the destruction of old modes of being? Why does the succession of transformations which the psyche undergoes result not in a succession of forms of psyche but, as Castoriadis contends without ever really explaining,39 in the coexistence of a stratified plurality of psychical instances, each of which corresponds to a different/other mode of psychical being? Part of the answer is surely that these apparently conflicting characteristics are in fact related. If the human psyche has such an extraordinary facility for self-transformation, this is in part due to the fact that for it self-transformation does not require the destruction of its existing mode of being. Instead, the psyche ‘splits’, the old and the new co-habiting in a combination of conflict, co-operation, mutual ignorance and misunderstanding. That such a ‘selfpluralisation’ is possible at all may be attributed directly to the autonomised character of the human psyche. It is precisely this indeterminate, and, therefore, indefinitely determinable, character of the psychical world that permits transformation to coincide with preservation. One might be able to understand this better if one reflects on the opposite end of the ‘continuum’ (in a later chapter, I will have cause to question this formulation, but it will suffice for the present purpose): the more determinate an entity—an object, a form—the more its transformation necessarily entails the obliteration of its existing determinations. Simply put, determinacy implies inflexibility. Conversely, indeterminacy implies flexibility. The more indeterminate the ‘overarching’ mode of being of an entity, the more potential there is for that entity to encompass and incorporate a variety of different modes of being. (There is a limit to this, of course: as I have already noted, a perfect

39

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” pp. 153-154.

136 • Chapter Five

indeterminacy would preclude transformation every bit as much as a perfect determinacy, since a perfect indeterminacy would be formlessness, and without form there can be no question of transformation, let alone a co-existence of the results of successive instances of transformation.) This is precisely how Castoriadis envisages the pluralised and stratified human psyche: as a ‘magma’, a “mode of coexistence with an ‘organisation’ that contains fragments of multiple logical organisations but which is not itself reducible to a logical organisation.”40 (I will, as promised, return to the topic of magmas in a later chapter.)

Self-Pluralisation and the Drive for Meaning This may account for the possibility of self-pluralisation; it does not yet explain its actuality. In order to do that, we would need to posit either a general tendency towards conservation of forms, so that wherever transformation could coincide with the preservation of existing forms it would, or we would need to posit a tendency peculiar to the psyche itself with a similar goal. (The specific tendency of the human psyche could of course be construed as an instance of a broader tendency of the for-itself, perhaps even of being per se. Later, I will offer an interpretation along just these lines.) Castoriadis’ work certainly supports the latter. He postulates a tendency of the psyche towards an all-encompassing unification which one could expect to operate in such a way that the replacement of any form would be tolerable only if that form could at the same time be preserved, so that nothing would be discarded that could merely be displaced—through repression, sublimation, or any of the various types of modification we might care to postulate. Castoriadis traces this drive for unity to the psyche’s drive for meaning and to an original experience of meaning as all-encompassing and undifferentiated which is disrupted and eventually entirely lost to the psyche by a succession of transformations, especially those connected with socialisation, which force upon the psyche an internal differentiation and division that renders such an experience impossible.41

40

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 154.

41

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 281-316.

The Human Psyche • 137

This drive for meaning would appear to be the primary drive whose ultimate source is the psyche itself.42 For Castoriadis, it is of the greatest significance, not least because it throws into doubt Freud’s view that drives occupy a place on the frontier between the somatic and the psychical.43 This original experience, which this drive constantly seeks to re-create, is said by Castoriadis to furnish “the matrix and the prototype of that which, for the subject, will always be meaning: indestructible holding-together, aiming at itself and grounded on itself, the unlimited source of pleasure to which nothing is lacking and which leaves nothing to be desired.”44 As such, it fuels that drive towards total unification, towards the subsumption of difference by the identical with which we are already familiar.45 This argument may strike the reader as oddly contradictory. We asked ‘Why does the psyche divide and differentiate itself?’, and our answer is ‘Because it wishes to be one, to be whole’. Described in this way, the psyche’s ‘strategy’ would seem to be inevitably self-defeating, and in a sense it is. To make the psyche’s actions more comprehensible we need to add that the unity which the psyche craves is one which is all-encompassing, which excludes nothing. The cost of its reluctance to exclude is division and differentiation, so that

42

Castoriadis manages to find some sort of precedent for the idea of such a drive—

or rather, a secondary, sublimated form of it—in Freud’s notion of a ‘drive for knowledge’ (Wisstrieb). (“The Ontological Import of the History of Science,” trans. David Ames Curtis, in World in Fragments, ed. David Ames Curtis, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997, pp. 266-267) Freud introduces this idea as part of his efforts to explain children’s curiosity about sexual matters; but he admits that this drive for knowledge is not in itself an exclusively sexual drive. He does not, however, regard it as in any sense elementary or fundamental. In his view, “Its activity corresponds on the one hand to a sublimated manner of obtaining mastery, while on the other hand it makes use of the energy of scopophilia.” (“Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,” p. 112) To the best of my knowledge, Freud never employs the term outside the ‘Three Essays on Sexuality’, not even in the context of his later discussions of the broader relationship between the scientific project and the drives. 43

Castoriadis, “Logic, Imagination, Reflection,” pp. 266-267; Freud, “Instincts and

their Vicissitudes,” p. 118. 44

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 293.

45

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 299-300.

138 • Chapter Five

the psyche would appear to get only part of what it wants: its world is comprehensively inclusive, but only because it is not undifferentiated. I would add to this picture the hypothesis of a contrary tendency which predisposes the psyche towards differentiation, and which would therefore make the final compromised result of this process somewhat more understandable. This tendency is one I have already identified in my discussion of creation: the tendency to maximise determinacy. This tendency towards determinacy favours differentiation because the more determinate a form becomes, the more it is differentiated from others. The notion of such a tendency is a central, if at times understated, theme of Castoriadis’ work, but it is conspicuously absent from his discussions of the human psyche; probably because what he wishes most to emphasise about the psyche is its relative indeterminacy and the manner in which a greater determinacy is forced upon it by society. What I am suggesting is that the psyche may not be as unwilling a partner in this process as Castoriadis imagines. Many readers of Castoriadis, including those who are otherwise sympathetic to his views, find this idea of an original ‘monadic’ state of the psyche difficult to accept. I share this scepticism, but not, perhaps, for the reasons others would advance. I agree that the psyche does exhibit a tendency towards unification and that this is connected to its experience of meaning. I do not, however, believe that this can or should be traced to an original experience of meaning as all-encompassing and undifferentiated. Part of my reasons for rejecting such a notion relate to fundamental considerations concerning the nature of determinacy and indeterminacy and the relationship between the two. Though I will touch on this issue in what follows here, I deal with it more fully in later chapters. My remaining reasons concern questions arising from Castoriadis’ account of the development of the psyche from this monadic state, as well as his justifications for positing such an initial state at all.

Creation, Indeterminacy and the Preservation of Forms Before we turn to a consideration of Castoriadis’ conception of the monadic psyche, however, there are a few implications and presuppositions of the preceding discussion which need to be clarified further. Is there a genuine inconsistency between Castoriadis’ view of creation as the emergence of the genuinely new and this picture of the human psyche as an essentially conser-

The Human Psyche • 139

vative self, which transforms itself, wherever possible, only on condition that it preserves what it has already created? I think not. We should remember that Castoriadis’ insistence on a more radical interpretation of creation occurs against the background of a tendency to deny the possibility of the genuinely new which Castoriadis himself traces to the most fundamental characteristics of the human mode of being. We have already seen that in relation to the social-historical Castoriadis recognises alongside the tendency towards creation and transformation an equally powerful tendency towards conservation in the form of society as instituted. If Castoriadis tends for the most part to side with the creative, self-transformative tendency, this is because the denial of this aspect of human experience and potential undermines the project of autonomy. Although it is certainly true that, in Castoriadis’ view, much should be changed, it would be wrong to imagine that he supports change for its own sake. Castoriadis may well be a romantic—though of a rather stoic variety—but change and the new are not for him ultimate values. Rather, his ultimate value is the freedom to decide for oneself, and this may very well mean, and clearly for Castoriadis himself sometimes should mean, choosing to preserve what we already have. Autonomy also implies the possibility— even the necessity—of activating the capacity for reflection and deliberate action against the modern tendency towards the indiscriminate destruction of the old.46 What Castoriadis’ philosophical position requires is not that we reject, conceptually or politically, the idea of such a conservative tendency, but that we accept that all endeavours to conserve what is precisely as it is are ultimately doomed to failure, that transformation will occur despite efforts to halt it, and that all we can reasonably do is to try to shape this transformation. We should also recall in this connection that the idea of creation does not imply a lack of relation between old and new forms, only the absence of a determination of the new by the old.

46

C. Castoriadis, “Reflections on ‘Rationality’ and ‘Development,’” in Philosophy,

Politics, Autonomy, ed. David Ames Curtis, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991; C. Castoriadis, “From Ecology to Autonomy,” trans. David Ames Curtis, in The Castoriadis Reader, ed. David Ames Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., Oxford University Press, 1997.

140 • Chapter Five

Noting the correspondence between the self-preservative tendency of society and the conservative tendency of the psyche prompts one to ask how complete or incomplete this correspondence might be. Castoriadis’ account of things suggests that societal transformations are complete in a way that psychical transformations never are. For him, even if a society preserves elements of its history, these elements are so altered in their meaning by their inclusion in a new universe of imaginary significations that they can never be regarded as simply ‘the same’. In contrast, Castoriadis portrays the psyche as managing to preserve its ‘past’ selfs virtually unchanged: the primary Unconscious remains what it always was, a ‘monadic core’ within the otherwise altered and differentiated psychical totality.47 I would tend to opt for a position somewhere between these two extremes. It seems inconceivable that the Unconscious is genuinely unaltered by the experience of psychical division and differentiation. (I will return to this question in the next chapter.) In the psyche, as in society, the preservation of the old would seem always to coincide with its transformation: drives are preserved precisely by being altered. On the other side of things, I believe Castoriadis may underestimate the capacity for the societal totality to preserve relatively unchanged elements of its historical modes of being, which, as in the psyche, may be protected by the limited character of the relations between such pockets of the archaic and the contemporary core. In the case of a society, there is also the possibility of a complete splitting into two or more entirely separate and ultimately alien societies, a possibility not open to the psyche. This said, there is a genuine difference in the degree to which the psyche and society are capable of preserving historical forms alongside new forms, and this, I believe, reflects a difference in the degree of determinacy of psychical and social forms. If the mode of being of the institution would seem to demand that old institutions be obliterated to make way for new institutions, this is because this mode of being itself demands determinacy of a type and to a degree that the psyche does not. The basis for this difference—which I do not propose to investigate further in this context—undoubtedly lies in the difference between representation and signification; and also, perhaps, in the differing degrees of deter-

47

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 298.

The Human Psyche • 141

minacy-indeterminacy of that in which representations and significations are respectively embodied.

The Creation of Drives and the Duplication of the Body Finally, there is the question of the psychical creation of drives which do in fact lean on already existing somatic drives. Earlier I contrasted Freud’s view of the somatic origin of drives with Castoriadis’ position which implies that there are drives whose source is the psyche itself. This contrast needs to be both qualified and amplified. It sometimes seems that for Freud also drives are already psychical, the ‘ideational representatives’ of a constant somatic stimulus.48 That this is Freud’s true or ultimate understanding of the nature of drives is not, however, beyond question. As Angela Richards points out,49 sometimes Freud seems to regard drives as these psychical representatives themselves, and sometimes he seems to regard the somatic stimulation as the drive, with the psychical representative being consigned to the status of an ‘idea’ (Vorstellung) which merely ‘represents’ the drive. The potential for terminological confusion here is formidable; but we can dispense with all this if we admit, as we surely must, that where a drive can be traced ultimately to a somatic (that is, non-psychical) source, there must in fact be two drives, one somatic and the other a psychical drive ‘corresponding’ to the somatic stimulus; just as, in the case of sublimation, there is the creation of psychical representations (and orientations and affects) corresponding to the imaginary significations (and orientations and affects) posited by society. This is true even if we conclude that this psychical creation is a co-product of psyche and society. Since what society assists in creating is something for the psyche, this assistance can only be by way of supports and inducements, not donation. Only the psyche can make presentations/representations, and each psyche must make its own representations for itself.50

48

Freud, “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,” p. 83.

49

S. Freud, On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis, The Pelican Freud Library

Vol. 11, trans. ed. J. Strachey, ed. A. Richards, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1984, pp. 108-109. 50

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 366.

142 • Chapter Five

Castoriadis seems to be arguing for some such interpretation when, on the by now familiar grounds that psychical representation is necessarily indigenous to the psyche, he points out that, insofar as they exist for the psyche, drives cannot be ‘re-presentations’ of somatic stimuli.51 To exist for the psyche, they must be creations of the psyche itself. These creations, these drives, are what are subsequently transformed, deformed and otherwise manipulated, sharing as they do that plasticity which is peculiarly characteristic of the psychical world. Here once again, however, Castoriadis’ use of the term ‘representation’ has the potential to cause confusion. When we follow Freud in acknowledging the necessity for somatic drives to be ‘represented’ in the psyche, we do not and cannot merely mean that there must be a psychical ‘representation’ of these drives (even if this is what Freud himself intended); that is, we do not mean that the psyche ‘represents’ the drives in the sense of making an ‘image’ of them, however independently the psyche may act in its construction of such an image. It is not, after all, simply a matter of the psyche becoming ‘aware’ of the drive, much as it might make itself aware of an aspect of its environment. The drive must become active within the psyche; it must become psychical. And the only way we can imagine this possibly occurring is by the psyche creating a drive of its own (for itself ) which corresponds or relates to the stimulus of the somatic drive. What is in question is the creation of an intention or orientation. Castoriadis never says this explicitly. What he says, in fact, is that the drive “can be manifested in the psyche only by means of a representation”.52 Inasmuch as all intentions/orientations must necessarily be manifested in and through images/figures, this is undoubtedly true. But in this context, Castoriadis seems to be attempting to discuss representations as distinct from orientations and affects, and in doing so, he seems to concede in the case of affects and intentions what he denies in the case of representations. Thus, even though he observes that the problem of the ‘delegation through affect’ should be considered alongside the problem of the ‘delegation through representation’, Castoriadis goes on to suggest that “we can say that the first delegation of the drive in the psyche is the affect, particularly that of displea-

51

Castoriadis, “Logic, Imagination, Reflection,” pp. 253-254.

52

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 282.

The Human Psyche • 143

sure,” and that, while “we can find nothing in an affect, whether of pleasure or unpleasure, that could account for the form or content of a representation,” we could perhaps imagine the affect inducing “the ‘finality’ or ‘orientation’ of the representative process”.53 (Though parts of the passage from which these quotes are taken constitute an argument ad absurdum intended to demonstrate the inadequacy of Freud’s approach, it seems clear that Castoriadis intends us to take these last two points perfectly seriously.) As two essential aspects of the psychical world, neither affects nor intentions can be exempted from the general rule prohibiting the importation of the non-psychical into the psychical. If it is impossible to explain the development of representations on the basis of affects, this is also because to do so would still leave us with the problem of explaining the presence within the psyche of these affects. As to the possibility of ‘finalities’ or ‘orientations’, even in the relatively limited domain of the aim of a process of representation, being induced by an affect, not only does this contradict Castoriadis’ account elsewhere of the essential character of each of these three aspects of the world of the self, it is no more clear how an affect in and of itself could provide the form or content of an orientation than it is clear how it could do so in respect of a representation. The psyche does not merely ‘represent’ the body, it ‘duplicates’ the body— not completely and not perfectly; and not, perhaps, in the way Castoriadis intends when he suggests that the psyche is “the ‘unperceivable’ dimension of the body, ‘duplicating’ it through its entire length.”54 “The body,” writes Castoriadis, “(more exactly, the ‘actions/passions’ of the body) is source of pleasure, but this pleasure has to be ‘doubled’ by representation.”55 This means that what is pleasure for another part of the body must become pleasure for the psyche (mind) also, and in the case of the psyche this can be achieved only through representations and their inter-relations. This pleasure must in turn be linked to the relevant organ pleasure, so that the satisfaction of the psyche’s own drive at the same time satisfies the somatic drive—that is, satisfies the relevant organic needs.

53

Ibid.

54

Castoriadis, “Done and To Be Done,” p. 380.

55

Ibid.

144 • Chapter Five

The question we are (still) left with is this: given that the psyche is capable of creating representations, orientations and affects which are unrelated to physiological events elsewhere in the body, why does it link any of its representations and so on to such events? There is a domination of representational pleasure over organ pleasure, of imaginary representations over functional representations (‘representation’ in this context signifying ‘images-intentionsaffects’, rather than merely ‘images’), and there is the establishment of a relationship between the two. What we must try to account for, then, is the partial functionalisation of the human psyche. This is what Castoriadis’ account of the break up of the monadic psyche is intended to—and must—render comprehensible. Instead, the very concept of the monad as Castoriadis himself presents it would seem to make this impossible.

Chapter Six The Whole World and More: The Meaning of the Monadic Psyche and its Fate

1 The Community of Selfs and the Compulsion to Respond If the psyche links its self-formation to somatic events, this is because, on the one hand, it cannot do otherwise, and on the other, because it wishes to do precisely this. The human psyche may be a self in its own right, but it is nonetheless a self which exists within a ‘community’ of selfs. Whatever independent capacity to act and to create it possesses, the psyche is never entirely separate from this ‘community’ which is the human organism as a whole. “There is,” according to Castoriadis, “a bursting of man’s animal psychism under pressure from the inordinate swelling of the imagination.”1 This bursting “allows large elements of the animal psychobiological organisation to remain intact—for example, key elements of the ‘sensorial imagination’,” along with “a considerable amount of debris from the ensidic logic regulating the psychism as an

1

Castoriadis, “Logic, Imagination, Reflection,” p. 263.

146 • Chapter Six

animal psychism.”2 If one accepts what has already been argued concerning the relationship between psyche and soma, there can be no objection to translating this into more concrete terms. There is a continuity between the organ whose activity constitutes the human psyche and other organs and organic systems. That part of the human brain which is the seat of the psyche is not separated from other, more ‘primitive’ neurological structures. Neurons within these ‘primitive’ structures produce substances which come into contact with neurons within the higher cortex. The whole of the neurological system is bathed via the bloodstream in a bewildering array of substances produced in all the far-flung corners of the body, and these substances react with other substances and with cells, and these reactions have consequences in terms of the actions of cells. However inadequate this description may be, however it may need to be altered in view of current or future scientific knowledge, the basic point remains: the psyche is not shielded from the actions of the rest of the body, it is inevitably affected. It would perhaps be going too far to conclude from this, as Castoriadis does at one point, that “hunger announces itself to the psyche and cannot be ‘ignored’ by it . . .”3 Rather, when the hypothalamus, or the limbic system more generally, produces certain neurotransmitters in response to falling glucose levels in the blood, these neurotransmitters will set off a chain of physiological and neurological actions which will inevitably impact upon the cerebral cortex. Such an impact (‘shock’) must be dealt with in one way or another. One possible way of dealing with such an event is in fact to ignore it. But this presupposes that the psyche is already aware of this ‘shock’ (one ignores only that of which one is aware), that it has therefore formed a representation in response to it, and that this representation is such that it does not immediately or automatically result in action directed at removing the stimulus in question. The complexity of this description indicates how far the strategy of ‘ignoring’ is from ‘doing nothing’. As should have been clear by now, the concept of ‘leaning on’ does not denote a purely voluntary relationship. If the psyche leans on the body, this means that the psyche is compelled to respond, in one way or another, to the physiological shocks it suffers. We describe this as ‘leaning on’ only in acknowledg-

2

Ibid.

3

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 302.

The Meaning of the Monadic Psyche and its Fate • 147

ment of the fact that the nature of this response is not determined beforehand by the nature of the ‘shocks’ themselves. Or perhaps we should say that this response if not entirely determined by the nature of these ‘shocks’. What Castoriadis’ positing of residual ensidic/functional elements (‘debris’ seems far too dismissive a term) within the psyche suggests is that to some degree there continues to be a predetermined match between ‘shocks’ and responses. We can detect a similar suggestion when Castoriadis, in what is admittedly a deconstruction of Freud’s account of the drives, suggests that the somatic ‘push’ “must be sufficiently ‘psychoid’ to be able, so to speak, to knock at the door of the psyche,” that the body “has to send into the psyche ambassadors which, in order to be understood, must speak a language that is recognisable and “comprehensible” by the psychical”.4 This brings us back to our earlier question about the difference between the sense in which the representational activities of the selfs/psyches within a single organism may be said to ‘lean on’ one another and the sense in which the representational activity of a living being ‘leans on’ the ‘shocks’ it suffers within its environment. Insofar as the self-formation of all the selfs within a single organism is co-ordinated and subordinated to a common aim—that is, insofar as this self-formation is functional—the actions of each of these selfs will be geared to producing ‘shocks’ which will elicit predetermined responses, while they themselves will be constituted so as to respond in specific ways to specific types of ‘shock’. It does not seem so absurd then to postulate that what is received from the body is already sufficiently ‘psychoid’ to elicit at least a certain type of response from a psyche which is not entirely devoid of functional elements. The ultimate question in this connection is whether and to what extent the interaction between the body and the psyche (that is, the mind) can be understood simply in terms of ‘shocks’, or whether there is something in this case which we would be justified in describing as a transfer of ‘information’. We cannot answer this question here, nor do we need to. Whatever the precise nature of the interactions between body and psyche, these do not consist in the passage from one to the other of representations (or of affects or intentions). These psychical elements must be created and re-created by the psyche for which they are to exist. What we have now concluded is that the psyche

4

Castoriadis, “Logic, Imagination, Reflection,” pp. 253-254.

148 • Chapter Six

must employ its imaginative capacities to respond to those ‘shocks’ which it suffers by virtue of its connection with and participation in the life of the human organism. But this does not yet explain why the psyche should create drives of its own corresponding to somatic drives, why it should ‘duplicate’ the body rather than merely representing it.

2

The Myth of the Monad

The ‘Omnipotence’ of the Unconscious The answer which Castoriadis’ work suggests is that this is precisely what the psyche initially does in response to all ‘shocks’. ‘Representation’ in the everyday sense of the term, the construction of a figure which ‘stands for’ something else, something ‘other’ and ‘external’, is secondary. The psyche is and always will be what it figures/forms; its creation of forms is a selfformation. At a certain stage in its development, however, a distinction is introduced between those figures/forms which are purely internal and those which relate to external events and objects. If it is to exist for the psyche, this distinction must be a creation of the psyche itself. The psyche must come to represent certain components of its representational world as ‘belonging to’ itself and others as ‘standing for’ things beyond itself. Prior to the achievement of such a distinction, everything that exists as part of the representational world is equivalent in this respect. There is no ‘self’ in our sense of the term, nor is there a ‘world’; there is only what the psyche makes/is. Castoriadis describes this original state in the following manner. What can exist as ‘perception’, in the absence of an index of reality or realitytesting, can only be simply ‘perception’, that is, self-representation—not as the representation of an ‘inside’ distinct from and in opposition to an ‘outside’, but the representation, prior to this distinction, of everything (as) self, of self (as) everything, the words in parenthesis serving to indicate the powerlessness of our waking thought to express this ‘state’.5

5

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 293.

The Meaning of the Monadic Psyche and its Fate • 149

This is what Castoriadis has dubbed the ‘monad’ or ‘monadic psyche’. As the above description indicates, the crucial difference between this original psyche and its subsequent forms is the absence of an index of reality or reality-testing. The problem of explaining the subsequent division and differentiation of the monadic psyche—its ‘breaking up’, as Castoriadis terms it—is therefore the problem of the emergence of reality-testing, or of a reality principle. As we know, the alternative to such a reality principle is, in Freud’s view, the pleasure principle. For Freud, the disruption of the universal reign of the pleasure principle is explicable by reference to the unavoidable impact of the external world upon the psyche.6 Castoriadis’ account rules out so simple an explanation. Castoriadis links the concept of the domination of representational pleasure over organ pleasure with a postulated omnipotence of the monad’s representational activity which he deduces from the supposed omnipotence of Unconscious thought. The argument is something like this: if neither representations nor affects are tied to real referents via a necessary association with physiological events (shocks), an imagined satisfaction of physical desires such as hunger should serve as well for the psyche as their ‘real’ satisfaction. Better, for in the former case the satisfaction is dependent on the psyche alone and is unrestricted by physical circumstance; that is, the actual presence of food. This should make the psyche omnipotent with regard to its own pleasure. This omnipotence is particularly important when we consider the early development of the individual. Castoriadis likes to cite the example of anorexic infants, for whom, it is to be supposed, the imaginary satisfaction of hunger has replaced its physical satisfaction so completely that real food is ignored.7 For Castoriadis, therefore, “Somatic needs ‘explain’ nothing; hunger announces itself to the psyche and cannot be ‘ignored’ by it—but it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition . . . The canonical ‘response’ to need is hallucination and phantasmatic satisfaction; it occurs in and through imagination, and in an

6

S. Freud, “Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning” in On

Metapsychology: the Theory of Psychoanalysis, The Pelican Freud Library Vol. 11, trans. ed. J. Strachey, ed. A. Richards, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1984. 7

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 302.

150 • Chapter Six

undetermined manner.”8 At the level of the Unconscious this omnipotence continues to reign supreme. As we know, Freud regarded all phantasies and dreams as wish-fulfillments, the psychical satisfaction of desires which, for one reason or another, cannot be satisfied in reality. According to Castoriadis, “for the Unconscious the question is not that of transforming ‘external reality’ (about which it knows nothing) but that of transforming the representation thereof so as to render it ‘pleasing’.”9 This prompts a series of questions. Why should pleasure not always be guaranteed? Why should displeasure ever be experienced? Why should the psyche relinquish its omnipotence with respect to its own pleasure to the extent that it does? Why should we not all die of anorexia as infants? Why should the domination of representational pleasure over organ pleasure not have led to the immediate extinction of our species? Castoriadis suggests that, given that the Unconscious can in principle always form a pleasing representation, whenever such a representation is not formed this is attributable to another psychical instance opposing the Unconscious in this endeavour.10 However, this merely shifts the problem to that of explaining why, given that there are a multiplicity of psychical instances, any of these instances should not only relinquish its own omnipotence but oppose the ‘imaginary’ satisfaction of desires on the part of others. I believe that Castoriadis’ argument to this point is open to criticism on the following grounds. First, he has a rather exaggerated view of the power of Unconscious thought, which he transfers unproblematically to the monadic psyche—which is, as it were, all Unconscious. But the Unconscious (or the Id—the precise details of the topography are unimportant) exists as part of a pluralised and differentiated psyche, and it is difficult to imagine that it could be entirely immune to the effects and implications of this circumstance. This is betrayed in the contradiction contained in Castoriadis’ description of the Unconscious as transforming the representation of external

8 9 10

Ibid. Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 151. Ibid.

The Meaning of the Monadic Psyche and its Fate • 151

reality so as to render it pleasing when it apparently ‘knows nothing of’ this external reality. It is as wrong to suggest that the Unconscious ‘knows nothing’ of external reality as it is to suggest that it ‘knows nothing’ of time. In both cases what is in question is neither total ignorance nor the absence of concern (if the Unconscious represents reality as other than what it is, this is because it cares about this reality: it wants it to be otherwise), but a blithe refusal to abide by the rules governing the representation of these ‘domains’ or ‘qualities’ by other psychical instances. The ‘reality’ the Unconscious knows about it knows only as a representation, as an image, which can therefore be altered ‘at will’. But the need to alter such representations, their appearance and reappearance within a representational world in which the Unconscious clearly participates, shows how far the Unconscious is from being omnipotent and how much, on the contrary, what power it has is the result of a perpetual struggle for control over this representational world. One could perhaps claim this as support for Castoriadis’ position in that it seems to demonstrate that the Unconscious would be omnipotent were it not for the independent activity of other psychical instances. The logic of such an argument is somewhat tenuous, however. Just because the Unconscious strives against others for mastery over a representational world which it to some degree shares with these others does not prove that it would have the total mastery it craves if those others were no longer present to oppose it. In any case, insofar as Castoriadis’ attribution of representational omnipotence to the monadic psyche is inferred from the supposed omnipotence of Unconscious thought processes, any doubt thrown on the latter must also cast its shadow upon Castoriadis’ inference.

The Unsocialisable Psyche and the Lack of Distinction between the Imaginary and the Real All this misses a crucial point, however. What we are supposedly dealing with in the form of the monadic psyche is a psyche prior to the emergence of a reality principle as distinct from the pleasure principle; prior, therefore, to the emergence of an Ego distinct from an Id; and above all, prior to the establishment of a distinction between ‘imaginary’ representations and those representations which are responses to ‘shocks’. Castoriadis at one point describes

152 • Chapter Six

himself as diverging from Fichte in that, whereas for Fichte the imagination (the self ) “is the capacity to posit an image starting from a shock,” for him the imagination is the capacity to posit images “starting from nothing at all.”11 My point is that for the monadic psyche as Castoriadis describes it there can be no distinction between these two types of image formations. We would distinguish between them on the basis of their origin—not on the basis of their having different creators, but on the basis of these acts of creation being initiated in different ways. Here, however, we are discussing a psyche for whom there is no distinction between what comes from outside and what comes from inside, a psyche for whom everything that ‘is’ belongs—not to itself, for there is not yet any ‘self’ distinct from a ‘not self’ to whom it might belong in this exclusive sense, but in the sense that it belongs unproblematically within the totality of what is. Castoriadis rightly observes that the real enigma in relation to the monad is the emergence of separation.12 But whereas Castoriadis locates this enigma around the socialisation of the psyche, if not equating the break-up of the psychical monad with socialisation, then at least suggesting that socialisation plays a crucial role in the monad’s demise, I would argue that the being of the monad is such that it could never be ‘broken up’, ‘broken apart’ or ‘broken into’ by society, that socialisation presumes a psyche that is already divided and differentiated, and that we must therefore either look elsewhere for an explanation of this process or re-think our conception of this original monadic state. The problem with the idea of an external ‘intrusion’, generally characterised as violent by Castoriadis,13 of society into the monadic psyche is that this psyche has not yet established a distinction, and therefore a boundary, between its ‘self’ and what is alien to this ‘self’. No sooner would one ‘intrude’ into the representational world of such a psyche (that is to say, impact upon it in such a way as to force it to form a representation in response to that impact/shock) than this ‘intrusion’ would be represented as belonging to the psyche’s world every bit as much as any other component of it. I will return to this question later.

11

Castoriadis, “Logic, Imagination, Reflection,” p. 261.

12

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 301.

13

Ibid.

The Meaning of the Monadic Psyche and its Fate • 153

Castoriadis writes that “The nursling’s entire fate depends on the way in which it weaves together, and the way in which its mother leads it to weave together, phantasmatic pleasure and ‘real’ satisfaction.”14 I am suggesting that the fate of the psyche, and therefore of the nursling, depends, prior to any such weaving together, on its ability to separate and distinguish between ‘imaginary’ representations and ‘real’ representations. Of course, ‘real’ does not signify here what it will later come to signify; here it means simply ‘connected to shocks’. But in order to establish such a distinction, the psyche will need to undergo a transformation so profound that we could no longer describe at as ‘monadic’ in the sense Castoriadis gives the term. It will need at least to begin to establish a principle of reality-testing, and therefore to represent a ‘reality’ distinct and separate from itself. (The precise details of this process need not concern us here.) It will never achieve a complete separation of these types of representation. After all, its constitution of a ‘world’ distinct from its ‘self’ cannot be anything other than an imaginary creation. There will always be a profound intermingling of these two types of representation, but alongside this intermingling there will be a struggle between them; and this is what could not have been possible prior to their at least partial separation and distinction. This struggle is what Castoriadis refers to as the domination of representational pleasure over organ pleasure; it is a struggle internal to the psyche.

The Primal Phantasy and the ‘Self that is All’ The first example of this struggle we encounter, prior to any question of sublimation, is the struggle between phantasmatic pleasure and ‘real’ satisfaction. As we have seen, Castoriadis rejects the idea that hunger can explain the break up of the psychical monad because “The canonical ‘response’ to need is hallucination and phantasmatic satisfaction . . .” What this misses is the fact that phantasying as a substitute for ‘real’ satisfaction presupposes the recognition of a distinction between the two. To explore this question further we will need to follow Castoriadis’ argument in a bit more detail.

14

Castoriadis, “Done and To Be Done,” p. 380.

154 • Chapter Six

Castoriadis’ introduction of the notion of the monadic psyche follows from his critique of Freud’s conception of phantasying and hallucinatory satisfaction, which Castoriadis regards as obscuring the spontaneous and undetermined nature of the imagination. As Castoriadis explains, Freud traces the activity of phantasying back to the division and differentiation of psychical processes consequent upon the introduction of a reality principle. “With the introduction of the reality principle one species of thought-activity was split off; it was kept free from reality-testing and remained sub-ordinated to the pleasure principle alone. This activity is phantasying, which begins already in children’s play, and later, continued as day-dreaming, abandons dependence on real objects.”15 According to Freud, before this split, when “the state of psychical rest was originally disturbed by the peremptory demands of internal needs . . . whatever was thought of (wished for) was simply presented in a hallucinatory manner, just as still happens to-day with our dream thoughts every night.”16 Castoriadis immediately finds fault with this account of psychical development. Insofar as “the hallucination borrows its elements from the ‘real’, and the primary hallucination par excellence is, for Freud, the one that palliates the absence of the mother’s breast, by positing its image as ‘real’ . . . the model of the product of the imagination [is one] which, under the pressure of drive . . . covers over a ‘deficiency’ with the reproduction of the representation (posed as equivalent to perception) of a scene of satisfaction which has an antecedent in ‘real’ perception . . .”17 For Castoriadis, as we know, this is an entirely unacceptable position. Imagination cannot be traced to perception, because it is more fundamental than perception. In order to bring out the deficiencies of Freud’s view, what Castoriadis not unreasonably asks is “just what is and of what is made the ‘state of psychic tranquillity’ to which Freud refers, and what is the representation that accompanies it”?18

15

Freud, “Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning,” p. 39, quoted

by Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 284. 16

Freud, “Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning,” p. 36, quoted

by Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 284. 17

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 284.

18

Ibid.

The Meaning of the Monadic Psyche and its Fate • 155 For if this is a psychical state, it also necessarily exists as a representation; its breaking apart by ‘internal need’ is the calling into question of this representation and, in being restored with the help of an activity of representation (whether hallucinatory or not), the aim of the psyche must betray the status quo ante to which it wishes to return.19

We should note before we proceed that this claim—that the aim of the psyche must betray the status quo ante—is valid only if we follow Freud in positing a state of psychical ‘tranquillity’ or ‘rest’ which the psyche is endeavouring to preserve or recover via its phantasying. In what follows Castoriadis endeavours to deduce a picture of this state of tranquillity; it never occurs to him to question the assumption of its existence. Given that everything Castoriadis has to say about representation and the psyche, as well as the overall tenor of his philosophical approach, would suggest that the notion of tranquillity should be treated with the utmost scepticism, this seems an odd oversight. There is not space here to explore its origins; what I am interested in is its consequences. Castoriadis proceeds to search for a more primal form of phantasy, one which will show more clearly that original state to which the psyche wishes to return. Building on the work of Laplanche and Pontalis,20 he postulates that the fundamental features of the most primal phantasies are their organising character and the fact that it is impossible to assign the subject to any one place within them. It is not just that the subject can be identified at various moments with any of the terms within the scenario, or even with the ‘syntax’ of the scene itself. Rather, the unconscious intention staged by the phantasy is the ‘global situation’ of a fundamental lack of distinction between subject and non-subject. According to Castoriadis, this ‘lack of distinction’ is the ‘archaic trace’ of an originary phantasy. Every phantasy “containing a multiplicity of ‘distinct’ representative elements is, by definition, secondary”.21

19

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 284-285.

20

J. Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, “Fantasme originaire, fantasme des origines, orig-

ine du fantasme,” Les Temps Modernes, no. 215, April, 1964. 21

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 286.

156 • Chapter Six The phantasy can borrow from ‘experience’ whatever you like except, here again, what experience cannot lend because it does not possess it: that organisation full of significance or primary meaning for the subject, a meaning not to be found in the ‘nature’ of the elements organised but in the mode of organisation insofar as the latter, through its permutability, presentifies and figures, in and through ‘distinctions’, an indistinction or essential ‘reunification’.22

For Castoriadis, then, “the originary psychical subject is this primordial ‘phantasy’: at once the representation and investment of a Self that is All.”23

The ‘Real’ Origin of the Phantasy and its Lost Object Having arrived at the monad via an analysis of the characteristics of the most primal phantasies available to our inspection, Castoriadis proceeds to find it again via a more abstract philosophical deduction. Not only phantasies but also cultural formations are generally interpreted by psychoanalysts as compensations for some lack suffered by the psyche, an unsatisfied desire, or the desire for an object that is not, or is not any longer, obtainable. “How is it,” asks Castoriadis, “that this lack comes to be as a lack for a subject? ”24 Desire is sustained only by the lack of a desired object. How can we speak of an object that is lacking if the psyche has not first posited this object as desirable? How can an object be desirable if it has not been invested (cathected), and how can it be invested if it has never been ‘present’ in any way? Desire is always the desire of a missing object (or one that could be missing) but the missing object is constituted as such by relation to desire.25

We could, as Castoriadis admits, postulate that “the subject emerges by positing itself as desiring a given object, which is to say, by positing at the same time a given object as desirable for it.”26 But this merely leads to a more fun-

22

Ibid.

23

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 287.

24

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 288.

25

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 289.

26

Ibid.

The Meaning of the Monadic Psyche and its Fate • 157

damental question: “under what conditions can an object be constituted by the psyche as an object of desire (aside from the trivial condition that it must be ‘lacking’?”27 (As Castoriadis notes, ‘objectively’, the subject “bathes in a non-denumerable infinity of ‘lacks’.”)28 “In other words, under what conditions can a lack, a loss or a difference exist for the psyche—and be that very thing, lack, loss, difference?”29 As we know, there can be no question of this lack being bequeathed directly to the psyche by the body. The object of desire and its lack “is an anaclasis, psychical creation. . . . If there is to be a lack for the psyche, the psyche must be that which makes something be—representation— and the psyche may make something exist as ‘lacking’: this implies that it can at one and the same time posit as existing that which is not, hence that the psyche can presentify-figure it, and that it can figure it in relation to another figure, in which it is caught up: the figure or the representation ‘of itself’ (an abuse of language) as that in which ‘nothing is lacking’.”30 The ‘discovery’ of the breast as absent—and this occurs in a psychical formation which itself is undeniably ‘secondary’, riddled with distinctions and articulations—is made only in relation to and on the basis of the requirement that nothing is to be absent, nothing is to be lacking; it is only in this way that something can be posited as ‘missing’, as not being where it ought to be. This necessarily refers back to an originary mode of being of the psyche, as representing-representation to which nothing is ‘missing’, to an aimintention-tendency of figuring-presentifying (itself ) in and through representation which is always realised. To this we have certainly to associate an originary ‘affect’, these distinctions themselves (of representation, intention and affect) being simply ways of describing, in our secondary and waking language, something that precedes their possibility. At the originary level, not only can there not be any distinction between representation, intention and affect; there cannot be any ‘missing object’ and any ‘desire’, for ‘desire’ is always fulfilled—‘realised’ before it is able to be articulated as ‘desire’. . . . At the level of the originary unconscious, to say that there is an intention, an

27

Ibid.

28

Ibid.

29

Ibid.

30

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 290.

158 • Chapter Six aim, a ‘desire’ is to say ipso facto that there is a representation which is this intention as something realised, in the sole reality which exists and which counts from the psychical point of view: that in which only ‘images’ and ‘figures’ can and do exist. The indelible marks of this are manifested in ‘hallucinatory satisfaction’ as well as, in a second stage, in the organisation of the phantasy.31

I will hold off my criticisms for the time being as we follow Castoriadis further into this mystery of the monad. Here is his most comprehensive description of it. (If I quote Castoriadis extensively in relation to this topic, it is because the reader both needs and deserves to know as clearly as possible what Castoriadis intends by the monad so that s/he may better understand and assess my subsequent criticisms.) In its first ‘state’ and its first ‘organisation’—diametrically opposed to all that we understand by ‘state’ and ‘organisation’—the subject, if indeed there is a subject, can only refer to itself; a distinction with respect to itself and the rest is not and cannot be posited. To the extent that we can speak at this point of a ‘world’ of the ‘subject’, this world is at one and the same time self, proto-subject and proto-world, as they mutually and fully overlap. Here there is no way of separating representation and ‘perception’ or ‘sensation’. The maternal breast or what takes its place, is a part without being a distinct part, of what will later become the ‘own body’ and which is, obviously, not yet a ‘body’. The libido circulating between the infans and the breast is a libido of auto-cathexis. It is preferable not to speak of ‘narcissism’ in this regard, not even of ‘primary narcissism’, for this refers to a libido fixed upon itself to the exclusion of all the rest, whereas what is in question here is a totalitarian inclusion. Instead we should use Bleuler’s term of autism which was explicitly approved by Freud in the same context and with respect to the very same problem. This autism is ‘undivided’: not the autism of representation, of the affect and of the intention as separate, but a single affect which is immediately (self-) representation and the intention of the atemporal permanence of this ‘state’. In the immediate identity of what will later become a series of ‘moments’, an identity in which totality is a

31

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 291.

The Meaning of the Monadic Psyche and its Fate • 159 simple unity, in which difference has not yet emerged, being is being in this circle, and being is immediately ‘meaning’: an intention completed before any formulation and before any gap between a ‘state’ and an ‘aim’, as it is immediately the ‘existence’ of the subject for the subject. Not only the subject and the object but the ‘cupola’ which joins them are all the same: not ‘A is B’, but ‘I = am = id’ and ‘am = I = am’ and ‘id = am = id’, along with all the other possible combinations.32

In an effort to defend this vision of the original psychical state, which he admits is ‘absurd’, Castoriadis returns again to the question of the phantasy and its ‘primal scene’. The question Castoriadis poses in view of a phantasy in which one cannot assign the subject any definite place, a phantasy in which the subject neither aims at an object nor represents an object to itself, is ‘from whence does this phantasy stem and what is it attempting to reproduce?’ The subject is the scene of the phantasy (at once its elements, its organisation, ‘director’, and stage and scene in the strict sense) because the subject has been this undifferentiated monadic ‘state’. The phantasy ineluctably refers back to its origin, to a ‘state’ in which the subject is everywhere, in which everything, including the mode of coexistence, is only subject. In this sense, one could just as well say that the phantasy is the ‘object of desire’ as the ‘fulfillment of desire’—and, in fact, it is impossible in this case to state one without stating the other. . . . What desire aims at is not an ‘object’ but that ‘state’, that ‘scene’ which, when we grasp it (and we can do so, by definition, only in its derivative and secondary forms) implies not simply a ‘subject’ and ‘objects’ but a certain relation between them . . . —and it is in this relation that the meaning of the phantasy is to be found for the subject (‘objects’ being always contingent and replaceable).33

Having begun by criticising Freud for reducing phantasy and, by extension, the imagination and all its products to a reproduction of a real past experience, Castoriadis ends by doing precisely the same; the only difference is that in his case the experience in question is not perceptual, it is presentational/ representational. This is hardly surprising given that, as I have already noted,

32

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 294.

33

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 295-296.

160 • Chapter Six

he never actually questions the assumption upon which Freud’s hypothesis is based. What Castoriadis is concerned to avoid is the reduction of presentation/representation to perception; but what he unaccountably fails to see in this context is that this reduction is merely one instance of the more general reduction of the present/new/other to the past/old/same. So we find Castoriadis writing that “The subject is the scene of the phantasy . . . because the subject has been this undifferentiated monadic ‘state’. The phantasy ineluctably refers back to its origin;”34 and claiming that if the psyche originally posits itself as that from which nothing is to be absent or lacking, “This necessarily refers back to an originary mode of being of the psyche, as representing-representation to which nothing is ‘missing’.”35 What, then, has become of the notion of the psyche, or the for-itself, as that which makes unprecedented and undetermined forms/images be, which creates these forms/images and itself ‘out of nothing’? Now it would seem that if the psyche desires something this must be because the psyche previously possessed/was that ‘thing’. What for Castoriadis would be an entirely untenable assertion in relation to social desires/aims is advanced in relation to the psyche without hesitation. (One discovers the same discounting of the psyche’s capacity to create in Castoriadis’ assertion that the psyche must make “ ‘at the start’ a ‘first’ representation which must, in a certain manner, contain within itself the possibility of organising all representations—something that is formed and forming, a figure that would be the seed of the schemata of figuration; hence, in as embryonic a form as one may like, the organising elements of the psychical world that will later develop . . .”36 Granted, the psyche must emerge as an ‘organising-organisation’, the creation of its ‘first’ presentation-representation must be at the same time the creation/emergence of a capacity to present-represent. But the idea that this ‘first’ representation must contain within itself the possibility of organising all representations, that it must contain the ‘seed’ of the organising elements or schemata of figuration which will develop later, suggests a once and for all creation which ‘dooms’ the psyche to becoming only that which already exists in potential within its first created form.)

34

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 295.

35

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 291.

36

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 283.

The Meaning of the Monadic Psyche and its Fate • 161

A World Without Difference Even if we reject the supposed necessity of the deduction of a past ‘state’ or ‘mode of being’ from a current desire for that ‘state’, even if we argue that the psyche is perfectly capable of creating such a desire without first having to experience its fulfillment, we could still postulate that in this case we just happen to be dealing with a nostalgic longing for a past reality. After all, there is nothing in the idea of creation and self-creation which excludes such a possibility. However, if we encountered a social imaginary in which the aims of the contemporary society were presented as an attempt to restore the society to a state of original, undisturbed and untroubled perfection, we would have no hesitation in describing this idea of an original idyllic state as a myth. I see no reason why we should not do the same in relation to the phantasies of the psyche, and for precisely the same reason: because we have cause to doubt the possibility of such a state, because the nature of both society and psyche would seem to preclude such a mode of being. In this connection we need to ask not how the monad could cease to be, but when and under what conditions it could ever exist. Once again, an extensive quotation of Castoriadis’ account is unavoidable. The break up of the psychical monad, to be sure, leans on somatic needs; but it simply leans on these. Somatic needs ‘explain’ nothing; hunger announces itself to the psyche and cannot be ‘ignored’ by it—but it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition. . . . The canonical ‘response’ to need is hallucination and phantasmatic satisfaction; it occurs in and through imagination, and in an undetermined manner. . . . each time the ‘real satisfaction’ appears, it is represented as the manifestation, confirmation, restoration of the initial unity of the subject. . . . The availability of the breast simply re-establishes, to begin, the monadic state; it can be ‘lived’ at this period only in terms of the representations and the schemata available to the subject—and this is the only one available. . . . What takes place, on the somatic level, as the appeasement of need is understood by the psyche—in the normal case—in its own language as restoring the unity and the proto-affect indissociable from it. This is what, henceforth, will form the core of pleasure. . . . At this stage of the effective omnipotence of the psyche, it will be capable of reproducing this pleasure all alone, by reproducing the corresponding representation,

162 • Chapter Six hallucinating or phantasising the breast. Correlatively, unpleasure is the break up of the autistic monad. Hunger is certainly—or can be—what it leans on; but the absent breast does not, and cannot have the meaning of the cause of hunger, a meaning which simply does not and cannot exist at this stage. The absent breast is the negation of meaning or a negative meaning, in so far as it is the break-up of the monadic closure—insofar as it is a hole in the subjective sphere, the ablation of an essential part of the subject. . . . The ablation of the breast is unpleasure in so far as it is the tearing apart of the autistic world. It is because the first schema is perpetuated as the condition and presentification of all signification, it is because everything is always lived by the psyche in terms of the indistinguishability of I-world-sense-pleasure, that the absence of the breast can become a figure, more precisely: a constitutive component of the ‘object’ in its alteration with the latter’s ‘presence’. A border of virtual non-being begins to take shape at the boundary of representation; the polar opposition of yes/no, of reality and negation, of the possible and the actual find here their first subjective seeds, and the figure-ground schema begins to be posited as the general articulation of a ‘consciousness’ and a ‘perception’ in their embryonic state. However, from the perspective of the psyche, pleasure excludes unpleasure, identity excludes otherness. Consequently, ‘because the child so often finds it absent’, the breast ‘has to be . . . shifted to the “outside”.’ Let us say rather that an ‘outside’ is created so that the psyche can cast off into it whatever it does not want, whatever there is no room for in the psyche, non-sense or negative meaning, the breast as absent, the bad breast. It is obvious that this constitution of an embryonic object is possible only in and through the simultaneous constitution of an ‘external space’. The psyche invents-figures an outside in order to place the breast of unpleasure there. What will subsequently become ‘world’ and ‘object’ is literally a projection, which in its origin is the expulsion of unpleasure . . . Here too begins to take shape a relative articulation of the three ‘moments’ of psychical processes, representation, affect, intention; for only in this way can an intention be directed towards a positive affect and deflected from a negative affect, by being coordinated with the corresponding representations which begin to be distinguished as opposing.37

37

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 302-304.

The Meaning of the Monadic Psyche and its Fate • 163

We have already concluded that the psyche’s awareness (representation) of hunger and other somatical drives is only explicable on the basis of a substantial continuity between psyche and soma—a view which Castoriadis endorses. The psychical monad . . . is, to be sure, an ‘aspect’ of the living body or, if one prefers, it is this body as forming/self-forming, as figuring/self-figuring for itself. . . . For the living human body, that is to say, originally, for the psychical monad, all external calls, all external or internal ‘sensorial stimulations’, all ‘impressions’, become representations, that is to say, they are ‘put into images’, and emerge as figures.38

The psyche is not shielded from these ‘impressions’ or ‘shocks’. Whenever the body craves nutrition, the psyche will be affected. However, the experience of hunger does not ‘cause’ the break up of the psychical monad, because, according to Castoriadis, the psyche is capable of satisfying itself via representation alone. Why does it do this? Why does the psyche hallucinate the breast? (Castoriadis’ case would be stronger, though ultimately no more defensible, if he were say that the psyche simply represents itself as sated. As he points out in relation to Freud’s account, ‘hallucination’ inevitably suggests something derivative and secondary.) The psyche ‘hallucinates’ the breast because it feels hunger. How, according to Castoriadis, is hunger experienced by the monadic psyche? As unpleasure, as a tearing apart of the autistic world, as “a hole in the subjective sphere, the ablation of an essential part of the subject,” as the break-up of the monad. Hunger, then, signals the demise of the monad; though initially it is not experienced as hunger, much less as the desire for a specific object, but as a generalised fracturing of the psyche’s world/self. Only later will this come to be represented as hunger and as desire for an object. It would seem from this that the monad could not survive its first experience of hunger; or, for that matter, of any somatic need or disturbance whatsoever. Castoriadis is ambivalent about this, however. After all, the monadic psyche can represent its own satisfaction; it need not rely on bodily needs being satisfied. But why would the psyche do such a thing if its ‘tranquillity’ had not already been disrupted? But no: phantasmatic

38

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 301.

164 • Chapter Six

satisfaction “occurs in and through imagination, and in an undetermined manner”. Are we to suppose, then, that the psyche provides itself with a permanent phantasmatic satisfaction, which sometimes does and sometimes does not coincide with biological satisfaction? But according to Castoriadis, the psyche does recognise a difference between this phantasmatic satisfaction and the ‘real’ satisfaction of bodily needs, for “each time the ‘real satisfaction’ appears, it is represented as the manifestation, confirmation, restoration of the initial unity of the subject. . . . The availability of the breast simply re-establishes, to begin, the monadic state”. But if this monadic state is ‘restored’ or ‘re-established’, then it must have been lost. Once it is lost, can it be restored? (We shall see later that Castoriadis believes that it cannot; but perhaps he means to say that at first it can be re-established and only later is it lost permanently.) Between the loss and the re-establishment of its monadic state, what is the psyche; that is to say, what does it represent/figure as being and as itself? The aporias to which Castoriadis’ description of the monadic psyche give rise do not end here. If the psyche does provide itself with a permanent phantasmatic satisfaction (and it is difficult to see why this should be the case, given that the psyche does not yet recognise a distinction between the phantasmatic/imaginary and the ‘real’—or, as Castoriadis puts it, between “representation and ‘perception’ or ‘sensation’;”39 that is, as long as bodily needs are met, why should the psyche represent its satisfaction via anything other than a representation of its ‘real’ state?), and if the psyche is truly omnipotent with regard to its own pleasure, then there is no reason to suppose that its tranquillity should ever be disturbed. If, on the other hand, phantasmatic satisfaction is a response to a disturbance of this tranquillity, then the monad is torn apart as soon as phantasmatic satisfaction emerges as a substitute for physiological satisfaction. Once again, if the psyche is truly omnipotent, and if its phantasmatic satisfaction could really restore or preserve its ‘unity’, then we have no way of explaining why it ever transforms itself, why it ever departs from this heavenly state. This is only explicable if the psyche is not truly omnipotent with regard to its own pleasure, if phantasmatic satisfaction is not a fully adequate substitute for physiological satisfaction, and/or if its attempt to substi-

39

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 294.

The Meaning of the Monadic Psyche and its Fate • 165

tute a phantasmatic satisfaction for a ‘real’, physiological one already entails a division and differentiation of its self/world. The answer to our question of when and under what conditions the monadic psyche could exist would therefore seem to be this: only if and so long as all bodily needs are automatically satisfied before they give rise to a disruptive stimulation of the psyche. It is difficult to imagine such a situation persisting long after an infant emerges from the selfenclosed environment of the uterus. Indeed, even in the uterus, the foetus is not immune from physiological perturbations. Of course, the actual longevity of the undisturbed monadic state is unimportant: a moment is an eternity when there is no register of time. Although it is a long way from what Castoriadis envisages, we could perhaps postulate a monadic state of the psyche which ended sometime prior to birth. Or rather, we could do so if there were not other problems associated with the concept. The most conspicuous feature of the monadic psyche described by Castoriadis is its undifferentiated character. This lack of differentiation is manifested in two ways. The first is the lack of distinction between ‘self’ and ‘world’—or rather, ‘not-self’. This indistinction coincides with the absence of any distinction between what I have called ‘imaginary’ representations and ‘real’ representations. As Castoriadis explains, “a distinction with respect to itself and the rest is not and cannot be posited. To the extent that we can speak at this point of a ‘world’ of the ‘subject’, this world is at one and the same time self, proto-subject and proto-world, as they mutually and fully overlap. Here there is no way of separating representation and ‘perception’ or ‘sensation’.”40 The second form taken by this primary lack of differentiation is, according to Castoriadis, a lack of distinction between the three aspects of the presentational/representational world. The ‘autism’ of the monadic psyche is ‘undivided’; it is: not the autism of representation, of the affect and of the intention as separate, but a single affect which is immediately (self-) representation and the intention of the atemporal permanence of this ‘state’. In the immediate identity of what will later become a series of ‘moments’, an identity in which

40

Ibid.

166 • Chapter Six totality is a simple unity, in which difference has not yet emerged, being is being in this circle, and being is immediately ‘meaning’: an intention completed before any formulation and before any gap between a ‘state’ and an ‘aim’ . . .41

I believe that these two forms of indistinction can and should be considered separately. The first merely recognises that the representation of a ‘self’ as a distinct and separate ‘domain’ within the presentational/representational world is not something that is immediately given with the notion of the self-created nature of such a ‘world’, that such a distinction cannot be assumed but must, rather, be explained. Not only is it plausible, therefore, to postulate such a state of indistinction prior to the establishment of a dichotomy between ‘self’ and ‘world’, it accords with an enormous corpus of evidence suggesting a gradual development of self-representation in children.42 In contrast, Castoriadis’ description of the second form of indistinction deserves to be regarded with the utmost scepticism, not least because it seems to contradict the basic tenets of his theoretical approach to the self and

41

Ibid.

42

I am not thinking here only of the work of psychoanalysts such as Anna Freud,

Melanie Klein, Winnicott, Horney, Erikson, or even Lacan, but also of the work of Piaget and the cognitive psychology tradition. For relatively recent psychological thought on the development of self-representation, see A. Whiten (ed.), Natural Theories of Mind: Evolution, Development and Simulation of Everyday Mindreading, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991, for a discussion of self-representation which centres specifically on the theoretical issues raised by autism, see U. Frith, Autism, Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., Blackwell, 1989, and A. M. Leslie and F. Happé, “Autism and Ostensive Communication: the Relevance of Metarepresentation,” Development and Psychology 1, 1989, pp. 205-212. Though Castoriadis’ use of the term ‘autism’ is not grounded in a knowledge of the clinical condition, it is interesting to note that recent thinking suggests that the condition is linked to a failure to form a representation of the self which sufficiently demarcates the self from its environment. The obsessive efforts of autistic individuals to meticulously monitor and/or control precisely defined aspects of their world as well as their tendency to withdraw from human contact may be interpreted as attempts to protect themselves from an environment which they cannot ignore because it cannot be ‘localised’ to a domain outside themselves. This is quite the opposite of the separation from the world which Castoriadis associates with the idea of autism.

The Meaning of the Monadic Psyche and its Fate • 167

to representation. (It is true that these tenets received their clearest formal statement in ‘The State of the Subject Today’, which was written after the section of The Imaginary Institution of Society in which he presents his most detailed discussion of the monad, but his subsequent references to the monad indicate no recognition of inconsistency. In any case, the principles embodied in these tenets are so fundamental to Castoriadis’ philosophical approach that they can hardly be said to be absent from The Imaginary Institution of Society; on the contrary, they constitute the framework for his analysis of the social institution and signification.) How are we to take seriously Castoriadis’ description of the monadic psyche as “the immediate identity of what will later become a series of ‘moments’, an identity in which totality is a simple unity, in which difference has not yet emerged,” when we know that not only does he assert that wherever the for-itself exists, from bacterium to the individual and society, “there will be representation and image, there will be affect, there will be intention,”43 but the core of his understanding of both imaging and creation implies the essential and ineluctable character of difference, of articulationorganisation, of distinction, and of otherness and the emergence of otherness, however ‘minimal’ these may be and however far their reality may fall from traditional conceptions of ‘determination’? If Castoriadis’ work teaches us anything, surely it is that notions of ‘immediate identity’ and of ‘totality as a simple unity’ are untenable. Despite all this, suppose we decided that this assertion of the ‘immediate identity’ of the monadic psyche need not contradict the assertion that the existence of an image always entails the establishment of a minimal difference between figure and ground, and therefore a ‘logical’ organisation of the image and imaging,44 that it merely concerns the distinction between representations/images, affects and intentions/desires. I would contend that this already leads to contradictions and aporias, and not merely because it contravenes the logic of our waking thought. Let us consider how Castoriadis describes the situation. We have “a single affect which is immediately representation and the intention of the atemporal permanence of this ‘state’ ”. What we have, then, is an affect-representation-intention. Let us call it

43

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 146.

44

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” pp. 145-146.

168 • Chapter Six

‘pleasure-imaging-being’. To be is to image, to image is to be, pleasure is to image, to be is pleasurable, and so on. If there is truly an ‘intention’ here, it is hardly what we would normally describe as a ‘desire’; for, as Castoriadis admits, this “ ‘desire’ is always fulfilled—‘realised’ before it is able to be articulated as ‘desire’. . . . At the level of the originary unconscious, to say that there is an intention, an aim, a ‘desire’ is to say ipso facto that there is a representation which is this intention as something realised, in the sole reality which exists and which counts from the psychical point of view: that in which only ‘images’ and ‘figures’ can and do exist.”45 Is this really an intention? Or is it, rather, a universal ‘affirmation’? If there is no gap between an intention and its fulfillment, between an ‘aim’ and the aimed-for ‘state’, if the intention does not by the least degree precede the state, and the state does not to the slightest degree diverge from the aim, how does this differ from a mere affirmation of ‘what is’? How is it, then, that this affirmation comes eventually to be denied to some of the psyche’s representations? How, in this case, can the wholeness of the representational world ever be threatened? Surely this wholeness is not and cannot be threatened by mere change. When Castoriadis talks about the intention of an atemporal permanence, this cannot refer to the preservation of the finite ‘contents’ of the psyche, for, as Castoriadis never tires of telling us, the psyche is from the beginning and essentially change, the emergence of otherness, of other figures/forms. If the protection of its contents from alteration were the psyche’s intention—or its only intention—this intention would be always and essentially unfulfilled. Rather, the wholeness of the representational world can consist only in there being no barrier to the psyche’s representing/figuring. What barrier is there? What barrier could there be? If there is no difference between what the psyche ‘wants’ and what the psyche ‘is/makes’, then it is as true to say that the psyche wants whatever it makes as it is to say that the psyche makes whatever it wants. We will never get out of this circle, and nor could the psyche—it would not wish to! Unpleasure could never emerge/be created unless there was a criterion for the form of the representational world with which the impacts of somatic stimulation interfered. Unpleasure, we must remember, is not yet

45

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 291.

The Meaning of the Monadic Psyche and its Fate • 169

‘pain’; it is just a ‘tearing apart’ of the representational world, an ‘ablation’ of a part of the self-all. But if the self-all is not fixed and finite—and how could it be since it includes both the constantly changing kaleidoscope of imaginary representations and the constantly changing ‘perceptions’ and ‘sensations’ which have not yet been distinguished from the former—what could constitute an ‘ablation’? Nothing or anything: nothing if the psyche ‘automatically’ and ‘immediately’ accommodates all and any change, anything if the psyche can accommodate only expansion and never contraction of its representational world. Castoriadis writes that “the absent breast is the negation of meaning or a negative meaning . . . a hole in the subjective sphere, the ablation of an essential part of the subject”.46 But if this is so, then surely the absence of any aspect or quality of the environment would have precisely the same effect: the absence of light or of darkness, of heat or of cold, the slightest alteration of perspective, the slightest movement of air. Any change, since all change entails the disappearance of some quality of sensation/perception. But we are forgetting the possibility of ‘hallucinatory’ representation. Once experienced/represented, every sensation/perception can be re-presented. But now we are back where we began, for if this were really true, or if it did not entail a shock which necessarily led to a division and differentiation of the psyche, and hence the demise of the monad, then we could never imagine the psyche having to relinquish its state of monadic bliss.

3

The Impossible Object of Desire

The Union of Determinacy and Indeterminacy These interrogations could continue indefinitely, but the foregoing will, I hope, be sufficient to suggest that we would do better to pursue a different route. As is so often the case, Castoriadis’ work itself points the way to an alternative method of approaching the problem, though Castoriadis sees it not as an alternative but as an extension and confirmation of his theorisation of the monad.

46

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 303.

170 • Chapter Six Desire is indestructible, Freud wrote after Sophocles and Plato, and one may wonder why. The only possible reply is that, in its essential form, it is unrealisable. But what, in desire, is unrealisable? . . . In psychical reality all desires are not fulfillable, they are always fulfilled. How could the Oedipal desire be said to be unrealisable, when it is constantly realised by every Oedipal dream? The sole unfulfillable (and for this reason indestructible) desire for the psyche is the one which aims, not at what could never be presented in the real, but at what could never be given, as such, in representation—that is to say, in psychical reality. What is missing and will always be missing is the unrepresentable element of an initial ‘state’, that which is before separation and differentiation, a proto-representation which the psyche is no longer capable of producing, which has always served as a magnet for the psychical field as the presentification of an indissociable unity of figure, meaning and pleasure. . . . Once the psyche has suffered the break up of its monadic ‘state’ imposed upon it by the ‘object’, the other and its own body, it is forever thrown off-centre in relation to itself, oriented in terms of that which is no longer, which is no longer and can no longer be. The psyche is its own lost object.47

We must reformulate this passage. If desire is indestructible, this is because, in its essential form, it is unrealisable. The sole unfulfillable (and for this reason indestructible) desire for the psyche is the one which aims, not at what could never be presented in the real, but at what could never be given, as such, in representation—that is to say, in psychical reality. What is missing, what has always been missing and will always be missing is the presentification of an indissociable unity, or immediate identity before separation and differentiation, a proto-representation which the psyche has never been able to produce, but which has, nevertheless, always served as a magnet for the psychical field. What the psyche ‘remembers/reconstructs’ in its phantasies as its initial monadic state is what the psyche has always wished it could make/be, but which it never was. The lost object of the psyche is the psyche itself (or the world itself, since for the psyche, there is initially no difference between the two); not as it once was in reality, but as it has always wished it could be.

47

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 296-297.

The Meaning of the Monadic Psyche and its Fate • 171

This necessarily denies what Castoriadis constantly affirms: that the psyche is capable of realising all and any desires via representation. This is not to deny the extraordinary creative power of the radical imagination; it is simply to admit that there are limits to this power, the chief of these being that the psyche cannot create a form/image that is free of the essential characteristics of form per se. The psyche cannot create a form which is free of separation and difference. The psyche cannot create an image in which there is absolutely no distinction between figure and ground. The psyche cannot create a ‘simple unity’ or an ‘immediate identity’. The indeterminacy of the world of the Unconscious psyche may be incomparably greater than any indeterminacy we are able to encounter or conceptualise, but it is not and cannot be a complete indeterminacy. Many ‘things’, ‘objects’, ‘terms’, and so on, which are subsequently identified in an attributive or predicative manner may be, as Castoriadis asserts, absolutely the same in their initial represented form.48 What cannot be ‘absolutely the same’ is the whole. It would be equally true to say that the psyche cannot create a ‘simple unity’ or an ‘immediate identity’ because it cannot create an absolute determinacy. The vision of monadic wholeness is peculiarly impossible in that it demands both of these contrary and contradictory impossibilities simultaneously. The monad is ‘one-all’: the ‘one’ signifies an absolute identity of its ‘contents’ (which cannot be properly designated as such, given that there can be no difference between these ‘contents’ and that in which they are ‘contained’), the ‘all’ signifies the complete absence of limits or boundaries. The monad is the unattainable goal of a complete determinacy which coincides with a perfect indeterminacy. If the psyche can figure/image in its deepest phantasies only something suggesting such a coincidence of characteristics, this is because their actual coincidence is impossible. That the psyche should desire such a coincidence of determinacy and indeterminacy is not terribly surprising. We have already traced these dual tendencies to the essentially dual character of any ongoing self-creation. We have also seen how this conflict is played out in the social-historical field, in the tension between the instituting and instituted aspects of society. If the psyche

48

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 297.

172 • Chapter Six

seems closer to realising this unrealisable goal than society ever is, this reflects the superior plasticity of the psyche and its self-formation.

Closure and Self-referral Castoriadis describes the psyche in its original, monadic state as ‘closed’, and he has made use of this notion of ‘monadic closure’ throughout his writings to explain certain important characteristics, not only of the psychical world but of the social world. We have already seen how he traces the origins of the ‘madness of reason’ to this monadic state. It is also crucial to his understanding of the relationship between psyche and society. The psychical condition for human beings’ ‘need’ for society is to be sought in the nature of the initial psychical monad, which is closed upon itself, absolutely egocentric, all-powerful and lives in the felt experience of the original identity that I = pleasure = meaning = everything = being. Ich bin die Brust. There one finds the prototype of meaning for human beings. This meaning is forever lost due to the fact that we have exited from the monadic world of psychical self-sufficiency, though we always try to find it once again in a mediated way, by means of instituted social imaginary significations, through religion, philosophy, or science. Society always furnishes us with a substitute for it that is nevertheless incapable of measuring up to the initial prototype.49

It is quite possible to preserve the essential elements of this view without supposing that this state of ‘original identity’ corresponds to a real experience. There is merit in the notion that the form of social meaning partially answers a demand in the psyche that all meaning should relate to the self; but if we also maintain, as Castoriadis does, that humanity emerges as “representational/affective/intentional flux which tends to relate everything to itself and to live everything as constantly sought after meaning,” and that this meaning “is essentially solipsistic, monadic,”50 we will find ourselves plung-

49

C. Castoriadis, “Psychoanalysis and Philosophy,” trans. David Ames Curtis, in

The Castoriadis Reader, ed. David Ames Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 357-358. 50

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 311.

The Meaning of the Monadic Psyche and its Fate • 173

ing into ever deeper mires of self-contradiction. Solipsism in the true sense is entirely alien to the monadic state as Castoriadis first describes it. Although Castoriadis puts the ‘self’ in parentheses when he speaks of the original presentations-representations of the psyche, though he says that this presentation-representation is neither self nor world, but proto-self and proto-world, he does not seem to fully believe what he says. He accords the representation of ‘self’ an originary role which it cannot occupy because it does not originally exist. It is, for all the reasons I have already advanced, impossible to conceive of the psyche as ‘separated’ or ‘cordoned off’ from the body. Nor is it cordoned off or separated from its environment, although this seems to be what Castoriadis imagines when he talks of the “closed self-representation of the originary psychical monad”.51 If this were a ‘self-representation’ which excluded representation of the world, then it might be reasonable to describe it as closed; but Castoriadis rules out such an interpretation as soon as he describes the monad as a representation in which there is no distinction between self and world. Castoriadis contends that, in its initial ‘state’, the psyche—or subject—“can only refer to itself; a distinction with respect to itself and the rest is not and cannot be posited.”52 But if there is no distinction between itself and the rest, how and in what sense can the psyche/subject refer to itself? In such a circumstance, what difference could there be between referring to oneself and referring to the world? More fundamentally, in the absence of distinctions how and in what sense could there be any possibility of ‘referring to’? Perhaps the ‘closure’ Castoriadis speaks of need not depend on a capacity for self-referral. Perhaps ‘closure’ signifies something more fundamental than this. Castoriadis also speaks of closure in relation to the for-itself generally. In this broader context, he argues that closure is a universal characteristic of the for-itself. “[T]he living being exists in and through closure. In a sense, the living being is a closed ball. We do not enter into the living being. We can bang on it, shock it in some way, but in any event we do not enter into it: whatever we might do, it will react after its own fashion.”53 And again, in the same vein:

51

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 316.

52

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 294.

53

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 149.

174 • Chapter Six

“The for-itself may be thought of as an enclosed sphere—that is what closure means—whose diameter is approximately constant.”54 According to Castoriadis, the peculiarity of the human subject (that is, the autonomous subject) is that it is capable of spontaneously dilating the sphere of its self/world and of questioning the laws of its closure. Even so, however “immensely enlarged” this sphere of subjectivity may become, it remains closed (though Castoriadis goes so far as to describe it as “pseudoclosed,” which is of course to say not really closed at all; but in itself this is a minor inconsistency).55 There are many difficulties associated with this use of the term ‘closure’. The most pertinent here is that if all selfs are ‘closed’ because all selfs ‘react after their own fashion’, then closure cannot be a distinguishing characteristic of the monadic psyche. This ‘reacting in its own fashion’ stems from the fact that the self knows/experiences only what it makes/is. But this is the sine qua non of the for-itself, of subjectivity. The psyche would answer such a description just as much after the break-up of its monadic state as before; indeed, it would answer this description whatever degree and complexity of internal differentiation and articulation it might achieve. There are, of course, other possible interpretations of ‘closure’, and Castoriadis employs the term in these other senses elsewhere in his work, and even in relation to the monad. Thus, ‘closed’ can mean ‘unresponsive’ and ‘unchanging’. It is with such an interpretation in mind that Castoriadis argues that heteronomous societies are characterised by a ‘closure’ of signification. An algebraic field is said to be closed when every algebraic equation that can be written in this field, with the elements of this field, can be solved with elements from this same field. In a society in which there is a closure of signification, no question that can be raised within this system, within this magma of significations, is lacking a response within this same magma. The Law of the Ancestors has a response to everything, the Torah has a response to everything, as does the Koran. And if one wanted to proceed any further,

54

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” p. 169.

55

Castoriadis, “The State of the Subject Today,” pp. 169–170.

The Meaning of the Monadic Psyche and its Fate • 175 the question would no longer have any meaning within the language of the society in question.56

I will examine this notion of the closure of signification further in a subsequent chapter. Here we must ask how this might apply to the psychical monad. The problem is that this type of ‘closure’, too, is inconceivable without some degree of self-referral. If the psyche cannot originally be self-referential, if it does not distinguish between ‘elements’ which it creates in response to external stimuli and those which are entirely spontaneous and unrelated to anything beyond themselves, it is difficult to see how ‘closure’ in this sense could be amongst its characteristics. A culture would be ‘closed’ in the sense Castoriadis intends if it refused to recognise anything which could not be incorporated into its own ‘system’ of meaning without alteration to that system, if it therefore refused to respond to such experiences or ideas except to consign them to the status of ‘error’, ‘evil’ or ‘non-sense’. How could this apply to a self which lacks a representation of its own identity, and which therefore has no criteria for distinguishing ‘self’ from ‘other’?

The Emergence of Monadic Closure, and the Originary Aims of the Self-creating Psyche It happens that Castoriadis mostly speaks of the closure of the monad in discussions of the form of the psyche subsequent to the break-up of its original autistic state. To the fracture of its world, of itself, as that which was experienced at one stage, the breaking-in performed by the separate object and by the other, the subject responds by reconstituting interminably in phantasies this initial world, if not in its now inaccessible untouched unity, at least in its characteristics of closure, mastery, simultaneity and the absolute congruence between intention, representation and affect.57

56

C. Castoriadis, “The Greek and the Modern Political Imaginary,” trans. David

Ames Curtis, in World in Fragments, ed. David Ames Curtis, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997, pp. 86-87. 57

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 296.

176 • Chapter Six This being of the psyche is governed at one of its poles by the primal unconscious, which is the monadic core of the psyche and which has never been repressed but instead rendered impossible—unrepresentable—from the moment a world of diversity and of displeasure has been set up and which, unrepresentable in person, is presentified and figured in and through the very modalities of the deepest psychical processes. . . . The dynamic unconscious in the usual sense of the term, or the whole of what Freud calls the primary processes, will gradually be peopled by all of the creations of the psyche that have been repressed, and its organisation will undergo numerous reworkings. But it will always be dominated by that which formed the psyche’s initial core, the psychical monad, which, absent as such from the unconscious, will mark everything that occurs there with its seal. It is this desire, master of all desires, of total unification, of the abolition of difference and of distance, manifested above all as being unaware of difference and distance, which, in the field of the unconscious, arranges all the representations that emerge in the direction of its own lines of force.58

Impossible, absent and unrepresentable, the ‘monadic core’ of the primal unconscious governs and dominates the psyche in its deepest recesses. Two comments need to be made in response to this astonishing scenario. If the psyche is ever able to be governed by an aim which it cannot achieve—and is there any reason to assume that it cannot?—then there is no reason to assume the realisation of this aim in order to explain its existence. If the primal unconscious or ‘monadic core’ need not be present ‘as such’, if it need not be representable—but what is the difference in this case between representation and existence?—in order for it to have an effect upon psychical processes, why need we assume that it ever existed? We need to distinguish between this impossible aim and the actuality of psychical existence, and we need to distinguish this aim from characteristics of closure and self-referral which need not be originary and which can become expressions of this aim only in a context which is, even judging by Castoriadis’ own account, secondary. Considering all this, would it not make more sense to view this ‘monadic core’ as a response to the psyche’s division and differentiation, a response

58

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 298.

The Meaning of the Monadic Psyche and its Fate • 177

which neither reproduces nor continues nor is modeled on an initial state of the psyche, but which develops the characteristics it possesses as a response to its own peculiar circumstances? Closure and mastery become possible aims for the psyche only once articulation has emerged, only once ‘otherness’ has been represented as such in the form of an external domain of unpleasure or non-sense opposed to the ‘self’. Only from this moment may the psyche, or a portion thereof, strive to incorporate, reject, manipulate or ignore this ‘otherness’. The psyche emerges as creation and self-formation. Its originary aims are twofold, and stem from its nature as creating and self-creating. The psyche wishes to create, to figure, to make presentations/representations; but since this desire does not cease with the creation of any specific figures or forms, the psyche also wishes not to be bound within or limited by those figures/forms which it creates. (The ‘autonomisation’ of the psyche reflects this refusal to be bound, the pyche’s ceaseless struggle to go beyond the limitations which its self-formation imposes upon it. We must, as I have already suggested, posit a similar tendency in all selfs. The peculiarity of the human psyche is that it is more successful in this struggle. This may be due to the relative strengths of the opposing tendencies, or it may reflect the fact that the substantial nature of the human psyche precludes that degree of determinacy which we witness elsewhere.) The psyche wishes to determine and to be beyond all determinations. It cannot succeed entirely in either of these aims, and it fails in one to the extent that it succeeds in the other.59 Having identified this interplay of determination and indeterminacy as a crucial theme in relation to the psyche, in relation to society, and in relation to the self generally, we now need to examine the issues this raises at the most fundamental level. Castoriadis’ attempts to deal with these issues centre on the concept of ‘magma’.

59

There are substantial affinities, but also important differences, between the view

of the self I am proposing here and that advanced by Fichte. On the whole, I believe that Castoriadis’ analysis of the self would benefit from a closer examination of Fichte’s thought.

Chapter Seven Magmas

1

Being as Magma

To understand what Castoriadis means by ‘magma’ it will be best to begin with what Castoriadis himself offers by way of an intuitive description. We have to think of a multiplicity which is not one in the received sense of the term but which we mark out as such, and which is not a multiplicity in the sense that we could actually or virtually enumerate what it ‘contains’ but in which we could mark out in each case terms which are not absolutely jumbled together. Or, we might think of an indefinite number of terms, which may possibly change, assembled together by an optionally transitive pre-relation (referral); or of the holding-together of distinct-indistinct components of a manifold; or, again, of an indefinitely blurred bundle of conjunctive fabrics, made up of different cloths and yet homogeneous,

everywhere

studded

with virtual and evanescent singularities. And we have to think of the operations of identitary logic as simultaneous, multiple dissections which transform

180 • Chapter Seven or actualise these virtual singularities, these components, these terms into distinct and definite elements, solidifying the pre-relation of referral into relation as such, organising the holding-together, the being-in, the being-on, the being-proximate into a system of determined and determining relations (identity, difference, belonging, inclusion), differentiating what they distinguish in this way into ‘entities’ and ‘properties’, using this differentiation to constitute ‘sets’ and ‘classes’.1

Let us focus first on the question of what Castoriadis calls ‘virtual and evanescent singularities’. It would not be overstating the matter to suggest that the significance of the concept of ‘magma’ ultimately hinges on these two characteristics and the connection between them. From the outset, however, we need to recognise that such a description is meaningful only in relation to ensidic logic-ontology. We describe a ‘singularity’ as ‘virtual’ only because we are measuring it against the demands this logic-ontology makes with regard to all entities, demands which the ‘actual’ phenomena fail to meet. A ‘singularity’ is ‘virtual’, therefore, if it is not determined sufficiently to be distinct and separable from that which surrounds it—or rather, from that which we would wish to see as ‘surrounding’ it, as extraneous or accidental, but which we in fact find to be essential to the constitution of the ‘singularity’ in question. Similarly, it is ‘evanescent’ if its continual transformation makes it impossible for us to identify or assign it a unique and veridical form, either as a permanent sub-structure or as a fixed and pre-established end. We may illustrate the latter point by turning once more to the example of dreams. We have seen that for Freud the interpretation of a dream must remain incomplete because the dream-thoughts themselves remain without any definite endings; they remain, as Castoriadis puts it, without a conclusion. “The meaning of the dream as this is provided by interpretation is what completes, determines and brings to a conclusion ‘thoughts’ which, of themselves, cannot come to a conclusion.”2 Underlying even this description is the assumption that thoughts—‘real’ thoughts, ‘genuine’ thoughts—do and must come to a conclusion, that they must be finished, completed; or at least that they must be developing towards completion. The scandalous aspect of

1

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 344.

2

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 280.

Magmas • 181

dreams (from an ontological perspective) is that this is never so. Each dream is a vast and intricate web of meaning, endless, borderless, and ultimately goal-less—goals may emerge within the dream, but these goals, like other ‘aspects’ or ‘elements’, emerge, disappear and metamorphose without ever constituting anything like a single overarching and ruling telos. The meaning of the dream provided by interpretation is not the reconstruction of the dream’s own definitive meaning; this would be to suppose that the dream was in itself ‘becoming’ this meaning. But the dream is not ‘becoming’ anything, not in this sense of the term. Change such as that which we encounter in dreams—change as creation and transformation—inevitably confronts us with the indefinite and the indistinct. In the face of this, traditional—that is, ensidic—logic-ontology seeks to domesticate this indeterminacy by tying it to the determinate. This is the traditional significance of the concept of ‘becoming’. Whatever is indeterminate is construed as transitional, a temporary disorder lying between one determinate form and the next. This strategy fails, however, as soon as we accept the reality of dreams as we actually encounter them rather than as we would wish them to be. The dream (like representation more broadly, and like social imaginary significations) simply is this continual and interminable formation and transformation. This is its mode of being. The indefinite and indistinct forms which emerge within—or rather, as—the dream are not the echoes of ‘full’ (that is, determinate) forms underlying a superficial confusion; they are neither ghosts of past forms nor embryonic versions of future ones. It is for this reason that we must be wary of the concept of ‘becoming’ wherever we may encounter it, including, as we shall see, in Castoriadis’ own writings. We have seen that such a mode of being cannot be accommodated within a traditional logic-ontology which equates ‘being’ with ‘determinacy’, and that faced with the reality of indeterminate being this logic-ontology collapses. Change which is not mere becoming—generation or degeneration, development or regression—but creation or the emergence of new forms precludes determinacy in the full and absolute sense demanded by this traditional logicontology. We have also seen how the indeterminacy we encounter in the realms of the human psyche and the social-historical forces us to reconsider the meaning of ‘being’ generally. Being is creation, formation and transformation, a ‘determining’ which never results in the sort of determinacy imagined by traditional ontology. This is the purpose of the concept of magma. It is an

182 • Chapter Seven

attempt to imagine and to describe—albeit in a halting and largely negative fashion—such a mode of being. Everything I have tried to express up to this point about the indeterminacy of Being could be summed up in the assertion that Being is a magma: a magma of magmas, or a ‘supermagma’.3 This universalisation of the concept of magma—though it seems not only reasonable, but unavoidable—immediately prompts two serious objections. Is this development not governed by the very logic to which it is ostensibly opposed? Does ‘magma’, universalised in this fashion, not constitute as monolithic a definition of ‘being’ as that which it is supposed to supersede? In order to answer these objections, we need first to review the logic which leads to the expansion of the concept. Faced with the monolithic traditional definition of ‘being’ as ‘determinacy’, Castoriadis at first insists that we need to recognise a plurality of modes and, therefore, meanings of being. However, as we have seen, it soon becomes obvious that it is impossible to posit a meaning of ‘being’ which is other than ‘determinacy’ without dismantling the entire edifice of traditional ontology. The acknowledgment of a single example of nondeterminate being immediately undermines the general association of being with determinacy: obviously, ‘being’ cannot mean ‘being determined’ if there exists some entity or phenomenon whose mode of being is non-determinate. Castoriadis’ argument does not halt at this point, however. He is not content merely to show that ‘being’ is not equivalent to ‘being determined’; he argues that ‘being’ essentially and universally precludes determinacy, that all Being is non-determinate. As our previous discussions of this issue have shown, this conclusion is virtually forced upon us by the concept of determinacy itself. When taken seriously, the notion of determinacy binds the determination of each to the determination of all. This means that if any entity or ‘domain’ is non-determinate, no entity or ‘domain’ can be determinate. Clearly, the positing of a general indeterminacy is provoked by the logic of determinacy itself. Does this mean that it perpetuates this logic and the ontology with which it is connected? No, it does not. The objection to the logic of determinacy does not concern the validity of this logic, only the scope of

3

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” pp. 298-299.

Magmas • 183

its applicability. The implications of the concept of determinacy deduced by Kant, for instance, are not the fruits of flawed reasoning; it is just that, when applied to ‘what is’, the concept proves inadequate. Even if we concede that assuming the inherent validity of the logic of determinacy need not compromise the notion of ontological indeterminacy, questions remain. The logic of determinacy assumes a unity of Being. In relying on this logic in our critique of deterministic ontology we also assume a unity of Being. It is on the basis of this assumption that we recognise an inconsistency in the notion that some domains might be determined whilst others are not. It is this same assumption which provides the basis for the universalisation of the concept of magma. If this assumption were reducible to the logic of determinacy, we would be covertly perpetuating this logic merely by assuming such a unity of Being. Clearly, we need to ask ourselves whether this assumption can be separated from the logic of determinacy, and also whether, aside from this logic, we have sufficient reason for maintaining it. The second of these questions is of so vast a scope that we cannot hope to deal with it adequately here. The roots of the assumption of the unity of all that exists are so deep that to say that the universe is ‘one’ is already a tautology. Crudely put, what justifies the assertion that all that exists—or at least, all that we know of or might ever know of—belongs to the one universe is the possibility, if not the actuality, of interaction (however mediated) between all of the various ‘parts’ of this diversity, a possibility that is already partially realised in the fact that ‘I’ as a singular subject am able to apprehend these ‘parts’ in their diversity. Another universe would only truly be ‘other’—that is, it would only be a ‘universe’—if there were no possibility of interaction between it, or anything ‘within’ it, and anything ‘within’ our universe; which would mean, of course, that we could never become aware of its existence. Once again, we must avoid confusing interaction with determination. To reject a deterministic ontology is not to posit a state of absolute irrelation but, on the contrary, to embrace the possibility of types of relation which are non-deterministic. Having concluded that the assumption of a unity of Being is not reducible to the logic of determinacy, we must now ask whether this logic nevertheless continues to impose itself upon our conceptions of this unity. The traditional logic-ontology of determinacy equates the ‘unity’ of the universe with

184 • Chapter Seven

‘homogeneity’. This imagined homogeneity and the monolithic definition of ‘being’ as ‘being determined’ are two sides of the same coin. Does the concept of magma constitute a similarly monolithic definition of being? Unity of ‘Being’ implies unity of ‘being’, of the meaning of ‘being’. We see this clearly in the logic-ontology of determinacy. Should we expect to see the same thing in a non-deterministic logic-ontology? Yes and no. In fact we already see something which suggests the affirmative in Castoriadis’ critique of the traditional approaches to the question of the meaning of ‘being’. As we have seen, Castoriadis argues that the philosophical investigation of the nature of being has systematically ignored or marginalised those types of beings, and therefore those modes of being, which cannot be comfortably accommodated within the definition of ‘being’ as ‘determinacy’. Chief among these is, somewhat ironically, ourselves and the specific mode of being of our species. In Castoriadis’ view, it is absurd to privilege one type of being over others in this manner. Man is perhaps no more, but certainly no less of a being than galaxies or the species escheria coli. The possible “oddities” of man ought not to lessen, but rather to increase the interest in his ways of being, if only because they may shake or falsify general conceptions about “being” gathered from other domains. “Two” is no less a prime number because it has the oddity of being the only even prime number. And it is a very precious odd even prime number, if only because, by virtue of its existence, we can falsify a statement that is true in a denumerably infinite number of cases, viz.; every prime number is odd. So perhaps with man. . . . If I may attempt what is, to my mind, only half a joke, perhaps the time has come to reverse the traditional way of proceeding. . . . You remember that philosophers almost always start by saying: “I want to see what being is, what reality is. Now, here is a table; what does this table show me as characteristic of a real being?” No philosopher ever started by saying: “I want to see what being is, what reality is. Now, here is my memory of my dream of last night; what does this show me as characteristic of a real being?” . . . Why could we not start by positing a dream, a poem, a symphony as paradigmatic of the fullness of being, and seeing in the physical world a deficient mode of being, instead of looking at things the

Magmas • 185 other way round, instead of seeing in the imaginary, that is, human mode of existence, a deficient or secondary mode of being?4

The joke here is the suggestion that we adopt the imaginary as paradigmatic of being and consign all alternative modes of being to the category of the ‘deficient’ or ‘secondary’. However, as Castoriadis admits, this is only half a joke. Castoriadis’ argument is that each realm of being inaugurates a new mode of being, thus revealing another sense or meaning of ‘being’. The fact that there is more than one meaning of ‘being’ immediately falsifies any conception of being which depends upon ‘being’ having only one meaning. This does not mean that we must abandon altogether the search for some general conception of ‘being’. To take up Castoriadis’ analogy, the existence of the prime number ‘two’ does not show that it is absurd to seek characteristics common to all prime numbers, that the concept of a prime number is a mere artefact with no relationship to the object it purports to define. So, too, with ‘being’. To speak of ‘modes’ of being, or even ‘meanings’ of being, is already to assume a commonality underlying the diversity. This terminology is only partially a consequence of the logic imposed on our thought by the exigencies of language. It is no mere artefact. If it were, it would make no sense to endeavour, as Castoriadis does, to modify our understanding of being within domains other than the human in light of what the mode of being of the human species teaches us. What, then, is the difference between a general conception of being of this kind and that which we have rejected in traditional thought? The difference derives from the content of the concept of ‘magma’ itself. Traditional logic-ontology posits a unity of Being which is equivalent to homogeneity and which coincides with a univocal meaning of ‘being’ (= ‘being determined’). This univocality is part and parcel of the logic of determinacy. The concept of determinacy is inherently univocal. Indeterminacy, as the mere negation of determinacy, is already essentially multivocal: the only meaning it excludes is ‘determinacy’. ‘Magma’, as we shall see, does

4

Castoriadis, “The Imaginary: Creation in the Social-Historical Domain,” p. 5.

186 • Chapter Seven

not designate simple indeterminacy. However, inasmuch as indeterminacy is essential to the meaning of ‘magma’, ‘magma’ may be said to be essentially multivocal. In fact, it is more and ultimately other than simply ‘multivocal’. ‘Magma’ designates that which inevitably escapes/exceeds all definitions by virtue of an intrinsic indeterminacy, but an indeterminacy which is not sheer formlessness. It would be closer to the truth, though still less than perfect, to describe it as a superabundance of form. The forms in question, however, are not ‘forms’ as we have traditionally understood them. They are both less and more: less because they lack the determinacy traditionally construed as essential to the notion of ‘form’; more because they are not constrained within fixed boundaries but branch out in every direction, ‘impinging’ on other ‘forms’ in ways which defy simple articulation but which never amount to mere ‘merging’. We must turn Plato on his head. Our fixed and determinate forms are but the pale shadows of the nebulous and fluid reality of form-forming Faced with such a mode of being, even the notion of multivocality seems inadequate. What we really require is a term which could convey the idea of an indeterminate multiplicity of meanings, none of which, either individually or collectively, may be regarded as encapsulating the whole. The meaning of ‘magma’ is itself a magma.

2

The Mode of Being of Magmas

Magmas and Indeterminacy Ultimately, the difference between a logic-ontology of determinacy and one centered on the concept of magma is not the presence or absence of the assumption of a unity of Being, or the connection between this unity and a unity of the meaning of ‘being’. The difference lies in how the notion of unity itself is understood and applied. As Castoriadis shows, the unity of Being conceived by traditional logic-ontology is the unity of an ensemble or set.5 In terms of logic, we may say that the identity of a set is equivalent to its definition. From an ontological perspective, however, we must say that this equivalence of the set’s identity and its definition devolves from the fact that

5

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 221-227.

Magmas • 187

the set is a fully determined object. We are able to say definitively what is and is not a member of this or that set because everything that is either is or is not a member of any given set. (Attempts to found mathematics on set theory have shown this proposition to be ultimately untenable, but it is nonetheless fundamental to the concept of a set. This merely shows that the logic of sets is inadequate for the understanding of even as apparently deterministic a field as mathematics.6 I will return to this topic in the following chapter.) This is only possible because each of these ‘elements’ (and ‘non-elements’) is itself fully determined. Because the set is a fully determined object, we can unambiguously distinguish one set from another; what is more, we can provide an exhaustive account of their differences, their commonalities and their mutual relations (that this set is itself a member of another set, that these two sets are both members of a third set, that certain sets share common members and others do not, and so on). By contrast, the very concept of magma renders the task of distinguishing one magma from another problematic. Castoriadis postulates five ‘defining’ properties of a magma. (It should be noted that Castoriadis expressly denies the value of these postulates as axioms. Indeed, their purpose for him is, in part, to demonstrate the impossibility of a formalised definition of magmas. This does not mean that they are without value as descriptions.)7 The most pertinent ones for us at this point are the second and third. M2: If M is a magma, one can mark, in M, magmas other than M. M3: If M is a magma, M cannot be partitioned into magmas.8

As Castoriadis observes, “the formulation of this second property gives rise to a question: When is a magma other than an (other) magma—or: How do you know it?”9 If an ‘object’ (which can only be designated as such, or designated at all, insofar as this question has for practical purposes already been answered) is by its very nature indeterminate, so that one cannot say in a determinate

6

Ibid.; Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” pp.

290-296. 7

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” pp. 296-299.

8

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 297.

9

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 298.

188 • Chapter Seven

fashion what ‘it’ is—and this because ‘it’ is not ‘what’ it is: that is, it is not in itself determined as ‘this’—how can one distinguish between this ‘object’ and others? Castoriadis’ postulate suggests that one can do so—and of course we do. However, one cannot do so in the manner required by ensidic logic-ontology. One can ‘mark’ the differences between one magma and another, but this procedure can never—or rather, should never—congeal into a traditionally conceived act of definition. If the being of a magma is indeterminate, the distinction between one magma and another cannot be determinate either. It is not just that the boundary between one magma and another cannot be fixed because it is liable to change with the fluid transformation of the magmas in question; it is not even a matter of the boundaries themselves being essentially indefinite, indistinct ‘regions’ where one magma imperceptibly merges into another. It is that these boundaries or regions cannot even be located as such. To mark in M a magma other than M is not to say that here, within M, M disappears and N takes its place. This is made clear by M3: the impossibility of partitioning a magma into magmas. The fact that one could mark N in M does not exclude the possibility that one might also mark M in N. The answer to the riddle—when is a magma other than another magma and how do you know it—is twofold. First, the fact that a magma is not ‘what’ it is in a determinate fashion, the fact that one cannot define its identity completely and unambiguously, does not mean that it is anything and everything (or, as traditional thought would have it, nothing). On the contrary, a magma is ‘what’ it is despite the fact that this ‘what’ is indeterminate; to say otherwise would be to assume once again that determinacy is essential to being. Thus, the constellation of imaginary significations of a society is a magma, but this magma is not the same as the magma of the imaginary significations of another society. Similarly, the magma of representations which constitute my dream of last night is not the same as the magma of representations constituting yours, nor is it the same as the magma of representations constituting a dream I had last week. Most importantly, the magma of my representations is not identical to the magma of imaginary significations of the society of which I am a member, or vice versa, nor is it identical to the magma of the structures and activities of my cerebral cortex, any more than these structures and activities are identical to the magma of sub-atomic particles and events without which they would be impossible and from which they cannot be divorced.

Magmas • 189

The second part of the answer concerns the issue of what this ‘identity’ consists in and the relationship between this and our capacity to apprehend and articulate it. We will return to this later. For Castoriadis, the significance of this second property of magmas is that it expresses the “inexhaustibility” or “indefinite potentiality” of a magma. As he observes, this inexhaustibility refers not to the “number of objects” a magma might “contain,” but rather to the “modes of being” that can be discovered therein.10 This inexhaustibility may be regarded as a corollary of the indefinite potentiality of a magma, the fact that the magma is perpetually changing, becoming other than what it was, and thereby bringing into being new types of organisation, new modes of being—in effect, giving birth to new magmas. This is the aspect Castoriadis most often focuses on. But there is another side to this inexhaustibility which we ought not ignore. The perpetual possibility of ‘discovering’ in a magma other modes of being is not due only to the fact that new modes of being are continually emerging. It also derives from the fact that whatever mode or modes of being may be said to exist at any moment are already in themselves indeterminate. The mode of being of a magma is already and essentially an ‘indefinite plurality’ of modes of being. It is true, of course, that this intrinsic indeterminacy cannot be divorced from the fact of perpetual transformation, that—to return to Castoriadis’ original description—the virtual nature of the singularities we can detect within a magma cannot be divorced from their evanescence. But this does not mean that we may conflate these two characteristics. There is a tendency in Castoriadis’ writings, which for strategic reasons focus on the need to acknowledge the reality and importance of transformation, to speak of ontological indeterminacy as though it were a mere consequence of perpetual transformation. To discourage such a view, one might endeavour to imagine that we had managed to freeze the transformative flux of Being, allowing us to examine the mode of being of some phenomenon as it is/was at a single moment. What the concept of magma implies is that even under these impossible circumstances we could not identify a determinate mode or modes of being, that we would still

10

Ibid.

190 • Chapter Seven

be confronted with an indefinite plurality of modes. Our ‘snapshot’, however brief, would still reveal a blur. Our discussion of the second of Castoriadis’ properties of magmas having already drawn on the implications of the third, there is little more we need to say about this third property other than what Castoriadis himself observes. For Castoriadis, this property is the most decisive. It expresses the impossibility of applying here the schema/operator of separation—and, above all, its irrelevance in this domain. In the magma of my representations, I cannot rigorously separate out those that “refer to my family” from the others. (In other words, in the representations that at first sight “do not refer to my family,” there always originates at least one associative chain that, itself, leads to “my family.” This amounts to saying that a representation is not a “distinct and well-defined being,” but is everything that it brings along with it.)11

Indeterminacy and the Unity of Being If we accept Castoriadis’ account of the fundamental properties of a magma, how are we to understand the unity of a magma, of any magma, including that ultimate magma, Being? In fact, viewed from a certain perspective this unity would seem ‘superior’ to that of a set. What can never be clearly separated into ‘components’ or ‘elements’ is ‘one’ in a way that a set, the ‘unity’ of which is entirely dependent on its exhaustively articulated composition, can never be. Thus, when Castoriadis comes to consider Being as a whole in the light of a recognition of the ultimate indeterminacy of being, what he discovers is a unity that traditional thought, informed as it is by ensidic logic-ontology, obscures. . . . we can no more think that the coexisting aspects of an object, which we assign to particular disciplines and accommodate within specific theories, are separable and recomposable at will, than we can think that the successive layers that we discover in an object have arranged themselves according to our convenience in such a way that we can move successively in a regressive fashion from corollaries to theorems and from theorems to axi-

11

Ibid.

Magmas • 191 oms. Every phenomenon is an interphenomenon. The borderlines between them become hazy and the idea of region reasserts the enigma of the central place it must be accorded in the categorial schema of knowledge. But if that is the case, the only theory worthy of the name would be a unified and unitary theory.12

This unity should be construed neither as a seamless homogeneity nor as a pure chaos in which nothing is or can be distinguished from anything else. We must remember that the impossibility of partitioning a magma, the inapplicability of the schema of separation, coincides with internal differentiation and the possibility of discerning within any given magma other magmas, as well as the perpetual emergence of otherness. What Castoriadis says of representation—that it is unanalysable without thereby being simple—applies to all magmas, and ultimately, to Being as a whole.13 In thinking about what exists, then, we cannot base ourselves upon the traditional idea of an empirical realm possessed of simple infinite-indefinite extension and depth, with both of these conceived as mere negative determinations, as an ‘ever more and more’ which could be limitlessly effected and repeated; nor can we base ourselves upon the other traditional idea of an underlying articulated organisation wherein each level, though a complete part in itself, would be well integrated into the ‘whole’ and, though completely determinable as it stands, would refer back, in a necessary and univocal fashion, to a lower (or, if one prefers, higher) level. If we are to think about what exists it must be in terms of a hitherto unsuspected type of stratification. It must be in terms of an organisation of layers that in part adhere together, in terms of an endless succession in depth of layers of being that are always organised, but never completely, always articulated together, but never fully.14

12

C. Castoriadis, “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation” in Crossroads

in the Labyrinth, trans. and ed. Kate Soper and Martin H. Ryle, Brighton, U.K., The Harvester Press, 1984, p. 167. 13

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 276.

14

Castoriadis, “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation,” p. 172.

192 • Chapter Seven

This vision of unity, and the indeterminate logic which underlies it, casts Castoriadis’ universalisation of the concept of magma in a light which reveals stark differences between it and the monolithic vision propounded by traditional logic-ontology. What I am calling here ‘indeterminate logic’, which is a logic based on a recognition of the essential indeterminacy of being, may seem to be characterised by a proliferation of qualifications and phrases of the ‘neither . . . nor . . .’, ‘both . . . and . . .’ type. This might lead one to conclude that this ‘logic’ is reducible to an abandonment of the law of the excluded middle. While it is true that a logic of indeterminacy demands that this law be reexamined, that the merely relative nature of its validity be acknowledged and that it be applied henceforth only with the greatest prudence, it is not reducible to these demands. If we find ourselves frequently saying ‘neither this nor that’ and ‘both this and that’, this is because the this no longer designates a determinate entity or property but merely ‘something’ which is, within a specific context and for specific purposes, distinguishable from ‘something else’ without thereby being or becoming truly distinct and separate. Of course, the fact that we are able to mark something out as distinguishable is itself as ontologically significant as the fact that what we mark out is not in itself separate and distinct. In the present context, the most important lesson to be drawn from this is that indeterminacy need not preclude differentiation and that the price of plurality need not be a thorough-going articulation or compartmentalisation. At the macro-scale, this means not only that regionality does not preclude a kind of trans-regionality but that the two must somehow be thought together. Only by bearing this in mind can one recognise the ultimate consistency within the apparently conflicting tendencies towards particularisation and universalisation in Castoriadis’ ontological reflections. Against the analytical, compartmentalising tendency of traditional logic-ontology he asserts, as we have seen, that “every phenomenon is an interphenomenon,” so that, as he says, the very idea of ‘region’ becomes enigmatic;15 but equally, contrary to the traditional impulse to establish and impose a single comprehensive and univocal table of categories on all phenomena, he insists we recognise a ‘strong regionality’.

15

Castoriadis, “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation,” p. 219.

Magmas • 193 We must recognise that the primary regions, the major original objects are only ‘conceivable by means of themselves’, to use Spinoza’s expression. What our reflection upon society teaches us, for example, is that the ‘relation’ between the economy and the law is not a particular case of a ‘relation in general’, and that, so far from being reducible to it, is not even comparable with any other relation, however ‘universal’.16

This ‘incomparability’, this uniqueness of each ‘primary region’, does not mean that we must henceforth limit ourselves to the task of describing each of these regions individually and in absolute isolation from the others (for, as Castoriadis insists, they are not, in themselves, isolated). As Castoriadis goes on to say of the relation between the economy and the law, “. . . we cannot think it except on the basis of itself, and we learn in contact with it, not only something that no other relationship can ever teach us, but also a great deal more about the idea of a relation in general than the idea of a relation in general can teach us about the relation between the economy and the law.”17 If the idea of a relation in general could teach us nothing whatever about particular relations, it would be entirely superfluous; not only could we learn nothing useful about it from particular relations, but we would have no business trying to do so. Lest one imagines that Castoriadis is therefore simply making a joke, we should note that in this same passage he goes on to say that “the relation of sign and meaning does not ‘belong’ to any type of relation, but itself defines a type of relation on the basis of which we are able to think it and perhaps also to think something other than it . . .”18 This apparent contradiction may be resolved as follows. The problem with the traditional approach is that it engages in a generalised ‘superimpostion’ of categories, “the vain attempt to transpose to [one] region concepts and schemas that are valid only in other regions.”19 Castoriadis’ exhortation that we should think certain fundamental phenomena ‘on the basis of themselves’, learning how to conceptualise a specific phenomenon via our contact with

16

Ibid.

17

Castoriadis, “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation,” pp. 219-220.

18

Castoriadis, “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation,” p. 220. Final

emphasis added. 19

Ibid.

194 • Chapter Seven

that phenomenon, should not be construed as meaning that we may thereby dispense with the evil of superimposition. All concepts, all categories, all representations are inevitably ‘superimpositions’. This includes those which we develop specifically for and in contact with the phenomena to which they are applied. Our aim, then, cannot be to avoid superimpositions; it must rather be to alter the way in which these superimpositions are viewed and employed. We must recognise that all categories “have unity only in being indices of a problem; their full and effective signification differs essentially from one region to the next.”20 Rather than approaching a phenomenon with a view to determining whether, for example, what we encounter is ‘truly’ one or ‘truly’ many, we ask must what, in relation to such a being, ‘unity’ and ‘multiplicity’ might mean. We must accept, in other words, that, if they are to be useful, ‘one’ and ‘many’ must signify different things depending on the object to which they are applied, that their meanings must vary from one region of being to another—and, unlike our predecessors, we may do so with a clear conscience, without fearing that we are thereby doing some violence to the ‘unity of Being’. Rather than precluding the exportation of concepts and categories from one region to another, this may actually serve to facilitate it—though no longer as mere transposition, since the meaning of the concepts themselves will alter with each new application. Castoriadis’ own modus operandi exemplifies this. Far from confining his researches and speculations to the region that is and has always been his central concern, the human domain, he casts his eye over the whole expanse of human thought and knowledge, eagerly taking up any idea or concept from any field which he believes may usefully be adapted to his needs and purposes. The justification for importing and exporting concepts in this manner is twofold. Firstly, it reflects a willingness to explore the possibility that what we learn in one region might assist us in understanding another. The ontological uniqueness of each ‘primary’ region does not mean that all theoretical and conceptual problems must be regarded as being specific to a single region (though some, of course, may be). The second justification is less explicitly stated in Castoriadis’ work. It is connected with what

20

Castoriadis, “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation,” p. 219.

Magmas • 195

we have already said about the continuing validity of a general conception of being despite the radical diversity of phenomena and modes of being such a concept must encompass. While Castoriadis initially develops the concept of magma in relation to specifically human phenomena, as soon as he broadens it to encompass phenomena in other domains, it becomes necessary to modify the concept not only as it applies to these other regions but also as it applies to the human realm. We will explore this in more detail later. For the moment, I wish merely to point out that this reciprocal modification of the concept based on the experience of applying it within a diversity of contexts amounts to an effort to refine a general concept. As I have already suggested, this general concept differs from those which Castoriadis would have us reject inasmuch as it is essentially multivocal. The search for such general concepts is no longer a search for a single, unambiguous meaning. It is far more like the search for a common ‘theme’: something that unites without prescribing a definite form. This ‘thematic’ character is not exclusive to general or trans-regional concepts. The multivocality of categories across regions does not imply a simple univocality within regions. To return to Castoriadis’ example, the relationship between the economy and the law is not a determinate—and therefore determinable—relation. The nature of this relationship will of course vary from one society to another; as will, not just the nature but the very existence and possibility of identifying the terms—the economy and the law—whose relationship is in question. However, one has not fully appreciated the true significance of a logic-ontology of indeterminacy until one recognises that the same is true within any particular society; that whenever we speak of the relation between the economy and the law, what we are designating is itself essentially indeterminate, and that the terms ‘the economy’ and ‘the law’ never do more than ‘mark out’ magmas which are not in themselves separate and distinct from each other or from the other magmas which comprise the society in question.

196 • Chapter Seven

3

Magmas and Ensembles

Ensemblisation and the Impossibility of True Ensembles If it is both necessary and useful that our most fundamental concepts should signify different things depending on their context, that their meaning should vary from one region of Being to another, this implies, first, that the mode or organisation of being itself varies from one region to another, and second, that our concepts can somehow signify these different modes of being. But we have not yet satisfactorily explained what these two propositions assume. We have not yet provided a complete and entirely satisfactory solution to Castoriadis’ riddle. How does one distinguish between regions of Being, and the modes of being belonging to these regions, when all modes of being are indeterminate? How can one distinguish one magma from another? These questions first present themselves as epistemological in nature, but it would be wrong to conclude that they were therefore ‘merely’ epistemological. In fact, such questions arise precisely where epistemology and ontology merge, revealing their ultimate continuity. The question of how one can distinguish between magmas is ultimately inseparable from the question of how and in what sense magmas may be different from one another. What does this ‘being different/ other’ consist in? What constitutes the ‘identity’ of a magma? The danger we face in attempting to answer these questions is that as soon as we attribute any organisation to ‘what is’, we are liable to find ourselves sliding into the old, familiar patterns of deterministic thought. For example, any ‘identity’ we may ascribe to a magma cannot be ‘identity’ in the sense demanded by ensidic logic-ontology, because such an identity is premised on the complete determination of the object in question. As we shall see, it would seem impossible to conceptualise the differences between magmas and between regions of Being without positing determination itself as a variable. What distance can we proceed along this path without sacrificing the essential insights about the indeterminacy of being expressed in the concept of magma? It should have been clear from the outset that something like determination cannot be entirely alien to magmas. A magma is not a pure and seamless chaos. Magmas encompass order. The indeterminacy of the magma is not a formlessness, but a ‘forming’. This forming excludes the emergence of ‘forms’ in the traditionally understood sense; but forms—real forms—do nonetheless

Magmas • 197

emerge. It is only the existence/emergence of these indeterminate forms— precisely the ‘virtual and evanescent singularities’ Castoriadis speaks of—that permits us to construe/construct ensembles within the magma. As Castoriadis describes it, we “transform or actualise these virtual singularities . . . into distinct and definite elements, solidifying the pre-relation of referral into relation as such, organising the holding-together, the being-in, the being-on, the being-proximate into a system of determined and determining relations (identity, difference, belonging, inclusion), differentiating what they distinguish in this way into ‘entities’ and ‘properties’, using this differentiation to constitute ‘sets’ and ‘classes’ ”.21 We represent the magma as an ensemble— we ‘ensemblise’ it; and, since it is not an ensemble, in doing so we inevitably misrepresent it. This ensemblisation would be absolutely impossible, however, if magmas did not to a certain degree lend themselves to such a misrepresentation. If there were no ‘virtual and evanescent singularities’, if there was no ‘pre-relation of referral’, if ‘what is’ were pure disorder, no operation of ours—no dissection, no solidification, no transformation—would allow us to construct a representation which bore any relation, however imperfect, to its object. When we say that magmas are ensemblisable, we are not just saying something about our own capacity to see ensembles where there are none, we are saying something about the nature of magmas themselves; the assertion has ontological as well as epistemological significance. Even aside from this, our capacity to represent magmas as ensembles is of ontological significance. Any investigation into the nature of being must inevitably incorporate an analysis of representation, since it is only via representation that we encounter being and beings. What can be overlooked, however, is that the analysis of representation is always in itself an investigation into the nature of being: the being of representation. In this way, all epistemology is also ontology. What, then, are representations, and how are they created? Whatever their substance and provenance, representations are forms whose organisation is sufficiently stable and regular to enable the establishment of a relationship between themselves and that which they represent. Whenever we represent, and quite apart from any question of whether these representations are adequate or appropriate, we demonstrate the organisability of at least that

21

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 344.

198 • Chapter Seven

part or region of Being within or out of which we construct these representations. If we represent what is as an ensemble, we do so by constructing representational ensembles, and in so doing we demonstrate that what is can be, in a sense we will have to elucidate as we proceed, ensemblised.22 What is ensemblised when a subject constructs representational ensembles? Primarily and essentially, it is the subject itself, whether this subject happens to be a living being, a psyche or a society. As I have argued already, representation must be understood as a type of self-formation. The representational ensemblisation of the world is therefore a self-ensemblisation. Indeed, self-constitution generally, in its structural and functional as well as its representational aspects, can be understood as a process of self-ensemblisation. However—and this is the mystery we must endeavour to penetrate—that which misrepresents ‘what is’ as an ensemble, and which does so by ensemblising itself, which exists only by virtue of its own activity of self-ensemblisation, is nonetheless not an ensemble, it is a magma. Castoriadis has a tendency to employ the passive rather than the active voice when speaking of magmas. Thus: A magma is that from which one can extract (or in which one can construct) an indefinite number of ensemblist organisations but which can never be reconstituted (ideally) by a (finite or infinite) ensemblist composition of these organisations.23

Given that any subject that forms representations and therefore extracts or constructs ensembles (any subject whatsoever, in other words) is also a magma, and whatever its intended object, it is itself always and essentially also that from which it extracts and in which it constructs, we must also recognise the validity of something like the following formulation: A magma is that which can constitute itself as an indefinite number of ensemblist organisations, but which can never do so exhaustively because it always exceeds whatever organisations it constructs. This statement is neither perfect nor complete. It does not recognise the distinction between those magmas that are ‘subjects’ and those that are not—between

22

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 238-239.

23

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 343.

Magmas • 199

the realms of the for-itself and the non-self—and it says nothing about the most crucial issue: the relationship between the impossibility of an exhaustive ensemblist construction and the nature of ensembles themselves. On the latter point, it seems certain—and it is essentially what Castoriadis contends, though not without some degree of equivocation—that the impossibility of an exhaustive ensemblist construction is intimately related to the fact that such constructions as they actually exist and are made are not ensembles. We cannot construct the world as a hierarchy of ensembles because the world we encounter does not consist of ensembles and because what we make in and of this world are not ensembles either. Ensembles do not exist and cannot be made; they are impossible. This is the principal implication of the essential indeterminacy of being. We could go further: even if we could make ensembles, they would not serve. We may want ensembles (sometimes we are determined not to be satisfied with anything less), but what we get, all we can make and what we truly need are ‘quasi-ensembles’. It is ironic if our construction of these quasi-ensembles happens to be driven by a vision of true ensembles which we see ourselves as failing to realise. As we shall see later, a crucial question from the perspective of the project of autonomy is whether and how we can dispense with this illusion. Our immediate problem was to explain how a magma, which is by definition not an ensemble, can ensemblise itself without thereby ceasing to be a magma. Our answer is that ensemblisation is not the construction of ensembles but of quasi-ensembles, forms/organisations which are ensemble-like without being true ensembles. This answer requires us to reconsider the whole question of the relationship between magmas and ensembles. Castoriadis suggests that “ideally, starting from magmas, we should try to describe ensembles as ‘immersed’ in magmas.”24 What I am arguing is that, not just ideally but of necessity, we must endeavour to describe and account for ‘ensembles’— ‘actual’ ensembles, which are not and cannot be ‘true’ or ‘ideal’ ensembles, and which obviously include those which are ‘imagined’ or ‘imaginary’ in Castoriadis’ sense—as magmas.

24

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 296.

200 • Chapter Seven

Form and Formability Earlier I accused Castoriadis of equivocating on the question of whether or not true ensembles exist. The essential thrust of his arguments suggests that they do not and cannot, but it is nonetheless true that Castoriadis frequently makes statements which suggest the contrary. For example: A magma contains sets—even an indefinite number of sets—but is not reducible to sets or systems, however rich and complex, of sets.25 Now, in the psyche we are not dealing with a set or an organisation or hierarchy of sets. Sets, and determinacy, are present therein, but they far from exhaust the being of the psyche.26

Elsewhere Castoriadis qualifies this general recognition of the existence of sets, but in a manner which seems to leave no doubt as to his belief in the existence of true ensembles. In its abstract-material being-there as a code or a system of signifying codes, language is the first and the only genuine ensemble that has ever existed, the only ‘real’ and not simply ‘formal’ ensemble . . .27

As this qualification suggests, if one is going to posit the existence of ‘real’ or ‘true’ ensembles, it is in the human domain, and particularly the domain of the social-historical, that this seems most justified. It is in this domain alone that we find an effective productivity of ensidic logic. This peculiar relationship between the human domain and the ensidic leads to an astonishing paradox. It would appear that that region of Being over which ensidic logic has the least hold is also that region in which we feel most justified in postulating the existence of true ensembles. It is inconceivable that such a paradox could be devoid of significance, but what its significance might be we shall have to discover as we proceed. If we are to arrive at a truly satisfactory understanding of the nature and extent of actually existing ensembles—that is, quasi-ensembles—we will need

25

Castoriadis, “The Imaginary: Creation in the Social-Historical Domain,” p. 12.

Emphasis added. 26

Castoriadis, “Psychoanalysis and Philosophy,” p. 352. Emphasis added.

27

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 239.

Magmas • 201

to retrace some of our steps up to this point. We have already encountered the essential components of the argument which leads Castoriadis to conclude that ‘what is’ must incorporate what he calls “an ensemblistic-identitary dimension”.28 We must postulate an ensemblistic-identitary dimension of being because the existence of living beings necessarily entails the possibility of ensemblisation, a possibility that is attested to by the functional and representational self-ensemblisation of the living being, and because the effectivity of this self-ensemblisation (however limited and imperfect) is inconceivable unless this self-ensemblisation in some sense and to some degree ‘corresponds’ to what is beyond the living being. Castoriadis presents this same argument time and again. Each version has its own strengths and weaknesses. The following is perhaps the most comprehensive. Many of the components of this argument are already familiar to us by now, but it is worthwhile to see them here brought together. Incontestably, for an enormous part of its operations—for all its operations?—the living being works by means of classes, properties, and relations. The living being constitutes a world—itself constitutes its world—that is organised, and whose organisation is obviously correlative to (is only the other side of ) the proper organisation of the living being. Equivalence and relation are its everywhere-present ingredients. The living being creates for itself its own universality and its own order. . . . . . . But could the living being organise an absolutely chaotic world? For the living being to be able to organise, for itself, a world, starting from X, X would still have to be organisable. This is the old problem of Kantian criticism, which one could never glide over. All organisational forms immanent to the transcendental consciousness—or within the genome: the logical position of the problem remains strictly identical in the two cases—cannot provide anything if the ‘material’ they are to ‘form’ does not already include in itself the ‘minimal form’ of being formable. . . . . . . We are therefore obliged to postulate that there is something in the world ‘independent of the living being’ that corresponds to the organisation (by classes, properties, and relations) by means of which the living being constitutes its world—which amounts to saying that there exists in itself a stratum of total being [étant total] that ‘possesses’ an ensemblistic-

28

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 307.

202 • Chapter Seven identitary organisation (in the minimal sense that it can lend itself to such an organisation). But we are also obliged to state, further, that this organisation goes far beyond the simple ex post (and apparently tautological) implications that may be drawn from the fact that the living being exists, that it really presents a universality in itself. Perhaps the existence of terrestrial living beings as we know them would not have been possible without the fall of apples. But there is not only the fall of apples: the rotation of galaxies or the expansion of star clusters is ruled by the same law. If the living being exists in parasitising, or in ontological symbiosis with, a stratum of total being that is locally ensemblistic-identitary, this stratum extends even where the living being does not.29

In the present context, two elements of this argument require clarification. How should we interpret Castoriadis’ assertion that “there exists in itself a stratum of total being that ‘possesses’ an ensemblistic-identitary organisation (in the minimal sense that it can lend itself to such an organisation)”? What is the significance of the claim that ‘what is’ must be ‘organisable’, that it must “include in itself the ‘minimal form’ of being formable”? It should be obvious by now that in this context ‘ensemblisticidentitary’ cannot mean ‘in conformity with the tenets of ensemblistic-identitary logic-ontology’. If Being, or some ‘part’ thereof, is said to be ensemblistic-identitary, this cannot signify what it would in respect of a true ensemble, for that would be equivalent to saying that Being does indeed consist—albeit only ‘partially’—of ensembles. Such a possibility is ruled out as soon as one has concluded (as we already have) that the essential indeterminacy of being is inconsistent with the full determination of any particular region of Being. Castoriadis endeavours to steer the reader away from a literal interpretation of the term via a rather awkward and unsatisfactory formulation. A stratum of total being ‘possesses’ an ensemblistic-identitary organisation, but, as the inverted commas suggest, it does not possess this organisation in the full or usually accepted sense. Rather, this stratum of Being possesses this organisation only in the ‘minimal sense’ that it can ‘lend itself’ to such an organisation. There are two major problems with this formulation. First, we might question whether it is ever legitimate to speak of something as possessing a characteris-

29

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” pp. 306-307.

Magmas • 203

tic merely because it can acquire or be given that characteristic. We need only recall Castoriadis’ discussion of the relationship between the bronze and the statue to see what confusion this might lead to: the eidos of the statue is not contained in the bronze, but the bronze may be said to ‘possess’ this eidos in the sense that it can lend itself to it (?!). Second, what Castoriadis is trying to get at here is an immanent characteristic of Being, an organisation inherent to ‘what is’ independently of the operations of any subject whatsoever. That characteristic of Being, or a stratum thereof, which allows it to be ensemblised, it possesses independently of this ensemblisation and irrespective of whether such an ensemblisation ever occurs. To return to our example once again, the intrinsic characteristics of bronze are what allow us to use it to make a statue, but these characteristics are possessed by the bronze irrespective of whether it is ever actually used to make a statue. To describe the bronze as ‘lending itself to the making of statues’, whilst true, begs the real question. Insofar as ‘to lend’ signifies that what is in question is not given wholly or completely or permanently, this means that, however ensemblised, ‘what is’ never becomes truly ensemblistic-identitary; it is never transformed into a true ensemble. But then, why talk about Being ‘possessing’ an ensemblistic-identitary organisation at all? What we must posit as an immanent characteristic of Being is a type of organisation—described by Castoriadis in terms of ‘virtual and evanescent singularities’, ‘distinct-indistinct components’ and ‘pre-relations’—which is non-ensidic, but which, not despite this but, I shall argue, because of it, is ‘ensemblisable’ in the sense that it can be organised via operations based on an ensidic logic, though these operations can never produce true ensembles. Speaking as Castoriadis does of an ensemblistic-identitary stratum or dimension of being might therefore be misleading. It has value only in that it suggests that ensidic logic—the substantial albeit partial effectiveness of which cannot be denied and is of the greatest practical as well as theoretical importance—may be said to ‘capture’ a certain aspect of what is, even if it does so (and can only do so) by denying and deforming other aspects; and in that it recognises that ‘what is’ is in itself organised, that its re-organisation by the living being presumes an immanent organisation. This brings us to the second aspect of Castoriadis’ argument that calls for clarification. Castoriadis argues that the success of the for-itself in imposing its organisational forms upon ‘what is’ indicates that ‘what is’ must “include

204 • Chapter Seven

in itself the ‘minimal form’ of being formable”. It is easy to miss the true significance of this assertion. Of course that which is successfully formed must be formable—in itself, this is a mere tautology. Beyond this, what the assertion indicates is that the formability of any material implies inherent form. True formlessness, absolute chaos, is entirely inimical to the imposition of form. Since we more or less successfully impose form upon ‘what is’, ‘what is’ must possess the ‘minimal form’ of being formable; or as Castoriadis puts it elsewhere, ‘what is’ is at least “organised qua organisable”.30 The first thing we need to recognise about this assertion is that it does indeed attribute an inherent form or organisation to ‘what is’. To possess the ‘minimal form’ of being formable, or to be organised qua organisable, is to possess form or to be organised. The second is that, while the qualifications Castoriadis attaches to it make it appear as if he is making the weakest possible claim about this organisation or form, in fact the claim is an extremely strong one. To be organised qua organisable is to be organised in a quite specific manner: that which permits the material in question to be organised and re-organised in an indeterminable variety of ways. This precludes precisely that which is truly ensemblistic-identitary, that which is fully determined, since that which is already fully determined cannot be determined otherwise. In view of this, not only should we say that ‘what is’, as something that is formed/re-formed, must include the ‘minimal form’ of being formable, we must assert that it is only because it possesses just such a form—which is ‘minimal’ only in that it falls short of the criteria demanded by ensidic logic-ontology—that the creation of (other) forms is possible. This type of form is precisely what Castoriadis has endeavoured to describe under the title of magma. What we must now say of magmas is that not

30

Castoriadis, “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation,” p. 173. In fact,

what Castoriadis writes is “in as far as it is absolutely unorganised, the real would be indefinitely organisable, and thus it would still be organised qua organisable”; which might be misinterpreted as contradicting the assertion that what is organisable cannot be devoid of intrinsic organisation. The broader context of the statement, however, suggests that Castoriadis is endeavouring to demonstrate the reductio ad absurdum of the idea that the effective application of a number of different theories to an object could be consistent with the hypothesis that the object in question possesses no organisation of its own.

Magmas • 205

only can they be made to yield ensembles—or rather, quasi-ensembles— but this is possible only because they already and essentially incorporate those characteristics necessary for such a construction/creation. In effect, magmas can be ensemblised only because they are in themselves always already ensemblised and ensemblising—where ‘ensemblised’ signifies the presence not of true ensembles but of quasi-ensembles, and ‘ensemblising’ signifies that the emergence and disappearance of such quasi-ensembles is spontaneous and continuous. This applies to all magmas; that is, to magmas within the realm of the non-self as well as those within the realm of the for-itself.

Determinacy, Indeterminacy and Determination Let us pause for a moment in order to survey the argument that has been presented thus far and to clarify its intent. I have proposed the term ‘quasiensemble’ in preference to ‘ensemble’, and I have argued that both what ‘subjects’ or ‘selfs’ make when they ‘ensemblise’ and that which we may postulate as existing independently of their ‘ensemblisation’ are best described as the former rather than the latter. One might well question the value of such an argument, turning as it seems to do on such a fine terminological distinction. The motivation for insisting on this distinction, awkward and cumbersome though it is, stems from a consideration of the central issue of determination. What is the significance of the term ‘ensemble’ in Castoriadis’ thought? Why does he contrast and oppose ensembles to magmas? For Castoriadis, the concept of the ‘set’ or ‘ensemble’ represents and exemplifies the logic-ontology of determinacy to which he is opposed, as we have seen, because it proves to be philosophically inadequate when applied to ‘what is’, and because it is politically pernicious in the sense that, when rigourously adhered to, it renders human autonomy unthinkable. The relationship between the notion of ‘ensemble’ and the logic-ontology of determinacy is, Castoriadis argues, immediately obvious when we examine Cantor’s original definition of the set. “A set is a collection into a whole of definite and distinct objects of our intuition or of our thought. These objects are called the elements of the set.”31 For Castoriadis, this

31

Castoriadis, “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation,” p. 208. Castoria-

dis points out that ‘intuition’ here translates the German Anschauung, a term which “covers both what is intuited externally and internally in empirical fashion, the

206 • Chapter Seven

‘naive’ definition is preferable to subsequent attempts to develop a formalised theory of sets precisely because of its circularities and undefinable terms. These show that the theory is “posited straight away or that it presupposes its own positing,” that it is an “originary institution”—a true creation.32 All attempts to derive the theory axiomatically merely obscure this. In this definition Castoriadis finds implied all of the essential features of ensidic logic, not only in its explicit philosophical manifestation but also as a fundamental institution of society, an institution that is ‘originary’ in the sense that it may be regarded as the very institution of instituting. Castoriadis discerns two ultimately indissociable aspects of this institution, which he names legein and teukhein. Legein is distinguishing-choosing-positingassembling-counting-speaking; teukhein is assembling-adjusting-fabricatingconstructing. We will return to Castoriadis’ analysis of these fundamental aspects of social instituting later. What is important here is his analysis of the logic-ontology which underlies both social instituting and the concept of the set or ensemble. The following account is only one of the many Castoriadis has presented in various contexts. It is perhaps the most basic—both in the sense that it concentrates on what is most essential and in the sense of its simplicity and, therefore, its clarity. I have excised those parts of Castoriadis’ account which merely amplify his assertion of the self-presupposing, and therefore created, nature of this logic-ontology; and I have not included other implications he also derives from the concept of ‘ensemble’, such as the equivalence of property and ensemble, or property and class, the relation of equivalence per se, and the schema of iteration.33 While important in themselves, these are not essential to the point at issue. In order to speak of a set or an ensemble, or to think of one, we must be able to distinguish-choose-posit-assemble-count-say objects. . . . These objects must be able to be posited as defined, in the sense of a decisory-practical definition, and as distinct. One must then be able to posit by distinguishing—

perceived, and what is intuited in the ‘pure’ Kantian sense” (‘Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation’, in Crossroads in the Labyrinth, p. 208). 32

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 223.

33

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 224-226; Castoriadis, “The

Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” pp. 293-295.

Magmas • 207 or be able to act as though one could distinguish—and be able to posit by defining—or to speak as though one could define. . . . . . . One must, therefore, have available the schema of separation and its essential product, which is already presupposed in the operation of the schema of separation: the term of the element. . . . . . . To speak of an ensemble or to think of an ensemble, ‘to collect into a whole’ distinct and definite objects, also signifies, of course, that a schema of union is available. Distinct objects must be able to be posited as being assembled into a whole, which is in itself a distinct and definite object of a higher type. Or we must be able to speak as if we could collect into a whole this manifold of objects. . . . . . . It is self-evident that the schemata of separation and of unification make possible the schema of decomposition, allowing us to find in a given whole wholes of a lesser type or the distinct and definite elements out of which they were made.34

The question we must ask is this: What becomes of the concept of an ensemble and the schemata Castoriadis identifies as intrinsic to it once we decide that there are no ‘distinct and definite objects’, that the ‘wholes’ supposedly composed of such objects are not distinct and definite either, and that these wholes cannot be decomposed to reveal either distinct and definite wholes of a lesser type or distinct and definite elements? Castoriadis’ answer, as we have seen, is to say that ‘what is’ is not an ensemble but a magma. However, as we have also seen, this soon proves to be insufficient. The problem is that we obviously do distinguish-choose-posit-assemble-count-say, we do separate, unify and decompose ‘what is’; we do ‘ensemblise’. But what can ‘ensemblising’ mean when we have already shown that it cannot mean the creation of ensembles in the sense of Cantor’s definition? What the fact of ensemblisation would seem to demonstrate is that ‘what is’ does not need to consist of distinct and definite objects in order for us to distinguishchoose-posit-assemble-count-say objects. On the other hand, as Castoriadis goes to some pains to show, the possibility and effectivity of ensemblisation does require us to attribute to Being certain characteristics without which ensemblisation would clearly be impossible. As he puts it, we must be able to find in the magma of ‘what is’ supports for ensemblisation. Let us recall once

34

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 223-224.

208 • Chapter Seven

again how Castoriadis describes the operations performed on these by the process of ensemblisation. And we have to think of the operations of identitary logic as simultaneous, multiple dissections which transform or actualise these virtual singularities, these components, these terms into distinct and definite elements, solidifying the pre-relation of referral into relation as such, organising the holding-together, the being-in, the being-on, the being-proximate into a system of determined and determining relations (identity, difference, belonging, inclusion), differentiating what they distinguish in this way into ‘entities’ and ‘properties’, using this differentiation to constitute ‘sets’ and ‘classes’.35

What all these operations amount to is a determining, a makingdeterminate. To ensemblise is to determine. However, this makingdeterminate does not and cannot result in full or complete determinacy. We will say, therefore, that ensemblisation is best described as a determining only in the sense of a making-more-determinate. But even this formulation, unavoidable though it is, presents us with problems and aporias. Creation implies a fundamental and essential indeterminacy of being, but at the same time, as has been stated from the outset, it implies determination, since to create is necessarily to determine (is necessarily to ensemblise, in other words). This determination can never be such as to extinguish the fundamental indeterminacy of being, however. We might be tempted therefore to simply describe this determination, as Castoriadis does, as ‘partial’ or ‘incomplete’, to declare that everything real is necessarily both somewhat determinate and somewhat indeterminate. This implies something like a continuum of determinacy-indeterminacy. Presumably, one could locate all phenomena on this continuum according to how determinate/indeterminate one judges them to be. Unfortunately, things are not so simple. In reality, there would seem to be no simple inverse correlation between determinacy and indeterminacy. Determination—qua the creation of forms and qua ensemblisation—may in fact correspond with the greatest indeterminacy. Of course, creation per se need not amount to a making-more-determinate. It can just as easily be viewed as a making-less-determinate, as might be said

35

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 344.

Magmas • 209

to occur when our waking thoughts are transformed into the material of our dreams. Creation is simply the bringing about of other determinations. What I am suggesting, however, is that there is some sense in which the act of makingmore-determinate itself does not result in a diminution of indeterminacy. This brings us to what is perhaps the most extraordinary implication of the concept of magma. A magma may be determined indefinitely, one may extract from it as many ‘ensembles’ as one likes up to infinity, and at the end of these operations one will still be left with a magma as residue. And upon this ‘residual’ magma one could then proceed to perform another infinite series of operations with the same result.36 We are forced, therefore, to the apparently absurd conclusion that ‘determining’ a magma does not reduce its indeterminacy. Reflecting on the nature of such an operation, Castoriadis suggests that what it principally indicates is the untenable character of the assumptions underlying the operation itself. “Magmas exceed ensembles not from the standpoint of the ‘wealth of cardinality’ . . ., but from the standpoint of the ‘nature of their constitution.”37 We suppose that by marking ensembles within a magma we are somehow transforming ‘parts’ of the magma into ensembles and, in this sense, ‘removing’ them, an operation which might be formally represented as a ‘subtraction’. But in truth, we ‘subtract’ nothing. When we ‘mark’ or ‘make’ ‘ensembles’ in a magma we do not ‘diminish’ the magma, because our ensemblising never results in anything which is other than a magma. Our determining never precludes other determinations, not only of that which we have not determined, but of that which we have determined.

Magmas as Quasi-ensembles It is evident that what is at fault here is our understanding of ‘determination/ determining’, which is still entirely grounded in an ensidic logic-ontology according to which determining must, by definition, reduce indeterminacy. Insofar as our attempts to determine/ensemblise are based upon an ensidic logic-ontology, we do not achieve what we think we achieve. We think that we are making-discovering ensembles, but we are not; at least, they are not

36

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 297.

37

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 299.

210 • Chapter Seven

ensembles in the traditionally accepted sense of the term. I have called them quasi-ensembles. What does naming these forms/organisations—which we had earlier described simply as ‘indeterminate forms’—‘quasi-ensembles’ add to our understanding of them? In order to answer this question, let us return momentarily to those properties Castoriadis identifies as characteristic of magmas. In this connection, the first and the last are the most important. M1: If M is a magma, one can mark, in M, an indefinite number of ensembles. M5: What is not a magma is an ensemble or is nothing.38

The second of these statements is somewhat ambiguous. Does it posit a universe consisting of magmas and ensembles, or of magmas only? Castoriadis’ explanation does not entirely remove this ambiguity. The fifth property (M5) amounts to affirming that the idea of magma is absolutely universal—or, more pragmatically speaking, that we call magmatic every non-ensemblistic-identitary mode of being/mode of organisation that we encounter or can think of. (This boils down to saying that everything that is/everything that is conceivable, and that wherein we ourselves are, is a supermagma.)39

Everything is a magma: therefore, there are no ensembles. Yet M1 states that in any magma we can ‘mark’ ensembles. We could exploit the subtleties of Castoriadis’ terminology and argue that our ability to ‘mark’ ensembles does not indicate their ‘objective’ existence. This is undoubtedly true; but it is also true, as we have seen, that our ability to ‘mark’ ensembles does indicate the ‘objective’ existence of ‘something’, and that this ‘something’ does bear some relation—however difficult to articulate and specify—to ensembles. What is more, our ‘marking’ of ensembles would seem necessarily to involve our ‘making’ ensembles—or, once again, something like ensembles. If we do make

38

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 297.

39

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” pp. 298-

299.

Magmas • 211

ensembles, ensembles exist. Something like ensembles must exist. This, as Castoriadis explains, is the intention of M1. The first property (M1) secures the indispensable bridge to the domains that are formalisable, as well as their applications, that is to say, ‘exact’ knowledge. It equally allows the illumination of the term/relation (or operation) of marking [repérage]. Indeed, to be able to speak of M, I have to be able, at the outset, to mark M vaguely ‘as such’—and the marking in M of a ‘series’ of definite ensembles allows me to render the identification of M progressively less ‘vague’.40

This process whereby ‘vagueness’ is decreased is no mere illusion. ‘Vagueness’ is of course just another nom de guerre for ‘indeterminacy’. When we mark M ‘as such’ by marking in M ‘definite’ ‘ensembles’, we do ‘determine’, we do ‘make-more-determinate’. However, not only does this ‘making-moredeterminate’ never result in a thorough-going determinacy, we cannot even conclude that it results in a corresponding decrease in indeterminacy. (We know already, of course, that by reducing the ‘vagueness’ we inevitably deform that which we define, since this vagueness/indeterminacy is essential to what M is.) We must conclude that the traditional conception of determination is itself inadequate and misleading when confronted with the mode of being of a magma, and we must try to think differently. We can no longer regard determinacy and indeterminacy as simple contraries, any more than we can do away with any notion of their opposition. We must admit that all determination includes and, as it were, ‘rests on’ indeterminacy. We cannot expunge this indeterminacy, and all attempts to do so, or to partition and cordon off the determinate from the indeterminate, fail; because not only is this indeterminacy not ‘external’ to the determinate, it is, on the contrary, that in and through which all determinations exist and can be made. The concept of ensemble is inextricably bound up with the traditional understanding of determination; it is, as Castoriadis has shown, its purest expression. The term ‘quasi-ensemble’ is intended to flag a break with this

40

298.

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” pp. 297-

212 • Chapter Seven

logic-ontology, while at the same time retaining some notion of determination as determining, as making/becoming determinate. To this end, I would suggest we append the following postulates to Castoriadis’ list of properties of a magma. QE1: All ensembles are quasi-ensembles. QE2: If QE is a quasi-ensemble, one can mark, in QE, an indefinite number of magmas. QE3: All quasi-ensembles are magmas.

As can readily be seen, this does not add anything substantially new to Castoriadis’ description. If QE3 is accepted, then QE2 is merely a restatement of M1. Similarly, M2 becomes essentially a reiteration of M1. What it does do, of course, is to equate magmas and quasi-ensembles. If one feels that this somehow does violence to the concept of magma, reducing its power or diminishing its originality, one has misunderstood the concept of magma altogether. We must not imagine that by ensemblising a magma we somehow reduce its ‘magma-ness’. To repeat: determination is not alien to the being of a magma; no magmas are ‘free’ of determination. The entirely indeterminate—seamless, elemental, pure—is as much of a chimera as absolute determinacy. A magma incorporates determination/determining and indeterminacy. Our problem is to understand anew the relationship between these two aspects of being. This relationship is a dynamic one. It varies, and this variation is not given once and for all, it is the result of a history of ontological creation. If we hope to understand the relationship between determination and indeterminacy we must examine the history of this relationship up to and including the emergence not just of the social-historical but of the specific and radically different forms of society which have thus far existed. This monumental task can hardly be completed here. In the remaining chapters, I will merely attempt to lay the groundwork for such a project and to indicate some of the directions in which it might proceed.

Chapter Eight Determination and the Logic of Indeterminate Being

1

Ensemblisation and the Ensidic

The Ensidic as Determination/the Ensidic as Determinacy According to Castoriadis, all magmas are ensemblisable.1 As I have tried to show, this ‘ensemblisation’ cannot mean the creation or construction of ‘true’ ensembles, it can only ever mean the creation or construction of ‘quasi-ensembles’. If magmas are ensemblisable in this sense, this is only because they offer ‘supports’ for ensemblisation. Recognising these supports as intrinsic characteristics of magmas amounts to saying that magmas are already inherently ensemblised-ensemblising, that they contain/ are and bring forth quasi-ensembles. If this is correct, then it follows that the ensemblisticidentitary, or ‘ensidic’, dimension of being cannot be associated exclusively with any particular ‘part’ or ‘region’ of Being. Every

1

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 343.

214 • Chapter Eight

magma incorporates an ensidic dimension. This is what Castoriadis seems to affirm when he argues that “What is bears with it an ensemblistic-identitary dimension—or an ensemblistic-identitary part everywhere dense.”2 On the other hand, it sometimes seems that he wishes to locate the ensidic dimension of being primarily or even exclusively within one or more ‘strata’ of Being. This contradiction reflects the operation of two different interpretations of ‘ensidic’, which Castoriadis never adequately distinguishes or reconciles, but which he continues to employ throughout his work. According to the first, ‘ensidic’ refers to determination qua form-formation, irrespective of the degree of determinacy involved. According to the second, ‘ensidic’ signifies a degree of determinacy approaching, if not meeting, that demanded by ensidic logic-ontology. Castoriadis’ failure to distinguish between these two senses of ‘ensidic’ leads to a failure to adequately distinguish between the two analytically separate, though complementary, arguments for the existence of an ‘ensidic’ dimension of being, one empirical and the other formal, which correspond respectively to the two interpretations of ‘ensidic’: as determinacy and as determinabilty/organisability. The empirical argument is based on the effectiveness of ensidic logic within a specific domain or domains. The formal argument concerns the absolute impossibility of organising anything that is thoroughly indeterminate. On one occasion, Castoriadis describes the first argument as an a posteriori confirmation of the second.3 However, the second argument would hold even if the first did not; that is, even if we could not show that our ensemblisations of a certain ‘region’ or ‘regions’ of Being do, for most practical and theoretical purposes, effectively grasp certain fundamental features of the intrinsic organisation of those regions, we could still maintain that, given that we do ensemblise, ‘what is’ cannot be thoroughly indeterminate, that it must incorporate some intrinsic organisation or form.

2

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 307.

3

C. Castoriadis, “Radical Imagination and the Social Instituting Imaginary” in The

Castoriadis Reader, ed. David Ames Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 328.

Determination and the Logic of Indeterminate Being • 215

This dual definition of ‘ensidic’ is a product of the role the concept plays in the development of Castoriadis’ thought. Castoriadis begins by contrasting the reality of ‘what is’ with the absolute determinacy posited by ensidic logicontology. This eventually leads him to rule out absolute determinacy as a possible characteristic of being. Once this is done, to speak of an ‘ensidic’ dimension of being can no longer be to identify something ‘truly’ ensidic, a perfect realisation of the tenets of ensidic logic-ontology. Even as but an aspect or dimension of ‘what is’, the ‘ensidic’ is never truly ensidic in this sense. If we call the determined-determining aspect of all strata of Being ‘ensidic’, this cannot mean that we find in all these strata a dimension organised in the manner of sets and elements, but rather that the organisation which we do discover and must posit is comparable with that posited by ensidic logic. This ‘comparableness’ has ontological as well as practical implications. Practically, it is what opens up the possibility of representation. Ontologically, beyond any question of names, it points to the existence of determination-determining— of identity, separation, relation, combination, and so on—in some sense and to some degree at all (knowable) levels of Being (or, if one prefers, it points to the existence of ‘something’ which can be subsumed under, and which will, by this very act of subsumption, alter, differentiate and pluralise, such categories as ‘determinacy’, ‘identity’, ‘separation’, ‘relation’, and so on.) This critique of ensidic ontology unavoidably rebounds upon our understanding of ensidic logic and its products. If absolute determinacy is impossible, it cannot be regarded as a real characteristic of this logic, but only as the principle and counter-factual ideal which governs its operation. This means that the contrast between this logic and the actual determination we may posit in what exists beyond it cannot be thought of as a contrast between absolute and relative determinacy. Rather, we must endeavour to locate the ensidic as it is manifested in legein, teukhein, and their products, including their philosophical, scientific and mathematical expressions and elaborations, within the context of a history of ontological creation; that is, a history of the creation not just of ‘beings’, but of modes of being and types of determination-determining. Any such account must acknowledge and endeavour to reconcile three facts: 1) the apparent variation in the degree of determinacy exhibited by different regions or strata of Being; 2) the coincidence and mutual inherence of

216 • Chapter Eight

determination and indeterminacy at all levels and in all regions, including that of ensidic logic and its products; and 3) the existence of an apparently unprecedented degree of determinacy in the very domain which also exhibits amongst the greatest indeterminacy; that is, the domain of the social-historical. We have already traced the logic by which Castoriadis infers from the existence of living beings the existence of a ‘stratum’ of Being which ‘corresponds’ to the organisation of the living being and which extends, as Castoriadis puts it, “even where the living being does not.”4 What is this ‘stratum’, and how far does it extend? Is Castoriadis speaking only of the ‘first natural stratum’, which in this context encompasses not only the living being’s immediate environment—the biosphere of which living beings are themselves a major component and which, as we know, they themselves help to create and maintain— but everything which may be said to be consistent in its mode of organisation with this immediate environment; that is, the ‘macro-physical’ world, from atoms to galaxies? If the answer is ‘yes’, how do we explain our ability to ensemblise that which lies outside this stratum, the quantum world, for instance, or the world of psychical presentation/representation, or the socialhistorical? One might object that our ensemblisations of these strata are less effective, that they have a much more tenuous and superficial grasp of the mode of being of these strata. This is certainly true, and it is a fact that needs to be taken into account and, if possible, explained. Nevertheless, as the form of the objection shows, this is a matter of degree, not of kind. Ultimately, all of our efforts to ensemblise the world ‘fail’ in the sense that they can never perfectly or comprehensively grasp ‘what is’. It becomes a question, then, of the degree of this ‘failure’, and more importantly, its precise nature. As Castoriadis suggests, we go beyond our ensemblisations only by recognising and endeavouring to articulate (contradictory though this inevitably is, since to articulate is to ensemblise) how they ‘fail’.5 If we nevertheless can ensemblise even that which is least amenable to ensemblisation—that is to say, even that which is least congruent with the ontological tenets of ensidic logic—this is because these strata also incorporate an ‘ensidic dimension’.

4

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 307.

5

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 327.

Determination and the Logic of Indeterminate Being • 217

As we have seen, Castoriadis seems to draw precisely this conclusion when he asserts that “What is bears with it an ensemblistic-identitary dimension—or an ensemblistic-identitary part everywhere dense.”6 This idea of a ‘part everywhere dense’ would seem to preclude construing the ‘ensemblistic-identitary’ as belonging exclusively to any particular stratum or strata of Being. Even if we accept that no strata is ultimately separate and separable from others (we are talking about magmas, remember), or that what we are calling ‘strata’ might just as accurately be described as ‘aspects’ or ‘layers’ of a single ‘object’ or ‘phenomenon’, these strata could hardly be described as being ‘everywhere dense’.7 In other contexts, however, Castoriadis’ view on the matter is not so clear. That admission [that is, that there is something immanently ensemblisticidentitary] certainly does not signify that this “stability,” this “organisability,” this “separability”—“formability” in general—exhausts the world. From what we know about it, the situation is quite the contrary: these characteristics concern only one (or some) of its parts.8

It might be possible to interpret parts of this assertion in a way that would render them unproblematic. To say that the ensemblistic-identitary dimension does not exhaust the world might just be to say that our organisation of the world can never be complete, that it can never preclude alternative organisations. It cannot do so because the ‘separation’—the distinctions, the definitions, the determinations—we establish in order to create forms can never be absolute; because any separation we introduce always coincides with an inseparability; because every determination we posit floats in a sea of indeterminacy from which it cannot be divorced because it is part of this sea. Another way to put this would be to say that no formation, no forming, can exhaust—or even deplete—the formability of the world. Castoriadis would seem to be saying something different, however. He is asserting that

6

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 307.

7

Castoriadis, “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation,” p. 167.

8

C. Castoriadis, “The Ontological Import of the History of Science,” trans. David

Ames Curtis, in World in Fragments, ed. David Ames Curtis, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997, p. 350.

218 • Chapter Eight

‘formability’ itself does not exhaust the world, that only one or some parts of the world are formable. What parts, then, are unformable? The only honest answer to this question is silence, since to name these parts is already to ensemblise them, and this ensemblisation demonstrates the formability of that which we are asserting is unformable. This paradox reflects Castoriadis’ failure to recognise the difference between the absolute nature of the claim of formability and the relative nature of any claims about characteristics such as ‘stability’ and ‘separability’. In an essentially non-deterministic universe, ‘stability’ can only ever be relative. Nothing is absolutely or completely stable. Nonetheless, some things are more stable than others. The first natural stratum seems to exhibit the greatest stability. This means that we may posit aspects of this stratum as distinct and separate elements related to each other in definite ways in the reasonable expectation that we will be able to identify these same elements and relations tomorrow and into the foreseeable future. As this description suggests, ‘stability’ is inevitably co-determined by the observer’s frame of reference—what is stable for a creature whose life-span is a day may be highly unstable from a human perspective. (I will explore the further implications of this type of relativism later.) Similar observations may be made with regard to the separability of the first natural stratum. It is easier (and more worthwhile) to distinguish aspects of this stratum, to define these aspect as elements, to unite these elements into sets/classes, and so on. Elsewhere—in relation to psychical presentation/representation, for example—this is more difficult, and the results of such operations are more problematic. What we posit as separate at one instant seems inseparable at the next, and the separations themselves seem essentially tenuous and artificial when compared to the object in question. Nevertheless, even here we can and do manage to posit separate ‘elements’, and we can do so only because we are able to find supports for such an operation within the object itself. It is formable, and it is formable because it exhibits form-forming. All form-forming entails the presence/emergence of some degree of articulation, and hence of a degree of stability and separation. Castoriadis is at times quite clear about this. A form cannot be said to be unless it is identical to itself (in the broadest sense of the term “identical”), and persists/repeats itself for a while—that

Determination and the Logic of Indeterminate Being • 219 is, in and through an identitary dimension along which it differs with itself only by being placed in a different (identitary) time. And this is but one aspect of the fact that no form can be without a minimal determinacy. This means that any form has necessarily an ensidic dimension—and therefore participates in the ensidic universe.9

The degree of these characteristics may vary, but their complete absence is unthinkable. It is one thing to say that, for example, separation always somehow coincides with inseparability, and that it is therefore vastly different from the sort of separation posited by ensidic logic-ontology; it is quite another to suggest that there is no separation at all. To do so is tantamount to accepting the ensidic definition of being.

Ensemblisation There is an undeniable difference between realms such as that which Castoriadis has labeled the first natural stratum and realms such as that of the human psyche and the social-historical. Our task is to understand the nature of this difference. It cannot be thought of as a difference between the ensidic and the non-ensidic, or between the formable and the non-formable. Rather, it is a difference between the types of form/determination characteristic of these different regions. The concept of ‘ensemblisation’ is crucial in this context. Castoriadis’ use of it encompasses a variety of different but interrelated activities of formation/ determining. ‘Ensemblisation’ signifies representation; it signifies self-formation (that is, of the living being), a category which includes both presentation and representation proper as specific types of self-formation; and it signifies the intrinsic formation/determination of the ‘object’ itself. When we discuss the process of representational ensemblisation, we are concerned to elucidate the relationship between the organisation of representation and the organisation of ‘what is’. What we must not forget is that the organisation of representation is also, and no less, an organisation of ‘what is’. What we say about

9

C. Castoriadis, “Time and Creation,” trans. David Ames Curtis, in World in

Fragments, ed. David Ames Curtis, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997, p. 400.

220 • Chapter Eight

representation therefore cannot contradict what we say about being generally, or vice versa. Rather, we must endeavour to develop an understanding of ensemblisation which can accommodate the reality of determination/determining in all of these regions and at all of these levels, including the differences between them, especially the difference in the degree of determinacy exhibited by each. Castoriadis’ account of ensemblisation points the way to such an understanding, but it also produces a number of inconsistencies and aporias. I propose to draw on the following passages to reveal and to work through these problems and possibilities. Considerable discussion, and a number of detours, will be necessary in order to unpack and explore all of the assumptions and implications they contain. To say that everything lends itself to ensemblist-identitary logic and to its determinations—the logic and determinations of legein—from the moment it can be said is a tautology . . . This tautology becomes deceptive as soon as the difference is rubbed out between those domains in which identitary logic is more or less fully operative and those in which it operates simply as a means of taking markings, unavoidable yet external, formal and nearly empty.10 To say that what is given permits us to extract from it (or to construct in it) ensemblist organisations amounts to saying that one can always fix marking terms (whether simple or complex) in what gives itself. Knowing whether one wants to treat these terms as the elements of a set, in the full sense of the term, and whether they can accommodate fruitful ensemblist operations is a matter that concerns the object one is considering as well as what one wishes to do with it (theoretically or practically). Everything is always ensemblisable (that is to say, tautologically, everything that can be falls under the rules of saying insofar as it is said); but beyond certain limits or outside of certain domains everything is so only trivially (one can always count the typographical signs in a book, weigh the statues in the Louvre, which would be most important if they were to be moved, or transform the Amerindian myths into one another after having posited that they are each composed of a small number of discrete elements), incompletely (mathematics taken

10

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 326-327.

Determination and the Logic of Indeterminate Being • 221 in toto) or antinomically (contemporary physics). The entanglement of what can be ensemblised in a relevant manner and what cannot be except in an empty manner or not at all can reach degrees of complexity which are almost unimaginable . . .11

It is indeed a tautology to say that “everything that can be falls under the rules of saying insofar as it is said”; but this is not equivalent to saying that “everything is always ensemblisable”. The latter is equivalent to saying that “everything lends itself to ensemblist-identitary logic and its determinations,” but neither of these statements are tautologies. We ought to be clear about this, even if the practical implications of the distinction involved are negligible. Perhaps there are regions of Being that are not ensemblisable. Such regions would have to be totally devoid of intrinsic form, entirely structureless, undifferentiated, homogeneous (something that is, if we accept the tenets of general relativity, not true even of space considered as a void). I say that such regions might exist not because I have any reason to suspect their existence but because it would never be possible for us to distinguish between their existence and their non-existence. Such a region would be unperceivable, unsayable and unthinkable. Castoriadis is perfectly aware of this. “Everything that is must contain an ensemblistic-identitary (‘logical’ in the largest sense possible) dimension; otherwise it would be absolutely indeterminate, and (at least for us) nonexistent.”12 Could a region of absolute indeterminacy really exist? A negative answer would reveal something about our conception of ‘being’, but it would not constitute an empirical assertion about ‘what is’. What we can say is that the mode of being of such a region would not be that of a magma. To say that everything is ensemblisable is therefore merely to assert that everything is a magma; and, as an empirical assertion, it can be neither proved nor disproved. Everything we can ever perceive/experience, say or think is a magma, and, as such, is not only ensemblisable but already ensemblised-ensemblising. To go beyond this is impossible and unnecessary. As Castoriadis warns, the fact that ‘everything’ is ensemblisable ought not lead us to imagine that there is no difference between “those domains in which

11

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 343-344.

12

Castoriadis, “Radical Imagination and the Social Instituting Imaginary,” p. 328.

222 • Chapter Eight

identitary logic is more or less fully operative and those in which it operates simply as a means of taking markings, unavoidable yet external, formal and nearly empty.”13 If nothing is ever ‘truly’ or ‘fully’ ensidic, identitary or ensidic logic is never fully operative: ‘more or less’ always, therefore, amounts to ‘less than fully’. Castoriadis’ argument is that in some domains this logic is almost fully operative, whilst in others it is hardly operative at all, so that the results of its application to the latter are, as he puts it, ‘external, formal and nearly empty’. We know that these operations are nevertheless unavoidable, and why: to represent is necessarily to ensemblise. We must ensemblise even if we immediately proceed to debunk or deconstruct these ensemblisations. For Castoriadis, the paradigm case in this connection is psychical presentation/ representation. Again and again: we have just written ‘identify’; we say that representation, the representative flux, makes ‘itself’: ‘itself’—who or what is this? The problematic I wish to bring to light reappears once again here. For, at the same time, everything slips away from us and we are reduced to silence, even ‘internally’, if this representation is not indeed this representation, and hence: identical to itself and different from any other. And we are irremediably lost if we take these terms as full determinations bearing on the things themselves and if we forget that the being of representation is nothing other than this perpetual and omnidirectional flight—temporal and spatial—outside of itself (where the term ‘itself’ reiterates once again the same problematic and so on, indefinitely), that representation does not lend itself to the ensemblist-identitary grasp of legein except in the most external and empty fashion . . .14

Why should we say that the terms we use in endeavouring to describe an ‘object’ such as representation are ‘external and empty’—or rather, ‘nearly empty’? They are ‘external’ because they derive from the exigencies of legein—of speaking, naming, and so on—rather than from the nature of the object itself. They are ‘empty’ because, insofar as they are external, they con-

13

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 327.

14

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 326.

Determination and the Logic of Indeterminate Being • 223

vey nothing about the object described. But Castoriadis does not believe his descriptions of representation are entirely empty. To be sure we do speak of representation—how could we not speak of it? And what we say about it is not entirely useless. We do so by using fragments of it that we fix, fragments that play the role of terms of marking, to which we attach terms of language, so that we can know approximately ‘what we are talking about’. We would be lost, however, if we were to forget that these terms cannot bear the full weight of the ensemblist and identitarian operations, even less of the ‘exact’ scientific constructions. We use these terms, as a galloping horse uses the ground beneath it; it is not the ground but the gallop that counts.15

This romantic analogy can be developed further. If our terms are like the ground upon which the horse gallops, we differ from the horse in that we make this ground. We make it because we need it if we are to progress at all, because in lieu of some such construction of our own we would be left to attempt to gallop on the ontological equivalent of quicksand. In making of this quicksand something solid enough to bear our weight, we do make real progress, however; and we do so because the solidity we create, though it is in some respects the very opposite of quicksand, does bear some relation to the intrinsic characteristics of the quicksand itself, characteristics which we would never discover if we simply allowed ourselves to sink silently into its depths. What are these characteristics? Principal amongst them is the one Castoriadis himself refers to: the ‘identity’ of the ‘object’. We cannot speak about representation at all unless we can posit this representation as identical to itself and different from any other. But what we are trying to say about this representation, and representation generally, partly contravenes the sense of ‘identity’ presupposed and demanded by the ensidic logic of legein. I say partly, because, as we have seen, we must posit as a universal characteristic of form per se that it possess “a minimal determinacy,” since no form can exist “unless it is identical to itself (in the broadest sense of the term ‘identical’)”.16

15

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 277-278.

16

Castoriadis, “Time and Creation,” p. 400.

224 • Chapter Eight

What must concern us most, however, is the question of how the ‘identity’ of this object, representation, departs from the ensidic model. Our attempts to describe the mode of being of representation force us to challenge the ensidic definition of such fundamental concepts, and to redefine them. What representation teaches us is that ‘identity’ need not mean what ensidic logic posits it as meaning. The thisness of a representation is not conditional upon its absolute distinctness and separation from other representations and its unvarying persistence as the same this. On the contrary, the being of a representation is such that it is this precisely because it is ultimately inseparable from other representations, because it participates in a general web of representation such that no representation distinguishes itself from any other except insofar as it continues to refer to what ‘it’ is not; and because the being of this representation presupposes its alteration, its becoming other, so that the continuum of its ‘identity’ is and can be nothing other than a history of transformations which encompasses the totality of the representational world to which it belongs. According to Castoriadis, to say that one can always extract or construct ensemblist organisations in what is given amounts to saying that one can always fix marking terms in what gives itself. The decision we must then make is whether or not “to treat these terms as the elements of a set, in the full sense of the term, and whether they can accommodate fruitful ensemblist operations”.17 What these terms mark are never in themselves elements of a set in the full sense; but can they be treated as such, up to a point and for certain purposes? Can treating them as elements of a set and applying the logic proper to sets allow us to discover things about them that we could not discover otherwise? The answer is clearly, yes. Mathematical physics does not merely describe the physical world, it discovers aspects of the physical world which would otherwise have remained unknown and entirely unsuspected. I will reprise here only one of the many example of this which Castoriadis himself cites. In the crucial cases, which are now legion, it is the theoretician who directs the observer’s search, instructing him to look, not for this or that object, but for this or that new and unknown type of object. When Hertz first set eyes

17

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 343.

Determination and the Logic of Indeterminate Being • 225 on Maxwell’s four equations, he exclaimed, ‘Ist es ein Gott, der diese Zeichen schrieb?’ (Was it a God who wrote these signs?) These equations condense into four lines an immense number of experimental facts; but their real scope is far larger than this, for they also involve real and theoretical consequences which no-one had previously suspected. One such consequence was the existence of radio waves, which Hertz went on to ‘discover’ some years later. But in that case, who truly discovered them?18

Treating the physical world as a set—in this instance, by mathematising it— clearly allows us to make fruitful predictions about it—and not just predictions about events, but about the constitution of the world, and therefore about what the world contains that is yet to be observed. This would be entirely impossible if the physical world were not to some degree and at some level actually organised in a manner similar to a set; if it were not, in this sense, ‘somewhat’ ensidic. That this ensidic character is only ever partial and limited is shown by the fact that, as Castoriadis observes, beyond certain limits and outside of certain domains the application of ensidic operations yields results which are either trivial, incomplete or antinomic.

The Incomplete Effectiveness of Ensidic Logic and the Variability of Determinacy/ Indeterminacy Let us examine more closely Castoriadis’ account of these limits of ensemblisation. According to Castoriadis, beyond certain limits and outside of certain domains, the results of our ensemblisation are trivial, incomplete or antinomic. This assertion in turn needs to be related to what Castoriadis says about the criteria for judging the appropriateness of employing (systematically, it should be added) ensemblist operations: that is, the nature of the object one is considering and what one wishes to do with it. The incompleteness of ensemblisation is unconditional: all ensemblisations are necessarily incomplete, whatever their domain and irrespective of limits. This is a direct implication of the thesis that Being is a magma. The ensemblisation

18

C. Castoriadis, Crossroads in the Labyrinth, trans. and ed. Kate Soper and Martin H.

Ryle, Brighton, U.K., The Harvester Press, 1984, p. xii.

226 • Chapter Eight

of a magma can never be complete: there are always more and other ensemblist organisations to be discovered/constructed, and this, as I have argued, because these ensemblist organisations are never truly ensembles but are only and can only ever be quasi-ensembles. Castoriadis is ambivalent on this point. He often seems not to recognise that the assertion that nothing is ever fully ensidic must apply just as much to ensidic logic and its products as it does elsewhere. Ensidic logic cannot be completely ensemblised; it cannot be founded or derived ensidically. As Castoriadis’ own account shows, this is precisely what the attempts to develop a logical foundation for mathematics reveal. Here, the quest to prove the non-contradictory nature of mathematics (consistency qua the absence of contradiction being an essential characteristic of all fully logical—that is, ensidic—systems) has resulted in the discovery, via Frege, Russell and Gödel, that for any formal system it is neither possible to unambiguously define all propositions within the system nor to demonstrate the non-contradictory nature of the system as a whole. The problem is that one cannot proceed at all without utilising and therefore assuming the validity of the very rules and principles which one is supposed to be proving (or rules and principles which are supposed to prove the validity of the rules and principles one is ‘proving’: it is possible to push the problem back indefinitely, but not to eliminate it).19 As Castoriadis’ account of the basic schemata of ensidic logic suggests, to ensemblise is, in effect, to act ‘as if’ it were possible to ensemblise. We cannot get ‘behind’ this ‘as if’, because what is ‘behind’ it is just the circle of an originary positing, of creation, which is this very activity actualising itself along with its essential assumptions. Despite this, Castoriadis insists on acknowledging the ‘complete’ ensemblisability of particular mathematical ‘objects’, limiting the postulate of the necessary incompleteness of ensemblisation to mathematics in toto.20 If, as I have argued, ‘true’ ensembles are impossible, this view cannot remain unchallenged. I shall return to it later. This said, there is an undeniable difference in the degree to which one can fruitfully apply ensidic logic to objects/phenomena within different domains.

19

Castoriadis, “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation,” pp. 152-157;

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” pp. 290-295. 20

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 298.

Determination and the Logic of Indeterminate Being • 227

The fruitfulness of such an ensemblisation is at the same time related to the scope of the phenomena in question. The first of these caveats concerns the question of domains, and it can be explained only if we posit a differential intrinsic ensemblisation of the objects themselves. The second concerns the question of limits, and this requires us to re-examine the question of the constitution of ontological domains or strata as well as the nature of the relationships between them. One of the questions I set out to answer in the previous chapter was that of how to distinguish between various regions of Being when all of these are conceived as ‘magmatic’. This problem arises as soon as Castoriadis extends the concept of magma beyond the phenomena which prompted it. What Castoriadis initially identifies as characteristic of the social imaginary and psychical presentation/representation—an intrinsic indeterminacy and creative/transformative flux which ensidic logic can never adequately grasp, since its essential modus operandi involves destroying these very characteristics—can no longer serve to differentiate the mode of being of these realms from that of others as soon as we identify these twin characteristics with magma as a universal category. The indeterminacy we observe in the psyche and also, albeit in a somewhat different way, in the social-historical alerts us to the inadequacy of ensidic logic, but this inadequacy is not confined to these realms, it exists wherever there is indeterminacy; that is, everywhere. All we can say is that in the human psyche and the social imaginary we encounter a mode of being which exhibits indeterminacy and creative/transformative flux to such a degree that these realms are almost entirely unamenable to an ensidic treatment. This variation in the degree to which different realms of Being are amenable to the operations of ensidic logic must in turn reflect an intrinsic variability in the very characteristics in question; that is, indeterminacy and creative flux. What Castoriadis calls the first natural stratum, for example, is evidently highly amenable to ensidic logic, offering extremely reliable supports for the operation of this logic. To return to Castoriadis’ favourite example: A dog as dog is actually one, the qua . . . in terms of which it is one despite its millions of cells and so forth, is essential . . . . Referring to a dog is immediately situating it in terms of a host of determinations, positing it as or recognising in it an ontological thickness which is essentially defined, relating to an

228 • Chapter Eight already actualised coagulation (although this is always incomplete), to something that is already done and stated as already done.21

In other words, our representational ensemblisation of the phenomenon ‘dog’ draws on (leans on) an ensemblisation which is inherent to the dog, that ensemblisation by virtue of which the dog—as a self-formed/self-forming entity—is. The same may be said in relation to inorganic nature: our ensemblisation of rocks and stars must be seen as leaning on an intrinsic ensemblisation of these phenomena. The situation is entirely different in the case of the human psyche. Saying ‘this representation . . .’ commits us to nothing and entails nothing (other than empty commonplaces) with respect to what is in question. The expression is infinitely slight; there is no essential with respect to . . . here, no categorial organisation mobilised ipso facto by the expression. The latter imposes practically nothing at all and at the same time excludes almost nothing; it has no content and no function other than provisionally identifying something fluid and fleeting, out of which stem an indefinite number and direction of vectors, and of which only one thing is categorially certain: that it will dissolve or burst apart to leave in its stead something totally other than ‘itself’. That to which we are related here is a concreteness or a coagulation yet to be realised, something that is not made but that makes itself by making itself as something else.22

In chapter five I suggested that Castoriadis’ description of representation in terms of a ‘yet to be realised’ determinacy is questionable. In chapter six, however, I suggested that determinacy might well be posited as a fundamental aim of the psyche, but that this aim is counterbalanced by a struggle to escape all determinations. Despite this, I still believe that the phrase ‘yet to be realised’ is unsatisfactory. As I have argued, it would seem to perpetuate the ensidic prejudice according to which the indeterminate must always be subordinated to the absolutely determinate. The determination of presentation/ representation is entirely realised; it is realised—it is ‘what’ it is—whether or

21

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 325-326.

22

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 326.

Determination and the Logic of Indeterminate Being • 229

not it conforms to the tenets of ensidic logic and whether or not it satisfies the psyche’s own demands for determinacy. If we describe the ensemblisation of the first natural stratum as ‘already done’, this does not mean that our ensemblisation of it is any less our own work. Rather, it signifies only that the degree of determinacy we attribute to the natural world in our ensemblisation of it is not entirely alien to that world in itself. ‘Already done’ acquires an additional layer of meaning when referring specifically to the living being, for here we must posit an aim intrinsic to the object in question which its self-ensemblisation realises. As Castoriadis warns, the greater degree of intrinsic determinacy discernible in the first natural stratum as compared to domains such as that of the human psyche and the social imaginary should not lead us to conclude that the natural world is capable of bearing the full weight of ensidic operations. In order to have a perception of ‘things’ as determined, we must pay attention to them—but not too much; we must take them seriously—but not too seriously. We must pay attention to them and take them seriously just within the limits our social-historical institution sets for us as conscious individuals acting in and through legein and teukhein. . . . If the limits of attention and seriousness are overstepped, what was a full and apparently determined being of the ‘thing’ suddenly becomes a hole in being, an undetermined enigma slipping away on all sides . . .23

We might describe the difference between the natural world and the worlds of the psyche and the social-historical in terms of the breadth of these limits of attention and seriousness. As I suggested earlier, we cannot speak about characteristics such as stability and separation/separability without relating these to a frame of reference, and therefore an observer. This does not mean that these characteristics are ‘merely subjective’. The limits of attention and seriousness Castoriadis refers to here are not determined solely by the observer; they are also determined by the intrinsic characteristics of the object in question. The physical ‘thing’ will slip away, its determinacy will be exposed as incomplete, its inseparability from that which surrounds it will assert itself

23

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 322.

230 • Chapter Eight

so that the ‘thing’ will become invisible as such, “a hole in being,” an abyss which defies representation and thought; but this will happen only exceptionally. The psychical ‘thing’, on the other hand, slips away almost as soon as one endeavours to grasp it, and this difference reflects an intrinsic difference in the degree of determinacy/indeterminacy and creative flux in the two ‘domains’.

2

The Ensidic and the History of Creation

The Antinomies of Physics and the Plurality of the Ensidic We can pursue this question further by exploring Castoriadis’ assertion that outside of certain limits and domains the results of ensemblisation are antinomic. As we shall see, this production of antinomies is a consequence of another aspect of the necessary incompleteness of the ensidic. The example Castoriadis offers is contemporary physics. There we find two practically complementary but theoretically conflicting ruling theories: general relativity and quantum mechanics. In fact, this conflict is only one of a series of antinomies, conundrums and paradoxes which Castoriadis identifies within contemporary physics.24 It is possible, nonetheless, to trace all of these problems and aporias to a conflict between the ontological assumptions required for both effective theorising and experimental exploration of different ‘object domains’ or ‘types of phenomena’, and this conflict is represented most starkly, if not exclusively, by the competing assumptions of the two major theoretical frameworks. The conflict in question is fundamental and formal: it concerns the very nature of determination. In general relativity determination is ‘classical’: determined causes produce determined effects. In quantum mechanics, determination is probabilistic: one can calculate the likelihood that a ‘known’ cause will result in one of a fixed range of system states, but one cannot know which of these possibilities will be realised on any particular occasion. One of the overarching aims of contemporary theoretical physics is to unify these two fundamental theories. The motivation behind this might also be described as ‘classical’. There must, so most physicists argue, be one

24

Castoriadis, “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation,” pp. 158-164.

Determination and the Logic of Indeterminate Being • 231

set of laws governing one set of forces at all levels of the physical world. It is unacceptable that the understanding of the actions of one of these forces, gravity, should be classically deterministic whilst the understanding of all the others is probabilistic. The problem is a dire one precisely because gravity cannot be thought of as simply absent from the realm which quantum mechanics effectively describes and explains. Its effects may be weak to the point of being negligible except under rare and extreme conditions, but it cannot be conceived of as being simply inoperative. Moreover, it happens that some of the most compelling questions posed by contemporary cosmology concern precisely those rare and extreme conditions under which the effects of gravity at the quantum level become crucial. Physicists are left with the (to them) intolerable situation in which a single force must be conceived of as operating according to radically different laws (and types of law) in different domains. The most common response is to endeavour to ‘de-classicise’ the account of this force by attempting to develop a quantum theory of gravity.25 On the other hand, as is evident from Heisenberg’s account of the philosophical assumptions underlying quantum mechanics, even this would not dissolve the antinomy, since quantum mechanics itself not only incorporates but is in effect founded upon classically determinist assumptions regarding the nature of measurement and measuring devices, assumptions which cannot be jettisoned because they are essential to the Western scientific project and also to what, following Castoriadis, we would call ‘social doing’ per se. It might be said that for Heisenberg quantum mechanics is best viewed as an effort to produce a classically deterministic description of a realm which is not in itself classically deterministic by forcing phenomena within this realm to produce

25

R. B. Angel, Relativity, The Theory and Its Philosophy, Oxford, Pergamon, 1980;

Y. Ne’eman and Y. Kirsh, The Particle Hunters, 2nd edition. Cambridge, Mass. and New York, Cambridge University Press, 1996; A. Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory, 15th edition, trans. R. W. Lawson, London, Methuen, 1954; S. W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time: from the Big Bang to Black Holes, London, Bantam, 1989; N. Bohr, “Causality and Complementarity,” T. Ferris, “Unified Theories of Physics,” W. Heisenberg, “The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory,” and H. R. Pagels, “Uncertainty and Complementarity,” all in The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, ed. Timothy Ferris, Boston, New York and Toronto, Little, Brown and Company, 1991.

232 • Chapter Eight

effects within a domain which can be treated according to the principles of classical determinism—that is, the principles of ensidic logic.26 Castoriadis’ contribution to this debate is to postulate that the “change in axioms, at the level of theory, corresponds to a fracture at the level of the object.”27 Antinomies such as those which prevail in contemporary physics reflect ontological differences between domains, strata or layers of Being. Each such domain is a ‘creation’, the emergence of a different or other mode of being. Each domain brings into being a different type of determination, and each type of determination exhibits a different degree of determinacy/ indeterminacy. This creation/emergence is itself entirely non-ensidic and, therefore, non-ensemblisable. All determinations—all forms and laws—are exclusive to the domain in which they operate. As ‘creation’, the emergence of a new domain, of a radically other constellation of forms and laws, and of other types or senses of ‘form’ and ‘law’, is not and cannot be governed by the determinations which obtain in already existing domains, nor is it governed by a set of overarching laws of development or pluralisation. Rather, this plurality is the result of a history of creation.28 We have discussed this notion of the heterogeneous stratification of Being previously, but in this context new aspects and implications come to the fore and demand to be addressed. As Castoriadis asserts, this ontological heterogeneity implies that while it is possible to ensemblise (albeit incompletely) each domain or stratum, it is not possible to ensemblise either the totality of Being or the relationship between strata.29 This impossibility is attributable to what Castoriadis terms the ‘local’ nature of the ensidic itself. Unfortunately, Castoriadis employs the term ‘local’ in such a way that it is not always clear what he intends by it. This can be seen immediately if we juxtapose a few statements in which the term appears or to which it relates.

26

Heisenberg, “The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory.”

27

Castoriadis, “The Ontological Import of the History of Science,” p. 366.

28

Castoriadis, “The Ontological Import of the History of Science,” p. 373; Castoriadis,

“Done and To Be Done,” pp. 368-370. 29

Castoriadis, “The Ontological Import of the History of Science,” p. 372.

Determination and the Logic of Indeterminate Being • 233 . . . either there exists an ensemblisable part of being that is ‘everywhere dense’ or being is ‘locally’ (or ‘piecewise’; or by strata) ensemblisable.30 What is bears with it an ensemblistic-identitary dimension—or an ensemblistic-identitary part everywhere dense.31 The physical world has to be “locally” ensidic—or: in this world, the ensidic has to be “everywhere dense”.32

Does Castoriadis intend the ideas of an ensidic or ensemblisable part ‘everywhere dense’ and that of ‘local’ or ‘piecewise’ or ‘by strata’ ensidic dimensions and hence ensemblisability to be alternatives or synonymous descriptions? In the first statement, they seem to be presented as alternatives, in the second statement Castoriadis seems to opt for one of these alternatives against the other; and in the third, he seems to equate the two. The following passage introduces still more complexities and confusions. The deployment of Western science reveals in its objects two key features. On the one hand, it offers a confirmation of the extraordinary immanent universality of the laws discovered/created by us on the basis of narrowly “local” considerations (or else their “unlimited” but “bounded” extendibility, practically without modification . . .). These laws appear as “locally universal” or “universal by strata,” “local” signifying here not a ball or a compact set in R4 but instead one or several leaves of a transversal layering.33

The second feature Castoriadis goes on to refer to is that irregularity or heterogeneity we are at present endeavouring to understand. ‘R4’ signifies a four-dimensional space-time; in other words, a ‘locality’ in the conventional sense—although in this case temporal as well as spatial. It is precisely this sort of ‘local-ness’ that Castoriadis is referring to when he speaks of the discovery/ creation of laws on the basis of narrowly ‘local’ considerations. We discover/

30

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 306.

31

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 307.

32

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 372.

33

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 364.

234 • Chapter Eight

create laws on the basis of phenomena within our vicinity, phenomena which affect us and which can be affected by us, and we then find that these laws seem to be universal. This is no surprise to a traditional scientist who assumes the ontological homogeneity of the universe. According to Castoriadis, however, what the history of science itself shows is that this universality is limited. It is a ‘local universality’; and here local has a different meaning. No longer does it refer to a ‘vicinity’, it now refers to a stratum, to “one or several leaves of a transversal layering”. These ‘leaves’ or ‘layers’ may ‘wrap’ the universe in its totality, but there are other ‘leaves’ or ‘layers’, ‘below’ or ‘above’ (or ‘within’ or ‘without’, and so on—such spatial metaphors are only that, metaphors, and can be deceiving inasmuch as the relation between such layers may not be spatial at all), and these other ‘leaves’ or ‘strata’ may also be ‘local’ in the first sense. The simultaneous employment of these two senses of ‘local’—‘local’ as ‘close by’ and ‘local’ as ‘indigenous’—can lead to confusions, as we shall see. The totality of ‘what is’ is not ensidic. It is a magma. Therefore Being cannot be completely ensemblised; in its totality it cannot be treated ‘ensidically’. The strata of Being are not ensidic, either. They are magmas. Even if taken individually, they cannot be completely ensemblised. ‘What is’ does include an ensidic dimension, but this dimension is not a uniform characteristic of the totality. The ensidic dimension emerges each time as an aspect of the being of each strata of Being; each time it is different/other. There is, it would appear, not one ensidic dimension, but a multiplicity of ensidic dimensions. Sometimes Castoriadis seems to be saying exactly this.34 Elsewhere and generally, he explicitly recognises the uniqueness of the ensidic dimensions created by the for-itself as living being and by the social imaginary.35 Nevertheless, to speak as he does of ‘a part everywhere dense’, or to say that “the world tout court include[s] an ensidic dimension,”36 or—worse still—that “Insofar as the ensidic dimension alone goes, we could talk of a unity of being,” risks misleading.37 The ubiquity of the ensidic is attributable to an essential constitutive feature of creation per se, of being as creation. To create is to form, and ipso

34

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 366.

35

Castoriadis, “Done and To Be Done,” p. 368.

36

Ibid.

37

Castoriadis, “Time and Creation,” p. 401.

Determination and the Logic of Indeterminate Being • 235

facto to determine. Each time this determining is different, but each time there is again determining. Creation is therefore always the creation of an ensidic dimension, but since this creation is not itself ensidic, since it is not determined (a tautological statement, as long as we accept the definition of creation put forward by Castoriadis), ‘what’ this ensidic dimension may consist in cannot be determined in advance.

Compatibility, Depth and the History of Creation Understanding the heterogeneity of Being in this way as the result of a disjunctive history of ontological creation gives rise to a series of problems. First (and once again) it does so in relation to the question of the unity of Being and the relationship between its various strata. As Castoriadis remarks, the absence of systematic unity, the “enormous irregularity in depth” of Being, its fragmented and heterogeneous character, nevertheless does “not signify any positive ‘incoherency’.”38 Castoriadis speaks of the emergence of new strata as constituting a ‘rupture’, and yet this rupture coincides with a certain ‘compatibility’. The resulting strata may be irreducible, but they are not isolated from one another. There are relations between them, “passageways are ‘negotiable’: there is a world.”39 These ‘passageways, however, are simply “numerical”; the relations between strata are ‘de facto’: they ‘happen’, without having been determined by any trans-regional law.40 How? Why? Perhaps there can be no finally satisfactory answer to the second of these questions. However, Castoriadis’ observation that living beings, in creating their own ‘laws’ and thereby their own stratum of Being do not ‘violate’ existing physiochemical laws, “they content themselves with making other ones” points to a kind of explanation.41 Why does the living being ‘content itself’ with making other laws, and how is it that these other laws happen not to violate existing laws? This can hardly be construed as some sort of voluntary self-constraint. It is not as though organisms take an inventory of existing physiochemical laws in order to establish what laws they should and should not make. If living

38

Castoriadis, “The Ontological Import of the History of Science,” p. 364.

39

Castoriadis, “The Ontological Import of the History of Science,” p. 365.

40

Castoriadis, “The Ontological Import of the History of Science,” p. 372.

41

Castoriadis, “The Ontological Import of the History of Science,” p. 364.

236 • Chapter Eight

beings do not create laws that violate existing laws this is because they cannot. Here we glimpse something like an overarching ‘law’ or ‘principle’ of creation, which one might call the principle of ‘compatibility’. As we have seen, the creation of each stratum is the creation not only of new determinations or laws, but of other types of determination and other senses of ‘law’. It would appear that creation cannot involve the emergence of new determinations which would be incompatible with those which already exist; it can only involve the emergence of other determinations, of other types of determination. It is this, I suggest, that prevents contradiction and guarantees the sort of de facto coherency we witness. This tells us something important about determinacy-indeterminacy in general. The determination of Being may be such that it can preclude the emergence of contradictory or incompatible determinations; what the existing mode/s of being cannot prevent is the emergence of other types of determination. This may be regarded as the most general type of constraint which creation must encounter. One only needs to reflect for a moment on the essentially indeterminable nature of the notion of ‘otherness’ to realise that this condition does not restrict the potential for creation in the slightest. All this concerns the question of the creation/emergence of the various strata; it still leaves us with innumerable questions about the continuing relationships between them. Without exploring or explicating them in any detail, Castoriadis offers a list of possible types of effective connection between strata of Being and between beings within each strata.42 I do not intend to examine these here. I only wish to point out the important fact that the notion of ‘leaning on’ cannot be generalised to encompass all such relationships. ‘Leaning on’ entails creative engagement. There can be no such engagement where there is no self. The most important point is that the strata of Being are not isolated. We must remember that when Castoriadis speaks of the necessity of positing a stratification of Being, he does so because of what he describes as an apparent ‘fracture at the level of the object’. Acknowledging this ‘fractured’ character of the ‘object’ does not mean that we are free to view each such ‘object’ as consist-

42

Castoriadis, “Done and To Be Done,” pp. 369-370.

Determination and the Logic of Indeterminate Being • 237

ing of and constituted by a number of more fundamental ‘objects’. On the contrary, this is the traditional reductionist approach Castoriadis is arguing against. Rather, we must recognise that, as Castoriadis puts it, “every phenomenon is an interphenomenon”.43 This means that the unity of any ‘object’ or ‘phenomenon’ which we may wish to designate or mark out as such must be viewed as the result of a multiplicity of interrelated but irreducible modes of being. The ‘object’ is this multiplicity of types of determination, none of which are determination in the properly ensidic sense, and between which a host of various types of effective but non-determinate relations exist. Castoriadis also speaks of a ‘depth’ of layers. This notion of ‘depth’ relates to a number of different aspects of the problem, and signifies different things depending on which aspect is in view. It reflects the spatial schema associated with the process of investigation, in which the solution of one mystery opens up another in the same way in which one ‘peels back the layers’ of an onion. It is at the same time an attempt to represent the relationship between modes of being, relationships which may not be organised in the regular, hierarchical fashion that this image of depth immediately suggests. A mode of being may, for example, be associated with the question of scale, with the differences between macro- and micro-worlds; or it may be related to the question of scale only in a quite superficial manner—the disjunction between the socialhistorical and the first natural stratum has nothing to do with scale, although the social-historical ‘inhabits’ the macro-world of the first natural stratum and not the micro-world of sub-atomic particles. The notion of ‘depth’ must also be understood ‘historically’. As Castoriadis insists, the stratification of Being is not merely or essentially ‘synchronic’, it is ‘diachronic’.44 Being is not just stratified, it is stratifying, it is the ‘creation’ of new strata. The ‘depth’ of strata reflect this history of creation/emergence. The undeniable asymmetry in relations between strata may be interpreted in terms of this historical dimension: obviously, earlier strata may constitute necessary conditions for the emergence of subsequent strata, but not vice versa. It should also be noted—though this, as we shall see, Castoriadis himself fails to do—that these different senses of

43

Castoriadis, “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation,” p. 167.

44

Castoriadis, “The Ontological Import of the History of Science,” p. 373.

238 • Chapter Eight

‘depth’ need not coincide: the history of investigation need not correspond to the history of ontological creation. None of this should be surprising if we recall that each of these strata as well as their unity or totality—whatever this might consist in—are to be regarded as magmas. The fact that they are magmas means that all of the problems and difficulties relating to the identification and separation of magmas which we have discussed previously in the abstract now re-appear in a more concrete form. What constitutes the ‘identity’ of a stratum? Where does one stratum ‘end’ and another ‘begin’? According to our understanding of the nature of this ontological stratification, we must declare that a stratum exists and extends wherever we can identify a unitary mode of being, wherever we can discern a homogeneous set of types of form-forming. However, as the term already suggests, the ‘set’ which we so identify will inevitably be an ensemblistic construction of our own, and this ensemblisation will never simply ‘reflect’ the ensemblisation inherent to the stratum in question. In ensemblising a stratum of Being, we determine this stratum and the objects or phenomena within it—and here Heisenberg’s reflections on the epistemological implications of the methodology of quantum mechanics supplies useful insights into the meaning of ensemblisation per se—according to the rules of determination which operate within our own stratum. For us, of course, this means according to the rules of social doing and saying, of legein and teukhein, both generally and as they obtain within our particular society. If we could eliminate from this term the naive ontological assumptions with which it is sometimes associated, this might be usefully thought of as a kind of ‘translation’. Translation implies interpretation. Acknowledging that representations are undetermined creations of the subjects for whom they exist does not, as Castoriadis seems to think, render the notion of interpretation inadmissible. On the contrary, it brings to the fore the inevitability and irreducibility of the problem of interpretation. Although Castoriadis rejects the term itself, always associating it with its most restrictive interpretations and least sophisticated proponents and practitioners, it must be said that the foregoing considerations inevitably bring us to what can only be described as the ‘hermeneutical’ dimension of both his own thought and the problematic which his work

Determination and the Logic of Indeterminate Being • 239

opens up.45 In fact, as Arnason has pointed out, the hermeneutical problematic emerges as soon as the question of a relationship between imaginary significations and the first natural stratum is raised; or more generally, as soon as the notion of ‘leaning on’ is introduced, in any of its various senses and contexts.46 This hermeneutical problematic, which is ontological as much as it is epistemological, will be the focus of the final two chapters.

45

There are in fact two distinct, though related, bases for Castoriadis’ rejection

of hermeneutics. The first is philosophical: he believes (rightly or wrongly) that the hermeneutical tradition underestimates the importance of cultural creation. He assumes that ‘interpretation’ must be understood principally in terms of an encounter with a pre-existing truth or meaning, and for this reason he rejects any notion that the relationship between social imaginary significations and ‘the world’ can be regarded as interpretive. ‘The world’ in itself has no ‘meaning’; meanings arise within the world as they are created by the subjects for whom they exist. (“Done and To Be Done,” pp. 363-364) The second is cultural: he believes that since the Second World War Western culture has entered a period of decline which has involved, amongst other things, a diminution of cultural creativity. This reflects a rejection of the very notions of the new and of creativity which is philosophically justified by the idea that tradition is all-embracing and inescapable, that novelty is an illusion, and that radical social and cultural change is more often suffered than made, and when made, almost inevitably produces results which diminish freedom. This line of thought he associates with thinkers such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida. The result is a ‘retreat’ into interpretation, in which a re-reading of the history of ideas replaces any attempt to re-think ‘what is’. Castoriadis, “The Crisis of Culture and the State,” p. 226; Castoriadis, “The Retreat from Autonomy: Postmodernism as Generalised Conformism,” p. 40; Castoriadis, “Done and To Be Done,” pp. 362-364. 46

J. P. Arnason, “Culture and Imaginary Significations,” Thesis Eleven, 22, 1989, pp.

25-45.

Chapter Nine Indeterminacy and Interpretation

1

The Measure of Things

Creation and Interpretation The creation of a ‘world’ is at the same time an articulation of ‘what is’.1 The latter may not exhaust this creation, but it is nonetheless central to it. Its necessity is dictated in the first instance by the exigencies of survival, which require that the presentational world of the self be adapted to the task of representation. Castoriadis’ objection to the notion that this constitutes an interpretation seems to rest on a naive understanding of interpretation in which creativity has no place. This supposed antithesis of creation and interpretation is illusory. Moreover, his denials and disparagements notwithstanding, Castoriadis’ own work goes a long way towards exposing it as such. What he shows is that, while creation is a more extensive category than interpretation, so that not all creation can be reduced to interpretation, all interpretation is necessarily creation.

1

Arnason, “Culture and Imaginary Significations.”

242 • Chapter Nine

Denying the existence of the hermenuetical dimension of culture inevitably places the concept of truth in jeopardy, something that would be entirely alien to the core of Castoriadis’ own project. His position has never been to reject the concept of ‘truth’, but merely to show that it is creation alone which makes truth possible. I will return to this question in the following chapter. In the present context, the hermeneutical problem appears in two guises: 1) the problem of the historical nature of science and the ontological implications of this history, and 2) the general question of the relationship between the observer and the observed. In exploring these, the question of the status of the ensidic and the nature of ensemblisation will continue to be one of my primary concerns.

The History of Science and the Multiplication of Entities According to Castoriadis, the history of science shows us that we cannot ensemblise, or ‘ensidise’, ‘what is’ in its totality, that we can do so only “in fragments”.2 For him, this fragmentary character of our systematic knowledge reflects the fractured, heterogeneous nature of the object of this knowledge: the ‘world’. The physical world is ensidisable (mathematisable). It is not so “in various ways” (supposedly arbitrary ones, so that “anything goes”) . . . Rather, it is so in other ways, and thus according to which stratum of the world one considers. . . .3

The correspondence which Castoriadis seems to be postulating here between different ensidisations—different theoretical frameworks with different axioms—and different ontological strata is far too simplistic, and it ignores the very factors which Castoriadis himself is usually most concerned to emphasise: indeterminacy, creativity and the relationship between the two. What Castoriadis says of the history of physics is true: “that at each stage there is a ‘description-explanation’ of a given class of facts, which is simultaneously both adequate on the accepted criteria of rationality and yet incomplete relative

2

Castoriadis, “The Ontological Import of the History of Science,” p. 372.

3

Castoriadis, “The Ontological Import of the History of Science,” p. 369.

Indeterminacy and Interpretation • 243

to the set of known facts, and logically incoherent from the standpoint of the subsequent stage.”4 One cannot, however, as Castoriadis does, leap straight from this observation to the hypothesis of ontological stratification. To do so one would have to assume that the only reasonable explanation for this historical movement is the encounter with new ontological domains. Not only is this assumption untenable, but Castoriadis’ own account shows it to be so, and explains why changes in theoretical frameworks cannot be automatically reduced to encounters with other modes of being. The world is ‘ensidisable’ in various ways because each ‘ensidisation’ is a creation. Each stratum of Being is ensidisable in various ways because each stratum is a magma, because the determinations which obtain within each stratum are never truly ‘ensidic’, because the indeterminacy of these determinations is always such as to allow representation by an indefinite number of ensemblist organisations, none of which, insofar as they are ensemblistic, corresponds to or encapsulates all that the stratum in question is. These ensemblisations are not ‘arbitrary’; it is not true that anything goes. But even if we were able to exclude the impossible (which is doubtful), we would not arrive, like Sherlock Holmes, at the ‘correct answer, however improbable’; we would not even be able to specify a set or domain of possibly correct answers. Deduction is an effective method of investigation only of ensidic realms, or only insofar as a realm can be reduced to an ensidic system. Beyond this, there is always more. To put this more concretely, we must say that, while Castoriadis argues that “the essential aspect of human theoretical activity lies in its discovery and exploration of new regions,”5 sometimes, on the contrary, theoretical activity involves a re-thinking of the same region. When such a re-thinking occurs, our understanding of the region itself, its extent, the nature and variety of the entities within it and their mode of being may all alter. But this may occur without our being able to say that we have encountered a ‘new’ region. We may—indeed, we should—say that we have thereby ‘constructed’ a new region, but this construction/creation need not correspond to any ontological rupture or gulf. The perfect example of this is the one which Castoriadis

4

Castoriadis, “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation,” p. 171.

5

Castoriadis, “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation,” p. 219.

244 • Chapter Nine

offers, though he offers it in support of the view I am arguing against. This concerns the relationship between Newtonian physics and relativity. In fact, when Castoriadis asserts that “change in axioms, at the level of theory, corresponds to a fracture at the level of the object,” he is referring specifically to the passage from Newtonian mechanics to relativity.6 As he points out: the Newtonian Model is not a simple arbitrary constructum; it ‘corresponds’, after a certain fashion, to an immense class of facts, which are of all types and have no apparent relation; it has allowed to explain or foresee types of fact of which absolutely no account was taken at the time of its construction . . . And yet the Newtonian model is ‘false’, if the word has any meaning in this context: not only does it fail to foresee other facts, which can only be explained providing we reject it, but it also contains absurd hypotheses and concepts, and results in other absurd conclusions.7

Castoriadis is undoubtedly right to observe that the deficiencies of Newtonian mechanics do not in themselves lead to relativity. Relativity does not ‘contain’ Newtonian mechanics; it rejects and replaces it.8 “To make the passage [from Newton to Einstein] one must replace ‘it is true that P’ with ‘it is not true that P’.”9 And yet, not only is this passage quite understandable without postulating a fracture at the level of the object, I would contend that it is impossible to understand at all on the basis of such a postulated fracture. Unlike the passage between quantum theory and general relativity, the passage from Newtonian mechanics to relativity does not involve a movement between different ontological realms; rather, it is an effort to re-think and to re-imagine the same realm, the same ontological stratum. The fact that there is no alteration in the fundamental category of ‘determination’ attests to this. In this sense, relativity remains, as I have argued already, and as both Einstein and the early proponents of quantum theory recognised, ‘classical’. Castoriadis sometimes speaks as if the fact that Newtonian mechanics does indeed ‘correspond to an immense class of facts’, and that it therefore remains, in practical terms,

6

Castoriadis, “The Ontological Import of the History of Science,” p. 366.

7

Castoriadis, “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation,” p. 171.

8

Ibid.

9

Castoriadis, “The Ontological Import of the History of Science,” p. 366.

Indeterminacy and Interpretation • 245

perfectly serviceable in relation to such facts, means that there is a stratum the mode of being of which continues to be more adequately described-explained by Newtonian mechanics than by Einsteinian relativity.10 This is simply wrong. It is not true—or, it is not a tenet of general relativity—that the “space-time that is not Euclidian in its totality . . . is ‘locally Euclidian’ . . . ”11 Rather, within an R4 sphere of sufficiently small diameter the non-Euclidian character of the totality is indiscernible from space conforming to the axioms of Euclidean geometry. Similarly, the fact that “for sufficiently small v/c, Lorentz formulae are unneeded”12 does not mean that the effects predicted by the theory of special relativity do not occur where differences of velocity are sufficiently small relative to the speed of light, it means only that for most practical purposes these effects are so small in such instances that they may be safely ignored. Contrary to what Castoriadis seems to be arguing, I would assert that in such contexts, where one set of axioms effectively replaces another, we cannot relate this change to an ontological fracture. Only when this does not happen, when theoretical frameworks stand side by side without there being any question of one replacing the other because each, with its radically different ontological assumptions and categories, is clearly better suited than its alternative to describe-explain phenomena within its own object domain, where, in other words, there exists a genuinely intractable and apparently unresolvable antinomy, only in these circumstances can we posit the existence of real ontological differences corresponding to the different assumptions of the theories. As Castoriadis himself proclaims, “there are not two gravitational theories for ordinary phenomena, from the molecule to the galaxy, there is one and only one . . .”13 General relativity does not reveal another stratum of Being, it redefines the nature and extent of the same stratum which the Newtonian model dealt with. On the other hand, if we go below the level of the molecule (and perhaps, above the level of the galaxy) we do seem to require more than one theory, and this suggests genuine ontological differences. Of course, we might be wrong. Tomorrow a new theory may be proposed which

10

Castoriadis, Crossroads in the Labyrinth, pp. xiv-xv.

11

Castoriadis, “The Ontological Import of the History of Science,” p. 366.

12

Ibid.

13

Castoriadis, “The Ontological Import of the History of Science,” p. 369.

246 • Chapter Nine

reveals continuity where today we see discontinuity. Castoriadis’ response to this, with which I concur, is to insist that even if this were to happen we would still be left with the radical discontinuities between realms such those of the non-self and the for-itself, and between the living being and the human domains of the psyche and the social-historical. If the movement from Newtonian mechanics to relativity seems to resemble the movement from classical determinism to quantum indeterminacy this is because, as I have already suggested, the movement of scientific knowledge itself can be imagined as a ‘peeling back of layers’, an ‘uncovering’ which seeks always to go ‘deeper’. This layering, however, this stratification, may not and will not always correspond to an ontological stratification. We can posit some rules of thumb for judging whether or not this might be the case. Castoriadis argues that the postulate of ontological stratification suggests that it is a mistake to oppose a ‘phenomenal’ layer to a ‘real’ layer. While not wishing to preserve this terminology with all its philosophical implications, I would contend that what we should actively endeavour to do is something very like this: rather than postulating ontologically divergent strata wherever we are able, we should endeavour wherever possible to discover a unity between apparently divergent strata. Some phenomena are irreducible, but we will only discover which by endeavouring as far as possible to perform reductions. It is only when we fail in this that we can argue that we are dealing with something which is genuinely ‘other’. Ironically, once again it is the example Castoriadis offers in support of his contrary argument that best shows what I mean. . . . the accuracy of the statement that ‘the sun always rises in the East and sets in the West’ is presupposed by the demonstration that establishes the heliocentric system. The truth of the appearance of geocentricity is an ingredient in the truth of heliocentricity.14

Where it is possible in this way to explain one phenomena by reference to another, however contradictory they may superficially appear, we are dealing with a single stratum. Where we cannot do so, where, as is the case with the relation between physical events ‘in the world’ and representations, we

14

Castoriadis, “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation,” p. 173.

Indeterminacy and Interpretation • 247

cannot even posit what such a reduction might consist in, we are dealing with different strata.15

The Hermeneutical Circle and the Self-Creation of the Observer These are only rules of thumb, however; they are not infallible. What we hold for truth today we may reject tomorrow. In itself, this is not a problem. Knowledge changes, truth changes, and the nature and extent of such change cannot be determined in advance. To accept this is just to accept the creative, and therefore indeterminable, nature of knowledge and truth. There is a problem here, however, to be understood rather than to be overcome. Castoriadis argues that the world is ensidisable “in other ways . . . according to which stratum of the world one considers (or one ‘discovers’—one ‘constructs’—one ‘creates’).”16 One can only know a stratum as such insofar as one has constructed it as a stratum, insofar, therefore, as one has created this construct. The fact that one has such a construct does not, however, mean that there is beyond this construct a stratum which corresponds to it. There is no formula for determining whether or not this is the case—if there were, the question would not arise. Nonetheless, the question must be asked and we must endeavour to answer it each time, even though we are aware that none of our answers will or can ever be definitive. If there are ontological strata each of which constitutes its own ensidic dimension, its own mode of being and of determining/being-determined, then the question of how our constructs, our ensemblisations, correspond to and differ from the intrinsic ensemblisation of these is unavoidable. Castoriadis frames this problem in terms of the relationship between observer and observed, or subject and object. We posit that ‘what is’ “bears with it an ensemblistic-identitary dimension . . .”17 Question: Does it bear this dimension with it or do we impose this dimension on it? . . . For the ‘near-perfect’ observer, the question of knowing, in an

15

Castoriadis, “The Ontological Import of the History of Science,” p. 364; Castoriadis,

“Radical Imagination and the Social Instituting Imaginary,” pp. 322-325. 16

Castoriadis, “The Ontological Import of the History of Science,” p. 369.

17

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 307.

248 • Chapter Nine ultimate sense, what comes from the observer and what comes from the observed is undecidable. (Nothing absolutely chaotic is observable. No absolutely unorganised observer exists. The observation is a not fully decomposable coproduct.)18

Once again, Castoriadis’ statement requires some re-interpretation if it is to be made consistent with his own underlying position and the conclusions we have arrived at thus far in our exploration and development of it. All representational ensemblisations—all categories, all concepts, all theorisations— are impositions. The ‘observation’ comes from the observer and from the observer alone: it exists only for the observer, and as such it cannot be given even partially by the observed. It is not a coproduct of the observer and the observed, it is a creation of the observer. This creation, insofar as its purpose is to represent, attempts to reach something beyond itself. It can do so only insofar as it is created in such a way that it may be affected by what is ‘other’. It—or the subject who creates it—determines how it might be affected; as Castoriadis points out, if each stratum of Being seems coherent yet incomplete, it is “coherent or incomplete, sufficient or deficient, only relative to the corresponding ‘categorial schema’.”19 We must admit that the questions we ask determine the type of answer we may arrive at. And we must go even further than this. As Castoriadis observes, “no question can arise of itself and have a meaning outside a theoretical framework”.20 In order to determine what shall count as an answer, a theoretical framework must first postulate both ‘what’ is and ‘how’ it is; it must, to some degree, have answered already. Such answers are what Heidegger refers to as the ‘fore-structure of understanding’, and what Gadamer analyses as ‘prejudices’.21 Both the questions and the answers are ours and can never be other than ours. What makes a question a genuine

18

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” pp. 307-308.

19

Castoriadis, “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation,” p. 173.

20

Ibid.

21

M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson,

Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., Blackwell, 1962, pp. 188-203; H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Garrett Barden and John Cumming, New York, The Seabury Press, 1975, pp. 235-274.

Indeterminacy and Interpretation • 249

question is that it does not contain its own answer. The openness of a question depends on its allowing and even seeking out answers which rebound upon the question itself and the prejudices which underlie it and which therefore force us to create a new framework which gives rise to different questions. It is impossible to get beyond this circle; it is also unnecessary. The possibility of representation, the capacity to impose an order of our own creation, is predicated on the existence of an intrinsic organisation of that which we represent. The question, then, is not whether this representational ensemblisation is ours (it is), nor whether ‘what is’ contains an ensidic dimension (it does); the question is to what extent any specific representational ensemblisation ‘reaches’, ‘corresponds to’, obscures or distorts that ensemblisation which is intrinsic to the object in question. This question concerns the value of our representational ensemblisations. This value is dependent on the capacity of these ensemblisations to present the non-ensidic—or rather, the differently ensidic—and to do so, as must be the case, by utilising the capacities of the ensidic logic with which they must necessarily operate: that is, the logic of legein. Castoriadis would say: by utilising the imaginary capacities of legein, which go beyond and are not determined by its ensidic dimension. I would not disagree with this; I would wish to emphasise, however, that the creative capacity of language and signification reflects the confluence of these two dimensions. We go beyond what has already been thought and said because imagination and the imaginary dimension of signification are ‘autonomised’, because they are not confined by the determinations through which they are each time constituted. But this ‘going beyond’ also reflects a desire to think and to say what has yet to be thought or said; a desire, therefore, to determine what has thus far escaped determination, and, ultimately, to determine everything. Without the extravagance—the hubris, as Castoriadis would call it—of this drive to determine, the madness of a logic that would encompass everything, and which, as we have seen, Castoriadis tries to trace to an original state of the psyche, the imagination could never be affected by anything beyond itself. I will return to these questions again later. As we have seen, Castoriadis argues that the primary ‘regions’ or ‘strata’ of Being cannot be thought except on the basis of themselves, that we can only

250 • Chapter Nine

learn how to conceptualise them ‘in contact with’ these regions themselves.22 In terms of the language of observer and observed, we may say that this presupposes a capacity of the observer for self-reorganisation. The peculiarity of our species would seem to be just this capacity to re-organise itself, not just but also qua observer. How this occurs therefore becomes an important question, and what we have concluded thus far concerning the nature of ensemblisation may offer some useful conceptual tools for thinking about this process. As usual, this primarily epistemological question has an equally important, and ultimately inseparable, ontological side.

Locality, Limitation and Truth We can ensemblise ‘what is’ only ‘by fragments’. This limitation of our capacity to ensemblise cannot be entirely explained by reference to the fragmented nature of ‘what is’, for the fragments we mark out need not coincide with ontological fractures. Even were this not the case, it would be wrong in principle according to all that we have said about the spontaneous, non-derived nature of representation to seek to explain a characteristic of representation by reference to a characteristic of the object represented. Where there are similarities between the two, this can only mean that the same or similar characteristics exist independently in both realms, characteristics which may constitute general features of the ensidic or of ‘determination’ per se. If we know only ‘by fragments’, this is because our ensemblisation essentially involves the creation of such fragments. The inevitability of this ‘fragmentation’ is related to the ultimate indeterminacy and indeterminability of all ‘determination’, the fact that the ensidic, wherever and whatever it may be, is always, in truth, quasi-ensidic. Previously I identified two senses of ‘local’ operating in Castoriadis’ account of ensemblisation. To this we must now add a third, which in fact encompasses the others. Ensemblisation is always ‘local’ in the sense that it holds or applies only ‘within limits’. Ensemblisation itself creates these limits: it is a process of ‘limiting’, of establishing limits. The validity or viability of an ensemblisation is confined by and within these limits, but without such limi-

22

Castoriadis, “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation,” p. 219.

Indeterminacy and Interpretation • 251

tation no ensemblisation could have any validity or viability at all. ‘What is’ (representation included) is determinable only within limits. Insofar as it is not in itself ‘determined’ or ‘determinate’, it exceeds these limits. Insofar as it is essentially indeterminate, it exceeds all and any limits. The necessary incompleteness of any ensemblisation devolves from the limited nature of any determination, whether this determination be imposed or intrinsic. Castoriadis discusses this question in terms of the notion of modulo. All determination is limited, conditional, relative; it is determination with respect to . . . . When we ensemblise we endeavour to make determinate what is not in itself fully determined, and we do so, as Castoriadis argues, by ‘marking out’, by separating and defining features which are not in themselves separate and defined. We can do so only because ‘features’ exist, because amidst the flux and indeterminacy there is the constant emergence of separation, of determination, of form; but by the same token, we can do so only by ignoring the inseparability, the indefiniteness of that which we construe as distinct and determined. As Castoriadis suggests, to see a ‘thing’ requires a restriction of attention.23 We must concentrate only on those aspects with regard to which the ‘thing’ may be construed as separate and distinct. Our awareness of its identity as ‘this’ depends on our capacity to make determinate the indeterminate features it exhibits and then to divorce those characteristics which it does not share from those which it does; or rather, the ‘thing’ is this collection of characteristics which can be defined (which exist as such only insofar as we define them and construct them as characteristics of this ‘thing’), on the basis of which it can be regarded as separate and distinct. Castoriadis describes this process in relation to presentation/representation. An individual’s representations at every instant and throughout his entire life—or, better, the representative (-affective-intentional) flux that an individual is, . . . are not a set of definite and distinct elements and yet they are absolutely not pure and simple chaos. A particular representation can be extracted from it and marked out—but this operation is obviously transitory in relation to the thing itself (and even essentially pragmatic and utilitarian), and the result, as such, is neither true nor false, neither correct nor

23

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 322.

252 • Chapter Nine incorrect. A fragment, aspect or moment of the representative flux is made to exist . . . as provisionally separated from the rest, with respect to . . . and for a given end and, in order to do this, it is generally attached to a particular linguistic term.24

Neither true nor false, neither correct nor incorrect: might we not just as well say that it is always false, or that it is always incorrect? It is false and incorrect inasmuch as it distorts that which it represents. The particular representation which is marked out as such does not exist as a particular representation, it does not exist in the manner in which we represent it. Since it is not as we portray it, is not our representation of it false? And yet, we know that without this distortion, this ‘misrepresentation’, there could be no representation at all. What hope is there for truth, then? What hope there is must centre on an awareness of the process through which the representation is constructed, and in particular the specific aim and underlying assumptions which guide this process: the with respect to . . . . A representation may be said to be true or false only in relation to that purpose for which it was constructed. The living being’s representations of the world are true to the extent that they allow it to successfully perform the activities necessary for its survival: to find food, to distinguish the edible from the inedible, to avoid danger, to find a mate, and so on. As this example immediately shows, the criteria for truth are set entirely by the subject in question—what is prey for one animal may be predator for another—but the truth or falsity of any particular representation also depends on the properties of the object represented—is the other animal in fact small enough for you to eat or is it big enough to eat you? Representation in general may be said to be essentially false only if the criteria for judging truth or falsity are such that no ‘object’ can meet them. This, in effect, is the situation which the traditional logic-ontology of determinacy places itself in. If we say, following Kant, that to ‘truly’ represent an object we must completely determine that object with respect to all possible predicates, we must conclude that we can never ‘truly’ represent anything, because ‘what is’ is neither determined nor determinable in such an absolute and universal manner.

24

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 321.

Indeterminacy and Interpretation • 253

We can represent ‘what is’ only by marking out particular ‘features’ which we construct as determined characteristics on the basis of which we distinguish and define an object as such and as ‘this’ object. Which ‘features’ do we choose? Which ‘features’ ought we to choose? This brings us finally to the question of the possible ‘triviality’ of ensemblisations. Everything may be ensemblisable, but “beyond certain limits or outside of certain domains, everything is so only trivially . . .”25 How are we to determine what is trivial and what is not? As Castoriadis suggests, and as the examples he offers show, this “concerns the object one is considering as well as what one wishes to do with it (theoretically or practically).”26 To weigh the statues in the Louvre is not trivial when viewed from the perspective of the necessity of moving them; it is trivial, however, when viewed from an aesthetic or cultural perspective. One cannot determine either the artistic merit or the meaning of a statue by its weight—not even if the massiveness of the statue contributes to its meaning. Statues can be weighed, however—their being as artworks does not eliminate their being as physical objects possessing mass. Michelangelo’s ‘David’ is a hunk of marble. It is not just a hunk of marble, of course. But why ‘of course’? Whether Michelangelo’s ‘David’ is just a hunk of marble or a statue will depend on who is making such a judgment, and why. The being of the object as object, both what it is and also whether it is—that is, as a distinct and separate ‘object’—will depend on the nature of the observer and his/her/its aims. One can certainly offer myriad criteria for distinguishing a statue from other hunks of marble, and these criteria concern characteristics which are ‘discoverable’ in the object, but they are not discoverable in the absence of these criteria, and according to other criteria they may be not just irrelevant but imperceptible. What is more, their ‘discovery’ is inevitably also their creation as determinate characteristics, so that in the absence of the appropriate criteria they simply cannot be said to exist. If and insofar as we decide that this hunk of marble is a statue, we must admit that the type of ensemblisation to which we would subject it as a hunk of marble is no longer appropriate, in the same way that, for all the reasons we have discussed, it is inappropriate to analyse a society in the same way one might analyse a table or a fish. Statues

25

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 343.

26

Ibid.

254 • Chapter Nine

and stones are different types of object: their modes of being are ‘other’. However, their existence as ‘objects’ cannot be separated from ‘what one wants to do with them’. It is the latter which first determines not only which object is before us but whether there is an ‘object’ at all. Castoriadis is well aware of this quandary. The creation of thought renders thinkable what was not previously thinkable, or not in that way. It brings into being: brings into being as thinkable that which . . . What? That which, without it, would not be thinkable? Or that which, without it, would not be? Each of these paths leads back into the other. . . . That which, in thought, is lasting, has to do with what is thought on each occasion. But it also has to do with the how it is thought. These two moments cannot be confounded, yet they cannot be rigorously separated. Let us accept the apparent redundance: a new thought is a new way of thinking a new object. The redundance at once gives birth to the enigma which it contains: we regularly find that the way exceeds the objects—and that the object exceeds the way. But we would be mistaken if we saw in this observation the indubitable index, at last, of some clear difference, some reciprocal exteriority as between thought and its object. The way exceeds the object starting from which and in connection with which thought was able to exist. So thought, then, has its own proper power—or is there rather an immanent universality, a complex uniformity of all that we come to think? But in that case, why is this universality not immediate and total? The object exceeds the way. So there is a heterogeneity, an inexhaustible irreducibility of the object—or maybe the latter might be arrived at in some other way? But in that case, why has it already been partially arrived at in this way?27

Here once again we encounter the figure of the circle. Castoriadis, as we have seen, refers to this circle as the circle of creation. Though Castoriadis would be unlikely to concede this, this same circle is what, following Heidegger28 and Gadamer,29 we have come to know as the hermeneutical circle. When faced

27

Castoriadis, Crossroads in the Labyrinth, pp. xxvii-xxviii.

28

Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 188-203.

29

Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. 235-274.

Indeterminacy and Interpretation • 255

with this circle, what we must understand is what Castoriadis, Heidegger and Gadamer each in his own way reveals: that this circle is not a prison, that it is instead that which makes knowledge possible. To ‘reach’ what is beyond—which is also to create what is not (yet)—is not to escape the circle, it is to transform it, to create a new circle. The ‘horizon’ which limits our vision is also what enables us to see, since that which is unlimited/indeterminate is invisible. But as these limits are creations, and our creations, they are not essentially or inevitably ‘closed’. We can alter them, transform them, replace them. The horizon moves with us; we move the horizon.30 Wherever we are, there is a horizon, but it is not the same horizon everywhere. This circularity may be universal and inescapable, but this does not mean that all circles are the same. A deliberate (that is to say, autonomous) transformation of our understanding is possible only through a particular kind of circle, one with certain specifiable characteristics. The isolation of a prejudice clearly requires the suspension of its validity for us. For so long as our mind is influenced by a prejudice, we do not know and consider it as a judgment. How then are we able to isolate it? It is impossible to make ourselves aware of it while it is constantly operating unnoticed, but only when it is, so to speak, stimulated. The encounter with a text from the past can provide this stimulus. For what leads to understanding must be something that has already asserted itself in its own separate validity. Understanding begins . . . when something addresses us. This is the primary hermeneutical condition. . . . . . . If a prejudice becomes questionable, in view of what another or a text says to us, this does not mean that it is simply set aside and the other writing or the other person accepted as valid in its place. . . . In fact our own prejudice is properly brought into play through its being at risk. Only through its being given full play is it able to experience the other’s claim to truth and make it possible for he himself to have full play.31

What I argued in chapter one concerning the altered character of nomos/ law in the context of autonomy applies equally to this notion of ‘prejudice’.

30

Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 271.

31

Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 266.

256 • Chapter Nine

Recognising the elements of our understanding—the concepts, axioms, theories, and so on—as ‘prejudices’, as judgments, affects the character of these elements. A concept that is questionable, and questionable because it is recognised as a creation and a superimposition, differs from one the truth of which is beyond question because it is regarded as ‘natural’—in the sense that it in one way or another ‘emanates’ from the ‘object’—or ‘received’—that is, is attributed to a source with a privileged access to truth. (Gadamer’s account prompts the question of how it is possible and what it may mean for ‘the other’ to ‘assert itself in its own separate validity’, especially when this ‘other’ happens not to be a text or a person, and when there is therefore no ‘bridge’ of meaning or of history between ourselves and that which we seek to understand. How do we discover that there is a difference between our understanding and its object? In terms of textual hermeneutics, Gadamer relates this to the experience of being “pulled up short” by the text.32 In terms of a more general conception of hermeneutics, can we say the same? I will return to this question later.)

Being: with Respect to and by Virtue of To ensemblise/determine is to limit. This limiting is possible only so long as we assume the validity of the principles (prejudices) on the basis of which it is accomplished. We proceed as if . . . . This as if . . . is always bound up with a with respect to . . . , which, as it were, establishes the limits or conditions within which our limiting/determining operates. This limitation may gall us, but we can accept it with relative equanimity as long as we can regard it as a reflection of our own limitations, our own ‘finite’ capacities. As soon as we admit that the determinability of ‘what is’ is necessarily and unavoidably limited, everything changes. The as if . . . and the with respect to . . . no longer mean what they had before; now, instead of merely reflecting something about ourselves, they refer to something intrinsic to ‘what is’. According to Castoriadis’ description, our ensemblisation of presentation/ representation requires us to make a “fragment, aspect or moment of the representative flux . . . exist . . . as provisionally separated from the rest, with respect

32

Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 237.

Indeterminacy and Interpretation • 257

to . . . .”33 We must acknowledge that this ‘provisionality’ concerns not only our ensemblisations of ‘what is’, but also the ‘object’ itself. ‘What’ we provisionally separate is in itself ‘provisionally separate’; it is inherently ‘provisional’. Castoriadis’ assertion that Being possesses an ensidic dimension only in the sense that it can ‘lend itself’ to an ensidic organisation should be re-interpreted along these lines. We must not imagine, however, that this signifies a mere potentiality of Being, one which we realise. Rather, the actual determination of all forms is to be understood as essentially ‘provisional’. ‘Provisionality’ in this sense implies an actual but indeterminable multifariousness. This is not a ‘waiting to be’, it is ‘being’. When Castoriadis suggests that “being is always essentially to-be,”34 we must not, as I have argued previously in other connections, understand by this an eternal ‘becoming’ which never reaches its goal. There is perpetual change, perpetual transformation, perpetual creation/emergence; but to interpret this as a perpetual ‘forestalling’ of being—‘true’ being—is to submit our thought once again to the prejudices of a determinist ontology. When we ensemblise we create representational ‘objects’. What is true of these objects is true, but the conditions of this truth also create these objects. What is the relationship between these objects and ‘what is’? ‘What is’ is ‘provisionally’ the object we create. Amongst an indeterminate multiplicity of determinations, ‘what is’ is, ‘within limits’ and ‘with respect to . . .’, also this. To say that ‘what is’ is this object does not and cannot mean what it would mean if ‘being’ were construed as ‘determinacy’; but this, of course, is the issue. It may seem surprising, but it is nonetheless unavoidable, that this should impact on Castoriadis’ assertions about the stratification of Being. Earlier I suggested that the fragments we create in our ensemblisation of ‘what is’ need not coincide with ontological ruptures or gulfs; now we must go further. If Being is a magma, then the ontological fractures we identify cannot be thought in accordance with the schemata of ensidic logic except ‘provisionally’. These fractures themselves, and the ontological strata which are supposedly associated with them and which occupy so important a place in Castoriadis’ thought, must also be regarded as ‘provisional’ in the sense out-

33

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 321.

34

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 322.

258 • Chapter Nine

lined above, as must the discontinuity between the modes of being of the various strata. To say that this discontinuity is only ‘with respect to . . .’ is not to signal a diminution of the being of this discontinuity. All that is ‘is’ only ‘with respect to . . .’. If we wished to describe this as a ‘relativisation’ of the differences between strata, we would also have to recognise that the meaning of the term ‘relative’ alters fundamentally once we concede that there is nothing that is not, in this sense, relative. Castoriadis’ assertions about mathematical objects need to be re-examined in the light of these reflections. As we have seen, Castoriadis claims that we discover the mode of being of the magma everywhere “save in mathematical constructions separated from their foundations”.35 It would seem, then, that for Castoriadis such mathematical objects are true ensembles. However, as he concedes, this is true only of mathematical constructions separated from their foundations. The problem is that mathematical constructions are not separate from their foundations and cannot be separated from them. A mathematical construction separated from its foundations is an object separated from that on the basis of which it exists. A mathematical construction may be regarded as a true ensemble only as long as we assume without question the validity of the rules and principles according to which it is constructed. But the same may be said of any ensemblisation, even the most patently tendentious. If there is a difference—and undoubtedly there is—between mathematical constructions and other ensemblisations, this cannot be a difference between ‘genuine’ and ‘non-genuine’ ensembles. Mathematical objects are presentations—they are ‘imaginary’ in the sense I have outlined already—which may be put to use in representation. Representations are also imaginary in the sense that they are creations, but inasmuch as they are submitted to the task of representing something beyond themselves, they are no longer ‘imaginary’ in this more limited sense. To reject the validity of the rules and principles according to which a mathematical object is constructed is to destroy the object in question; to reject the validity of the assumptions underlying a representational ensemblisation destroys the representation, but this still leaves that which was to be represented. The fact

35

Castoriadis, “Done and To Be Done,” p. 364.

Indeterminacy and Interpretation • 259

that this ‘X’ does not merely disappear indicates not that it is possible to represent it otherwise but that it is already also represented in another manner, even if this be merely at the level of a ‘shock’. In this way, as Castoriadis puts it, the object exceeds the manner in which it is thought—though it does not and obviously cannot, for us, exceed any thought/perception (any representation) whatsoever. The imaginary (mathematical) object, on the other hand, is inseparable from the thought/imagining which brings it into being. There is a difference between that which, outside our thought/imagining, would not be thinkable and that which, outside our thought/imagining, would not be. It is the difference between that which exists only by virtue of the self’s creative activity and that which also exists ‘in itself’; between that which the self makes (including itself ) and that which the self finds. The fact that the self can only ever ‘find’ something ‘other’ than itself by making something of its own does not destroy this distinction. (That the self can also ‘find’ that which it makes—including itself—complicates matters, but it does not alter the point I am making here.) Mathematical constructions, like all other ensembles/ensemblisations, are determined and determinable only ‘within limits’, only ‘with respect to . . . .’ If they seem to be ensemblisable/determinable to an exhaustive degree, as Castoriadis suggests they are,36 this is only because and insofar as these limits are respected. This restriction is achieved more successfully and completely in the case of mathematics than it is elsewhere.

2 Determination Beyond Limits To be as if Determined by When we speak of determination and determinacy we must always be aware that these characteristics can never be divorced from the modulo—the ‘with respect to . . .’—in relation to which the form in question is perceived and thought and in relation to which the form is. The significance of the ‘with respect to . . .’ is not confined to representation, it is central to being per se. The principles according to which we represent ‘what is’ are the laws according to

36

Castoriadis, “The Logic of Magmas and the Question of Autonomy,” p. 298.

260 • Chapter Nine

which representations are formed; they are the laws given by the self to itself as the laws of its own self-formation. The mode and scope of operation of each of these laws is governed and limited by the law’s own inherent ‘with respect to . . .’ In the same way, the laws of the non-self are limited. Within the limits (which, as I have already warned, should not be imagined as merely spatial) within which these laws operate and which the operation of these laws establish, that which is formed according to these laws is determined sufficiently for it to effectively be; that is, for it to affect and to be affected, in the manner proper to it. Outside these limits, these same forms are quite simply irrelevant. When we forget this—or if we reject the notion altogether—questions about determinacy soon lead to unresolvable aporias. What degree of determinacy is there in the structure and organisation of a living being? Sufficient (under certain highly limited conditions) for it to be: to be what it is and as it is. There is a difference, of course, between the inherent ‘with respect to . . .’ governing determination in the realm of the non-self and the ‘with respect to . . .’ as it operates in the realm of the for-itself. In the latter, the ‘with respect to . . .’ must be given by the self to itself as part of its self-creation; it is related to a goal, or a set of goals, the most fundamental of which is the continuation of the self’s own mode of being. In this context, the ‘with respect to . . .’ is purposive. This purposiveness must not be confused with consciousness, let alone deliberateness; rather it is what precedes these and makes each possible. In the passage from the living being to the human, the nature of this selfdetermination alters. One would be tempted to describe this alteration as a ‘forgetting’, except that what is supposedly ‘forgotten’ was not known before and could not have become known except via such a forgetting. What is ‘forgotten’, what is ‘cast aside’, is the ‘with respect to . . .’ of determination, its intrinsic limitedness. The appearance of ensemblisation qua ensidic logicontology in the fundamental instituting institutions of the social-historical represents an absolutisation of determination, an expansion beyond all limits of the drive towards determination which is essential to creation. If we encounter in the social-historical ‘objects’ which seem closer to true ensembles than anything we encounter elsewhere, this is because here alone forms are produced through the operations of a logic which assumes and demands full and complete determinacy. Elsewhere there exists only the ensidic qua determination. With the social-historical, there emerges for the first time the

Indeterminacy and Interpretation • 261

ensidic qua determinacy. It emerges not as an achievement—that is, not as the production of true ensembles—but as a principle, an aim, a norm. This shrugging off of the limits of determination is intimately related to that indeterminacy we have already identified as a key characteristic of self-creation in the human domain. If indeterminacy entails the transcendence/ destruction of limits, amongst these limits are the limits placed upon determination itself. With the greatest indeterminacy the scope for determination becomes greatest. If the self-ensemblisation of society obeys and actuates an ensidic logic which is more rigorously deterministic and identitary than that which governs the ensemblisation of other strata, including the first natural stratum, this immediately rules out any possibility of ‘explaining’ the logic of the institution of society by reference to the need to take into account the natural world and its organisation. As Castoriadis argues, social-historical ‘identity’ is neither the repetition nor the extension of ‘natural identity’; on the contrary, “identity exists fully or purely only as instituted, in and through the social-historical institution of identity and the identical.”37 ‘The Earth was the same Earth two hundred million years ago’—this expression is at once indubitable and indefensible. However, to return to a classroom example, Pythagoras’s theorem is the same, whether in Samos 25 centuries ago or in Paris today. Little matter in what context it is taken by those who are thinking it, or even whether it is ‘actually’ the same: it has to be. I can think-speak only by positing this condition, I must posit it at the very moment that I want to show that it is absurd and in order to show this. It is not only that the social-historical institution alone can ‘state’, ‘formulate’, ‘explicate’ the idea, the schema, the actuality of identity: the social-historical institution alone brings identity into being, for the first time in the history of the world, by bringing into being the identical as rigorously identical. In this sense, ‘full’ identity exists if and only if it is instituted. The identity brought into being is other than the ‘identity’ that we can (and must) postulate in

37

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 205.

262 • Chapter Nine nature: society brings identity into being in a mode of being that is impossible and inconceivable elsewhere.38

Pythagoras’ theorem is the same because it has to be, because if it were not the same, it would not exist at all. Its identicalness, its being always the same, is a necessary condition for its existence. If we were to conclude that, in view of the manifold palpable differences between what we now call ‘the Earth’ and what we call ‘the Earth two million years ago’, they were not in fact the ‘same’ Earth, this would still leave us with a host of similarities which would remain relevant to the question of the being of the ‘object’ or ‘objects’ under consideration. If in the same manner we were to decide that Pythagoras’ theorem today is not the same as Pythagoras’ theorem 25 centuries ago, we would be left with nothing of the object in question (we may be left with a multitude of signs or marks, but none of these are Pythagoras’ theorem). The object, Pythagoras’ theorem, is that which remains the same; this is the ‘law’ according to which it is brought into being, the ‘as if’ without which it simply ceases to be. Like mathematical objects, social institutions are ‘imaginary’; they exist only as long as the validity of the logic which governs their creation is assumed. This logic, as we know, is a logic of determinacy and identity. It is not only—for this is secondary—that identity is ‘posited’ by the institution as a decree proclaiming that the identical has to be. It is, rather, that the institution itself can exist only as a norm of identity, the identity of the institution with itself, for it can exist only by being itself what it decrees as having to be: the identity of the norm with itself which is posited by the norm so that there can be a norm of self-identity. In the same way, ‘there are laws’ is the law that is presupposed by every set of laws, and it can be a law if and only if there indeed are laws.39

The social-historical world is brought into being through the operation of laws which the social-historical gives itself. These laws are not determined by functional imperatives; the aspects of society which can be traced to issues of societal survival are minor and superficial when considered in terms of

38

Ibid.

39

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 205-206.

Indeterminacy and Interpretation • 263

the social world as a whole, and even these aspects cannot be understood in isolation from the non- or supra-functional. The fundamental laws of society’s self-institution are arbitrary and groundless. They are norms. A norm is an entirely different type of law from those ‘laws’ which we posit as operating within other realms. A norm does not signify a necessary relation. On the contrary, what the norm commands need not be. The norm exists, and is what it is, only by being posited/imagined, and posited/imagined as that which determines. And in order for it to determine ‘what’ it determines, it must itself be determinate. What need not be, in order to be, presents itself as that which could not be otherwise. The social-historical posits itself and its world as an order of perfect determinacy; or, as Castoriadis puts it, society brings itself into being as the rigorously identical. It fails in this, of course, as it must fail if indeterminacy is truly essential to being, and to the mode of being of the social-historical in particular. Instituted society such as it has generally existed up to now depends upon its capacity to act ‘as if’ it had achieved this. Society exists by pretending to be what it is not. It cannot, and obviously need not, be the determinate ‘thing’ it pretends to be; but it must be able to continue to pretend, for this pretending is what makes it what it is and what makes it be. (As we have already observed, that this has happened up to now does not indicate that it must be. To believe so would be to accept the institution on its own terms; to accept, in other words, that what is must be, when the truth is that what apparently must be merely is.) If society is to continue in this form, anything that threatens this ‘pretence’, anything that threatens to expose it as ‘pretence’, to reveal the ‘as if’ of its fundamental instituting logic as an ‘as if’, as arbitrary and contingent, must be hidden, absorbed, or transformed. Indeterminacy, as evidence of the ultimate failure and limitedness of this logic, must be dealt with wherever it may arise, whether this happens to be within the human domain or beyond it. This becomes increasingly difficult, however, once this logic emerges as a relatively independent and overt element of the social imaginary. The refinement, formalisation and purification of the innate logic of social-historical instituting which we find particularly in Western culture exposes the indeterminacy at the heart of legein, which had until then remained effectively shielded from direct scrutiny.

264 • Chapter Nine Until this passage to logos is made, lacunarity is pre-emptively filled up, and incoherence concealed, by mythos, by a discourse-narrative that, in its mode of being and through the attitude of those who sustain and live it, excludes the posing of any question of unlimited horizons, since it has responded aforehand by invoking an event.40

This transformation of legein into full logos inaugurates “a discourse which recognises no limits save those which arise from its own nature and its own possibilities . . .”41 In truth, it does not even recognise these limits, though it constantly risks discovering them, either by a collision with ‘what is’ or through its own hubristic quest to prove that no such limits exist. Having emerged from its ‘cocoon’—which protected as well as contained it—ensidic logic threatens to expand indefinitely, subsuming all else. In the modern West, it assumes the status of a social imaginary in its own right, transforming rationality into an empty rationalism, an imaginary which has, as Castoriadis puts it, “no flesh of its own.”42 It is as though that in and through which meaning exists had taken the place of meaning. This is why Castoriadis has described this modern imaginary as “the extreme autonomisation [yet another meaning of the term, which need not detain us here] of pure symbolism.”43 In this circumstance, the wonder is not that despair and meaninglessness should be so widespread, but that it should not be more universal.

Indeterminacy, Determinacy and the Indefinitely Determinable There is in the social-historical a potentially unlimited demand for determinacy, and the limitlessness of this demand reflects the indeterminacy at the heart of society itself. It is this play of indeterminacy and determinacy that gives the social-historical its unique character, its virtually unlimited plasticity and its capacity for self-transformation. In this, the demand for determinacy is as crucial as its failure, for if this demand acknowledged limits the potential for creation would be confined within these limits. We can see how

40

Castoriadis, “Modern Science and Philosophical Investigation,” p. 212.

41

Ibid.

42

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 159.

43

Ibid.

Indeterminacy and Interpretation • 265

this relationship between determination and indeterminacy operates in the most basic and universal manifestation of legein, language. Castoriadis speaks of language as having two aspects or dimensions, an ensidic aspect, language as ‘code’, and an imaginary aspect, language as langue, or as ‘signification’. Linguistic terms signify by virtue of their embededness in and their mobilisation of a vast skein of referrals. Signification itself is essentially a relation of referral, a quid pro quo whereby the material ‘sign’—a sequence of phonemes or of graphic elements—‘stands for’ and/or ‘serves for’ a signification or meaning; and, where that which is to be represented is an aspect of ‘what is’ beyond this signification, whereby, in turn, this signification ‘stands for’ and/or ‘serves for’ this ‘object’. Each sign and each signification at the same time refers to the totality of signs and significations to which they belong, each linguistic term differentiating itself only insofar as it also participates in this network. The signitive relation, and the schema of value, of ‘standing for’ and ‘serving for’, presupposes the operation of the schema of union-decomposition (which we have discussed previously), for it is only through the operation of this schema that the linguistic term and its referent may be posited as separate or separable ‘elements’ which nevertheless ‘belong together’. As Castoriadis points out, this separability and co-belonging of the linguistic term and its referent presuppose one another. In order for this term to stand for this referent, both must be sufficiently distinct and determined to be separable from all else, and at the same time this separation/determination is achieved only through the positing of a univocal relation between them.44 All this concerns the ensidic dimension of language, its being as a code. That this dimension does not exhaust the being of language is evident if we consider two related characteristics of language. (I leave aside here the fact that this dimension rests on the non-ensidic creation of its operative schemata, its ensidic logic.) First, there is the fact of the creation of new linguistic terms, not only of new signs but of new significations, new meanings. As we have seen, such creation cannot be reduced to a response to changes in the ‘object’ or referent; it goes beyond this, and need not presuppose it. Second is the fact

44

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 237-260.

266 • Chapter Nine

that it is ultimately impossible to fully define/determine the ‘elements’ of a language; which leads us to conclude—for all the reasons already discussed, which I do not propose to reprise in this context—that language is not a set, but a magma. Language is not determined; it is, however, indefinitely determinable.45 It could not be indefinitely determinable if it were in fact ‘determined’; nor would it be so if it did not reach for a determinacy more extensive and more profound that it achieves or could ever achieve. How, though, is language determinable without thereby becoming determined? Any possibility of answering this question without denying one or other aspect of language depends on our acknowledging that determination is not—is never—determinacy. “A signification,” writes Castoriadis, “can always be marked out, provisionally assigned as an identitary element to an identitary relation with another identitary element (this is the case in designation), and as such be a ‘something’ as the starting point for an open series of successive determinations.”46 This determination is only possible through and within the limits established by a with respect to. All statements posit a with respect to, “without making it explicit or being able to (the explication would be endless)”; they establish “a transitory closure. But this closure is full of pores for the identitary-ensemblist dimension can never really be isolated and never actually is”.47 The relationship between the ensidic dimension of language and its imaginary dimension parallels the relationship between the instituted and instituting dimensions of society. Like instituted society, language as code “represents the relative and transitory fixity/stability of the instituted forms/figures in and through which the radical imaginary can alone exist and make itself exist”.48 These dimensions are not like the ontological strata which Castoriadis sometimes also terms ‘dimensions’. They are aspects of the same stratum. If we call them ‘dimensions’, this in part reflects the difficulty we have in thinking the characteristics of determination and indeterminacy at the same time and in relation to the same being. This, as I have tried to argue following Castoriadis, is

45

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 346.

46

Ibid.

47

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 349.

48

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 372.

Indeterminacy and Interpretation • 267

because for us determination always tends to gravitate towards and metamorphose into determinacy. We can see this even in Castoriadis’ writings. Our attraction to determinacy is more than accidental, even if the philosophical and institutional expressions of this attraction can be and should be combated. According to Castoriadis, by attempting to distinguish proper from figurative meaning, central signification from semantic aura, denotation from connotation, philosophers and grammarians have been led to posit (implicitly if not explicitly) “that it is possible to speak outside of any with respect to . . ., to speak absolutely.”49 This temptation is not confined to philosophers and grammarians. In the context of everyday discourse the implicit with respect to can often be made explicit (even if it cannot be explicated completely); but at the level of imaginary significations and the institutions which embody them the temptation to ‘speak absolutely’ is the rule. Here, the with respect to without which determination cannot be and outside which determination dissolves into indeterminacy, or into determinations of an entirely different kind and order, is almost always unacknowledged. The consequence is what Castoriadis calls the ‘closure of signification’. This ‘closure’ is not—because it cannot be—complete. ‘What is’, claims Castoriadis, is Chaos, the Abyss; it is otherness and the perpetual emergence of otherness. Humanity, he argues, is from the beginning aware of this otherness, albeit obscurely.50 How does it come to be aware of it? The world as such, which constitutes “an inexhaustible supply of otherness,” is “an irreducible challenge to every established signification.”51 How does this challenge arise? It is certainly not explicable by reference to the properties of the world alone; it concerns also the characteristics of the significations which are challenged, and above all, the movement of signification, the drive to create meaning. This drive is only ever partially and tenuously contained within the available significations. It strives constantly to exceed these; even, as we have seen, to go beyond signification altogether in order to reach the ‘thing in itself’. The expansionary character of the drive for meaning is such that even that which does not conform to established meanings—even, at

49

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 348.

50

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 316.

51

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 371.

268 • Chapter Nine

the limit, that which does not conform to the established meaning of meaning, or the meaning of being—must be given meaning, must be signified/ represented. This means that meaninglessness, difference, otherness, must themselves be represented, even if only to be immediately transformed into the meaningful by accommodation to or absorption within the established magma of significations. This brings us back once more to the fundamental hermeneutical question posed by Gadamer: how do we become aware of difference? What is the basis of the experience of being “pulled up short,”52 of being surprised or ‘shocked’ by what is? Without resolving or even diminishing the mysteriousness of this phenomenon, we can say that this is possible only because and insofar as both subject and object are magmas. As we have seen, this mode of being incorporates both determination and indeterminacy; and both determination and indeterminacy are essential if the encounter which the shock of otherness represents is to be possible. In his exploration of Merleau-Ponty’s unfinished masterpiece, The Visible and the Invisible, Castoriadis53 affirms Merleau-Ponty’s observation that the world constituted by each specific sense is both “absolutely incommunicable for the other senses, and yet [constructs] a something which, through its structure, is from the first open upon the world of the other senses, and with them forms one sole Being. . . . The ‘World’ is this whole where each ‘part’, when one takes it for itself, suddenly opens unlimited dimensions—becomes a total part.”54 What is proper to the sensible (as to language) is to be representative of the whole, not by a sign-signification relation, or by the immanence of the parts in one another and in the whole, but because each part is torn up from the

52

Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 237.

53

C. Castoriadis, “The Sayable and the Unsayable” in Crossroads in the Labyrinth,

trans. and ed. Kate Soper and Martin H. Ryle, Brighton, U.K., The Harvester Press, 1984. 54

M. Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis, ed. Claude

Lefort. Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1968, pp. 217-218.

Indeterminacy and Interpretation • 269 whole, comes with its roots, encroaches upon the whole, transgresses the frontiers of the others.55

This ‘transgression of the frontier of the other’, which does not extinguish but, rather, operates through and by virtue of the particularity of that which transgresses, is the essence of the mode of being of magmas. It is reflected, as Castoriadis argues, both in the being of language—which combines the characteristics of a determinateness of the specific signification with the virtually total referral through which the signification simultaneously achieves its determinateness and exceeds it—and the being of the world—which, as we have seen, is characterised by an ontological stratification which nevertheless, each of these strata being magmas within a magma, coincides with that compatibility and mutual interaction which comprises the mysterious ‘unity’ of the whole. The subject, the self, is also a magma within a magma. It is always this magma, but this particularity, this determinateness, is only ever of a type and degree consistent with the mode of being of a magma; it never extinguishes that indeterminacy which makes it impossible to absolutely separate this magma from other magmas ‘within’ which it forms itself and which form themselves ‘within’ it. The subject can engage with the world, can signify the world, only because it distinguishes itself from the world, and because it is of and ultimately inseparable from the world. It is ‘other than the world’, but only because it is ‘in the world’.56 The subject is able to exceed its own particularity—indeed, exceeds it even when it does not wish to—only because this particularity is something other than determinacy, and because it is forming, creating, becoming other. The subject, says Castoriadis, “is not an opening in the sense of a window or a hole in the wall. . . . It is opening . . . in the sense of the work of opening, constantly renewed inauguration. . . . Or, in other words: the subject is that which opens.”57 The circle of the singular subject—which is both the circle of creation and the hermeneutical circle—is “not superimposable upon itself”58 because and insofar as it is never the same, because and insofar as it exists in and through alter-

55

Merleau-Ponty, The Visible and the Invisible, p. 218.

56

Castoriadis, “The Sayable and the Unsayable,” p. 143.

57

Castoriadis, “The Sayable and the Unsayable,” p. 144.

58

Castoriadis, “The Sayable and the Unsayable,” p. 143.

270 • Chapter Nine

ing and recreating itself. The opening of the subject is an opening/reforming by the subject of itself, an acceptance of the indeterminacy which it, too, is, and through which the creation of new determinations becomes possible. The shock of ‘otherness’ is a disintegration of specific determinations of meaning which allows indeterminacy to be, without meaning thereby dissolving into indeterminacy. The questions of the closure of meaning and the possible overcoming of this closure are, of course, essentially social-historical. The circle of creation/hermeneutical circle is not a work of the singular subject alone. The possibility of opening, of transcending the given, emerges as a social-historical creation against the background of a history of institutional and cultural forms which by and large exclude this possibility by making it simply unthinkable. In the final chapter, this social and historical dimension will once again become our primary focus.

Chapter Ten Autonomy and Meaning

1 Autonomy, Heteronomy and the Significance of Greece Autonomy, Heteronomy and the Closure of Signification The importance of the Greek cultural legacy to the development of Western society is beyond question. So often has the tale been told, it is hardly necessary to list again those aspects of the cultural, intellectual and institutional life of the modern West which owe at least something of their form and nature to Ancient or Classical Greece. For Castoriadis, of course, the most significant aspect of this cultural legacy is the project of autonomy. Castoriadis describes the existence of this project within the Greek cultural legacy as a ‘germ’.1 As Arnason has pointed out, the term does not sit comfortably within the context of Castoriadis’ overall theoretical approach.2

1

C. Castoriadis, “The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy” in Philosophy,

Politics, Autonomy, ed. David Ames Curtis, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 84. 2

J. P. Arnason, “The Theory of Modernity and the Problematic of Democracy,”

Thesis Eleven 26, 1990, pp. 20-45, p. 34.

272 • Chapter Ten

It could suggest that the emergence of the project of autonomy within the modern West is no more than a resurgence of the original Greek project; or that without its Greek progenitor modern Western autonomy could never have been born. The latter is, of course, undecidable; and Castoriadis’ emphatic assertion of the differences between the modern project and its Greek precursor suggests that he would be reluctant to accept the former.3 It is not my intention here to inquire into either the nature of the Greek influence or its significance. No doubt, this influence is both complex and multifarious; no doubt, it has not been the only influence on the development of the West; and, no doubt, since all societies are self-creating, no inventory of influences, however exhaustive, would ever be sufficient to ‘explain’ this development. What I wish to discuss is a claim which, if correct, would be correct even if the legacy of Greece had had no influence whatsoever upon the development of subsequent societies. I am referring to Castoriadis’ assertion that the project of autonomy emerges first in Ancient Greece, and then for a second time in the modern West. (As we have noted already, for Castoriadis the first stirrings of autonomy can be seen as early as the High Middle Ages.) According to Castoriadis, the project of autonomy is exclusive to these two linked instances. Beyond this, there is for Castoriadis only heteronomy. Insofar as this claim is empirical, it is of course subject to historical and cross-cultural verification. Are there in fact other societies within which the project of autonomy has also emerged? If there are, we will wish not only to acknowledge this but to investigate these other instances in the hope that an understanding of them will deepen and broaden our understanding of the project of autonomy itself. Castoriadis’ claim is not merely empirical, however. It also possesses a theoretical dimension; and although the two are inextricably linked, it is this theoretical dimension that I am most interested in here. By identifying the project of autonomy exclusively with certain aspects of the Greco-West, Castoriadis ties the meaning of autonomy to this specific cultural and institutional history. Given that the project of autonomy is a social-historical creation, some such identification is inevitable: we are not discussing something which could have been

3

Castoriadis, “The Greek and the Modern Political Imaginary.”

Autonomy and Meaning • 273

identified prior to its emergence within an actual society. It should also be remembered that, insofar as autonomy is a project, identifying this project with specific societies does not necessarily mean equating it to the concrete cultural and institutional expressions of it within those societies. These may be more or less radical; and they will almost invariably incorporate a plurality of aims and orientations, some of which may ultimately conflict with the goal of autonomy. This said, there are obvious perils associated with such an identification. One might indeed confuse the specific expressions of the project of autonomy within a particular society with the core meaning of autonomy; and having done so, one might then be blind to the existence of the project of autonomy elsewhere merely because its expression differs from that with which one is familiar and comfortable. Even positing such a possibility raises serious questions. To what extent is it legitimate to speak of a singular ‘project of autonomy’ emerging in different societies, when each of these instances is conceived as being a creation of the specific society in question? On the other hand, if there are multiple projects, on what basis are we justified in calling them all projects of ‘autonomy’? Whatever we may decide in regard to the project of autonomy, Castoriadis’ description of all other societies as simply ‘heteronomous’ is clearly inadequate. Even if we grant that the concept of heteronomy concerns only the most general institutional and cultural characteristics of a society, so that there is room within the framework of heteronomy for indefinite diversity, we find that the observable diversity of societies does in fact concern these very characteristics. Castoriadis’ conception of heteronomy involves collapsing this diversity into a model based on societies whose institutional structure is of a ‘traditionalist’ type. Where societies diverge from this model, Castoriadis focuses on those aspects which most easily fit within the model: in particular, the most conservative expressions of the institutionalised religious traditions of the societies in question. Even if we choose to withhold the term ‘autonomy’ from such societies, we must acknowledge that there emerge in societies other than Greece and the West projects of transformation which alter the form and meaning of heteronomy within those societies. Let us remind ourselves of how Castoriadis defines social heteronomy. According to Castoriadis, the fundamental characteristic of social heteronomy is the one which is suggested by the literal meaning of the term: heteronomous

274 • Chapter Ten

societies posit their laws and institutions as given to them by an ‘other’. A corollary of this positing of heteronomy is what Castoriadis terms the ‘closure’ of signification within the society. As we have seen, Castoriadis envisages this ‘closure’ in algebraic terms. An algebraic field is said to be closed when every algebraic equation that can be written in this field, with the elements of this field, can be solved with elements from this same field. In a society in which there is a closure of signification, no question that can be raised within this system, within this magma of significations, is lacking a response within this same magma. The Law of the Ancestors has a response to everything, the Torah has a response to everything, as does the Koran. And if one wanted to proceed any further, the question would no longer have any meaning within the language of the society in question.4

According to Castoriadis, within the closure of heteronomous societies tradition supplies answers to every question. It is able to do this only because it also determines what sorts of questions may be posed. The only questions that are conceivable for the individuals of such societies are those which already assume the validity of the tradition, which operate with elements and within parameters established by this tradition. Consequently, the tradition itself remains effectively beyond interrogation. To acknowledge as meaningful a continuing interrogation of already available answers would entail a transformation of the society’s magma of significations which would go beyond the mere replacement of old significations by new ones. What Castoriadis envisages here is a system whose self-referential character is such that it cannot accommodate any alteration, a system in which the validity of all significations is tied inextricably to the postulate of the completeness of the system as a whole. In such a context, the admission of any new element immediately undermines the entire system. This means that one cannot alter any aspect of the system without transforming the system in toto. It means that one cannot question the validity of any signification without putting at risk the validity of all signification.

4

Castoriadis, “The Greek and the Modern Political Imaginary,” pp. 86-87.

Autonomy and Meaning • 275

We have already seen that this ‘closure’ of society’s significations is to be understood not as an effect of the positing of an extra-social source of the social order, but, on the contrary, as its raison d’être. Society endeavours to perpetuate itself in its specific mode of being; it resists transformation. Since the tendency towards transformation comes from within society itself, the general ‘strategy’ for avoiding transformation involves moving this source from the actually existing society to a realm from which it can be posited as commanding the perpetuation of the existing order, or—and this is, as it were, the most profound form of closure—from whence it can deny the need, the desire or the possibility of any alternative by rendering the very idea of an alternative unthinkable. This can also be thought of in terms of the society’s struggle for determinacy. Society posits itself as completely and absolutely determined by denying the possibility that it might be determined otherwise. It posits its contingent self-determinations as necessary and externally imposed, thus concealing from itself the ultimately arbitrary nature of their origin as selfcreation as well as the indeterminacy which they inevitably contain. Here it must be pointed out yet again that however a society might endeavour to protect itself from the possibility of transformation it is bound ultimately to fail. The most that can be achieved is to retard transformation and to disguise whatever transformation does occur as something else: by refusing to recognise the ‘otherness’ of new significations, by reducing the genuinely novel to the ‘same’. This means that, ultimately, the ‘closure’ of signification is itself an illusion. The magma of significations is presented—presents itself—as a complete and perfect system, when, in reality, not only is it not such a system, no such system is possible. Castoriadis’ analysis of signification and his description of the mode of being of magmas supports such a conclusion. It must be said, however, that Castoriadis himself seems at times to suppose that this ‘closure’ is real and complete. This leads to a vision of heteronomous societies as almost completely homogeneous, a picture which cannot long withstand either empirical or theoretical scrutiny. This idea of the ‘closure’ of signification raises fundamental questions concerning the nature and origin of social significations. I will address these questions later. At this point, we must explore the possibility that the linkage between these two characteristics of social heteronomy—closure and the positing of

276 • Chapter Ten

an external author and foundation—is not as unbreakable as Castoriadis’ account would seem to suggest. The untenably monolithic nature of Castoriadis’ conception of heteronomy becomes obvious as soon as we acknowledge that the positing of an extra-social source of order need not coincide with the sort of closure Castoriadis describes.

The Axial Age Civilisations: Heterodoxy and Self-Transformation Such a view is strongly suggested by the work of Eisenstadt on Axial Age civilisations. The term was probably used first by Alfred Weber, but it was first applied systematically by Karl Jaspers.5 It refers primarily to a group of societies which underwent profound cultural and structural changes over a period of about five hundred years, from around 800 to 300 BC. These societies include ancient Israel and Greece, Zoroastrian Iran, early Imperial China, and India during the time of the Brahminism of the original Upanishads and the emergence of Buddhism. A number of other civilisational complexes—most notably Christianity and Islam—are regarded as ‘secondary breakthroughs’ which build on an original Axial Age transformation. As the breadth of this collection suggests, the characteristics which these societies are purported to share are of a very general character and coincide with profound differences. Debate continues over which societies ought to be included within the definition and about how the concept of ‘Axial civilisation’ ought to be developed. Nonetheless, Eisenstadt has accumulated compelling evidence pointing to a similar pattern of revolutionary change within many of these societies.6 According to Eisenstadt, this pattern involves a fundamental alteration of the dominant world-view within these societies, accompanied by major changes in social structure and internal dynamics. The idea of a chasm between the transcendental and mundane orders emerges, this idea being carried and promoted by new and relatively independent cultural elites. These groups push

5

K. Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History, translated from the German, New Haven,

Ct., Yale University Press, 1953. 6

S. N. Eisenstadt, A Sociological Approach to Comparative Civilisations: The Develop-

ment and Directions of a Research Program, Jerusalem, The Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace, The Hebrew University, Jerulasem, 1986.

Autonomy and Meaning • 277

for the active reconstruction of the social world in accordance with a transcendental vision or command. This activity has profound consequences for the institutional structure of these societies and for the nature and distribution of power within them. One observes the development of cultural or religious collectivities which represent themselves as the privileged carriers of visions of social reconstruction or ‘salvation’. As these new elites succeed in influencing, creating or assuming control of institutions of power, there is a tendency for the development of “a high degree of symbolic orientation and ideologisation of some central aspects of the institutional structure, above all the structure of collectivities, societal centers and the process of political struggle.”7 This coincides with an increasing cultural systematisation, rationalisation and pluralisation. This is in turn associated with increased intrasocietal differentiation and conflict, the development of distinctive cultural and political centres and peripheries, struggles between these, the emergence of movements of protest and rebellion, the development of more overt and systematic methods of political and cultural control, and so on. It is not difficult to see the connection between these various characteristics, or to appreciate the central role of the new cosmological or ontological premise in this developmental process. Prior to the positing of a gap between the transcendental and the mundane, the social order is generally viewed as either continuous with or reciprocally related to a world order which is immanent rather than transcendent. The drama of the gods or spirits is inseparable from the drama of the natural world and the cosmos, and the institutional life of the society participates in this drama, maintaining it by its participation, its adherence to the proper customs and ceremonies which reproduce—or rather, instantiate—this order. Though we may posit a radical change from this form of society to that represented by the Axial civilisations, we should also be wary of assuming too monolithic a view of the former. The identity of the transcendental and the mundane is expressed in a variety of ways in different societies, coinciding with everything from a relative lack of differentiation of social roles to the existence of social actors with limited but significant spiritual and political

7

Eisenstadt, A Sociological Approach to Comparative Civilisations: The Development and

Directions of a Research Program, p. 32.

278 • Chapter Ten

power (for example, shamans and chiefs), the establishment of a ritual kingly role associated with extremely limited practical powers, the development of elaborate institutions of royalty which are identified with or subordinated to transcendental powers, and even the practical assumption of these godly powers by individual rulers.8 If Eisenstadt contrasts the situation of rulers within Axial civilisations with the role of “the King-God—the embodiment of both cosmic and earthly orders,” this is because he sees this as the immediate precursor to the Axial transformation.9 For Eisenstadt, the difference between the two centres on the accountability of the ruler. With the Axial changes, rulers became more accountable for their actions. In fact, both rulers and the community as a whole become accountable to a higher authority for the way in which they realise or fail to realise the Divine law or command.10 This contrast needs to be tempered by a recognition of the weight of obligation suffered by rulers of earlier types. If they were not accountable, they were certainly not free to do as they pleased—in some instances, assumption of the role of King-God removed from the incumbent all freedom of action whatsoever. The difference is in the form of accountability and in the nature of rule itself. A King-God may be held accountable for everything, from defeat in war to the failure of crops, but he is accountable to no-one; or rather, he is accountable to everyone, to the community as a whole as representatives of a tradition that must be maintained and a world which must be preserved. The ruler within an Axial civilisation is potentially accountable to a diversity of groups, each of which may claim a privileged knowledge of the correct interpretation of the transcendental and therefore of the ruler’s role. The ruler may be expected either to maintain the status quo or to alter it fundamentally, or both at the same time by different groups.

8

J. Campbell, The Masks of God, 4 Vols, New York, Penguin, 1976, Vols. 1 and 2;

S. Freud, “Totem and Taboo” in The Origins of Religion, The Penguin Freud Library Vol. 13, trans. ed. J. Strachey, ed. Albert Dickson, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1990; E. Canetti, Crowds and Power, trans. Carol Stewart, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1973; E. Sagan, At the Dawn of Tyranny: The Origins of Individualism, Political Oppression and the State, London and Boston, Faber and Faber, 1985. 9

Eisenstadt, A Sociological Approach to Comparative Civilisations: The Development and

Directions of a Research Program, p. 33. 10

Ibid.

Autonomy and Meaning • 279

What is different, then, is the ability of individuals and social groups not just to form their own judgment of the ruler’s performance, but to determine the principles according to which such a judgment is to be made, and this is certainly a profound change. The picture which emerges from this ongoing analysis of the Axial Age societies by Eisenstadt and his colleagues is of a type of society which is not only much more susceptible to transformation than its antecedents, but more internally receptive to such transformation, a type of society which is structurally and culturally equipped to accommodate continuous processes of change. This new openness to transformation involves the development of a new self-reflexivity, the emergence of the possibility of questioning not just the existing culture and institutional structure of the society, but the basic premises of this order, what Eisenstadt suggests might be called “the semantic map of a society”11—what in Castoriadis’ terminology would be the ‘actual imaginary’ or ‘the magma of significations’ of the society. “This includes the nature and destiny of man, his relation to the cosmic/transcendental order and his conception of the cosmic order, the relation between ‘culture’ and man, in other words, the basic conceptions of the social order in general and of hierarchy and authority in particular.”12 With this self-reflexivity, and with the emergence of divergent projects of social transformation and conflict between social groups over these projects and over the institutional means to put them into effect, awareness of conceptual and institutional alternatives naturally increases. The relationship and attitudes of social individuals and groups to the social order also changes, for what emerges as the result of conscious design and social struggle cannot be regarded as ‘given’ in the same way as can an order whose origin lies in a mythical past beyond memory. Before we explore the obvious challenges which this account represents for Castoriadis’ vision of heteronomous societies, we should take note of some of the broader questions and challenges which the recognition of an Axial Age transformation poses for our understanding of society and history. Eisenstadt is no more a historical determinist than Castoriadis; he insists that societies

11

Eisenstadt, A Sociological Approach to Comparative Civilisations: The Development and

Directions of a Research Program, p. 39. 12

Ibid.

280 • Chapter Ten

are neither natural nor given, that they are constructions. He emphasises the continuous nature of this process of construction, along with the fragility of all established social order.13 Nevertheless, the chronological coincidence of a similar pattern of social transformation across such widely separated and diverse societies raises the troubling problem of how to account for it without resorting to notions of an internal social and historical dynamic which are ultimately deterministic. Despite the geographical boundaries between some of these societies, there can be little doubt that there was a degree of direct or mediated intersocietal contact, and therefore cross-cultural influence, between them. In itself, however, this would hardly be sufficient to explain the coincidence in question. It would seem more profitable, as Schwartz suggests, to focus on the question of similarities in the previous developmental paths of each of these societies. “It is a fact,” observes Schwartz, “that the ‘axial age’ occurred after centuries of spectacular developments in the higher civilisations. If one assumes that all of these developments share certain common features, it is not unreasonable to assume that these civilisations had reached a stage of crisis which, in some instances, called forth new spiritual, intellectual, and ethical responses from certain groups or individuals.”14 In fact, a common feature of the Axial Age transformations does seem to be a preceding social crisis involving the collapse or disintegration of previous civilisational centres; but, as Arnason points out, both the nature and the degree of these collapses vary markedly, as do the factors which may be postulated as having instigated the collapse.15 So, too, does the relationship between the emerging Axial civilisations and their antecedents, including the degree of continuity/discontinuity between the pre- and post-crisis cultures. One might hypothesise that the institutional sophistication attained by these pre-Axial civilisations was of a kind which made them inflexible and therefore fragile, rendering them unable to cope with any significant disturbance of the status quo. This would still not account for all of the types and levels of diversity identified by Arna-

13

Eisenstadt, A Sociological Approach to Comparative Civilisations: The Development and

Directions of a Research Program, pp. 27-31. 14

B. I. Schwartz, “The Age of Transcendence,” Daedelus 2, 1975, pp. 1-7, p. 2.

15

J. P. Arnason, “Autonomy and Axiality, Comparative Perspectives on the Greek

Breakthrough” in Agon, Logos, Polis, The Greek Achievement and its Aftermath, ed. Johann P. Arnason and Peter Murphy, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2001.

Autonomy and Meaning • 281

son, however. It is possible, of course, that recognition of the broad similarities in the patterns of social change within these societies may blind us to the significant differences. Whether we attach more importance to the former or the latter will depend largely on our own perspective and judgment. It is also true that while similar transformations seem to have occurred in a number of societies at around the same time, they did not occur everywhere. One would need to ask whether such transformations have occurred in all or only some of the societies in which we are able to identify apparently similar preconditions. Recognition of the relative rarity of such a transformation may also be obscured by the immense cultural and historical influence exerted by those societies in which it did occur. Answers to these questions are obviously beyond the scope of this book. What I wish to focus on here are the disparities between Eisenstadt’s and Castoriadis’ accounts. There are also obvious and significant affinities between the two, but an exploration of their differences and the relative merits of their divergent approaches is more relevant to our present concerns. Eisenstadt suggests that out of the work on comparative civilisations, as well as the associated studies of varying patterns of modernisation, a new approach to macro-sociological analysis may emerge. One of the principal tenets of such an approach is the recognition that some degree of heterogeneity and pluralism is a universal characteristic of society. Because every social order always contains a strong element of dissension regarding the distribution of power and the values upheld, no institutional system is ever fully “homogeneous,” in the sense of being accepted either fully or to the same degree by all those participating in it. . . . Thus, in any society there exists the possibility that “anti-systems” may develop within it. While anti-systems often remain latent for long periods of time, under propitious conditions they may also constitute important foci of systemic change. That such potential anti-systems exist in all societies is evinced by the potential existence in all of them of themes and orientations of protest, as well as of social movements and heterodoxies which are often led by secondary elites.16

16

Eisenstadt, A Sociological Approach to Comparative Civilisations: The Development and

Directions of a Research Program, p. 28.

282 • Chapter Ten

Given his Marxist background and his continuing advocacy of revolutionary social change, it would seem odd to accuse Castoriadis of downplaying the importance of heterodoxy and conflict. It is nevertheless true that while he emphasises the importance of such features in societies this side of the emergence of the project of autonomy, societies from which this project is absent are generally portrayed by him as rather homogeneous. There may be conflict in such societies, but for Castoriadis it is conflict within the framework of a shared imaginary rather than conflict over divergent imaginaries. I have already remarked upon the inadequacy of this view when I argued that to identify social individuals exclusively with instituted society, as Castoriadis tends to do, is to ignore their participation in the instituting dimension of the social-historical, in which capacity they may just as easily be agents for institutional change as for institutional preservation. A theoretical approach which asserts the continuing and inevitable nature of social transformation can hardly do without some such recognition of this dual potential of social individuals, unless it is assumed that such transformations inevitably involve the wholesale destruction and disappearance of societies and their replacement by new societies only indirectly related to their antecedents. This surely occurs, but it is not the universal pattern. In other instances, we must allow that new imaginaries emerge and may continue to exist for long periods in a marginal form within existing societies, until, as Eisenstadt suggests, under propitious conditions they emerge as effective challengers to the dominant imaginaries and institutions of the society. (Many may also disappear entirely, leaving little or no trace of their existence.) Acknowledging the emergence of new imaginaries, and the potential existence of a plurality of imaginaries within any society, points once again to the imperfect and tenuous nature of ‘closure’. The closure of significations within any society is never so complete that it can preclude the emergence of other significations and other imaginaries. This is, of course, no more than a restatement of the fundamental principle of ontological indeterminacy. Struggle as it might, instituted society can never make itself so determinate that it precludes the emergence of other determinations. If Castoriadis understates cultural heterogeneity and conflict, Eisenstadt, on the other hand, could be accused of overstating the universality of some of the characteristics he associates with cultural dissension. In the context of Axial

Autonomy and Meaning • 283

societies, dissension is, as Eisenstadt asserts, associated with heterodox social movements expressing themes and orientations of protest; but as his analysis also shows, such movements are linked to the emergence within such societies of a new form of self-reflexivity, one which is associated with the notion of a chasm between the transcendental and the mundane. For Eisenstadt, this development is a distinguishing characteristic of Axial societies. If we are to assert that dissension is a universal feature of society, we must also posit that this dissension manifests itself differently in pre-Axial societies than in postAxial ones.

Self-Reflexivity and Autonomy This brings us to what is for our purposes the most significant disagreement between Eisenstadt’s and Castoriadis’ accounts: the history and nature of selfreflexivity. We must not suppose that cultural dissension, or the emergence of new significations and new imaginaries and conflict between and over them, inevitably involves self-reflection. It is perfectly possible—and historically, it would seem to be by far the more common process—for one magma of significations, one imaginary, to be supplanted by another for a society or for a group within that society without the intervention of anything which we might justifiably describe as self-reflection. Such a transformation may be thought of as a ‘conversion’. Such conversions may bespeak a weakness in the dominant imaginary of that society, but they need not betoken an activity of self-reflection. It is sheer naivety to believe that traditional or pre-Axial societies are characterised by a simple and perfectly consensual cultural unanimity. The degree of individual and group belief in and commitment to the instituted culture of their society is always variable—it is his recognition of this fact that leads Eisenstadt to assert that some degree of social heterogeneity is universal. Self-reflexivity, however, entails more than mere incredulity; it goes beyond the mere lack or loss of belief in established truths or norms. Self-reflection is the active questioning of such established significations. It is, in Castoriadis’ words, a type of thought which “turns back on itself and interrogates itself not only about its particular contents but also about its presuppositions and its foundations.”17 Since these presuppositions and

17

Castoriadis, “Logic, Imagination, Reflection,” p. 267.

284 • Chapter Ten

foundations “have been furnished . . . by the social institution,” genuinely selfreflexive thought necessarily involves “a challenging of the given institutions of society, the putting into question of socially instituted representations”.18 For Castoriadis, this type of thought emerges for the first time in human history in Greek antiquity. According to him, Greece is the first society in which it becomes possible truly to judge and to choose. In a more limited sense, judging and choosing are, of course, important activities in all societies, but in the strictly circumscribed form of applying established and unquestionable principles or laws. In Greece, however, these laws and principles are themselves made matters for judgment and choice. Here, Castoriadis argues, we find for the first time the existing institution of society along with established modes of thought and collective representations of the world called into question and rendered liable to explicit and deliberate alteration. The two fundamental questions of philosophy—‘How ought we to live?’ and ‘What, and how, ought we to think?’—are posed here for the first time. This involves the questioning and reformulation not only of existing laws and representations, but of the very conceptions of justice and truth against which these are measured. For Castoriadis, the emergence of such an interrogation involves—once again, for the first time—the rupturing of the closure of signification characteristic of heteronomous societies.19 How are we to reconcile this claim with Eisenstadt’s discovery of self-reflexivity in other societies? Castoriadis’ analysis of the relationship between selfreflexivity and autonomy makes the two seem inextricably linked. One cannot have autonomy without self-reflexivity: that much is undeniable. But it would also seem, according to Castoriadis’ understanding of things, that one cannot have self-reflexivity without the emergence of a project of autonomy. This apparent association leads Arnason to suggest that “the Greek breakthrough to autonomy seems less unique and the very perspective of autonomy is open to more divergent interpretations than he [Castoriadis] is inclined to admit.”20

18

Ibid.

19

Castoriadis, “The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy,” pp. 101-102.

20

J. P. Arnason, “The Human Condition and the Modern Predicament” in The Social

Philosophy of Agnes Heller, Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, Vol. 37, 1994, pp. 57-77, p. 66.

Autonomy and Meaning • 285

There can be no doubt that autonomy is open to divergent interpretations; the issue here is whether the interpretations in question are indeed interpretations of autonomy. The problem with regarding them as such is that they explicitly present themselves as something else. The deliberate cultural and institutional transformations which we witness in other Axial civilisations are presented not as autonomy but as heteronomy, as a submission of the social order to the laws of the transcendental realm. The possibility for individuals and groups to discover and re-interpret these laws for themselves emerges with the Axial transformation (along, of course, with numerous barriers to such freedom; which itself attests to the increased possibility of heterodoxy), but this is still a far cry from autonomy. It is nonetheless a significant transformation of heteronomy; one which, if it does not ‘rupture’ the closure of signification, at least alters the form of this closure, which becomes at once more tenuous and more overt. Castoriadis would no doubt be sceptical as to the genuineness of the selfreflexivity to be found within such societies. Here I think we need to recognise, on the one hand, differences in degree, and on the other, the importance of cultural and institutional factors which cannot be automatically derived from the activity of self-reflection but which condition it. For Castoriadis, true self-reflexivity is distinguished by its unlimitedness. He believes that “the appearance of reflection implies the simultaneous and reciprocally conditioned emergence of a society where no sacred (revealed) truths exist any longer”.21 In most Axial societies, on the contrary, we find a process of interrogation of the given which is associated with the creation of new significations which are themselves interpreted as sacred and revealed truths. There is reflection, but this reflection is not conditioned by a notion of truth, of law, or of order, which prevents specific truths and specific laws from acquiring the status of transcendental revelation. Castoriadis himself has offered a brief account of the key ontological and anthropological premises integral to the Greek world-view which condition the creation of the project of autonomy, and therefore of the sort of unlimited interrogation for which he would be inclined to reserve the title ‘selfreflexivity’. These include the acceptance of mortality (for the Greeks, to be

21

Castoriadis, “Logic, Imagination, Reflection,” p. 269.

286 • Chapter Ten

human was, ipso facto, to be mortal, and this where the prospect of death was not softened by any consoling vision of an afterlife); an ontology which is non-unitary—that is, which does not posit a total rational or meaningful order incorporating and hence determining the order of human affairs—and which recognises a fundamental indeterminacy that precludes the discovery or establishment of a final or perfect order, thus leaving open the possibility for continuing transformation (for the Greeks, the ordered world, cosmos, was a precarious domain emerging out of and perpetually threatened by an original and encompassing chaos); and a recognition of the importance of society, both as source of the norms and rules which comprise the human order and as constitutive of individuals.22 I have already said enough about the importance of the relationship between the project of autonomy and an ontology of indeterminacy for the significance of this association in the context of Greek society and history not to require any further emphasis. The acceptance of mortality is critical in that it forces people to value their lives and their world not simply as preparation for a higher existence to come, nor as a link in a cyclical or progressive chain of incarnations, but in themselves. As Castoriadis puts it, “Having nothing to hope from an afterlife or from a caring and benevolent God, man is liberated for action and thought in this world.”23 It is also important in that an acceptance of finitude qua the inevitability of destruction is tied to the acceptance of the possibility of creation, destruction and creation being two sides of the same coin.24 A recognition of the constitutive role of society is crucial if and insofar as it reflects the truth of the human condition. A project of self-transformation which attributes the norms and rules of the human order to something other than society would misdirect its efforts at self-determination. More importantly, by locating the source of the existing order beyond the reach of deliberate human action, such a project would endorse and perpetuate heteronomy, even if it were to wear the guise of autonomy.

22

Castoriadis, “The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy,” pp. 103-105; Cas-

toriadis, “The Greek and the Modern Political Imaginary.” 23

Castoriadis, “The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy,” p. 103.

24

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 320.

Autonomy and Meaning • 287

Arnason has gone into much more detail than Castoriadis in an effort to clarify the originality of Greek society. His analysis highlights the difficulty of applying the standard Axial model to the Greek experience. In very general terms, the structural transformations of the Archaic and Classical epochs were undeniably linked to equally radical cultural changes; a more detailed analysis, however, leads to the conclusion that these two aspects of the breakthrough are not interrelated in the same way as in the supposedly standard Axial pattern. Early alterations to the Greek religious imaginary may—in conjunction with other factors—have opened up new horizons for the emerging polis, but they did not give rise to a normative framework for further structural change. Both the initial formation and the most radical later transformation of the polis had more to do with the internal dynamics of a very peculiar institutional pattern than with any impetus or challenge derived from a transcendent model of order.25

Developments in the Greek religious imaginary take a radically different turn from that which is typical in other Axial societies and give greater scope to human autonomy vis-à-vis the divine. . . . the practical autonomy implicit in the eighth-century reconstruction of the religious universe—the double primacy of politics and poetry, pre-empting the role elsewhere assumed by religious institutions—exceeded the vision of autonomy articulated at the level of narrative and belief; this discrepancy may be seen as the starting point for a gradual shift towards more emphasis on human initiative and responsibility. Historians of Greek political thought have shown how the notion of a good order, willed but neither prescribed in detail nor guaranteed by the gods, gave way to ideas of a man-made and therefore contestable order.26

For Arnason, however, the most important peculiarity of Greek society is the emergence of the polis and, hence, of the political as an exceptionally distinct and independent domain of social life. Here he takes issue with that aspect of

25

Arnason, “Autonomy and Axiality, Comparative Perspectives on the Greek

Breakthrough,” p. 203. 26

Arnason, “Autonomy and Axiality, Comparative Perspectives on the Greek

Breakthrough,” pp. 192-193.

288 • Chapter Ten

Castoriadis’ analysis of the emergence of the Greek project of autonomy which centres on a distinction between ‘the political’ and ‘politics’. For Castoriadis, ‘the political’ refers to the exercise of explicit power, and as such it is a universal feature of society.27 ‘Politics’, by contrast, is the “explicit collective activity which aims at being lucid (reflective and deliberate) and whose object is the institution of society as such.”28 The latter is, for Castoriadis, a purely Greek invention. Arnason argues that this distinction “misses an essential point.” Even if we accept that the political is a constitutive feature of human societies, the polis as such—well before its democratic transformation—represents a turning point which cannot be identified with politics in the sense postulated by Castoriadis. The institutional deviation from the monarchic norm—apparently preceded by a prolonged de facto lapse of monarchic control—established a new form of the political: a multi-centred, constitutively under-structured and openly conflict-ridden field. . . . In that sense, the Greek refashioning of the political marked a new level of explicitness: the plural, multi-polar and—to use the proper Greek word—agonising character of power became fully visible. And inasmuch as the political sphere becomes—to an unprecedented degree—accessible to experience, reflection and interpretation, it seems appropriate to speak of a “discovery of the political” which preceded the invention of autonomy.29

While I agree with Arnason that the emergence of the polis, with its unique structural characteristics, is a significant development in itself, I believe that his argument suffers from an implicit acceptance of an aspect of Castoriadis’ account which ought to be questioned. This is Castoriadis’ identification of the emergence of the project of autonomy with the invention of democracy. In my view, the invention of democracy can only be understood as the result of a developmental process which already involved a project of autonomy, however imperfectly and incompletely thematised this project may have been. It is inadequate to say that the Greek refashioning of the political made the agonising character of power more visible; the Greek refashioning

27

Castoriadis, “Power, Politics, Autonomy,” pp. 156-158.

28

Castoriadis, “Power, Politics, Autonomy,” p. 160.

29

Arnason, “Autonomy and Axiality, Comparative Perspectives on the Greek

Breakthrough,” p. 204.

Autonomy and Meaning • 289

of the political made power more agonising. Within the new and developing poleis, the explicit use of power, whether by the collectivity as a whole, by an aristocratic elite or faction, or by an individual tyrant, became increasingly subject to discussion and contestation based on questions of justice and good governance which could not be referred to any higher authority than the participants in the conflict themselves. Insofar as this is true, the political has already become—or has begun to be transformed into—an object for politics in Castoriadis’ sense. Other Axial Age transformations could also be said to have made the political, in the sense of the explicit use of power, both more visible—because more common and more far-reaching—and more contestable, but in these other cases the mechanism for contestation typically involved an ultimate appeal to transcendental authority. A crucial dimension of the vitality and originality of Greek philosophy is, as Arnason points out, “the commitment to argument and debate as ways of settling interpretive conflicts, including those of rival cosmologies.”30 This commitment develops, as Arnason explains, in the context of the unique structures and dynamics of the polis, structures and dynamics which were neither confined to the democratic poleis alone nor a simple consequence of the invention of democracy. As Arnason point out, the fifth-century democratic transformation of the polis “was not a precondition for intellectual pluralism (the diversity of world-views during the last century of the Archaic period was far ahead of political forms)”; rather, the emergence of the democratic polis, and the “crystallisation and explicit confrontation of alternative regimes” which it made possible, merely “gave a more radical twist to the pluralising dynamic that had been at work from the outset.”31 In short, the invention of autonomy as a project was a precondition for the invention of democracy as a type of political regime. Arnason’s analysis—which is much richer and more detailed than this brief discussion of it can convey—certainly shows that the originality of Greek society cannot be reduced to the emergence within it of the project of

30

Arnason, “Autonomy and Axiality, Comparative Perspectives on the Greek

Breakthrough,” p. 197. 31

Arnason, “Autonomy and Axiality, Comparative Perspectives on the Greek

Breakthrough,” p. 198.

290 • Chapter Ten

autonomy. From this Arnason concludes that there is “the need for a more flexible and open-ended conceptualisation of autonomy.” Moves towards more autonomy must be analyzed in relation to specific historical contexts and to other trends activated or reinforced at the same time. Autonomy and heteronomy can be seen as variously intertwined and relativising aspects of historical patterns, rather than binary opposites.32

The idea that autonomy and heteronomy might be seen as intertwined and relativising aspects of historical patterns is hardly alien to Castoriadis’ overall approach: it is the very framework of his analysis of modernity. Nonetheless, his keenness to convince us of the significance of the project of autonomy within Greek society does sometimes lead him to downplay or marginalise heteronomous characteristics prior to what he regards as the disintegration and demise of the project in the fourth century. Castoriadis’ central argument, however, is not that Greece achieved or perfected social autonomy, but merely that autonomy emerged there for the first time as a counter-trend which was, for a period, decisive in the development of Greek society and which continues to have significance for those like ourselves for whom autonomy remains, or is again, a crucial and constitutive ideal and aim. This said, it could certainly be argued that Castoriadis has a tendency to attribute too many aspects of Greek society and culture to the influence of the project of autonomy. It is also true, however, that he operates with a frankly tendentious definition of Greece which limits it to that period and those places in which the project of autonomy was, in his view, decisively influential.33 His justification for this approach is that his interest in Greece is not that of an ethnologist, that the peculiar significance of Greek society and history for him and for all of us centres precisely on the Greek creation of the project of autonomy. Other aspects of Greek society and history, however intrinsically interesting they may be, are in principle no more interesting and significant than comparable aspects of any other society.34 Even if we accept the validity

32

Arnason, “Autonomy and Axiality, Comparative Perspectives on the Greek

Breakthrough,” p. 203. 33

Castoriadis, “The Greek and the Modern Political Imaginary,” p. 88.

34

Castoriadis, “Radical Imagination and the Social Instituting Imaginary,” pp. 81-84.

Autonomy and Meaning • 291

of this approach, there are still instances where Castoriadis may be accused of attributing too much historical importance to ideas and institutions because he sees them as emblematic of the project of autonomy. An example of this is the significance he attributes to the Greek distinction between nomos and physis. As Arnason argues, the association of this distinction with a defence of human autonomy seems to have been far too late and too exceptional, and to have coincided with an equally strong or stronger opposing tendency which devalued nomos in favour of physis, for the distinction to be regarded as a fundamental and unambiguous expression of a culture of autonomy.35 On the other hand, even if the distinction between nomos and physis was not as central to the development of the Greek project of autonomy as Castoriadis assumes, the notion of the man-made nature of the social order cannot be reduced to this distinction; and it is this notion, expressed in and arising out of the development of explicitly self-constituting political communities, which is the crucial peculiarity of the Greek experience from the perspective of the project of autonomy. What Arnason’s analysis of the history of Greek cultural and institutional developments suggests is that there is a need for a more flexible and openended analysis of these developments; I do not believe that it points to the need for a “a more flexible and open-ended conceptualisation of autonomy”.36 What the comparative analysis of Axial Age civilisations suggests is the need to acknowledge the existence of forms of self-reflexivity within social and cultural contexts which are nonetheless heteronomous. This, along with modern examples of the deformation of the project of autonomy—its degeneration into a search for the causal or rational bases of emancipation and its equation of freedom with destiny—precludes a reduction of autonomy to self-reflexivity, pure and simple. On the contrary, autonomy must be distinguished from sheer self-reflexivity, not only in terms of the open-ended character of the activities of self-reflection and self-transformation which it involves, but in terms of the self-understanding and intent of these activities. The specificity of autonomy is related to ontological and anthropological premises (imaginary

35

Arnason, “Autonomy and Axiality, Comparative Perspectives on the Greek Break-

through.” 36

Ibid.

292 • Chapter Ten

significations) which need not be the result of self-reflexive interrogation, even if the project of autonomy which emerges within this cultural context must subsequently submit them to such an interrogation. Our conception of autonomy certainly should be flexible and open-ended. The crucial questions affecting our understanding of autonomy—the nature and identity of the ‘self’, and the nature and scope of the ‘laws’ through which this self makes and remakes itself—cannot be answered finally and definitively because the ‘objects’ of these questions will not be everywhere and always the same. Comparative analysis reveals new and unsuspected aspects, dimensions and potentialities of society, of human subjectivity and of autonomy. Autonomy cannot be everywhere the same, but this does not mean that anything may qualify as autonomy. Autonomy means that I/we give myself/ ourselves my/our own laws. Wherever the laws are posited as being given by another, we can no longer speak of autonomy. Irrespective of how active individuals are in the constitution of these laws, and irrespective of whether individuals are able and free to disagree with each other over what these laws should be, insofar as the laws are made in the name of another, there is no autonomy. What is more, the fact that individuals make the laws on behalf of another rather than themselves cannot fail to be reflected in the types of laws and institutions which they create. The existence of forms of self-reflexivity consistent with heteronomy rather than autonomy suggests that Castoriadis’ identification of heteronomy with a hermetic closure of signification is untenable. Indeed, as I have tried to argue, this notion of closure is not even tenable in relation to pre-Axial societies. A society and a culture can never be entirely closed and homogeneous precisely because, as Castoriadis himself argues, a society is not an algebraic system, but a magma. This does not mean that instituted society may not attempt to posit itself as such a system, with more or less success, and that different societies may not therefore exhibit varying degrees of relative closure. In Axial societies other than Greece, we find, if not a ‘rupturing’, then certainly a transformation of the closure of society’s significations and institutions. There is the emergence of a new mode of thought which leads to a greater capacity for transformation and a greater capacity for the living members of society to participate actively in such transformations. However, insofar as this active participation is guided exclusively by a heteronomous world-view and ori-

Autonomy and Meaning • 293

entation, we cannot speak of autonomy, not even as a project. And insofar as this activity is heteronomous, the self-reflexivity which it involves will be limited by arbitrary boundaries which have their basis in the self-preservative imperatives of instituted society. This would seem to be the case within the societies in question. What Arnason’s analysis of the Greek case points to, however, is the need for a more careful study of all of these societies to uncover the specificity of each. The value of the Axial Age paradigm is that it provides a framework within which differences as well as similarities become more meaningful. The crucial characteristic we must look for in such societies if we are to identify within them the operation of something we could legitimately describe as a project of autonomy is a self-reflection and self-determination which is related to a world-view or imaginary consistent with autonomy. This must involve ontological and anthropological premises centring on conceptions of the self, its nature, origins, capacities and relations with the world. The increased propensity for the emergence of heterodoxies within such societies may make the creation of an imaginary conducive to and consistent with a project of autonomy more possible, but if this possibility was ever actualised in any of the societies in question, I do not know of it. Self-reflexive thought certainly went further in some cases than in others—and the products of this thought have intrinsic value whether or not we wish, like Castoriadis, to reserve the term ‘philosophy’ for the (in principle) unlimited interrogation characteristic of the Greek world—but this in itself is insufficient. Arnason has suggested that Indian philosophy involved a reflexive critique of inherited modes of thought comparable to that of Greek philosophy.37 It was, however, “for the most part inseparably linked to an attitude which Weber described as a religious rejection of the world . . . While this attitude is certainly not wholly alien to Greek culture, the dominant trend—an affirmative contemplation of the natural order—differs sharply from the Indian pattern.” Importantly, this pattern “excludes the kind of interaction between philosophy and politics that took place in Greece . . .” Despite such differences, Arnason suggests that the notion of autonomy might be applicable to both

37

Arnason, “Culture and Imaginary Significations,” pp. 43-44.

294 • Chapter Ten

traditions, and points in particular to early Buddhism. It is true that early Buddhism promoted a freedom of individual critical inquiry and the development of ideas based on personal experience and reflection rather than authority,38 but the fact that, despite the later proliferation of schools, this did not give rise to the multiplicity of fundamentally divergent views which we see in the Greek case suggests something about the influence of the anthropological and ontological presuppositions within which this questioning occurred. The ‘other-worldly’ elements of Buddhism (which are fundamental to all schools)—the doctrine of ‘no-self’ and the theory of ‘conditioned arising’ or ‘dependent origination’, and the concepts of rebirth, karmic determination and nirvana—preclude autonomy inasmuch as they render the very concept either meaningless or illusory. “Tradition means that the question of the legitimacy of tradition shall not be raised. Individuals in these societies are fabricated in a way that this question remains for them mentally and psychically inconceivable.”39 The Axial Age transformations mean that the question of legitimacy can be and is repeatedly raised by at least some individuals within these societies, and that tradition must therefore be defended in a way which was previously unnecessary. These societies are not ‘traditional’ in the sense Castoriadis ascribes to the term, and the implicit equation of heteronomy with this type of traditionalism cannot be maintained. The revolutionary changes of the Axial Age represent the emergence of the possibility of a new relationship between individuals and social significations. This transformation is not as far-reaching as that which we must posit in societies which incorporate a project of autonomy, but in both cases there is a fundamental change. This change concerns not specific significations, but the meaning of ‘meaning’ itself. It is to this question that we must now turn our attention.

38

P. Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings, History and Practices, Cambridge

U.K., Cambridge University Press, 1990. 39

Castoriadis, “Power, Politics, Autonomy,” p. 163.

Autonomy and Meaning • 295

2 Religion, Meaning and the Abyss The reader will probably have noted already that the very aspect of society upon which Castoriadis focuses when explaining what he intends by the ‘closure of signification’ is that which is revealed as the crucial driving force behind the transformation of this closure and the emergence of self-reflexive thought within the Axial civilisations. I mean, of course, religion. This is not really surprising. To speak of a society’s magma of significations, its values and orientations, its ontological and anthropological premises, its semantic map or its imaginary is, in the vast majority of cases, to speak of religion. This does not mean that one institution, religion, determines and dominates all others. Rather, in most societies religion is not, as it is today, merely one institution amongst many. Castoriadis agrees with Durkheim that “religion is at the outset ‘identical’ to society.”40 For Castoriadis, not only at the outset but in almost all known societies, “the entire organisation of society is essentially ‘religious’ in character . . . it is religion that organises, polarises, and gives value to the pertinent, that hierarchises it, to use the term so as to restore to it its initial meaning (as the rule of the holy or of the sacred).”41 In other words, the institution of society is an institution of and through an imaginary which is essentially religious.42 In Castoriadis’ view, the key characteristic of religion, its essence, is the manner in which it ties together “the origin of the world and the origin of society, the signification of being and the being of signification.”43 This ‘unitary ontol-

40

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 318.

41

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” pp. 318-319.

42

The brevity of the following discussion does not reflect my estimate of the impor-

tance of the topic. The concepts and problematics which Castoriadis develops and explores open up numerous possible lines of inquiry into the nature and role of religion; and as my criticisms of the one-sidedness of his analysis of religion indicates, I do not believe that he fully realises these possibilities in his own work. There are limits, however, to how much can be dealt with in a work such as this, and here I confine myself to explicating and critiquing Castoriadis’ central thesis concerning the connection between religion and heteronomy. 43

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 317.

296 • Chapter Ten

ogy’, positing as it does a homogeneity of being, is, for Castoriadis, “consubstantial with the heteronomy of society.” It necessarily entails in effect the positing of an extrasocial source for the institution (and for signification), therefore the occultation of the self-institution of society, the covering over by humanity of its own being as self-creation. Inversely, this position, and the postulate of homogeneity from which it springs, is equivalent to a denial of the “contingency” of signification and of the institution, more exactly of what we have designated as the elsewhere of signification relative to necessity and contingency, and which we call the metacontingency (or the metanecessity) of signification.44

I have discussed the implications and ramifications of the postulate of ontological homogeneity in previous chapters. The curious notion of the ‘metacontingency’/‘metanecessity’, or the ‘elsewhere’, of signification requires some explanation, but before I attempt this some preparatory work is required. We need to ask once again, but this time from a slightly different perspective, what purpose is served by the unitary ontology of heteronomous societies. In asking this question, I am not seeking an ‘explanation’ in the sense of an account which demonstrates why this must be so, for, as I have said often enough already, I do not believe—and nor does Castoriadis—that this must be so. What I am inquiring about are the motivations behind this form of self-institution, the conditions to which it creatively responds, and in particular, its effectivity: how and why it works as it does. Humanity emerges from the Chaos, the Abyss, the Groundless. It emerges therefrom as psyche: rupture of the living being’s regulated organisation, representational/affective/intentional flux which tends to relate everything to itself and to live everything as constantly sought-after meaning. This meaning is essentially solipsistic, monadic: or, in other words, it is the pleasure of relating everything to oneself. If this search for meaning remains absolute and radical, it cannot but fail and will lead to the death of the psyche’s living support and of the psyche itself. . . . The institution permits the psyche to survive by imposing on it the social form that is the individual, by proposing to it and imposing on it another source and another modal-

44

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 318.

Autonomy and Meaning • 297 ity of meaning: the social imaginary signification, the mediated identification with this signification (with its articulations), the possibility of relating everything to signification.45

I have already made the case for a rejection of Castoriadis’ view that the psyche is essentially solipsistic or monadic. Insofar as the psyche becomes solipsistic, tending to relate everything to itself, this is a secondary (if unavoidable) development which must be traced to the more fundamental interplay between the twin imperatives of determinacy and indeterminacy, essential to all self-creating beings, in the context of the psyche’s unavoidable involvement in a world which is beyond its control. We have also discussed Castoriadis’ conception of ‘Chaos, the Abyss, the Groundless’; we need to recall again in this context that these terms do not refer to a void, but to a fundamental and pervasive indeterminacy, one of the key characteristics of which is the emergence of other forms, other determinations and other types of determination, none of which extinguish in themselves the essential indeterminacy out of which they emerge and within which they continue to exist. If the psyche is not essentially or originally solipsistic, it is certainly true that it lives in and through meaning, and that its survival is made possible by a transformation which enables it to make its own those meanings which society creates in the form of social imaginary significations. “The question of meaning was to be gratified in this way, and the psyche’s quest was to come to an end. In truth, such is never the case.”46 Why not? Why is the psyche’s quest for meaning not satisfied by signification? Because this quest requires an elimination or covering over of the Chaos, the Abyss, the Groundless, of indeterminacy, which is impossible in principle, and which the very nature of the quest—which is society’s quest also, society being not just the keeper of ‘the beast’ (radical imagination), but the beast itself in a different form— itself undermines. What makes this quest so wondrously fecund is also what makes it self-defeating: the fact that it demands determinacy while simultaneously refusing to be limited. This rejection of limits does not just mean that all specific determinations are undermined from within, it means that the drive

45

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 311.

46

Ibid.

298 • Chapter Ten

for determination itself refuses to be bound within limits. The determination demanded by the radical imagination as psyche and as society halts at nothing; it strives to extinguish indeterminacy entirely, but the more it strives, the more it exposes the impossibility of this quest. It is this unlimitedness of the drive for determination, which becomes therefore a drive for complete and perfect determinacy, that explains society’s positing of signification “as total, as covering everything”.47 According to Castoriadis, in doing this, society—or signification, as he puts it—“has renounced creating for itself that narrow ontological niche in and through which an animal lives its life, the animal giving being and meaning only to those things whose being and meaning are already functionally guaranteed for it.”48 This requires clarification. An animal represents, and therefore gives being and meaning to, everything within its environment that impacts upon it. It is the animal’s self-constitution which, in association with the intrinsic properties of its environment, determines what shall and shall not have an impact and of what type that impact will be, this self-constitution being guided and limited by reference to orientations which give the animal its specific functionality. This process amounts to the creation of a world for the animal, and in the context of this world representation/meaning covers everything—including a certain amount of ‘irrelevant stimulation’, or ‘noise’, which, if it has less meaning/ significance for the animal, is nonetheless represented since it is felt. How does society differ from this? The creation of instituting society, as instituted society, is each time a common world . . . This institution is the institution of a world in the sense that it can and must enclose everything, that, through and in it, everything must in principle, be sayable and representable and that everything must be totally caught up in the network of significations, everything must have meaning . . . The institution of the common world is necessarily each time the institution of that which is and is not, does and does not have worth, of what is and is not do-able, both ‘outside’ the society (in relation to ‘nature’) and ‘within’ it. As such, it must also necessarily be ‘presence’ for society of ‘non-

47

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 314.

48

Ibid.

Autonomy and Meaning • 299 being’, of the false, the fictive, the merely possible but not actual. ‘Reality’ for a given society is constituted through the synergy of all these schemata of signification.49

What has no parallel in the representational world of the living being is this positing of ‘negative’ meanings: non-being, the false, the fictive, the possible. The world created by signification is a totality in a sense which is entirely peculiar and original. If, as Castoriadis argues, society creates for the first time in the history of being true or full ‘identity’, it also creates at the same time this sense of ‘totality’. An animal knows what it knows and experiences what it experiences, but what it does not know and does not experience simply does not exist for it. This positing of the world as a ‘totality’, as a unity which includes ‘everything’ in this absolute and unprecedented sense, is uniquely human. ‘Identity’ and ‘totality’ go together. The determination of the whole is linked to the determination of all of its ‘parts’. I have discussed this at length already. What should be pointed out again in this context, however, is the significance of the ‘identity’ aspect of this duality as a distinguishing characteristic of the human. The limitation inherent in the functionalised self-determination of the living being precludes demands for a determination of its world beyond what is required for the organism’s survival. The living being has no ambition to exceed a type and degree of determination which is ‘sufficient as to use’. The human desire for determinacy is such that no indeterminacy is acceptable, in relation either to the ‘totality’ or its various ‘components’; and this remains so even if all that is achievable is a degree of determinacy which is ‘sufficient as to use’. “The labour of signification is . . . perpetually menaced (and, from an ultimate point of view, always already put in check) by the Chaos it encounters, by the Chaos it itself dredges up.”50 It ‘dredges up’ this Chaos of indeterminacy because, on the one hand, “the hold significations have over the world, over everything that presents itself and could ever present itself . . . is always partial and precarious. It could have been secure only if each thing were only

49

Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 370-371.

50

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 313.

300 • Chapter Ten

what it is, if the world were always only what it is—what they are posited by signification to be.”51 As we have seen, the world exceeds such determinations; it is never merely or precisely this; it is always more and other. As I have insisted previously, this is not only because, as Castoriadis stresses, being is essentially the undetermined emergence of other forms of being, other determinations; it is also because each of these forms or determinations escapes determinacy, because their mode of being is not that posited by the ensidic logic of signification, because being is a magma. Society uncovers and forces itself to confront this indeterminacy—in Being, in the psyche and in society itself—precisely because it demands that signification encompass the totality of Being. At the same time, the very activity of attempting to determine the totality of Being through signification also ‘dredges up’ indeterminacy. Signification emerges to cover over the Chaos, thus bringing into being a mode of being which posits itself as negation of the Chaos. But it is still the Chaos that manifests itself in and through this very emergence, inasmuch as the latter has no “raison d’être,” inasmuch as signification is ultimately a pure fact which in itself does not and cannot “have any signification,” inasmuch as it cannot double back upon itself.52

In addition to being inadequate to the task it sets itself, signification is, as Castoriadis puts it, essentially ‘arbitrary’.53 There is no alternative to this arbitrariness, however. If signification, or meaning, ‘has no meaning’, this is because in order for there to be meaning, meaning—and a specific meaning— must already have been posited. Here we are once again in the realm of the circle of creation. And it is for this reason that Castoriadis describes signification as ‘metanecessary’ and ‘metacontingent’. “Social imaginary signification—the magma of social imaginary significations—is both of an absolute necessity, when one remains within it, and of a radical contingency, when one is on

51

Ibid.

52

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 315.

53

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 313.

Autonomy and Meaning • 301

the outside.”54 It is both of these and neither; for to be ‘outside’ one ‘radical contingency’ one must be ‘inside’ another which is equally ‘contingent’. Signification ‘has no meaning’, it cannot ‘double back on itself’; and yet it must. It cannot be excluded from the demand for meaning. Signification must encompass everything; if it is to confer meaning—both ‘sense’ and ‘purpose’—universally, it must answer the question: ‘Why this meaning?’ This question of the ‘signification of signification’, the ‘meaning of meaning’, is as inescapable for signification (at least, as it has almost always been posited until now) as it is ultimately unanswerable. It is in the context of this constellation of drives and conditions that we must understand the strategy of heteronomous societies, the positing of the world as determinate, of being as determinacy, and of the specific determination of the world and of being as the meaning in and through which society exists and organises itself. The unitary ontology of heteronomous society affirms that being is ‘meaning’—is ‘sense’, is ‘purpose’—and that it is this meaning. The question ‘Why this meaning?’ is in this manner not so much answered as rendered unthinkable. This elegant and economical solution still does not suffice, however. The Chaos, indeterminacy as irreducible otherness and emergence of otherness, remains and cannot be ignored. Humanity’s mode of dealing with this situation is, according to Castoriadis, “original, ultraparadoxical, so to speak inconceivable. What it does is cover over that which announces and asserts itself in and through this very effort at covering over.”55 In the very same movement, the Chaos is affirmed and negated, it is, as Castoriadis puts it, ‘presented/occulted’. The Chaos, creation, that which escapes determination, is itself made determinate by being “taken into signification,” by being given a determinate meaning, and this signification is what confers meaning upon all significations and their emergence.56 For Castoriadis, this presentation/ occultation of the Chaos is the heart of religion, the essence of the ‘sacred’.

54

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 315.

55

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 316.

56

Ibid.

302 • Chapter Ten

There is no doubt that Castoriadis is vehemently opposed to the religious dimension of the institution of society, viewing it, as he does, as consubstantial with social heteronomy. It is strange therefore to realise that, up to a point, many people of serious religious conviction would find much to agree with in his analysis of the religious. The idea that the sacred is a ‘re-presentation’ of the unrepresentable creative source of being; that this source is present and active in being, in the world and in humanity; that it is both transcendent and immanent, the “unfathomable underside to everything;”57 that the representation of this unfathomable dimension through a simulacrum, figure, image, name or word risks deforming and obscuring it: all of these are common within religious discourse. (The radical distinction between the transcendent and the immanent which Castoriadis sees as typical of if not fundamental to the religious approach has its basis in the ontological innovations of the Axial Age. This distinction does not preclude the recognition of the presence or action of the transcendent within the mundane—this, after all, is the basis of most of the Axial religions. Rather, it provides a framework within which questions of the identity/alterity of the transcendent can be posed. We should be wary of confusing this distinction with the distinction between the representation of the sacred and the sacred itself, which is what Castoriadis seems to do. The two are certainly connected, but they are not identical. It is possible, and it happens, that individuals of pre-Axial societies look beyond the concrete representations of the sacred to that which is represented, though they do not therefore look towards a transcendent realm distinct from the mundane.)58 Not all religious people would accept such an

57

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 322.

58

Joseph Campell quotes from Dr H. Ostermann’s report of the fifth Thule expedi-

tion the following conversation with Najagneq, an Inuit shaman. “When Dr Rasmussen asked him if he believed in any of all the powers he spoke of, he answered: ‘Yes, a power we call Sila, one who cannot be explained in so many words. A strong spirit, the upholder of the universe, of the weather, in fact all life on earth—so mighty, that his speech to man comes not in ordinary words, but through the storms, snowfall, rain showers, the tempests of the sea, through all the forces that man fears, or through sunshine, calm seas or small, innocent, playing children who understand nothing. When times are good, Sila has nothing to say to mankind. He has disappeared into his infinite nothingness and remains away as long as people do not abuse life but have respect for

Autonomy and Meaning • 303

analysis, of course. Some would maintain that the specific representation of the sacred is true because it is revealed by the sacred. And almost no believers would agree with Castoriadis’ assertions that the Abyss, the Chaos, which is represented through the image of the sacred is essentially plural and pluralising, that its human manifestation is irreducible to its universal manifestation, that human creativity is therefore independent of the creativity of Being, that this creativity is undetermined, that being is essentially meaningless, and so on. Nor would they agree that “All religion is idolatry,” that religion never has and cannot have “anything to do with the Abyss—which it calls ‘transcendence’, when it calls the Abyss anything at all.”59 This last objection I share. What is more, Castoriadis himself seems to know that he is on shaky ground here. Even if we put aside the problems that arise from a denial that religion can have anything to do with the Abyss when it has already been stated that religion essentially involves a presentation/occultation of the Abyss, that it “furnishes an instituted simulacrum of the Abyss,” there are obvious problems with this assertion. These Castoriadis attempts to deal with by limiting his definition of religion. When he says that religion has nothing to do with the Abyss, Castoriadis tells us that he is speaking only of “effective, historically instituted and socially functional religion”.60 One might wonder what this excludes. Castoriadis tells us. The “mystical” relation to the Abyss, whether it be “authentic” or hallucinatory phenomenon, does not matter here: there never was and there never will be mystical religion or a religion of mystics. The true mystic can exist only in separation from society. In its effective social existence, religion furnishes and always has to furnish instituted simulacra of the Abyss. . . . Every religion is idolatry—or is not socially effective religion.61

Even if it is true that “there never was and never will be mystical religion or a religion of mystics” (and I do not know whether, in fact, it is true or not), and

their daily food. No one has ever seen Sila. His place of sojourn is so mysterious that he is with us and infinitely far away at the same time’.” (The Masks of God, Vol. I, p. 53) 59

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 325.

60

Ibid.

61

Ibid.

304 • Chapter Ten

even if it is true that not all religions include a mystical aspect (once again, I do not know, but here I strongly suspect that it is not), it is undeniably true that many, if not most, religions do include such an aspect. Now, it may be that mystics can only exist—can only be mystics—by separating themselves from society; but this does not make either mystics or mysticism any less a social phenomenon—indeed, a social institution. To separate mysticism from religion is arbitrary and tendentious; and it leads us to ignore something that we ought instead to be endeavouring to account for and elucidate. Joseph Campbell, in an attempt to identify the universal characteristics of religion, takes up Adolph Bastian’s distinction between ‘elementary ideas’ (Elementargedanke) and ‘ethnic ideas’ (Volkergedanke), which he links to the Indian concepts of marga—‘path’ or ‘way’—and desi—of the region, local, or ethnic. Functioning as a “way,” mythology and ritual conduce to a transformation of the individual, disengaging him from his local, historical conditions and leading him towards some kind of ineffable experience. Functioning as an “ethnic idea,” the image binds the individual to his family’s system of historically conditioned sentiments, activities, and beliefs, as a functioning member of a sociological organism. This antinomy is fundamental to our subject, and every failure to recognise it leads not only to unnecessary argument, but also to a misunderstanding—one way or the other—of the force of the mythological symbol itself, which is, precisely, to render an experience of the ineffable through the local and concrete, and thus, paradoxically, to amplify the force and appeal of the local forms even while carrying the mind beyond them.62

Religion ‘presents/occults’ the Abyss, the ineffable. It obscures the Abyss, deforming it by presenting it in and through forms which are particular and determinate, thereby tying the Abyss to the particular and determinate form which is the specific society in question. But it can only occult, domesticate and appropriate the Abyss in this manner by presenting it. To ignore this ‘presentation’ is, as Campbell asserts, as foolish as ignoring the other, institutionally justifying, idolatrous aspect. I certainly would not deny that in order to be socially effective, a religion must possess the latter

62

J. Campbell, The Masks of God, Vol. I, p. 462.

Autonomy and Meaning • 305

dimension. There are plenty of examples of religious movements which begin by emphasising mystical experience, but which in the process of becoming established—institutionalised—are transformed into religions which endorse and uphold instituted society. This is one example of what Weber termed the ‘routinisation of charisma’. Without adopting Weber’s analysis of this phenomenon uncritically or in its entirety, I would wish to point out that this process is impossible without the charismatic element; and not merely as source, but as a continuing component. A religion which ceased entirely to present the Abyss or the ineffable, however occulted and deformed, would also cease to be socially effective. At this juncture, it is worth pointing out that there is a contradiction between the notion that the sacred is a presentation/occultation of the Abyss and Castoriadis’ assertion that the central imaginary significations of a society—for example ‘God’—have no referent. They may be both more and less than this, they may involve a creation which can in no way be subsumed under the activity of representation, however this may be understood, but they also function as ‘representations’: of that aspect of being, the world and humanity which exceeds all representations, and out of which all being and all signification emerges.

3 Meaning and Truth Castoriadis’ analysis of religion and its relationship to the nature of signification leaves us with this obvious question: what is the alternative? Of course, in terms of the specific understanding of the nature of being and humanity and the relationship between the two, the rejection of a unitary ontology, the acknowledgment of the self-creating nature of society, and so on, Castoriadis has made his position perfectly clear. What I mean is: what are we to do in relation to the Abyss, the Chaos, the Groundless? What alternative is there to the presentation/occultation of it which we find in religion? According to Castoriadis, religion caters to our incapacity to “stand up straight and confront the Abyss.”63

63

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 324.

306 • Chapter Ten What some have called the need for religion corresponds to the refusal on the part of human beings to recognise absolute alterity, the limit of all established signification, the inaccessible underside constituted for every place to which one has access, the death dwelling within every life, the non-sense bordering on and penetrating all sense.64

This is, as Castoriadis admits, extremely difficult.65 So, how do we do it? It cannot simply mean avoiding ‘naming the unnameable, representing the unrepresentable’, because this Castoriadis already does (‘the Chaos’, ‘the Abyss’, ‘the Groundless’).66 His work as a whole, at least since The Imaginary Institution of Society, could be described as a series of efforts to name the unnameable, to think and speak of things—the psyche, society, history, language, the natural world, being—which defy thought and language insofar as they do not conform to the logic which is essential to both. Thought and language are more than this logic, however, and this logic itself is less and other than what it pretends to be, and this makes it possible to go beyond it, even if we must make use of it in doing so. Affirming this possibility, however, does not explain how it can be realised. And its realisation is of the utmost importance from the perspective of the project of autonomy. The response, if response there be, can come only on the collective level and the individual level simultaneously. On both levels, it presupposes a radical alteration of one’s relation to signification. I am autonomous only if I am origin of what will be . . . and I know myself as such. Understood nontrivially, what will be—what I will do—does not concern the haystack toward which I head in preference over another one equidistant but rather the meaning of what I will do, of my acts, of my life.67

Castoriadis says that this meaning is neither contingent nor necessary, and must be acknowledged as such. This ‘neither . . . nor’ formulation of the problem seems to me to be insufficient, even misleading. Meaning, signification, is not ‘beyond’, it is not ‘elsewhere’ (one is tempted to add ‘transcendent’).

64

Ibid.

65

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 327.

66

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 324.

67

Castoriadis, “The Institution of Society and Religion,” p. 329.

Autonomy and Meaning • 307

Mysterious, unmasterable, ultimately indeterminable, it is nonetheless here, with us—as we are, as we will be. We need to accept that what is apparently necessary in the meanings through which we live is in fact contingent, but that such contingency is absolutely necessary if there is to be meaning at all. This brings us, finally, to the question of truth and of validity. Castoriadis distinguishes between two types of validity: de facto, or positive, validity, and de jure validity. De facto/positive validity is that form of validity which attaches to significations in the context of the closure of signification in heteronomous societies. ‘Attaches’ is probably a somewhat misleading term. As Castoriadis shows, the relationship is far more complex than this idea of attachment suggests. “The meaning/validity distinction is constitutive of the institution of society. It is the presupposition of the distinctions correct/incorrect, licit/forbidden, and so on.”68 A statement can be both meaningful and valid—for example, ‘The Eiffel Tower is in Paris’—; it can be meaningful but invalid—‘The Eiffel Tower is in London’—; or it can be meaningless, or absurd—‘The square root of the Fifth Republic is a jerusalem artichoke’.69 This distinction is not absolute, however. Castoriadis illustrates this by reference to Paul’s account of the original reception of his message that Jesus, the Messiah, was crucified and resurrected. It was for the Jews scandalous, blasphemous (both that the Messiah should be considered an incarnation of God and that he should not have been gloriously victorious on Earth)—and for the Gentiles, meaningless and childish.70 Paul, as Castoriadis observes, was in the process of instituting a universe of affirmations which would have been simply absurd for Aristotle—which would have been no more meaningful than the statement ‘The square root of the Fifth Republic is a jerusalem artichoke’. And yet, within a few short centuries, nothing was more meaningful than this idea, and both the meaningfulness and validity of all other ideas depended upon their consistency with the ultimate truth of Christ’s divinity, crucifixion and resurrection. Society, as Castoriadis writes, “creates not only what is for it meaning but also

68

Castoriadis, “Done and To Be Done,” p. 385.

69

Ibid.

70

Ibid.

308 • Chapter Ten

what for it is validity, and valid.”71 And what is for each society valid—which is, above all, the central imaginary of the society—also determines for it the criteria of both validity and meaning. Each society’s own significations are valid for it in this de facto, positive sense. As we have seen, according to Castoriadis, in heteronomous societies this validity extends over the whole of the society’s magma of significations: the validity of each signification is tied so intimately to the validity of the central imaginary that nothing can be questioned. We have also seen that this description falls short of the reality of the Axial civilisations. The limitations of Castoriadis’ approach are revealed again in the context of his discussion of validity. Castoriadis argues that within heteronomous societies—that is, societies founded on religious institutions—the question ‘What am I to do?’ cannot be raised. There are more than 600 commandments the young Jewish boy is supposed to know by heart by the time of his bar mitzvah. With such instituted behaviours and pregiven responses, the question: What am I to do? is not raised.72

If this were really true, how could we explain what Castoriadis himself elsewhere describes as “the immense intellectual effort deployed in the Talmud”?73 Similarly, Castoriadis often asserts that in highly religious societies, “since justice is one of the attributes (and even, as among the Hebrews, one of the names) of God,” to say “‘God is unjust’ is inconceivable.”74 How, then, are we to explain the Book of Job? There the answer to the accusation that ‘God is unjust’ is that God is greater than justice; but the answer comes only because the question could be and was asked. Castoriadis comes closer to a reasonable estimation of the capacity for selfreflexive thought in such societies when he points to Saint Augustine’s asser-

71

Ibid.

72

C. Castoriadis, “Anthropology, Philosophy, Politics,” trans. David Ames Curtis,

Thesis Eleven 49, 1997, pp. 99-116, p. 112. 73

Castoriadis, “Done and To Be Done,” p. 390.

74

C. Castoriadis, “Phusis and Autonomy,” trans. David Ames Curtis, in World in

Fragments, ed. David Ames Curtis, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997, p. 339.

Autonomy and Meaning • 309

tion that “no restrictions are acceptable when discussing with our Christian brethren; with them, everything can be put into question. But no discussion is possible with those who would not accept the sacred authority of the Scriptures.”75 If the magma of significations within the society of which Saint Augustine was a member were truly closed in the way Castoriadis imagines, there would be no question of ‘discussing’ or ‘putting into question’ at all; everything that mattered would have been given already. If the example of Augustine shows that, “For all those for whom a revealed truth exists, whatever their intelligence, their genius, their subtlety, there is a principle before which their mind must halt,”76 it also shows that in societies of this type there is room for the mind to move, to ask ‘What should I do?’ and ‘How should I think?’. The validity of the answers to such questions, however, continues to be judged in relation to the absolute validity of the revealed truth, and the range of questions possible is consequently limited. It can never address the question of the validity of the revelation itself—or not without replacing it with another. De jure validity is that type of validity which is created when questioning becomes genuinely unlimited. It means, says Castoriadis, “that we no longer accept a representation, or an idea, simply because we have received it and that we do not have to accept it. We require that one might render an account and a reason for it, what the Greeks called logon didonai . . . And the same thing holds for our institutions.”77 Now, this type of validity, like de facto validity, is a social-historical creation. The question then arises as to the validity of this type of validity. “Why should I reflect and deliberate?” Castoriadis asks himself. I answer myself . . .: Poor simpleton, in posing the question, you are still in reflection and deliberation, you are still posing the question, ‘Why should I . . .?’, and you are leaving it understood for yourself that you would accept as an answer only ‘good reasons’—without yet even knowing, moreover,

75

Castoriadis, “Done and To Be Done,” p. 390.

76

Ibid.

77

Castoriadis, “Anthropology, Philosophy, Politics,” p. 109.

310 • Chapter Ten what defines a good reason’. You have already unconditionally given value to unlimited reflection.78

De jure validity is a creation. Like all creations, it presupposes itself. When we question the validity of de jure validity, it is de jure validity we seek. But we will not find it. What we find instead is de facto validity: we value unlimited reflection; the unexamined life is for us not worth living. And this troubles us, because, committed as we are to questioning ourselves and our assumptions, we cannot refrain from asking what distinguishes this de facto validity from any other. We must ask why we should choose this value rather than another; and the fact that we thereby affirm this value only leads us to ask whether we are not also trapped within a closure of signification. There are two answers to this kind of questioning. The first I have already broached, albeit in somewhat different terms, in preceding chapters: if there is to be a breaching of the closure of significations, how else could it arise except as a social-historical creation? Meaning, qua signification, is a creation of the socialhistorical. To suppose that breaking the closure of signification could mean escaping from the specificity of social-historical creation would be to imagine that we could escape the absolute necessity of the contingency of meaning, that we could have meaning without its being our own; or that one could be a self that was not this self, but an ‘absolute subjectivity’ which absorbs and is ultimately indistinguishable from its object. The second answer, which is related to the preceding one, concerns the nature of the ‘truth’ which the principle of de jure validity calls on us to seek. If we wish to speak of truth, distinguishing it from mere correctness . . . we have to reexamine the signification of this term and modify it. We must call truth not a property of statements, or any result whatsoever, but the very movement that breaks closure as it is each time established and that seeks, in an effort of coherency and of logon didonai, to have an encounter with what is.79

I am immediately struck by what seems to me to be the profound truth of this statement; and it is for this reason that I also immediately question it. It does

78

Castoriadis, “Done and To Be Done,” p. 392.

79

Castoriadis, “Anthropology, Philosophy, Politics,” p. 111.

Autonomy and Meaning • 311

not seem reasonable to grant the name ‘truth’ to a certain type of movement of thought while withholding it from the results of that movement or the statements in which those results are conveyed. Such results and statements differ from results and statements arrived at by different means, just as the institutions and ‘laws’ which we give ourselves autonomously differ from those imposed upon us heteronomously. This difference concerns the nature of these significations and these institutions, an intrinsic ‘openness’ which distinguishes them from heteronomous significations and institutions. Openness must be seen as a characteristic of these ‘results’, even if we accept that in order for it to persist the movement which created these significations and institutions must continue to exert its influence over them. This ‘openness’ entails, as Castoriadis suggests, the exigency of an ongoing encounter with what is—including ourselves. In the case of institutions, this involves an ongoing encounter with the judgment, the will and the reality of the collectivity. It implies, as I observed in chapter one, the creation of institutions which, in Unger’s terms, reduce the distance between institutional preservation and institutional revision. In terms of significations, it demands a conception of rigour as reflective of what is to be thought and represented over and above the intrinsic tendencies of thought and language themselves. This does not, cannot and need not mean an escape from signification and its contingency. On the contrary, it requires an acknowledgment of this contingency and its necessity. It also requires an acknowledgment of the indeterminate intermingling of determination and indeterminacy which characterises both subject and object, which makes the difference between the two unavoidable at the same time as it makes their absolute separation impossible. ‘What is’ impinges upon us; it affects us. We cannot escape it, except through death. Beyond this ‘being affected’, we may ‘encounter’ ‘what is’ only insofar as we are prepared to acknowledge its otherness, and therefore also to acknowledge the necessity and the possibility of our own self-transformation.

Conclusion

The Legacy of Castoriadis With expeditions of the intellect, as with other voyages, the journey itself may have value regardless of the destination. Sometimes what we learn from and may treasure most are those incidental discoveries we make along the way. I have certainly discovered things that surprised and interested me in the course of this journey, and I hope I have been able to communicate some of those discoveries to the reader. Having said this, I do hope we have managed to make some progress, and I believe we have. In what follows, without repeating at length the contents of this book, I want to try to show where we have arrived at the end of this investigation, and to point out some ways in which we may have profited from our efforts. One of the principle aims of this book has been to present and elucidate Castoriadis’ key ideas, and to convey something of their importance and usefulness for understanding the world we live in generally, the human condition broadly, and the social-historical especially. Though many thinkers have rejected social and historical determinism, perhaps none have done so quite as completely as Castoriadis. Certainly none have

314 • Conclusion

explored the intellectual, social and psychological foundations of the deterministic approach as thoroughly as he did. Castoriadis follows the assumptions and implications of determinism to their roots in the fundamental tenets of the Western tradition of logic and ontology, and deeper still, to the basic principles and rules posited by the foundational social institutions of legein and teukhein, embodied in all language and social doing. He also attempts to link these tendencies of social institutions and philosophical thought to basic psychological drives. (Though I have disagreed somewhat with the specifics of how he attempts to establish this link, I do not deny that some such link exists.) Based partly on the formal implications of a thorough-going rejection of determinism and partly on his own investigation of the characteristics of human phenomena, both social and psychical, Castoriadis proposes a radical and challenging new approach to ontological questions, one that incorporates an unequivocal acceptance of indeterminacy as a characteristic of ‘being’ in the human realm. And not only in the human realm, for, as I have tried to show, a rejection of determinism and an admission of the reality of indeterminacy in the human realm forces us to acknowledge indeterminacy elsewhere also, and indeed, to some degree and in some sense, everywhere. The chief motivation for Castoriadis’ rejection of determinism—apart from the fact that he believes such an approach to be simply incorrect—is his devotion to the aim and project of autonomy. Casotoriadis identifies autonomy as the essence and heart of those projects of emancipation and self-determination that have distinguished European history beginning with the ancient Greeks, arising again during the medieval period, and proliferating in modernity. We see the project of autonomy in operation in the Enlightenment project of critical reflection and the testing of inherited beliefs and traditions, in the drive towards democracy, and in the various movements of personal and collective liberation. It is important to understand, however, that we never see the project of autonomy in a pure or unadulterated form. It is invariably mixed with other aims, some of which potentially and actually conflict with it; and it is always clothed in cultural assumptions and orientations (imaginary significations) which affect its character and the ways in which it unfolds. This is partly a reflection of the specific nature of the project of autonomy. (Castoriadis admits that when we seek autonomy, we invariably seek it also in order to do something with it, with a view to those laws we would wish to make for ourselves. The project of autonomy can never in and of itself constitute the

Conclusion • 315

whole of the content of our political—that is, self-instituting—program.) And it is partly a reflection of the fact that practically all social and cultural movements are an admixture of sometimes ill-fitting elements. It is obvious that determinism conflicts with the project of autonomy. We cannot make laws for ourselves if the laws are already given, and given once and for all, and this is what determinism implies. Castoriadis situates determinstic theoretical approaches to the explanation of society and history within the much broader context of heteronomous world-views. These are those worldviews which posit an Other outside society which is responsible for making the laws society and its members obey. Castoriadis asserts that heteronomy is the established form of almost all hitherto existing societies, including to some degree those like our own, where the laws of Nature, the laws of biology or the laws of specific social institutions like the economy, have usurped the place most often occupied in other societies by God or gods. Heteronomy is more pervasive than the mere reference to cultural ideas might suggest, involving the totality of a society’s institutions, which are structured in such a way as to preclude all questioning of and challenges to the established institutional order. I have tried to show that this monolithic view of heteronomy needs to be modified in view of the observable variation and relativisation of the closure of social institutions in many societies, particularly those of the Axial type. I have, however, reasserted the need for a distinction between heteronomous world-views and autonomous ones, and argued that any relative opening of institutional closure associated with new conceptions of the relationship between the ultimate source of law and real social actors is doomed to end in a re-establishment of closure if it remains tied to a belief in the extrasocial origin of effective or legitimate social laws. Having decided that he could no longer accept Marxist accounts of society and history, Castoriadis embarked on the bold but unavoidable task of developing a more satisfactory account of his own. He proceeded to develop an understanding of society and history—of the social-historical—that is both radical in its departure from past traditions and profound in the new concepts it offers and the way these open up new opportunities for understanding and investigating the social world. The two key concepts in Castoriadis’ new approach to society are the institution and the imaginary. Not only does he argue that the institution and instituting are fundamental to the construction

316 • Conclusion

of the social, as, on the one hand, the building block and, on the other, the mode of being of the social-historical, but he asserts unequivocally that the institution is unique to the social-historical, that it represents a type of being without parallel outside society. With the concept of the imaginary Castoriadis points to the irreducibly creative dimension of social instituting, the fact that the creation of institutions is the work of society itself, and the fact that this creation is never a mere response to other factors, whether society’s environment or its past history, and that it exceeds and is not deducible from the exigencies of functionality or logic. The imaginary refers to a capacity for invention, the formation of images not derived from the external world, and a spontaneous and ultimately undirected activity of such invention. When coupled with the term ‘signification’ in the form of the concept of social imaginary significations, it constitutes a radical attempt to place meaning at the heart of our understanding of society, to recognise meaning as the constituting and organising factor par excellence, as well as the driving force of social change. The function of the term ‘imaginary’ in the triumvirate of ‘social imaginary signification’ is to indicate a hitherto under-recognised dimension of meaning, that aspect of any signification that concerns what is meant, rather than how this meaning is given form and expressed. A social imaginary is that meaning which constitutes the organising principle for all the specific significations found within and related to a specific institution or society, the central meaning to which all significations refer and which confers on them their various values and aims. Such a social imaginary may never find concrete or definitive expression within the institution or society in question, and is never reducible to any specific expression. These concepts of ‘social imaginary significations’ and the ‘social imaginary’ are fecund as well as novel. They have proven particularly valuable to social scientists who find that they allow them a way into understanding institutions and social practices that had previously resisted explanation. Part of the reason for this may be that Castoriadis’ approach points away from the notion of explanation altogether. For Castoriadis, the concept of explanation belongs within the frame of reference of causality, and the social-historical largely escapes and exceeds causality, strictly understood. What we encounter in the social-historical is a phenomenon in which creation takes a crucial role. This means that we cannot derive what comes to be as a specific society from what had been before or outside this society. In this sense, we cannot

Conclusion • 317

‘explain’ social institutions at all. We can, however, elucidate them, give an account of their emergence and unfolding, even show how they relate to and draw on aspects of past institutions, providing we always understand that this never means they have been ‘caused’ by the institutions of the past. The value of Castoriadis’ new approach may be in part that it forces and allows social scientists to focus on the social institutions themselves, without feeling that they have to look beneath or behind these institutions for something else, something essentially sub-social or supra-social, which drives these institutions and determines how they evolve. Castoriadis’ exploration of the peculiarities of both society and the human psyche eventually led him to a broader inquiry into the fundamental characteristics of the self. He recognised that some of the characteristics that he first identified as belonging to the human realms of the psyche and society were not confined to those realms, but constituted more general characteristics of the for-itself wherever it is found. The most important of these characteristics—or at least, that one that calls for the greatest elucidation and demands the greatest effort of thought and reflection—is the fact that all selfs are selfcreating. Having accepted this premise, we are obliged to account for all of the other characteristics of the self by reference to the self’s own activity of self-creation and without resort to external causal factors. The key concern in this connection is the issue of representation, the question of how an activity of creation and self-creation that is undetermined can nevertheless come to be related to the external world in such a way that the presentations produced by the self’s spontaneous activity of imaging can be submitted to the demands of functionality, how their creation can be connected to the shocks resulting from encounters between the self and its environment. When it comes to the human self, and specifically the human psyche, the question becomes that of how this functionalisation can be achieved while still leaving a significant defunctionalised or autonomised psychical capacity behind. Castoriadis’ singular contribution to this problem is his concept of leaning on. Adapted from the much more limited concept offered in psychoanalysis, Castoriadis uses the notion of ‘leaning on’ as a means to signal a type of relation in which creation intervenes decisively, and which is therefore never one of determination. The self takes up the stimuli given by the external world, but what it makes of those stimuli is not determined by the stimuli themselves,

318 • Conclusion

but by the self’s own creative processes. It is important to recognise also—and I have taken some pains to try to emphasise this more than Castoriadis himself does—that the relation of ‘leaning on’ involves a degree of impulsion and even compulsion. What the self does and makes in response to stimuli may not be determined, but it is often the case that the self cannot not do or make something having encountered such stimuli, having undergone such shocks. We should also acknowledge that the utility of the concept of ‘leaning on’ as it is employed in Castoriadis’ work is matched by a lack of definition. Castoriadis himself admits that it means different things in different contexts, but does not address the potential for confusion implied by this polysemy. Castoriadis’ insistence on the self-creating character of the for-itself, and his concern to explore a type of relation, unrecognised hitherto, which escapes determination, resting instead on a creative engagement with and utilisation of material that traditionally has tended to be viewed as having a determining role—all this is consonant with his overall rejection of determinism, and his insistence on indeterminacy as a crucial and universal characteristic of Being. One of the effects of Castoriaids’ approach is to draw together the philosophical problematics of epistemology and ontology. The question of how the subject knows cannot be entirely divorced from the question of how Being is. Indeterminacy and creation are mutually implied. The fact of creation, which involves both the absence of full determination and the possibility of new determinations, implies an indeterminacy that traditional logic-ontology rejects as inconsistent with its definition of ‘being’. Beyond his analysis of the philosophical construction of ‘being’ as ‘being-determined’, Castoriadis’ central contribution in this connection is his identification of the significance of the concept and schema of the ‘set’ or ensemble. As we have seen, this leads Castoriadis to describe traditional logic-ontology as set-theoretical or ensemblist-identitarian (ensidic). This concept offers a new way into many and diverse fields of inquiry, wherever the issues of determination and indeterminacy are relevant. Thus, the concepts of the ensidic and of ensemblisation can help us come to grips with some of the profound epistemological problems associated with science and mathematics, and they can help us understand some of the fundamental features of all social institutions, including the institution of language. A consideration of these problems in turn leads Castoriadis to make bold ontological assertions about the structure and articulation of Being, assertions with implications that may go beyond what even he himself

Conclusion • 319

imagined. In all these contexts, the task Castoriadis sets himself is to explore the relationship between determination and indeterminacy, to show how Being is and yet is not an ensemble, or that the creative processes of the self always and essentially involve ensemblisation, but always and just as essentially exceed it. Finally in this connection Castoriadis offers the remarkable concept of magma, an attempt to elucidate what cannot be said directly or definitively, since it contradicts some of the fundamental rules of language, and since definition is the antithesis of its meaning. Magma refers to a mode of being from which indeterminacy is never absent and in which determination is only ever partial and transitory. Since indeterminacy is, for Castoriadis, universal, the mode of being of magma, the meeting and melding of determination and indeterminacy, is also universal. Everything is magma, Castoriadis declares; Being is a magma, a magma of magmas, or a super-magma. Since the mode of being of a magma includes both determination and indeterminacy, everything can rightly be called a magma, the only question being the degree of determination-indeterminacy exhibited by the specific magma in question. I have tried to explore some of the questions opened up by this concept, and some of the peculiar and unexpected implications that might be drawn from Castoriadis’ account of it; in particular the impotence of conventional (ensidic) concepts and approaches when dealing with the relationship between determination and indeterminacy within a magma.

The Journey, and What We Have Made of It As the reader will have realised, this book sets out to do more than merely introduce Castoriadis’ ideas. It attempts to examine these ideas, to uncover their presuppositions and expose their implications, to test their limits and evaluate their worth. It has done so through the pursuit of key questions and problems, following the trail of these problems wherever it happened to lead. In pursuing this end, it has proven necessary and desirable at times to suggest ways in which Castoriadis’ ideas and approach might be amended, corrected or extended. As something of a sidelight, but not necessarily of lesser value, have been those occasional insights into the various fields of inquiry we have found ourselves traversing in the course of our investigations.

320 • Conclusion

The primary question I set out to answer was that of autonomy and its differentiation from the self-creation Castoriadis posits as the universal condition of, first society, and then by extension, the human psyche and the for-itself generally. This forced us to explore the nature of the self, beginning with the social-historical. This we did in part through an exploration of Castoriadis’ critique of traditional approaches to society and history, and his proposed re-conceptualisation of the social-historical as the world of imaginary institutions and instituting; and in part through an analysis of the relationship between the individual and society, and various aspects of each: the social individual versus the human psyche, the individual versus the collective anonymous, instituted society versus instituting society. We concluded that the self of autonomy could not be simply identified with any of these various poles, but must be seen as distributed amongst them all to varying degrees, in various senses and at various moments in the process of making and abiding by one’s own laws. We also encountered the possibly even more difficult question of the identity of the ‘Other’ of heteronomy, whose otherness cannot be regarded as any more absolute than the selfhood of the various versions or incarnations of the self in the human domain, but which must be recognised as genuinely other in some contexts and circumstances, because effectively independent of the choosing and judging self that must constitute the author of autonomous laws. Building on this platform, we proceeded to an investigation of fundamental questions concerning the nature of the self generally and of the psyche and human psyche particularly. This was followed by an inquiry into the basic epistemological and ontological questions opened up by Castoriadis’ work. In terms of our overall goal of elucidating the concept of autonomy, this part might be regarded as an attempt to clarify the meaning of the ‘law’ or nomos component of ‘giving oneself one’s own laws’. What sort of laws are possible, how can one give them to oneself, how do they operate, what is the relationship between these laws and the laws which operate in the world beyond the social-historical? These are the sorts of questions I hope to have answered, or at least to have begun to answer, in pursuing the thorny and twisting trails that lead through the forests of Being and our knowledge of Being. We ended by confronting the issues of meaning and truth. In the process, I suggested a re-evaluation of Castoriadis’ approach to heteronomy, and

Conclusion • 321

a relativisation of the concept of heteronomy as it applies to societies of a non-traditionalist type. I also sought to rescue some aspects of religion from Castoriadis’ wholesale condemnation, while at the same time insisting on the uniqueness and specificity of the project of autonomy, and re-asserting the fundamental antipathy between the aim of autonomy and the religious postulate of an extra-social and supernatural source of order, meaning and truth. Now to the question of what we may take away from this journey by way of profit or bounty. This is not an exhaustive list, but merely the highlights of what I have found most interesting and useful in what we have discovered. First is the usefulness of the distinction between activity and structure in investigations of the psyche and the relationship between the psyche and soma, or the self and its environment. The difficult question of how the self can be affected by its environment when its presentational-representational activity is spontaneous and undetermined becomes less troublesome if we admit that the self is both structure and activity. As structure it cannot be unaffected by the impacts it suffers from its environment, and if it is affected as structure, it can hardly remain unaffected as and in its activity. The only question is how this activity will be affected, and if we accept the postulate of the self-creating nature of the for-itself, we must conclude that this ‘how’ is determined by the psyche or self in its own terms and according to its own self-given aims. This issue continues for Castoriadis into his investigation of the human psyche and his argument that the original form of this psyche is monadic. I have deconstructed this thesis of the monadic psyche, and tried to demonstrate its impossibility. I have further shown that it depends on both a supposed immunity to somatic shocks which, in keeping with the activity-structure view of the psyche, seems impossible, and the related issue of the supposed omnipotence of the Unconscious. I have argued that the concept of such an omnipotence is untenable, a psychoanalytical dogma that ought to be rethought and rejected. Finally, and most importantly, in this connection I have replaced the idea of monadic madness and a desire for lost unity-universality with a more fundamental tension between a desire for the contradictory and equally impossible goals of complete determinacy and perfect indeterminacy. This dichotomy between determinacy and indeterminacy is suggested by some of Castoriadis’ ideas, but he never raises it to the level of an explicit theme. I regard it as centrally important to an understanding of the self, the human psyche, and the

322 • Conclusion

social-historical, and the relationship between the peculiarities of the human condition and the fundamental indeterminacy of a Being which nevertheless incorporates a degree of determination. I will return to the question of this dichotomy shortly. Out of our investigation of the issue of the nature and generation of representation there emerged a suggested additional meaning of Castoriadis’ concept of the ‘imaginary’. It seems useful to recognise ‘imaginary presentations’ as those which are never subject to a representing function, as purely imaginary creations unrelated to the real. (Castoraids makes early moves in this direction in The Imaginary Institution of Society, but does not pursue them very far or with much consistency.) This has proven and could prove useful in connection with matters beyond the psychological, as in attempts to specify the distinctiveness of mathematics and other such ‘pure’ logical systems. In trying to clarify as far as possible Castoriadis’ reflections on traditional logic and ontology, and its roots in social institutions and psychical drives, it has seemed necessary to insist that what he sometimes is content to regard as ensemblisation, or the creation of real or actual ensembes, is and must be in fact only the creation of quasi-ensembles. The suggestion of this concept is motivated by a wish for consistency between Castoriadis’ critique of ensidic logic-ontology and his exploration of ontological indeterminacy through the concept of ‘magma’. If Being is a magma, or a super-magma incorporating a multiplicity (a magma) of other magmas, then ensembles or sets are, properly speaking, entirely alien to the nature of Being. All that we can allow as possible are quasi-ensembles, magmas that to a degree and in certain specific contexts can function as ensembles without ever being ensembles in the full sense. Pushing the question of ensemblisation to its limits, and therefore exploring the whole question of limits and limitations and how these concepts might be relevant from an ontological as well as an epistemological viewpoint, has led me to suggest that the concept of provisionality might have an ontological as well as an epistemological significance. Castoriadis’ exploration of the relationship between determination and indeterminacy, especially within his elaboration of the concept of magma, presents us with significant challenges. How do we understand determination when the concept of magma does not allow for a diminution of indeterminacy as a consequence of determination?

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How do we understand the mode of being of the universe if it allows for and supports/justifies/confirms an indeterminable multiplicity of determinations? I have suggested that the with respect to that governs our construction of ensemblistic representations of ‘what is’ must also in some sense operate ontologically, that what we provisionally separate is in itself ‘provisionally separate’, is inherently ‘provisional’. This means that the actual determination of all forms is to be understood as essentially ‘provisional’, ‘provisionality’ implying an actual but indeterminable multifariousness, not a ‘waiting to be’, but the true reality of ‘being’. This concept of ‘provisionality’, and the recognition of the modulo or ‘with respect to’ nature and qualification of all our representations and imaginary creations, should serve to add flesh and depth to our investigation of the nature of ‘closure’, particularly as this relates to autonomous laws and the autonomous subject. Full determination is impossible, full closure is impossible. Recognising its impossibility should be an integral component of our autonomy, since it is this recognition which allows us to question, to challenge, to re-examine, re-asses, to reformulate and replace the laws we find or have previously given ourselves. It should also inform not only our understanding of the laws we subsequently lay down for ourselves, but dictate the form and type of laws that are permissible in the context of our autonomy. (When I talk of ‘laws’ in this connection, I am thinking about laws of thought as well as action, therefore concepts, knowledge, truths, as well as rules for behaviour.) The relationship between determination and indeterminacy becomes an important theme in our investigation of ontological issues once indeterminacy has been posited as an ineradicable characteristic of Being. Similarly, the twin drives for determinacy and indeterminacy emerge as an important theme once we begin to see how the relationship between determination and indeterminacy operates in the human domain. We encounter these twin drives in the human psyche in the form of a tendency toward maximising determinacy and differentiation alongside a tendency toward expansion and an antipathy to all and any limitations. In society, we find this tension between determinacy and indeterminacy at the heart of the social institution and the activity of instituting. We find it in the tension within the institution between the ensidic structure of the institution and the imaginary significations that animate and

324 • Conclusion

exceed it: so, in the institution of language, between language as code and language as signification. We also find it in the tension between society as instituted and society as instituting, between the drive towards social selfdetermination and the drive to explode and exceed any and all defined social forms in an activity of creation that knows no boundaries and no end. I have tried to explore the basis of these twin drives in the peculiarities of the human mode of being, its unique coalition of profound indeterminacy and an unprecedented capacity for determination. The human psyche is characterised by its preservation of a highly autonomised imaginative presentationalrepresentational capacity and activity alongside a level of functionalisation that allows it to survive. I have suggested that we might think of this as a kind of arrested development. The functionalisation that other organisms’ psyches undergo the human psyche manages to escape because of its greater plasticity. This allows it to become sufficiently functionalised to ensure its survival, but to retain almost intact the atonomised capacity that in other species might be thought of as a mere ‘juvenile’ phase preparatory to mature functionalisation. In other words, the human psyche divides and differentiates itself to preserve what in other species must be relinquished if functionalisation is to occur at all. This autonomisation of the human psyche is clearly crucial to the emergence of the social-historical, to the emergence of a radical social imaginary and the creation of a world of social institutions. Formidable mysteries remain in connection with the relationship between the psychical radical imagination and the social radical imaginary. We can see how the autonomisation of the human psyche is crucial to its capacity to adopt, to re-create and install social significations as objects for itself. More mysterious, though, is the question of the origin of social significations and institutions, their initial and on-going creation. Castoriadis does not say much on this topic, though his refusal to countenance the possibility that social significations could be created by a ‘mere’ psyche points us in the direction of a possible solution. I would suggest we must posit a transformation of a portion of the socialised psyche’s radical imagination which in the social individual then becomes the radical imaginary of the society. Then, just as dreams and fantasies are the products of the radical imagination, the radical imaginary bursts forth in myths and visions. This still leaves the question of an initial creation of the social. We

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have explored the conceptual difficulties involved in this question. Our conclusion must be that any first social creation must be the creation of a first social signification and a first institution, and that it must at the same time constitute a first socialisation. The chicken and the egg arise together as the creation of a new form of life and mode of being. In terms of the twin drives, the social-historical inaugurates both a greater capacity for determination and a greater drive for determinacy, both of which become not only possible but necessary only because of the unparalleled indeterminacy in the social-historical realm. The degree of determinacy proposed and instituted by society exceeds that found elsewhere. As Castoriadis asserts, the sense of rigorous ‘identity’ insisted upon by the ensidic dimension of the social institution is something found nowhere outside society. It is also more than the things themselves can truly bear or support, since it would eradicate indeterminacy altogether, and we have already seen that indeterminacy is essential, universal and ineradicable. The institution bears up against this impossibility only by a steadfast and unwavering insistence on the necessity of determinacy, by trying to make this precept unquestionable and unchallengeable. We see here how heteronomous closure has its roots in some of the fundamental characteristics and drives of the social institution; though, as Castoriadis is at pains to show, this does not mean that heteronomy is inevitable, only that it has been, up to now, the manner in which the social institution has usually attempted to preserve itself. The social-historical is a peculiar mode of being. Its laws, norms, are arbitrary; they do not correspond to functional requirements, and they do not reflect necessary regularities or relations. They are in fact entirely unnecessary; they truly need not be. Heteronomy means this: that what need not be, in order to be, presents itself as that which could not be otherwise. Those of us who value the project of autonomy must learn to recognise this illusion wherever it may appear—and it can appear in unlikely places, in the guise of pure reason, for example, or apparently undeceived realism. In the human psyche and society we encounter beings that are less determinate in their mode of being than almost any other, that incorporate a greater indeterminacy and plasticity than we find almost anywhere else. And yet, precisely because of this indeterminacy, the drive for determinacy is greater

326 • Conclusion

in the human domain than anywhere else. The activity of self-creation inevitably includes a moment of self-determination, and where indeterminacy is greatest, there also the limits on determination are the least. And so we find the human being striving to determine itself more fully and completely than any other being has ever been determined, precisely because it is so indeterminate, because almost all its determinations are arbitrary, and because, being arbitrary, they have no natural limit. The modulo, the ‘with respect to’ that governs and limits determination generally, is forgotten in the social institution. Determination seeks to present itself as complete and absolute. It fails, again and again, and it must fail, because it is based on an illusion, and because what it strives to do is impossible. From the perspective of the project of autonomy, what we must endeavour to do is to strip this failure of its catastrophic aspect, to bring it into the light and to see it for what it is rather than what it pretends to be—the end of all things, the decline and collapse of all that we hold dear, and so on. The other side of this equation is the drive towards indeterminacy, the antipathy towards all determinations, all definitions and limitations. It has its way too, to some extent, since social creation continues despite all efforts to thwart it. In the end, then, attempts to deny the inevitability of change and the impermanence of all and any determinations resolve themselves into attempts to cover up the fact of change, to rewrite past history in order to remake it in the image of the present, to make even cataclysmic change seem like the fulfillment of an inevitable destiny. The drive to indeterminacy, though it stands on the side of creation, and though it does not require us to deny the indeterminacy we would wish to recognise as essential to all Being, is not for all that an unambiguous ally of the project of autonomy. Autonomy aims at determination, too, though it must recognise the essentially limited and arbitrary nature of its determinations. They are determinations nonetheless, and a drive which eschews all determinations would dispense with autonomy as quickly as it would dispense with heteronomy, if it could. The dangers in allying ourselves with this drive are serious. The romantic dimension of the revolutionary tradition has often drawn on this drive, installing the idea of an untrammeled and unlimited creativity at its heart. But creativity can be violent when it recognises no boundaries, and unlimited revolution is no way to live, except for the few who survive by imbibing its heady fumes. In real-

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ity, what happens most commonly is that the rejection of all determinations is in fact a mere precursor to the installation of determinations of a far more sinister and inflexible nature. The project of autonomy must recognise and incorporate both of these drives, and set limits of its own design and choosing on each. Autonomy is a new way to play the game of social self-creation, one which involves choice and responsibility in ways never before possible. As I said in chapter one, autonomy does not represent a transcendence of this dichotomy of emancipation and self-determination, but rather, an alternative deployment and organisation of its components. Autonomy must aim to recognise and balance these potentially conflicting aspirations and the more basic tendencies which underlie them. If heteronomy, too, amounts to a kind of balancing, it is a balance of extremes, the tenuous balance produced by the blind interplay of opposing forces. By contrast, the balance aimed at in autonomy is one which involves the mutual tempering of these extremes. Recognising their mutual inherence, it also recognises that the pursuit of one must always also involve the other. In this context, freedom comes to be seen as dependent upon self-limitation, and self-determination comes to be seen as predicated on a freedom to re-examine and re-institute which no determination may be permitted to prohibit or proscribe.

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Index

abyss 96 n. 22, 230, 267, 296–297, 303–306 actuality/energeia 87–90, 96, 101 affects 74, 82, 92, 103, 113, 121–127, 129, 134, 141–144, 147, 149, 157–162, 165, 167, 172, 175, 251, 296 anaclasis see also leaning on 62, 83, 85, 104, 157 Angel, R. B. 231 n. 25 animals 23, 89, 113–114, 113 n. 1, 114 n. 4, 132 n. 29, 145–146, 252, 298–299 Anstoss/shock 72, 75–83, 106, 112, 117, 128–129, 146–153, 163, 169, 259, 317–318, 321 Aristotle 44 n. 15, 67, 67 n. 6, 83, 86–91, 101, 307 Arnason, J. P. ix, 239, 271, 280, 284, 287–293 as if 96, 207, 226, 256, 262–263 autism 158, 165, 166 n. 42 autonomisation 113, 116–118, 121–129, 127 n. 20, 177, 264, 324 autonomous society see society, autonomous autonomous subject see subject, autonomous autonomy xi, xiii–xiv, 6–9, 11–14, 16, 18–20, 23, 25, 29–36, 70, 96, 116, 139, 199, 205, 271–273, 282, 284–294, 306, 314–315, 320–327 project of 7, 9, 12–14, 16, 19, 23, 25, 29, 31–36, 96, 139, 199, 271–273, 282, 284–294, 306, 314–315, 321, 325–327 Axial Age/Axial Civilisations 276, 279–280, 289, 291, 293–294, 302 Being 41, 46–48, 80, 98–100, 182–186, 189–192, 194, 196, 198–204, 207, 213–217, 221, 225, 227, 232–238, 243, 248–249, 257, 268, 300, 318–320, 322–324, 326 being xi, xiii, 4–9, 27, 31, 38–41, 43–48, 68, 73, 87–88, 136, 158–159, 165–168, 172, 181–192, 195–204, 208, 212–221, 229–230, 234–238, 243–245, 247,

253–254, 257–264, 269, 295–303, 305, 314, 318–319, 323–324 as determinacy 7, 45–48, 98, 101 n. 28, 181–187, 301 bringing into 5, 26–27, 33, 43–44, 60, 232, 254, 259, 261–263, 300, 318 coming into 17, 98–100 meaning of 7, 39, 46–48, 98, 158–159, 168, 172, 181–187, 195, 268, 295–298, 300–301, 303 modes of 4–9, 18, 21–22, 26–27, 29–30, 43, 46, 58–59, 66, 82, 94, 99, 125, 135, 139–140, 157, 160–161, 181–182, 185, 189, 196, 210–211, 215, 221, 224, 227, 232, 236–238, 243, 245, 247, 254, 258, 260, 262–264, 269, 275, 316, 319, 323–325 biology 48, 67, 94, 97, 100, 132, 315 body see soma/body Bohr, N. 231 n. 25 brain 105, 134, 146 Buddhism 276, 294 Campbell, J. 278 n. 8, 304 Canetti, E. 278 n. 8 Cantor, G. 205, 207 capitalism xiii, 2, 3 n. 1 bureaucratic 2–3, 3 n. 1 causality/causation 17, 40, 52, 63, 231 n. 25, 316 chaos 58, 76, 80, 100, 191, 196, 204, 251, 267, 286, 298–306 check 81–82 Christianity 276 Ciaramelli, F. 96 n. 22 civilisation 276–281, 285, 291, 295, 308 closure 18–19, 27, 29–32, 48, 93, 162, 172–177, 266–267, 270, 274–276, 282–285, 292, 295, 307, 310, 315, 323, 325 code 55, 200, 265–266, 324 collective anonymous 25, 33, 320 compatibility 235–236, 269 creation 4–9, 13, 17–18, 22, 24–47, 56, 59–62, 66, 70, 74–76, 80, 94–104, 109–111, 117–118, 126, 129, 131, 135,

342 • Index 138–142, 149, 152–153, 157, 160–167, 176–177, 181, 204–215, 226, 232–239, 239 n. 45, 241–243, 248–250, 253–257, 260–265, 270, 272–275, 285–286, 293, 298, 301, 305, 309–311, 316–318, 322–327 circle of 94–98, 96 n. 22, 254, 269–270, 300 ex nihilo 8, 38, 152 culture 12, 16, 32, 58, 61–62, 66, 126, 175, 239 n. 45, 242, 263, 279–280, 283, 290–293 defunctionalisation see psyche, defunctionalisation of Denton, D. 78 n. 26 depth 191, 235, 237–238 Derrida, J. 2, 239 n. 45 desire 19, 26, 33, 58, 77, 113, 115, 121–123, 125, 127, 129, 133, 149–150, 156–163, 167–171, 176–177, 249, 275, 299, 321 determinacy 7–9, 40, 45–47, 79, 82, 98–100, 100 n. 28, 119, 135–136, 140–141, 171, 177, 181–188, 200, 205–208, 211, 214–223, 228–230, 232, 236, 252, 257, 259–270, 275, 291–301, 321–326 drive to 82, 137, 249, 260, 297–301, 321–326 determination 8–9, 17, 29–30, 38–43, 60–62, 75, 82, 139, 167, 177, 182–183, 196, 202, 205, 208–212, 214–221, 228, 230, 232, 236–238, 244, 249–251, 257, 259–261, 265–268, 297–301, 311, 317–319, 322–327 determinism 8, 16, 47–55, 75, 232, 246, 313–315, 318 difference 7, 38, 40, 42, 137, 157–158, 164–180, 197, 208, 232, 245, 268 drives 69, 75, 82, 85–86, 105, 129–143, 132 n. 29, 137 n. 42, 147–148, 154, 163, 249, 260, 267, 297–301, 314, 322–327 dunamis 87 Durkheim, E. 51, 295 eidos see also form/forms 43–44, 60, 86–87, 91, 93–94, 203 Einstein, A. 100 n. 28, 231 n. 25, 244–245 Eisenstadt, S. 276–284 energeia see actuality/energeia energy 80, 90, 132, 137 n. 42 Enlightenment 1–3, 314 ensemble 186, 196–212, 226, 258–261, 318–319, 322

ensemblisation 196–208, 213–230, 238, 242–243, 247–253, 256–261, 318–319, 322 ensemblist-identitarian/ensidic logicontology 41, 51 n. 27, 93, 98, 115, 125, 145, 180–181, 188, 190, 196, 200, 202–204, 206, 209, 213, 215–230, 232, 249, 257, 260–261, 264–265, 300, 318, 328 ensidic/ensidic dimension/ensemblistidentitarian dimension 147, 201–204, 210, 213, 226, 230–237, 242, 247, 249–250, 257, 260–261, 265–266, 318–319, 322, 325 ensidic logic-ontology see ensemblistidentitarian/ensidic logic-ontology entelechy 86, 89 environment 71–72, 75–76, 80–83, 103, 109–112, 117, 142, 147, 165, 166 n. 42, 169, 173, 216, 298, 316–317, 321 Erikson, E. 166 n. 42 Ferris, T. 231 n. 25 Fichte, J. 75, 78–82, 92, 152, 177 n. 59 for-itself/being-for-itself see also self 29, 67–70, 73–75, 78, 81–86, 89–99, 102–103, 108, 116–120, 127, 136, 160, 167, 173–174, 199, 203, 205, 234, 246, 260, 317–321 form/forms 5, 8, 17, 26–27, 30–31, 38, 42–47, 43 n. 23, 56, 61, 76, 80–82, 86–102, 109–111, 123, 148, 160, 168, 171, 177, 181, 186, 196–197, 199, 201–203, 208, 210, 214, 217–219, 221, 223, 232, 238, 251, 259–260, 266, 323 formable/formability 201–204, 217–219 forming 72–78, 80–82, 89–93, 98–105, 117, 120, 123, 163, 196, 202, 217–219, 234, 238, 260, 269–270 Foucault, M. 1, 239 n. 45 freedom 2, 15, 20, 29–31, 139, 239 n. 45, 278, 285, 291, 294, 327 Freud, A. 166 n. 42 Freud, S. 3, 22–23, 62, 74, 107, 110, 120, 124, 129–134, 137, 137 n. 42, 141–143, 147–150, 154–155, 158–160, 163, 170, 176, 180, 278 n. 8 Frith, U. 166 n. 42 functionalisation 116–119, 144, 317, 324 functionalism 48–55 Gadamer, H.-G. 248, 254–256, 268 generation 67, 91, 181 gravity 231 Greece xiv, 14, 271–273, 276, 284, 290–293

Index • 343 Harvey 294 n. 38 Hawking, S. 231 n. 25 Heidegger, M. 239 n. 45, 248, 254–255 Heisenberg, W. 100 n. 28, 231, 238 hermeneutical circle 9, 254, 269–270 hermeneutics/hermeneutical 9, 238–239, 239 n. 45, 242, 254–256, 268–270 heteronomous society see society, heteronomous heteronomy 7–9, 11–12, 16, 19–36, 272–276, 285–286, 290, 294–296, 295 n. 42, 302, 315, 320–321, 325 history see also social-historical 3–9, 11, 17, 30–32, 35, 41, 45–52, 51 n. 27, 99, 101 n. 28, 140, 212, 215, 232, 235, 237–238, 242, 256, 272, 279, 284, 286, 290–291, 299, 306, 314–316, 320 Honneth, A. 99 n. 26 horizon 255 Horney, K. 166 n. 42 human subject see subject, human humanity/human beings 12–13, 21, 72, 75–76, 83, 107, 115, 117–119, 132 n. 29, 267, 296, 301–302, 305–306, 326 identity 40, 42–43, 58, 67, 109, 133, 158, 162–175, 180, 186, 188–189, 196–197, 208, 215, 223–224, 238, 251, 261–262, 277, 292, 299, 302, 320, 325 image/images 5, 8, 56–57, 72–74, 80–82, 92, 103–104, 109–110, 116–124, 130, 142, 144, 151–154, 158, 160, 163, 167–168, 171, 237, 302–304, 316 imaginary 4–8, 21 n. 22, 55–59, 73, 99, 104, 128–129, 134, 144, 149–150, 164, 185, 199, 258–259, 262, 264–266, 282–283, 287, 293, 295, 315–316, 320–324 actual 56–57, 279, 308 central 4, 308 radical 5, 56–57, 95, 266, 324 representations 134, 144, 151–153, 165, 169 significations see social imaginary significations social 99, 161, 227, 229, 234, 263–264, 316, 324 imagination 4–5, 79, 82, 106, 113, 116, 121–122, 125, 129, 145, 149, 152, 154, 159, 161, 164, 249 autonomised 113, 116–118, 121–122, 125, 129 radical 5, 82, 128, 171, 297–298, 324 indeterminacy 4, 8–9, 79, 82, 98–100, 100 n. 28, 118–119, 135–136, 141, 171, 177, 181–196, 199, 202, 208–211,

216–223, 227, 230, 232, 236, 242–243, 246, 250–251, 261–270, 275, 282, 286, 297–301, 311, 314, 318–326 drive to 82, 296–301, 321–326 individual 11–16, 20–34, 48, 60–63, 67–71, 88, 107, 131, 149, 167, 229, 251, 274, 279–286, 292, 294, 296, 302, 304, 306, 320, 324 information 18, 66, 72–81, 147 instituting and instituted society see society, instituting and instituted institution 7, 12–13, 13 n. 2, 16–32, 49–56, 51 n. 27, 62, 66, 70, 95, 130–131, 140, 167, 206, 229, 260–263, 267, 270–274, 277, 287–288, 291–292, 295–298, 302, 304, 307–309, 311, 314–326 intention 57, 71, 74, 92, 103, 121–124, 133, 142–144, 147, 155, 157–159, 162, 165–168, 172, 175, 251, 296 interpretation 124, 180, 238, 239 n. 45, 241, 247–250 Islam 276 Jaspers, K.

276

Kant, I. xiii, 3, 40–44, 47, 66, 72–73, 76–77, 87, 183, 201, 206 n. 31, 252 Lacan, J. 166 n. 42 language 3, 24, 39, 52, 98, 117, 126, 129, 157, 175, 185, 200, 223, 249, 65–269, 274, 306, 311, 314, 318–319, 324 Laplanche and Pontalis 155 law/laws see also nomos/nomoi 6–7, 11–26, 31, 38–41, 45, 47, 53, 60, 77, 93–94, 128, 174, 192–193, 195, 202, 231–236, 255, 259–263, 274, 278, 284–285, 292, 311, 314–315, 320, 323–325 Lawson-Tancred, H. 86, 90 leaning on/Anlehnung see also Anaclasis 9, 62–63, 74–75, 83, 85, 104, 110–112, 134, 146, 228, 236, 239, 317–318 legein 206, 215, 220–223, 229, 238, 249, 263–265, 314 Leslie and Happé 166 n. 42 life 18, 63, 86–91, 101, 306, 325 limitation/limits 26, 29–37, 76–77, 171, 177, 220, 225–230, 250–268, 297–299, 306, 322–323, 326–327 living being 8, 18–21, 63, 65, 68–86, 90–97, 101–120, 128–129, 147, 173, 198, 201–203, 216, 219, 229, 234–235, 246, 252, 260, 296, 299 local/locally 202, 232–234, 245, 250

344 • Index logic 17, 22, 40, 45, 53–54, 61, 69, 73, 97–99, 115, 122, 136, 145, 167, 179, 182–187, 192, 200, 203, 206, 208, 214–216, 220–229, 232, 249, 257, 260–265, 300, 306, 314, 316, 322 logicist 48 logic-ontology see ensemblistidentitarian/ensidic logic-ontology lost object 156–177 Luhmann, N. 50–51 n. 27, 51 magma 9, 125, 136, 174, 177, 179–214, 217, 221, 225–227, 234, 238, 243, 257–258, 266–269, 274–275, 279, 283, 292, 295, 300, 308–309, 319, 322 Marx, K. xii, 3, 15 Marxism/Marxist xii–xiv, 3, 3 n. 1, 6, 15, 282, 315 mastery 21, 31, 137 n. 42, 151, 175, 177 mathematics 38, 54, 187, 220–221, 226, 259, 318, 322 matter 44, 86–90, 94, 101 meaning 4–5, 21–22, 52–59, 65–66, 73, 125–126, 131, 136–138, 140, 156, 159, 162, 166, 169–172, 175, 180–182, 186, 193, 224, 239 n. 45, 256, 264–270, 296–301, 306–310, 316, 320–321 measurement 231 Merleau-Ponty, M. 268 mind 84–86, 103–112, 114, 128, 133, 143, 147 modernity 1, 14, 290, 314 monad/monadic psyche/psychical monad 8, 34, 79, 138–140, 144–177, 296–297, 321 natural stratum/first natural stratum 62–63, 66, 74, 80, 216, 218–219, 227, 229, 237, 239, 261 Nature 11, 51, 72, 262, 298, 315 Ne’eman and Kirsh 231 n. 25 Newton, I. 244–246 nomos/nomoi see also law/laws 12, 255, 291, 320 norms 70, 261–263, 283, 286–288, 325 object 26, 40–46, 48 n. 22, 51, 54, 58, 60–62, 68, 77, 80, 103, 110, 122–123, 129–135, 148, 154, 156–163, 169–171, 175, 185, 187–198, 205–207, 217–233, 236–238, 244–250, 252–262, 265, 268, 292, 310–311, 324 objective 71, 79, 81–82, 110, 157, 210 occultation/self-occultation 11–12, 19, 25, 27–28, 296, 301, 303, 305

omnipotence 148–151, 161 ontology xi–xii, 7–8, 41, 45, 98–99, 125, 181–183, 196–197, 215, 257, 286, 296, 301, 305, 314, 318, 322 unitary 295–296, 301, 315 opening 30, 269–270, 315 organism 17–18, 20, 67–68, 71, 73, 83, 86, 92, 95, 102, 104–105, 108–109, 112–119, 115 n. 4, 132, 145–148, 235, 299, 324 other/the Other/otherness 7–8, 12, 18–36, 38, 40, 42–43, 46, 49, 56, 78, 80, 94–98, 109, 131–132, 148, 162, 167–170, 175, 177, 183, 187, 209, 235–236, 242, 246, 248, 254, 256, 267–270, 274–275, 297, 300–301, 311, 315, 320 ousia 86–87 Pagels, H. R. 231 n. 25 Parsons, T. 51 phantasy 77, 153–160 philosophy xii, xiv, 3, 14, 29, 44, 85, 172, 284, 289, 293 physics xiv, 94, 100, 100 n. 28, 221, 224, 230–235, 242, 244 pleasure 113, 127–130, 127 n. 20, 134, 137, 143–144, 149–154, 161–164, 168–172, 296 political, the 288–289 politics 288–289 postmodernism 1, 3 power 19, 35, 53, 88–90, 277–278, 281, 288–289, 302 n. 58 praxis 97 n. 24 presentations 60, 73–74, 75, 79, 103–104, 120, 122, 127, 160, 165–166, 173, 177, 216, 218–220, 222, 227–228, 241, 251, 256, 258, 301–305, 317, 321–324 primal phantasy 153–156 project 69, 273 of autonomy see autonomy, project of provisional/provisionally 125, 228, 252, 256–257, 266, 322–323 psyche 5, 8, 17, 21–23, 26, 29, 33–34, 63, 65, 68, 70, 79, 82–91, 95–177, 181, 198, 200, 219, 227–229, 246, 249, 296–300, 306, 317, 320–325 animal 115 n. 4, 132, 145–146, 298–299 as structure and activity 87–112 defunctionalisation of 113–118, 127–129 human 5, 8, 17, 23, 68, 79, 86, 95–97, 100, 113–177, 181, 219, 227–229, 317, 320–325

Index • 345 quantum mechanics 100 n. 28, 216, 230–231, 238, 244–246 quasi-ensembles 199–200, 205, 209–213, 226, 322 Radcliffe-Brown 51 rationality 51, 53–54, 242, 264 reality 56, 148–154, 158, 162, 168, 184, 299 relativity 221, 230, 244–246 religion 53, 172, 295–306, 321 representation/representations 44, 53, 57, 71–72, 74–85, 92, 102–106, 109–111, 113–134, 127 n. 20, 140–177, 166 n. 42, 181, 188–191, 194, 197–198, 201, 215–216, 218–220, 222–224, 227–228, 238, 241, 243, 246, 248–252, 256–260, 284, 296, 298–299, 302–305, 309, 317, 321–324 imaginary see imaginary representations representational pleasure 113, 127–136, 144, 149, 150, 153 Richards, A. 141 Sagan, E. 278 n. 8 salvation 277 Schwartz 280 science 15, 45, 93, 100 n. 28, 172, 233–234, 242–246, 318 self see also for-itself/being-foritself xi, 6–8, 19, 21–23, 32–36, 65–177, 205, 241, 259–260, 269, 292, 310, 317–321 constitution 18, 63, 91–93, 95, 97, 103, 198, 291, 298 creation xi, xiii, 5, 7–9, 11, 17–18, 26–38, 41 n. 9, 45, 47, 61–62, 79, 89, 91–92, 94–104, 100 n. 28, 109, 118, 167, 171, 260–261, 275, 296, 317, 320, 326–327 determination 14, 27, 30–31, 47, 81, 92, 104, 118–119, 260, 275, 286, 293, 299, 314, 324, 326–377 ensemblisation 198–200, 229, 261 finality 70–71, 86, 110, 114 formation 91–92, 101–106, 112, 145, 147–148, 163, 172, 177, 198, 219, 228, 260 institution 11, 25, 28, 62–63, 91, 263, 296, 315 limitation 30, 327 perpetuation 27, 71, 275 pluralisation 135–138 preservation 67, 69, 71, 110, 117, 140, 293

presupposition 96, 96 n. 22, 98, 206, 310 referral 172–176 reflexivity/reflection 29, 69–70, 116, 279, 283–285, 291–295, 308 representation 148–177, 166 n. 42 transformation 6, 22–23, 34, 69, 135, 139, 264, 286, 291, 311 set theory 41, 187, 318 sets 22, 61, 125, 180, 186–187, 190, 197, 200, 205–206, 215, 218, 220, 224–225, 238, 251, 266, 318, 322 shock see Anstoss/shock signification/significations see also social imaginary significations/ imaginary significations 4–5, 53–63, 65–66, 93, 95, 121, 128–133, 140–141, 162, 167, 174–175, 194, 249, 265–269, 274–279, 282–285, 292, 294–301, 305–310, 316, 324–325 and being 295–310 social-historical, the 6, 8, 34, 46–47, 56, 65, 70, 79, 96–100, 139, 171, 181, 200, 212, 216, 219, 227, 229, 237, 246, 260–270, 272, 282, 309–310, 313, 315–316, 320, 322, 324–325 social imaginary see imaginary, social social imaginary significations/ imaginary significations 4, 6, 8, 21, 57–61, 74, 128–129, 140–141, 172, 181, 188, 239, 239 n. 45, 267, 291–292, 297, 300, 305, 314, 316, 323 socialisation 20–22, 117, 130–131, 136, 152, 325 society xi, 3–63, 65–66, 68–70, 74–75, 91, 95–100, 102, 111–112, 116–117, 128–134, 138–141, 152, 161, 163, 171–172, 174–175, 177, 188, 193, 195, 198, 206, 212, 238, 253, 261–266, 271–309, 315–325 autonomous 12, 30, 32, 69–70, 97 heteronomous 97, 301 instituting and instituted 11, 23–34, 53, 59, 65–66, 70, 79, 91, 99, 139, 171, 206, 260, 263, 266, 282, 292–293, 298, 305, 315–316, 320, 323–324 soma/body 8, 34, 62–63, 83, 85–95, 101–112, 117, 128, 132–134, 137, 141–149, 157–158, 161–163, 168, 170, 173, 321 structuralism 48, 54–55 structure 4, 7, 12, 19, 23, 45, 48, 53, 55, 60, 87, 90–94, 101–114, 117, 134, 146, 180, 248, 260, 268, 273, 276–278, 289, 318, 321, 323 subject 18, 20, 28–36, 61, 66, 69–70, 72, 77, 79–80, 99, 103, 110, 116, 130,

346 • Index 132, 137, 155–169, 173, 175, 183, 198, 203, 205, 238, 239 n. 45, 247–248, 252, 268–270, 310–311, 318, 323 autonomous 28–36, 69–70, 116, 174, 323 human 69–70, 116, 174 subjectivity 29, 34–35, 174, 292, 310 sublimation 22, 127–136, 141, 153 symbol/symbolic 4, 52–59, 73, 264, 277, 304 teukhein 206, 215, 229, 238, 314 time 40–42, 151, 165, 219, 233, 245 tradition 14, 16, 25, 273–274, 278, 283, 294, 314 traditional logic-ontology 2, 4, 8, 15, 45–47, 97–99, 167, 181–193, 211, 252, 318, 320, 322 transformation 12, 14, 20, 27–28, 32–33, 36, 47, 68, 70, 80, 92, 96, 112, 117, 123, 129–140, 153, 180–181, 188, 189, 197, 224, 255, 257, 264, 273–297, 304, 324 truth 34, 239 n. 45, 242–257, 263, 283–286, 305–311, 320–323 twin drives 259–270, 297–298, 323–325

uncertainty 100 n. 28 Unconscious 22–23, 33, 107, 140, 148–151, 171, 176, 321 Unger, R. 14–16, 31, 45, 311 unitary ontology see ontology, unitary vis formandi 98 with respect to 228, 251–252, 256–260, 266–267, 323, 326 Weber, A. 276 Weber, M. 293, 305 Whiten, A. 166 n. 42 Winnicott, D. W. 166 n. 42 world 8, 19, 22, 57–59, 62–63, 65–82, 91, 93, 95, 102, 108, 110–130, 134–135, 138, 142–143, 148–153, 158–176, 184, 198–201, 224, 239 n. 45, 241–247, 252, 262–263, 268–269, 277–278, 284, 286, 293, 295–302, 305, 324 X

72–81