Castoriadis at the school of ancient Greece

The city and the laws is the last transcription published by the seminars that Cornelius Castoriadis held at theEhess (covering the seminars of 03/16/1983 to 1/06/1983 to which are added two seminars of the following year) immediately following the seminars which, from November 1982 to early March 1983, treated from Greece from Homer to Heraclitus (Which makes Greece I). The thematic continuity of these two transcriptions is due to the method aimed at relating the emergence, from Homer and Hesiod, new imaginary meanings with the political transformation experienced by Athens (in the fifth century), characterized by the appearance of new institutions converging towards an ever more collective practice of power. This seminar therefore appears as the illustration of one of the main theses of Castoriadis: democracy is essentially based on the relationship that society maintains with the central imaginary meanings from which it draws its unity. These meanings (God, capital, party etc.) are indeed constitutive of the social in that they give a unity (unity of meaning) to individuals established in and from these meanings. Consequently, democracy designates the relativization, by society, of the inherited meanings, the latter appearing more and more imaginary, likely to receive new determinations from the community. Democracy is therefore the coming to the day (always partial) of a collective and thoughtful form of subjectivity that political institutions will have to reflect by allowing the participation of the greatest number in common affairs. Democracy is therefore not only a specific relationship of the people in power and sovereignty ; It first refers to a particular mode of subjectivation, which only humans can achieve.

Athens: a germ of democracy

The seminars devoted to the Greek imagination illustrate this thesis: there is, from the seventh century, in Homer, Hesiod, Anaximandre, Imaginary discovery of the world as “ khaos »A-sissed, essentially deprived of the order and rejecting any prospect of salvation. This made possible (in the mode of elective affinity and not of co-involvement or the causal relationship), in Athens, a new relationship to the institution. Indeed, if the khaos, the void, the a-union is the source of the cosmos, then the city may no longer consider itself as arising from a transcendent source from which it could draw the immutable standards from which determine what to do. It can then be seized as an exclusive source of its institutions, pure instituting power. This is what Osènes has, certainly very partially, achieved. Indeed, Castoriadis identifies a decisive feature, constitutive of the Greek experience and which excludes the idea that Handica would have been an aristocratic city or nothing other than a mode of production based on a slave infrastructure. This decisive trait is, for the first time in the history of humanity, a crack in the relationship to the institution, a crack which translates into the idea that the inherited meanings, the justice, the rules of action go without self, that the gods or the oracles are no longer sufficient to decide, that there is no science likely to govern all human affairs. It is the Doxa which is then led to reign in the world of human affairs and it is collective deliberation (preferably including the greatest number of doxai) which must supplement to the relativization of inherited meanings.

Castoriadis can then examine in The city and the laws The main institutions from which Athens gave a democratic form to its instituting power: the Ekklèsia first of all, a central institution in which the citizens met, but also the magistrates which were essentially based on the drawing procedure, the elective procedure having no relation with any form of political representation (revocability of elected magistrates, subject to Ekklèsia). Athens thus ignored the representation (of aristocratic and feudal origin) but also the state. The political unity of Athens was certainly not confused with the digital sum of existing citizens: there is not, in fact, of political unity without a diachronic identity also referring to those who are no longer and who, in the past, have contracted commitments which must be continued to honor. But that does not necessarily imply the mediation of a separate institution (the continuity of a state for example): the diachronic identity of the Athenian demos embodied precisely in the assembly, symbol of “ impersonal and sustainable Athenians Where all citizens could (and had to) participate in the affairs of the city. Athens thus inaugurated a first form, a “ germ Direct democracy where sovereignty returned to the people.

She especially showed that she was not reserved for a “ god », To use a famous expression of Rousseau (Social contract III4) contesting the possibility for the people to exercise all powers (the general will not being able to have any other object than the formation of the law, a delegation of executive tasks is imposed according to Rousseau, which can only threaten the effective sovereignty of the people). There polished Greek indeed showed how the magistrates in charge of the executive power were able to remain under the control of other citizens (revocability to which is added the low duration of the mandates and the significant rotation of the loads).

Democratic Hubris

What the Athens showed was therefore that the deadly threat that democracies are not in the possible competition of powers. It is not essentially of institutional nature. Rather, it relates to the disappearance of any standard to limit the action of the demos a priori. The fundamental problem of democracy is that of autolimitation, a problem directly resulting from the loss of substantial significance: the inherited meanings, being questioned, open to the doxai, but, in return, can no longer indicate how and how far to act. The discovery of the imaginary instituting thus gives off a first tension with democracy: the condition of the possibility of the latter, namely the discovery of imaginary meanings as substantive, relatively indefinite, is also what offers it to excess since, precisely, there is no more stallion from which to measure actions.

But Castoriadis goes further. Indeed, the relativization of inherited meanings does not only pose the problem of the limits to be given to the action of the demos ; She can, “ upstream », Place that of knowing why basically you should decide collectively. Hence the capital seminar dedicated to Socrates (1/06/1983), the latter coming to embody another form of hubris, of excess generated by the democratic athens. Socrates is indeed the one who calls into question the certainties of his fellow citizens by the perpetual examination of their opinions. Now this examination does not lead to anything positive: Socrates fell all opinions without proposing anything else, the only thing he knows is that he knows nothing. He therefore indirectly puts in danger (although this is not the object of his approach) the “ better-off Democracy since it cannot be based on anything other than the deliberation supposed to collectively emerge a decision and therefore a doxa deemed better, more valid. Thus, where the problem of autolimitation suggested a form of hubris by excess (transgression), the reference to Socrates highlights a symmetrical form of hubris, a hubris “ by default “, Where the questioning of inherited meanings leads to skepticism” nihilistic », Similar, as for its political effects (passivity and collective helplessness), to those who know the most deeply alienated societies to their imagination. The Socrates of Castoriadis is therefore very interesting because it allows you to cross a new level in the conceptual tension that the relationship between imaginary establishing and democracy gives off. Discovering the inherited meanings as relatively indeterminate and no longer fixed once and for all makes the institution of a real public space that can be invested in the plurality of the doxai. But the end of heteronomy with inherited meanings can just as much plunge the instituting power in generalized inertia, if the community came to apprehend them as purely indeterminate, essentially deprived of meaning, that is to say basically as imaginary.

The problematic status of the imaginary

However, this is what they are: the meanings, in Castoriadis, are imaginary. Although having immense real implications (since they make society be), they are, as such, aborn. Indeed, social meaning, as a pure historical creation, is denial of the abyss or the flawlessness from which it emerges. In other words: it is irreducible to everything from which it emerges: one cannot, in particular, obtain a meaning by combination of other meanings. The meaning is not an absolutely distinct entity: (it refers to other meanings to signify), all the patterns from which we can generate a new entity from other entities distinct No longer work within the framework of meaning, so that it is impossible to explain the origin (and therefore the meaning) of the meaning, hence the sans- substance, the abyss.

The reference to Socrates thus makes it possible to indicate an interrogation on the ambivalent status of the imaginary at Castoriadis. The latter is supposed to identify an ontology of the social (reveal whatEast the social) “ at the service »Of a substantial conception of democracy: it is because the social is only by the meanings (imaginary and open to the doxai) that a community can and must access political autonomy.

But, moreover, the meanings seized “ at the root », As a sensible creations, can no longer indicate, at this levelif a company must be democratic. Why, in fact, a society that would discover the imagination as denial of the abyss would not become nihilist ?

A tension is therefore reintroduced between what is, according to Castoriadis, the social and what it must be (a democratic society) from, precisely, from the concept which was to generate one (democracy) from the other (society as an institution of an imaginary meaning).

The Socrates case thus expresses, indirectly, the ambivalence of the concept however constitutive of the Castoriadian work: the social imagination must cease to be hypostasied so that society becomes democratic, without being seized as such because then we would find a new form, “ democratic », Collective helplessness. It is therefore in the task of thinking about collective autonomy as coextensive to the being of the social (as imaginary instituting) that a temptation “ Socratic »Appears. The collective discovery of the imagination as imaginary does not equivalent to democracy, and even makes it improbable if it is precisely seized as it East.