Cornelius Castoriadis 1922 – 1997
Cornelius Castoriadis was a Greek-French philosopher, psychoanalyst, and political theorist. A founding figure of the heterodox Marxist group Socialisme ou Barbarie in post-war Paris, he broke with Marxism in the 1960s while retaining a radical commitment to the project of human self-government. His Imaginary Institution of Society argued that human beings inhabit a world of their own instituting through what he called the social imaginary, and that political autonomy is the project of consciously assuming and remaking that institution. He spent his final decades teaching at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Greek-French
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Marxism, Continental
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Cornelius Castoriadis:
“Society is self-instituted; it is not given by nature, by God, or by history.”
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Attributed to Cornelius Castoriadis:
“Autonomy is the project of consciously giving ourselves our own laws.”
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Attributed to Cornelius Castoriadis:
“The radical imagination is the deepest source of human creativity.”
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Attributed to Cornelius Castoriadis:
“We are responsible for what we make of the world we share.”
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Attributed to Cornelius Castoriadis:
“The crisis of the West is the crisis of imagination as much as of institutions.”