Cornelius Castoriadis Quotes on Knowledge
Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997), the Greek-French theorist who broke with orthodox Marxism in the 1950s and subsequently developed in The Imaginary Institution of Society (1975) one of the most original philosophical anthropologies of the late twentieth century, defended the doctrine that human society is constituted not by underlying functional necessities but by the "social imaginary" — the magma of significations through which a society institutes itself as a determinate world. Knowledge for Castoriadis is therefore inseparable from the historically contingent imaginary significations that make a given form of social life cognitively possible at all, and the political project of autonomy is the society's lucid recognition of its own self-instituting activity.
Quotes
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“From an interview conducted on 23 March 1983 for the May-August issue of the French journal Lutter ( "Marx today: the tragicomical paradox " ). It was translated by Franco Schiavoni for the January 1984 issue of the Australian magazine Thesis Eleven .”
Either history is really governed by laws, and in that case a truly human-activity is impossible, except perhaps in a technical sense; or human beings really make their own history, and then the task of theory will not be directed to discovering 'laws', but to the elucidation of the conditions with in which human activity unfolds. -
“A century after the Communist Manifesto was written and thirty years after the Russian Revolution, the revolutionary movement, which has witnessed great victories and suffered profound defeats, seems somehow to have disappeared. Like a river approaching the sea, it has broken up into rivulets, run into swamps and marshes, and finally dried up on the sands.”
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“Despite their noisy pretensions, all of them, the "Fourth International," anarchists, and "ultraleftists," are but historical memories, minute scabs on the wounds of the working class, destined to be shed as the new skin readies itself in the depths of its tissues.”
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“I ask to be able to participate directly in all the social decisions that may affect my existence, or the general course of the world in which I live. I do not accept the fact that my lot is decided, day after day, by people whose projects are hostile to me or simply unknown to me, and for whom we, that is I and everyone else, are only numbers in a general plan or pawns on a chessboard, and that, ultimately, my life and death are in the hands of people whom I know to be, necessarily, blind.”
Je désire pouvoir, avec tous les autres, savoir ce qui se passe dans la société, contrôler l’étendue et la qualité de l’information qui m’est donnée. Je demande de pouvoir participer directement à toutes les décisions sociales qui peuvent affecter mon existence, ou le cours général du monde où je vis. Je n’accepte pas que mon sort soit décidé, jour après jour, par des gens dont les projets me sont -
“Wo Ich bin, soll Es auftauchen.”
Where Ego is, Id must spring forth. | p. 104. -
“Where Ego is, Id must spring forth.”
Wo Ich bin, soll Es auftauchen. -
“There is no proper meaning … every expression is essentially tropic .”
Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society , trans. Kathleen Blamey (Cambridge, Mass. 1987) p. 348 ( doi : 10.1093/camqtly/bfs004 ). -
“Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society , trans. Kathleen Blamey (Cambridge, Mass. 1987) p. 348 ( doi : 10.1093/camqtly/bfs004 ).”
There is no proper meaning … every expression is essentially tropic .