Subject: Re: Castoriadis
Date: 	Thu, 11 Nov 1999 22:52:52 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)


On Thu, 11 Nov 1999 18:14:59 PST Howard Hastings 
<aspinozist-AT-hotmail.com> wrote:

> I don't know Castoriadis well enough to help you, but I would love to read 
> your critique of Habermas when you finish it.

This is a *very* drafty part... but I would appreciate 
comments.  I wrote this about 2 years ago, and I've been 
slowly working on it... I disagree with its formulation as 
it stands but there are a few ideas here that I want to 
develop (I've since read more Lacan, more Castoriadis, and 
more Habermas...).

While Habermas, on the one hand, argues that the 
unconscious is a derivative phenomenon, stemming from the 
fact of intersubjective communication, Castoriadis, on the 
other hand, develops the idea of subjectivity (and 
thereby intersubjectivity) through a theory of imagination. 
Castoriadis's understanding of subjectivity begins with 
what he identifies as the radical imaginary, the initial 
act of positing.  Subjectivity, then, is conceived of as a 
project: "This subject is not merely real, it is not given; 
rather, it is to be made and it makes itself by means of 
certain conditions and under certain circumstances."  
Whereas Habermas, for all intents and purposes, begins with 
an anthropological understanding of cognition, Castoriadis 
argues that the absolute condition for the possibility of 
reflectiveness (subjectivity) is the imagination (fantasy). 
In other words: for Habermas human consciousness is a 
function of language, with the unconscious being formed 
as a consequence.  In Castoriadis, drawing on Lacan, 
language (as Other) is transformed by the 
unconsciousness, which is also formed by language at the 
same time.  In contrast to Habermas, Castoriadis maintains 
that the spontaneous and creative power of the imagination 
is not and could (should) not be completely 'tamed' or 
rationalized (although he also maintains that such a 
'taming' of the psyche is necessary to preserve the 
institution of society of which the individual remains a 
part).

	Castoriadis understands social imaginary 
significations to demarcate a shared ethos, a shared web of 
meanings, carried in and through the institution of a given 
society.  The institution of society is the cipher through 
which the project of autonomy is channeled.  Whereas 
Habermas's theory of communicative action points to a 
procedural model of will-formation based on a theory of 
justice, Castoriadis's imaginary institution of society 
focuses on self-interpretation and spontaneous collective 
praxis.  While language provides certain representations 
and is, without a doubt, the primary vehicle for social 
coordination, the imaginary upon which language is based, 
cannot be 'tamed' or 'rationalized' in the way that 
Habermas's theory requires.  Castoriadis even goes so far 
as to note that Habermas's attempt "rationally" to deduce 
right from fact "leads him... to seek a mythical biological 
foundation for the questions of social theory and political 
action."  Habermas writes: "The utopian perspective of 
reconciliation and liberty is ingrained in the conditions 
for the communicative sociation of individuals; it is built 
into the linguistic mechanism of the reproduction of the 
species."  Castoriadis goes on to note that it is 
incoherent to assume that biology has a "built in" utopian 
perspective.  What Castoriadis's work is able to illuminate 
here, through the idea of the imaginary, is the way in 
which Habermas overdetermines cognition against value.  In 
other words, the logical gap in Habermas's circular 
justification for a differentiation between the three 
spheres of validity is filled by a specific moral 
imaginary...

ken