Cornelius Castoriadis[a] (Greek: Κορνήλιος Καστοριάδης;[b] 11 March 1922 – 26 December 1997) was a Greek-French[84] philosopher, social critic, economist, psychoanalyst, author of The Imaginary Institution of Society, and co-founder of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group.

In 1941 he joined the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), only to leave one year later in order to become an active Trotskyist—at the time, Castoriadis was under the influence of the Trotskyist militant Agis Stinas.

In 1944 he wrote his first essays on social science and Max Weber,[92] which he published in a magazine named Archive of Sociology and Ethics (Αρχείον Κοινωνιολογίας και Ηθικής, Archeion Koinoniologias kai Ithikis).

Castoriadis heavily criticized the actions of the KKE during the December 1944 clashes between the communist-led ELAS on one side, and the Papandreou government aided by British troops on the other.

In December 1945, three years[80] after earning a bachelor's degree in law, economics and political science from the School of Law, Economics and Political Sciences of the University of Athens (where he met and collaborated with the Neo-Kantian intellectuals Konstantinos Despotopoulos, Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, Konstantinos Tsatsos),[93][94] he got aboard the RMS Mataroa,[95] a New Zealand ocean liner, to go to Paris (where he remained permanently) to continue his studies under a scholarship offered by the French Institute of Athens.

In the late 1940s, Castoriadis started attending philosophical and sociological courses at the Faculty of Letters at the University of Paris (faculté des lettres de Paris), where among his teachers were Gaston Bachelard,[94][101][102] the epistemologist René Poirier, the historian of philosophy Henri Bréhier (not to be confused with Émile Bréhier), Henri Gouhier, Jean Wahl, Gustave Guillaume, Albert Bayet, and Georges Davy.

[81][103] At the same time (starting in November 1948), he worked as an economist at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) until 1970, which was also the year when he obtained French citizenship.

[108][7] When Jacques Lacan's disputes with the International Psychoanalytical Association led to a split and the formation of the École Freudienne de Paris (EFP) in 1964, Castoriadis became a member (as a non-practitioner).

He offers: "if psychoanalytic practice has a political meaning, it is solely to the extent that it tries, as far as it possibly can, to render the individual autonomous, that is to say, lucid concerning her desire and concerning reality, and responsible for her acts: holding herself accountable for what she does.

In 1980, he joined the faculty of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) as Directeur d'études (Director of Studies).

[122] He had been elected Directeur de recherche (Director of Research) in EHESS at the end of 1979[82] after submitting his previously published material in conjunction with a defense of his intellectual project of connecting the disciplines of history, sociology and economy through the concept of the social imaginary[123][124] (see below).

[125] In 1980, he was also awarded his State doctorate from the University of Nanterre; the final title of his thesis under Ricœur (see above) was L'Élément imaginaire de l'histoire[82] (The Imaginary Element in History).

[130][131] Edgar Morin proposed that Castoriadis' work will be remembered for its remarkable continuity and coherence as well as for its extraordinary breadth which was "encyclopaedic" in the original Greek sense, for it offered a paideia, or education, that brought full circle the cycle of otherwise compartmentalized knowledge in the arts and sciences.

[132] Castoriadis wrote essays on mathematics, physics, biology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, linguistics, society, economics, politics, philosophy, and art.

An exception to this rule is to be found in Ancient Greece, where the constellation of cities (poleis) that spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean, although not all democratic, showed strong signs of autonomy, and during its peak, Athens became fully aware of the fact as seen in Pericles' Funeral Oration.

[140] Castoriadis considered Greece, a topic that increasingly drew his attention, not as a blueprint to be copied but an experiment that could inspire a truly autonomous community, one that could legitimize its laws without assigning their source to a higher authority.

Regarding modern societies, Castoriadis notes that while religions have lost part of their normative function, their nature is still heteronomous, only that this time it has rational pretenses.

Surprisingly, this definition of logic is also shared by Communism, which despite the fact it stands in seeming opposition, is the product of the same imaginary, and uses the same concepts and categories to describe the world, principally in material terms and through the process of human labor.

Castoriadis then is offering an "ontogenetic",[144] or "emergentist" model of history, one that is apparently unpopular amongst modern historians,[145] but can serve as a valuable critique of historical materialism.

By that measure he observes (first in his main criticism of Marxism, titled the Imaginary Institution of Society,[146] and subsequently in a speech he gave at the Université catholique de Louvain on 27 February 1980)[147] that these two systems are more closely related than was previously thought, since they share the same Industrial Revolution type imaginary: that of a rational society where man's welfare is materially measurable and infinitely improvable through the expansion of industries and advancements in science.

[146] Similarly, in the issue of ecology he observes that the problems facing the environment are only present within the capitalist imaginary that values the continuous expansion of industries.

[148] This initial schema of separation[34] (schéma de séparation, σχήμα του χωρισμού) of the world into distinct elements and categories therefore, precedes the application of (formal) logic and, consequently, science.

He believed that social norms and morals ultimately derive from a society's unique idea of the world, which emerges fully formed at a given moment in history and cannot be reduced further.

In his book World in Fragments, which includes essays on science, he explicitly writes that "We have to understand that there is truth - and that it is to be made/to be done, that to attain [atteindre] it people have to create it, which means, first and foremost, to imagine it".

The concept of Chaos, as found in Ancient Greek cosmogony, plays a significant role in Castoriadis' work, and is connected to the idea of the "imaginary".

[153] Castoriadis views the political organization of the ancient Greek cities (poleis) not as a model to imitate, but rather as a source of inspiration towards an autonomous society.

That's the road of the loss of meaning, of the repetition of empty forms, of conformism, apathy, irresponsibility, and cynicism at the same time as it is that of the tightening grip of the capitalist imaginary of unlimited expansion of "rational mastery," pseudorational pseudomastery, of an unlimited expansion of consumption for the sake of consumption, that is to say, for nothing, and of a technoscience that has become autonomized along its path and that is evidently involved in the domination of this capitalist imaginary.

[157] Hans Joas published a number of articles in American journals in order to highlight the importance of Castoriadis' work to a North American sociological audience,[158] and Johann Pál Arnason has been of enduring importance both for his critical engagement with Castoriadis' thought and for his sustained efforts to introduce it to the English speaking public (especially during his editorship of the journal Thesis Eleven).

Original French Posthumous publications Selected translations of works by Castoriadis Overviews Interviews Obituaries; biographies Bibliographies; analyses; critiques