Marco Ridolfi

Dopo la pubblicazione dell’"Istituzione immaginaria della società", Castoriadis si dedica ad un’indagine complessiva della società greca antica, che ricerca le condizioni della nascita congiunta della filosofia e della democrazia. Queste analisi, che sarebbero dovute confluire in una grande opera rimasta incompiuta, "La Création Humaine", vengono esposte in diversi saggi e, soprattutto, in una serie di seminari all’École des hautes études en sciences sociales durante gli anni Ottanta. Il presente volume raccoglie i primi sei mesi di insegnamento dell’anno accademico 1982-1983 e un dattiloscritto del 1979 che anticipa gli assi intorno a cui si sviluppa la sua lettura. Attraverso l’analisi dei poemi omerici, di Esiodo e dei presocratici, Castoriadis elabora così un’interpretazione originale della Grecia che si rivolge sia agli studiosi di filosofia sia a quelli del mondo antico sia a tutti coloro che vogliono riflettere sul significato della politica e della democrazia. Edizione italiana di "Ce qui fait la Grèce 1. D’Homère à Héraclite. Séminaires 1982-1983", Seuil, Paris 2004.

In this paper I discuss the relationship between Cornelius Castoriadis and Ancient Greece by focusing on the meaning of tradition and on the possibility to produce new philosophical and political reflections through it. I analyze the general features of his reading and I argue that his interest also develops in many texts and forms. I distinguish different dimensions of this relationship, which does not concern only the analysis of Greek society but also that of philosophers and their works. I clarify that Castoriadis turns to ancient authors’ texts in order to philosophize through them and to develop his own thinking.

In this paper, I will discuss essential aspects of Castoriadis’ philosophy that can be related to Cassirer’s conceptions of symbol and imagination. The aim is not to reconstruct the antecedents of Castoriadis’ philosophy nor to propose a comparison between the two authors; rather, my intention is to show how Castoriadis’ reflection is in tune with some of Cassirer’s themes and how he develops them autonomously even to reach different conclusions. This analysis will serve to enrich the investigation on imagination in a different way from conventional frameworks. For this reason, I will choose the symbolic and art as the areas of research. Firstly, I will contextualize the figure of Castoriadis in relation to Cassirer and Neo-Kantianism in order to identify the common elements and to clarify some misunderstandings. Then, my analysis will underline Cassirer’s and Castoriadis’ great emphasis on the function of the symbolic in the human world and specify how the latter enriches this reflection through his original conception of the social imaginary as a collective and creative capacity for new forms. Based on these considerations, I will turn to the artistic field to observe how Castoriadis intertwines aesthetics and ontology in his conception of art as a “window into chaos”.