Maria Kli

The purpose of this paper is the introduction of the anthropological ideas that are proposed through the philosophical thought of Cornelius Castoriadis, specifically focusing on the psychoanalytic topic that he elaborates. Psychoanalysis for Castoriadis does not only disclose the ‘impossibility’ of the subject but also the overcoming of this ‘impossibility’. The subject on Castoriadis is not an a priori logical subject, absolutely absorbed by the social, as well as it is not a ‘lost’ subject that is being ‘captured’ by the unconscious’ domination and betrayed through a latent language from which he has irrecoverably been alienated. In the Castoriadian anthropology the singularity of the human nature is self-creation and human’s vocation could be autonomy. This aim that exactly could coincide with the goals of a successful analytical process constitutes not only a deeply humane purpose, but also a vital precondition for a free and autonomous society. Castoriadic psychoanalysis aims to autonomy through the establishment of a different, clarified–as much as this can be possible- relation between the subject and his unconscious. By defining the soul’s being as imaginary, Castoriadis refers to a condition that enables the reflection to become, overrunning thus the Freudian biological thinking and succeeding to show, that the act of thinking is something totally different from the process of simple logical computation. Imagination is designated as a source of creation and human conceived as basically an imaginative being, becomes potentially self-creative and capable of autonomous decision.

The principle of creativity constitutes a central point in the philosophical-anthropological as much as in the psychoanalytic work of the Greek philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis. In Castoriadis’s thought the creative praxis of the human being is dependent on the innate imaginary force. The purpose of this article is to elaborate the way that subjectivity and the social field are constituted and interconnected through the unfolding of two fundamental concepts of Castoriadis, the radical imagination which applies to the psyche and the social imaginary significations which applies to the social. The text aims to point out that Castoriadis’s intention was to make thinkable the content of autonomy in psychoanalytic terms of an “exchange” between the conscious and the unconscious that unleashes the creative potentiality of the psyche, and also becomes a precondition of political autonomy.

The ethical constitution of the subject in Michel Foucault’s work relies on the way truth is perceived, and on the way the knowledge of truth is produced. Foucault understands subjectivity as constituted socio-historically by means of particular techniques, which he refers to as “Technologies of the Self.” The main focus of this paper is to present the way in which two different kinds of approaching the truth, the modern scientific and the ancient Greek one, develop different kinds of technologies as ways of forming the subjectivity. It is maintained that the ancient technology of the care of the self can be especially meaningful in contemporary society from an ethical and political perspectives.

This paper examines the relation between the problem of human nature and political theory; it is claimed that every such theory is founded on some anthropological preconditions. The paper studies the political conceptions of four modern philosophers: Thomas Hobbes, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, Pyotr Kropotkin. It reveals that two opposing tendencies form the imaginary of the modern era: the authoritative one that identifies an egoistic/ unsociable human nature that needs control, and the libertarian one that recognizes a human being capable of more advanced types of social fabric. The problem that is also investigated is how anthropological dualism can be transcended to permit the conception of a new anthropological type as well as the type of society that will help human potentiality of consciousness and coexistence to unfold.