Abstract
Early in The Imaginary Institution of Society, Castoriadis expresses his ‘desire’ and ‘need to live in a society other than’ the one in which he finds himself. He observes that the ‘unacceptable things’ of this society are not inevitable and declares that a different organization of society is possible. He proceeds to outline and pursue a ‘project of autonomy’ which aims to imagine and institute a different society.
In simple terms, for Castoriadis, the project of autonomy aims to create a society that clearly and lucidly understands that the nomoi (norms, laws, etc.) that society lives by are those which it posits for itself; they are not determined by any extra-social laws or forces. But of course such simple terms do not suffice for, as Castoriadis acknowledges, there are in fact various extra-social forces or conditions that constrain the laws that society can make for itself. He argues, however, that these forces are not law-like; at least, not in the sense of natural science laws which determine certain actions or reactions to given stimuli or impulses.
Although his subsequent work is strikingly diverse in its pursuits and directions – engaging in epistemology, ontology, physics, mathematics, anthropology, psychoanalysis and more – it is bound together by this overriding concern to demonstrate that society as we find it is not inevitable, and to elucidate the possibility of an autonomous society. Repeatedly along the way Castoriadis explores the very being of being itself, shining light into ‘the abyss, the chaos, the groundlessness of being’. This territory has of course been a site of exploration since the earliest philosophers, and Castoriadis is acutely aware of both their achievements and their shortcomings. He finds Aristotle, Kant and Freud, for example, especially useful to think with; Hegel, Marx and Heidegger as necessary to think against. But his work cannot be reduced to merely a reinterpretation of their explorations. Like all great explorers, he breaks through into new terrains, new domains, and new regions of being.
To do so, like many who preceded him, Castoriadis finds a need to redefine terms and create neologisms in his efforts to elucidate the ineffable. As his work develops new insights and complexity, many of these terms take on additional layers of meaning. Yet as he forges ahead with his investigations, he frequently fails to reflect upon the effects of his new uses of terms.
Jeff Klooger’s penetrating analysis of Castoriadis’ work seeks to advance the project of autonomy by more clearly elucidating the mode of being of the human animal and society. As Dick Howard describes in the Foreword to this book, ‘Klooger manages at once to present clearly Castoriadis’ theses and the questions that motivate him while never hesitating to criticize and suggest paths for developing more richly these theses and questions’. Indeed, one of the many strengths of this book is the direct, sometimes blunt, voice used to highlight contradictions or weaknesses in Castoriadis’ presentation of his arguments. This is but one of many voices that Klooger employs seamlessly, as he juxtaposes detailed analysis of Castoriadis’ philosophy with empirical observations of the object(s) of that philosophy in passionate pursuit of his own objectives. Klooger’s objective is to defend Castoriadis’ ‘insights against the weaknesses and inconsistency in his writings which, in [his] view, threaten to undermine them … and to build on these insights’.
Klooger’s approach is explicitly hermeneutical, arguing with Castoriadis against himself – agreeing with Castoriadis’ significant insights, but seeking to correct some problems that arise in articulating them. In this approach, the influence of Klooger’s postgraduate supervisor, Johann Arnason, is most apparent. In fact, this is the first of three recent books about Castoriadis published by former students of Arnason, the others including my own, Meaning, Subjectivity, Society: Making Sense of Modernity (Brill, 2010), and Suzi Adams’ The Being of Creation: Castoriadis’ Ontology (Fordham University Press, 2011), each focused on different aspects of Castoriadis’ thought, with overlapping and intersecting concerns. All three works are concerned with the later, more explicitly philosophical developments of Castoriadis’ thinking which begin to emerge in The Imaginary Institution of Society. All are motivated by Castoriadis’ project of autonomy and accept Castoriadis’ arguments that such a project cannot be grounded in reason – it is not historically necessary or teleologically inevitable but is rather a choice. All three seek to identify and explore various problems in his ensuing efforts to better elucidate the project and the underpinning philosophy. In this sense, all are concerned, more or less explicitly, with what Castoriadis refers to as the ‘circle of creation’, which Klooger quite rightly identifies with the hermeneutical circle.
Klooger enters the hermeneutical circle at the questions of self-creation and autonomy, meticulously elucidating Castoriadis’ key ideas and nomenclature, worrying away at the assumptions, the evidence and the implications of each claim, each concept, and each imaginary signification. He defines, challenges and refines Castoriadis’ use of the terms autonomy and heteronomy at the outset, beginning a conceptual transformation that is then further developed and refined as he explores these implications in the regions of the social-historical, the psyche, self and world in later chapters. To establish the fact of creation against a philosophical inheritance that deems it to be impossible, Klooger examines Castoriadis’ work on self-creation, the socialization of the psyche, and the role of representation in this process. This leads him into further examination of representation and its relationship to that which is represented before he begins his deepest exploration: into the questions of determinacy. As Klooger’s ten chapters circle around the project of autonomy, they also move us further down a path of comprehending not only how it is possible, or that it is possible, but perhaps also why it is both possible and compelling (as well as why it is not inevitable). The important answers here are revealed through Klooger’s reworking of Castoriadis’ arguments about determination and indeterminacy. Working through and across Castoriadis’ myriad of approaches to the questions of determination, Klooger has succeeded in his
attempt to reconcile the postulate of a fundamental ontological indeterminacy with the reality of determination, to highlight the dynamic and ‘historical’ nature of the relationship between these two aspects of being, and to show how determinacy and indeterminacy operate within the human domain as opposing tendencies, with far-reaching consequences for the mode of being of both the human psyche and the social-historical, as well as for the development of the project of autonomy. (pp. 8–9)
Perhaps the most fecund of Klooger’s insights is his identification of this dynamic interplay of determinacy and indeterminacy, and its implications for both how we are to conceptualize autonomy and heteronomy and for how we might realize a project of autonomy. Klooger observes that there are hints of Castoriadis recognizing this relationship, but it is not directly identified or developed in his writings. The implications of Klooger’s development of this idea are broad and profound. Castoriadis clearly argues that what is is not determined (Being ≠ determination), but he is not positing a philosophy of indeterminacy. How these two things fit together, though, is not altogether clear. For Klooger, indeterminacy is the key to Castoriadis’ argument that what is is created. Klooger deftly draws out this connection, arguing that creating is determining – that indeterminacy is a necessary condition for creation; that ‘[i]ndeterminacy and creation are mutually implied’.
In other words, the chaos of being calls for determination. From this perspective, we can significantly elaborate on Merleau-Ponty’s observation that human subjects are condemned to meaning in two steps: first (which is already found in Castoriadis), we are condemned to create meaning, which (in Klooger) becomes we must determine what things mean. In the process of clarifying the tension between determinacy and indeterminacy, Klooger turns floodlights on some of the more troubling aspects of Castoriadis’ account. First, it becomes clear that in his efforts Castoriadis takes a rather rigid, rather narrow, rather teleological definition of ‘determined’, wherein being determined means being pre-determined through some sort of divine, cosmic or natural necessity. But this stops him from saying at the same time that ‘being is determined’ – although clearly it is, if we understand as Klooger does that the act of creating an ensemble is by definition an act of creating – or determining – meaning. Here, determination is provisional – which is what Castoriadis was trying to say. Klooger says it much more explicitly, more lucidly, more clearly.
He also explores the ramifications of this insight across various regions or strata of being with some very interesting results. Developing Castoriadis’ various openings towards the differential stratification of being, Klooger argues that indeterminacy is characteristic of all regions of Being, yet it is not everywhere the same. Indeed, among the most peculiar qualities of the human psyche and society is that they are characterized by far greater degrees of indeterminacy than any other realms of being, and this greater indeterminacy calls for greater efforts to determine.
One of the important aspects of Castoriadis’ thought that Klooger is drawing on here is the reversible relationship between instituting and instituted. Another is the equally important tension between openness and closure that is found everywhere that there are instituting-institutions. A third is to draw in those indissociable aspects of social instituting that Castoriadis identifies – legein and teukhein, or saying and doing – in such a way as to highlight that these, in fact, refer to specific ways of determining. But Klooger is not merely drawing parallels, or seeking another term for the same thing, although it is easy to see how ‘closed’ and ‘determined’, ‘open’ and ‘undetermined’ are roughly synonymous – especially if we move, as Klooger does, to the extremes of the struggle for complete determination and perfect indeterminacy. Determination, like the institution, is never complete, cannot be complete; yet the institution is driven towards closure, towards complete determination. At the same time, the institution cannot be fully open, ‘perfectly undetermined’, for instituting is itself a form of determining – the instituted has been determined. This is what Klooger is getting at with the term ‘provisional’ – just as Castoriadis observes that every institution is a form of closure, remaining forever susceptible to rupturing open again, every determination is partial and provisional – and especially so in the realms of the psyche and society.
The forms of being that we encounter in the world, the what is, have been determined, but nothing determines these forms except the very determining; nothing determines that these particular forms should have been or must be determined as such. And such determination remains subject to rupture, opening to new questions, new considerations, new ways of thinking and organizing, and to being re-determined.
This, Castoriadis has already taught us about institutions, and yet there are tendencies to forget, or at least serious tensions in the way he treats, the ways that this impacts our understanding of autonomy, and hence the project of autonomy. Castoriadis repeatedly argues that autonomy, and the autonomous society, can never be complete or final, never fully closed. His understanding of the autonomous society is one of instituted agonistic negotiation, acknowledging the unavoidable fact of pluralism and difference within society. But he frequently dichotomizes autonomy and heteronomy, failing to recognize their dynamic interrelationship, and presenting heteronomous society as radically other than autonomous society. That is, he tends to treat heteronomous societies as if they have achieved total closure; as if there is no difference, no conflict, no negotiation.
Seeking a corrective for this tendency, Klooger deftly segues from the ontological analysis of determination to a social-historical analysis of autonomy and heteronomy, interweaving the tension of indeterminacy-determination, openness-closure and autonomy-heteronomy. His social-historical analysis moves into a brief exploration of the changes associated with the advent of the Axial age, presenting us with a radically different approach (than the ontological one) to examining the tension between openness and closure in historical societies, and presenting a strong argument that this tension existed before the Axial age; indeed, always exists where there is society. It is the fundamental dynamic of determining the indeterminate, of instituting-institutions while leaning on the undetermined flux of being, ordering the chaos, and creating a ground upon which to stand in the abyss (which, as Klooger rightly observes, is not ‘a void’ but ‘a fundamental and pervasive indeterminacy’).
At the end of this investigation, Klooger concludes that the project of autonomy ‘aims to determine, too, though it must recognize the essentially limited and arbitrary nature of its determinations’. This recognition, though, can render the self-reflexive questioning of why this particular determination/institution and not some other one unavoidable and interminable. In the end, we find that while it is necessary for the psyche, the living-being, and the society to create a world of its own, it is nevertheless possible for these worlds to remain open to the perpetual problem of provisional determination; to face the problem and take responsibility for making these particular determinations rather than others. Klooger reiterates Castoriadis’ observation that autonomy alone can never comprise the entirety of our political program, but has also made significant advances in outlining what role it might play in our ongoing self-instituting processes.
Reviewed by Karl E. Smith
La Trobe University, Australia
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