Castoriadis as a civilizational analyst

Abstract

This article argues that a civilizational perspective is central to Castoriadis’s interpretation of ancient Greece, even if he does not use the language of civilizational analysis. More specifically, his line of argument has clear affinities with Eisenstadt’s definition of the ‘civilizational dimension’ in terms of connections between cultural interpretations of the world and institutional forms of social life. Castoriadis has less to say about geocultural and geopolitical structures of the Greek world, which would also be important topics for a balanced civilizational approach. His distinctive variation on the civilizational theme rests on the idea of social imaginary significations; in the ancient Greek case, this starting point leads to the reconstruction of a ‘primary grasp of the world’, an imaginary core that conditions further developments and innovations. This core component of Greek culture centres on the human condition as the existence of mortals in a world characterized by imperfect order and underlying chaos. The Homeric poems are Castoriadis’s main source for the contents and directions of this original Greek imaginary. He understands the Homeric world as a framework within which the transformation of the polis towards autonomy could be initiated. Thus, the result is a strong emphasis on the archaic period as a formative phase of the whole Greek civilizational trajectory.