Seminar from January 12, 1983

Abstract

This chapter furthers the discussion of Greek religion. Castoriadis emphasizes its lack of a notion of decisive revelation, which gives the Greeks the chance to recreate and modify their myths in, for example, Greek tragedies. Likewise, in Greek religion there is neither a privileging of anthropogony nor an infinite distance between the human and the non-human. After a digression on idolatry and divine presence, he argues that Greek religion importantly lacks otherworldly promise or hope, and he argues that the Greek gods are grasped as “universal” and not merely as the gods of their own group. Examining the episode of the Cyclopes, in particular, Castoriadis argues that they serve to mirror for the Greeks their own sense of objective impiety and, indeed, inhumanity, insofar as they lack institutions that the Greeks see as most human (e.g., deliberative assemblies). Castoriadis then closes by discussing the retention and disappearance of Homeric values over time, the gods’ relationship to justice, and the tension between themes of agonism and solidarity in Greek history. In question-and-answer, Castoriadis contrasts the concepts of “monster” and “barbarian” and discusses the emergence of a current of rational theology in the Greek world.