The makings of social meaning: Cassirer and Castoriadis

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Abstract Two of the most interesting attempts of the 20th century to conceptualise, assess and understand the production, functioning and institutionalisation of social imaginary meanings were made by, first, a major thinker in the post-Kantian philosophical anthropological tradition, the German philosopher Ernst Cassirer, and, years later, by French-Greek philosopher and psychoanalyst Cornelius Castoriadis. Both offer ways of thinking and understanding the current political contexts, and point to and offer concepts for articulating difficulties and obstacles facing us today. The affinities between Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms and Castoriadis’s take on social imaginary significations are many and striking, despite the fact that Castoriadis never explicitly referred to his predecessor. This article pinpoints some of the affinities, and makes an argument for the political topicality of both thinkers still today.