Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, Vol. 33 (1998), 31-54

IMAGINARY DEMOCRACY

0JVIND LARSEN Copenhagen Business School

The imaginary democracy theory should be of equal interest to sociology and the study of politics. The task of sociology is to interpret the imaginary as it comes to expression in the symbolic order of social institutions. Just as the task of psychoanalysis is to discover the suppressed pathological traits of the soul, the task of sociology is to uncover the sup- pressed pathological traits of institutions. The role of the study of politics in this theory is to come to a fundamental understanding of the political as an imaginary relationship.

Introduction Before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, very few people looked at what characterizes democracy itself. Democracy was first and foremost understood as the opposite of the totalitarian regimes of Eastern Europe. This is no longer the case. Today there is no other form of rule which competes with democracy. It is therefore quite natural that a great interest has arisen in finding out what it is then that characterizes democracy. In this context, there is a danger that de- mocracy simply becomes identified with the particular historical form it has taken for us. By making such an identification, there is a risk that we will never come to an understanding of democracy itself, but merely confuse it with a particular historical form. There is, in other words, need for an understanding of democracy through which we have the opportunity to relate to the historical forms which democracy has taken not just in our time, but throughout history. In this regard it is useful to take up the work of two French philosophers, Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort, both of whom were examining this issue long before the East European regimes crumbled. Claude Lefort remarked in his 1989 essay "Reflexions sur Ie present" that it is isn't surprising that there is a close relation between the renaissance of de- mocracy and the dissolution of authoritarian forms of governance in Eastern Europe (Lefort 1992:371). The surprising thing is that some of the most clear thinking intellectuals, who sized up Nazism and Stalinism when these regimes 32 0JVIND LARSEN evolved, found no motivation in the historical circumstances to reflect upon the type of regime, namely democracy, which was so disliked by the new rul- ers in Germany and Russia respectively, and which was the only form of gov- ernance which offered the possibility for a free life. According to Lefort, one searches in vain for such reflections in critical thinkers such as Simone Weil, Horkheimer and Adorno. They instead, according to Lefort, rather attempted to uncover the preconditions for totalitarianism in European society, precondi- tions which Lefort believes still exist. In the following, I will look closer at how Lefort and Castoriadis treat the is- sue of democracy. Here I am initially interested in their general reflections on the imaginary, then subsequently in their assessment of the imaginary dimen- sion in democracy. Though I name Castoriadis and Lefort in the same breath, it should be noted that they represent two independent philosophies. On the other hand, they have worked together so much that they have many points in common in their view of the imaginary and its importance for democracy. However, whereas Casto- riadis primarily has taken up the issue of the imaginary's philosophical signi- ficance, Lefort has especially concentrated on the significance of the imagi- nary for democracy. Therefore, in the following I will first review what is meant by the imaginary, and then proceed to what significance the imaginary can play in a philosophical understanding of democracy.

The imaginary The word "the imaginary" itself has its roots in the Latin word imago, which is a translation of the Greek word phantasia. In English the words "fantasy" and "the fantastic" have their roots in the Greek word phantasia. In a number of places Castoriadis brings in his own definitions of the imaginary. In his article "La decouverte de l'imagination" Castoriadis concentrates on the origins of the concept in Aristotle (Castoriadis 1986a). According to Castoriadis, in Ari- stotle's work On the Soul, there are two understandings of the imaginary; the conventional and the creative. The first and dominant understanding is that which since has become our conventional understanding of the imaginary. This meaning of the imaginary corresponds to the words "fantasy" and "the fantastic". What is meant by this is a sense experience which does not allow it- self to be reduced to an experience which is conveyed through one or more of the traditional five senses. We can thus in a clearly awakened condition have