AFTER MERLEAU-PONTY: CASTORIADIS, LIVING BEING, WORLD
Suzi Adams
This paper considers Merleau-Ponty as a significant source not only for Cornelius Castoriadis’ early trajectory but also for his later philosophy, too. Although several openings into such a discussion are easy to find, the present paper takes up Castoriadis’ unfinished philosophy of nature, which is little discussed in the secondary literature. Unlike Merleau-Ponty, Castoriadis’ road to ontology was not by way of a reconsideration of nature, but through a rethinking of history, creation and the imagination. However he made not one but two ontological turns in his thought: moving from a regional ontology of the social-historical to a trans-regional ontology of à-être. This second ontological shift emerged through a rethinking of the creativity of nature. Two aspects are emphasized in this paper: First, Castoriadis’ poly-regional ontology of the for-itself, with especial reference to the living being and his contribution to an elaboration of the being of the world; second, Castoriadis’ later approach to the living being is contextualized as part of a critical Naturphilosophie. The importance of Merleau-Ponty as a key intellectual source for Lefort is well documented. However, the significance of Merleau-Ponty for Greek-French thinker and co-founder of Socialisme ou Barbarie, Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997) has been more marginal to contemporary debates.1 Perhaps the most obvious place to begin would be to situate Castoriadis’ political philosophy – or political ontology, as Dick Howard has called it2 – in relation to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. Although such an approach would certainly prove fruitful – especially if enriched by a comparison with Lefort’s post-Merleau-Pontian socio-political theory – the present paper takes a different tack. By focusing rather on Castoriadis’ unfinished philosophy of nature, the aim of this paper, is to sketch some
1 But see Dick Howard The Marxian Legacy, 2nd revised edition with Afterword, (London and Minneapolis 1988); and Bernhard Waldenfels Phänomenologie in Frankreich, (Frankfurt am Main, 1993). 2 Dick Howard, ibid.
3 See especially, Cornelius Castoriadis The Imaginary Institution of Society, Translated by Kathleen Blamey (Cambridge, UK: 1987 [1975]). 4 Cornelius Castoriadis, ‘Le Dicible et l’indicible’, L’ARC, 46 (1971) pp. 67–79. 5 Cornelius Castoriadis, ‘Merleau-Ponty and the Weight of the Ontological Tradition’, Thesis Eleven, 36 (1993) pp. 1–36.