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Passion and Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Cornelius Castoriadis

Extract

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Nothing that can be called thinking is formalized or formalizable; nor can it be likened to a mechanical process (Church's hypothesis). Rather, thinking sets into motion human imagination and passion.

Having already written extensively on the imagination,' I will limit myself here to outlining its basic structure. At the two opposite poles of knowledge, as well as in its center, lies the creative power of the human being, that is, radical imagination. It is thanks to the imagination that the world is presented in this form and not in some other: it is imagination that creates axioms, postulates, and the fundamental patterns that subtend the structures of knowledge; finally, it is imagination that both furnishes the hypothetical models and idea-images of knowledge, and makes possible their potential development and/or insight into them. This imagination, however, both in itself and in its essential operations – which include its social forms, experienced on this level as the creation of an anonymous collective force – is neither formalized nor formalizable. Obviously, the imagination contains – just as does everything else that exists – a totalizing, identity-bearing dimension (which for brevity's sake we have elsewhere called ensidiqt,ce)2; but this dimension of the imagination is not the essential one, neither in its operations nor its results, no more than the arithmetic relations between tones are the essential element of a Bach fugue.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 40 , Issue 160 , September 1992 , pp. 75 - 93
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

Notes

1. See “La découverte de l'imagination” (1978), in Domaines de l'homme — Les Car refours du labyrinthe II, Paris, Le Seuil, 1985, pp. 327-63; or, more recently, “Logique, imagination, réflexion” (1989), in L'Inconscient et la Science, R. Drey (ed.), Paris, Dunod, 1991.

2. On this term, see, for example “La logique des magmas et la question de l'autonomie,” in Domaines de l'homme, op. cit., pp. 385-418.

3. Piera Aulagnier, Les Destins du plaisir, Paris, P.U.F., 1979, pp. 14 and 163.

4. On this subject, see my article “Épilègomènes à une théorie de l'âme que l'on a pu présenter comme science” (1968), in Les Carrefours du labyrinthe, Paris, Le Seuil, 1978, pp. 61-63.

5. Plato, The Apology, 29 c-d, 38a. Twice in the course of The Apology, Socrates envi sions a situation in which he is offered acquittal (or exile) on the condition that he cease his philosphical activity; in both cases he refuses.

6. See my article “Institution de la société et religion” (1982), in Domaines de l'homme, op. cit., pp. 364-84.

7. Thus Augustine (Confessions, XII, XVI) agrees to enter into discussion with all those who oppose his ideas and yet refuses to enter into discussion with anyone who rejects the authority of Holy Writ.

8. Although a detailed review of the secondary psychoanalytic literature on this question is beyond the purview of this article, it can be generally stated that this lit erature has produced very little in the way of new ideas. The works of Piera Aulagnier, however, constitute an exception to this rule. In this regard, see (along with the book referred to in note 3) La Violence de l'interprétation, Paris, P.U.F,. 1975, and Un interprète en quête de sens, Paris, Ramsay, 1986.

9. Gesammelte Werke, V, pp. 95-97; Standard Edition, VII, pp. 194-97. In fact, as is known (cf. the Editor's Note, p. 126, S.E. VII), the section on the theory of infantile sex uality in the Trois Essais was added to the edition of 1915. However, this addition adds little to the basic argument of the essay, since what is added is a simple rehash of the text of 1907, Über infantile Sexualtheorien (G. W. VII, pp. 171-88, S.E. IX, pp. 207-26), along with the addition of the idea and term Wisstrieb, which he says “can neither be counted among the elementary drives nor be reduced exclusively to an aspect of sexuality” but rather “corresponds, on the one hand, to a sublimated form of control and, on the other, works with [by using] the energy [libidinal] of the plea sure of seeing” [or the desire to see, Schaulust]; see G. W., p. 95. The question of Freud's conception of the drive that determines the quest for knowledge and desire for inquiry, of its exact nature and specific objects (sometimes associated with the question “Where do babies come from?” sometimes with, “What is the difference between the sexes?”), and of the development of these notions in the history of thought, is worthy of a detailed investigation, although it is outside of the scope of the present article.

10. See, for example, G.W., XIII, p. 269 (Das Ich und das Es); XIV, p. 478 (Unbehagen in der Kultur); XVI, p. 22 (Warum Kreig) and p. 88 (Endliche und unendliche Analyse).

11. In this regard, see my book L'Institution imaginaire de la société, Paris, Le Seuil, 1975, chapter VI, in particular pp. 420-31; “L'état du sujet aujourd'hui,” in Le monde morcelé, Paris, Le Seuil, 1990, pp. 189-226; and “Logique, imagination, réflexion,” referred to supra, note 1.

12. See my L'Institution imaginaire, op. cit., chapter VI, p. 371-420.

13. See the texts cited in note 11. The term sublimation is used for the first time by Freud in his “Trois Essais.”

14. The singularity of Western civilization is probably a result of this unique cross-fertilization of theoretical research and political activity (institution building) nar rowly defined. This is distinct from both the more or less a-cosmic or, at the very least, apolitical philosophies of Asia, and from the “democratic” but “closed” institu tions of certain archaic societies.

15. See my texts, “Portée ontologique de l'histoire de la science,” in Domaines de l'homme, op. cit., pp. 419-55, and “Temps and création,” in Le Monde morcelé, op. cit., pp. 247-48.