Adams - Ricoeur and Castoriadis in Discussion: On Social Imaginaries, Human Creation, and the Possibility of Historical Novelty

Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd.

Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 2634 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB

www.rowmaninternational.com

Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd. is an affiliate of Rowman & Littlefield

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA

With additional offices in Boulder, New York, Toronto (Canada), and Plymouth (UK)

www.rowman.com

This translation copyright 2017 Rowman & Littlefield International

Originally published in French as Dialogue sur limagination sociale

Copyright les ditions de lEHESS, Dialogue sur limagination sociale

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: HB 978-1-7866-0134-6

PB 978-1-7866-0135-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Is Available

ISBN: 978-1-78660-134-6 (cloth: alk. paper)

ISBN: 978-1-78660-135-3 (pbk: alk. paper)

ISBN: 978-1-78660-136-0 (electronic)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

The radio discussion between Paul Ricoeur and Cornelius Castoriadis took place in March 1985. It is the only direct encounter between these two great thinkers of the imagination and human creativity. While each was familiar with and occasionally referred to the others work, they were not interlocutors in any systematic way. This makes the radio dialogue especially valuable. The dialogue itself is relatively short and sometimes fiery. The fault lines are clear to see. Where, for example, Castoriadis defends an approach to creation ex nihilo that rejects an interpretative dimension, Ricoeur repudiates the idea of absolute novelty in favour of a more measured and hermeneutic perspective on human creativity. But as the supplementary essays in this volume clearly demonstrate, critical comparison between Ricoeur and Castoriadiss intellectual projects provides fertile ground for further philosophical, sociopolitical, and historical reflection.

The dialogue is, however, peppered with some persistent misunderstandings. At one point, Castoriadis notes that they seem to be speaking at cross purposes. This can be attributed at least in part to the various seminar series that each had given in the years prior to the radio encounter, but which were not published at that time and thus remained unknown to the other. This is especially important in Ricoeurs case, who gave two series of lectures in Chicago in 1975: the first on ideology and utopia as the social imaginary and the second on the more properly philosophical aspects of the imagination. In Castoriadiss case, his seminars on ancient Greece, delivered at the EHESS in 19821983, were a significant source for his views in the radio discussion.

It is an honour to present the English-language publication of the RicoeurCastoriadis radio discussion. The French edition was published as Dialogue sur lhistoire et limaginaire social in 2016. It comprised the RicoeurCastoriadis dialogue proper and a substantive preface by distinguished Ricoeur scholar, Johann Michel (who, in collaboration with Pascal Vernay, also edited the publication). The English version offers a translation of both the radio dialogue and Michels preface. It also includes a preface written especially for this edition by eminent Castoriadis scholar, Johann P. Arnason. Each preface offers a thoughtful contextualisation of the RicoeurCastoriadis encounter, but it does so from a different vantage point. Additionally, the English-language publication features supplementary essays by Ricoeur and Castoriadis scholars. Four of these by George H. Taylor, Johann P. Arnason, Jean-Luc Amalric, and Suzi Adams were commissioned especially for this volume and engage directly with the themes of the radio dialogue. The final essay by Franois Dosse, who has written intellectual biographies on both Ricoeur and Castoriadis, takes a broader perspective.