Suzi Adams
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823234585
- eISBN:
- 9780823240739
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823234585.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter focuses on Castoriadis's epistemological grappling with the social-historical and argues that he does so via a critique of elementary reason (as a critique of Kant). He elucidates ...
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This chapter focuses on Castoriadis's epistemological grappling with the social-historical and argues that he does so via a critique of elementary reason (as a critique of Kant). He elucidates social-historical being as comprised of two strata: the ensemblistic-identitarian and the imaginary/signitive. He gives an account of the two proto-institutions of legein and teukhein. They can be understood as elementary forms of, respectively, “thinking” and “doing”, and act as a bridge between nature and the social-historical. Legein, as a form of “theoretical reason”, corresponds to proto-thinking, whilst teukhein, as a form of “practical reason”, converges with elementary social doing. Mathematics has a natural anchor in legein as the capacity to “distinguish-choose-posit-assemble-count-speak” in a universal manner, whilst teukhein involves identitarian aspects of “assembling-adjusting-fabricating-constructing”. Although there are overlaps between the two, each reveals a dimension that is absent in the other: The signitive relation is characteristic only of legein, whereas the transformative relation is present in teukhein. Castoriadis seeks to elucidate legein and teukhein as the social-historical, that is, institutional underpinning of ensemblistic-identiatarian logic and charts Castoriadis's growing realization that ontological foundations are inseparable from logical foundations.Less
This chapter focuses on Castoriadis's epistemological grappling with the social-historical and argues that he does so via a critique of elementary reason (as a critique of Kant). He elucidates social-historical being as comprised of two strata: the ensemblistic-identitarian and the imaginary/signitive. He gives an account of the two proto-institutions of legein and teukhein. They can be understood as elementary forms of, respectively, “thinking” and “doing”, and act as a bridge between nature and the social-historical. Legein, as a form of “theoretical reason”, corresponds to proto-thinking, whilst teukhein, as a form of “practical reason”, converges with elementary social doing. Mathematics has a natural anchor in legein as the capacity to “distinguish-choose-posit-assemble-count-speak” in a universal manner, whilst teukhein involves identitarian aspects of “assembling-adjusting-fabricating-constructing”. Although there are overlaps between the two, each reveals a dimension that is absent in the other: The signitive relation is characteristic only of legein, whereas the transformative relation is present in teukhein. Castoriadis seeks to elucidate legein and teukhein as the social-historical, that is, institutional underpinning of ensemblistic-identiatarian logic and charts Castoriadis's growing realization that ontological foundations are inseparable from logical foundations.
