Plurality and Indeterminacy

Revising Castoriadis’s overly homogeneous conception of society

Bibliographic Data

ID2397945
AuthorsJeff Klooger (Swinburne University of Technology, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume15
Issue4
Pages488-504
Publication date2012-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Social Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1368-4310 • E-ISSN: 1461-7137
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1368431011432372
OpenAlexW2097091359
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited12

Despite its ground-breaking character, Castoriadis's theory of society remains, in some respects, caught up in conceptual difficulties common to social theory generally, particularly the problem of conceptualizing social unity without resort to an understanding of society that downplays heterogeneity and over-emphasizes the homogeneous. Unlike many other theoretical approaches and traditions, Castoriadis's work also offers a possible path out of this dilemma in the form of philosophical innovations which could enable us to conceptualize social unity without flattening the heterogeneous characteristics of the social. Castoriadis sometimes fails to recognize the full implications of his own rejection of ontological determinism, and so ends up proposing a far too deterministic and homogeneous model of social types. This essay aims to show how this might be remedied by drawing on Castoriadis's own fundamental insights

Character (mathematics · Determinism · Dilemma · Epistemology · Homogeneous · Indeterminacy (philosophy · Sociology · Critical Realism in Sociology · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Mathematics · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism