Seminar from February 23, 1983

In this chapter, Castoriadis links broader philosophical observations to the analysis of early Greek philosophers. Anaximander, he argues, reveals a division found constantly in the heart of philosophy between, first, the indefinite qualifications beings may exhibit and, second, a rigid necessity connected to the concept of chreōn. Castoriadis connects the latter to his own notion of ensemblist-identitarian logic and argues that thinking can transcend such rigid determinacy. Following a discussion of the Greeks’ search for a minimal element accounting for the maximum of observables, Castoriadis praises the abstraction achieved by Anaximander for how it allows thinking to make itself into an intrinsic interest and how it correlates the notion of truth with unlimited interrogation. Castoriadis then traces this theme through Xenophanes, with his critique of instituted representations, as well as through Heraclitus’s corpus. Dividing the latter’s fragments into critical and positive themes, he argues that, for Heraclitus, appearing and being are not separated, and everyone equally participates in the logos (a theme which pulls against the typical elitist interpretation). In question-and-answer, Castoriadis addresses problems of language and philosophy, comments further on chreōn and creativity, and argues that there is non-univocity at the foundation of all instituted univocity of being.