Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy

These ten essays by Castoriadis, one of Europe's foremost social and political thinkers, include his latest contributions to philosophy, politics, social thought, aesthetics, and the philosophy of science. The author examines the 'co-birth' of philosophy and politics to show how the Greeks' questioning of ideas and institutions gave rise to the 'project of autonomy.' The 'end of philosophy' proclaimed by Postmodernism, he warns, would mean the end of this project. That end is now hastened by the lethal expansion of technoscience, the waning of political and social conflict, and the resignation of intellectuals who blindly defend Western culture as it is or who merely 'deconstruct' it as it has been.