Rupture and Tradition: The Conditions of Social-Historical Creation

Abstract Starting from the apparent opposition in principle between Castoriadian positions and any notion of “tradition” (synonymous with heteronomy, alienation, and insidious conformism), this text2 nevertheless shows that, both on the ontological level (the insurmountable dimension of the instituted) and on the political level (the Greek “seed” of democracy conceived as a legacy to be renewed), Castoriadis does not intend to neglect the delicate question of the conditions of social-historical creation, which, although it emerges ex nihilo , is never in nihilo or cum nihilo . The Castoriadian project of autonomy, voluntarist in its ontological postulates (radical creation) and political aims (revolution as a permanent democratic practice of self-explanation), paradoxically seeks to recall its “impersonal and anonymous” roots, emphasizing the inherent limits of individual or collective action, linked to the obscurity of motivations, the incompleteness of knowledge, the localization of commitment, and ignorance of the emerging effects of interdependence.