Ricoeur and Castoriadis in Discussion

Suzi Adams is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Flinders University, Australia. She is the author of Castoriadis’s Ontology: Being and Creation (2011), and editor of Cornelius Castoriadis: Key Concepts (2014) and Cornelius Castoriadis: Critical Encounters (a special issue of the European Journal of Social Theory, 2012, co-edited with Ingerid Straume).Contributors: Johann P. Arnason, Jean-Luc Amalric, François Dosse, Johann Michel, George Taylor

This fascinating comparison between two major contemporary thinkers, who had only limited contact with each other, nevertheless takes us to the heart of major issues in social theory: the interworking of institutions and symbols, their significance for relations of power and the scope for radical change in history. The authors, in charting the relations between these two views, end up casting an enormous amount of light on these crucial questions.

• Editor’s Foreword Suzi Adams / Preface: Situating Castoriadis and Ricoeur Johann P. Arnason / Preface to the French Edition Johann Michel (trans. Scott Davidson) / 1. Dialogue on History and the Social Imaginary Paul Ricoeur and Cornelius Castoriadis (trans. Scott Davidson) / 2. On the Cusp: Ricoeur and Castoriadis at the Boundary George H. Taylor / 3. Castoriadis and Ricoeur on Meaning and History: Contrasts and Convergences Johann P. Arnason / 4. Ricoeur and Castoriadis: The Productive Imagination Between Mediation and Origin Jean-Luc Amalric / 5. Castoriadis and Ricoeur on the Hermeneutic Spiral and the Meaning of History: Creation, Interpretation, Critique Suzi Adams / 6. The Social Imaginary as Engine of History in Ricoeur and Castoriadis by François Dosse (trans. Natalie J. Doyle) / Contributor Bios