Window into Chaos – by Cornelius Castoriadis

This translation makes available a remarkable lecture given by Castoriadis in January 1992 at the École des hautes etudes en sciences sociales. In this lecture, part of a series on social transformation and the task of creative forms of labour, Castoriadis explores the significance of art through a reading of Aristotle's definition of tragedy in the Poetics. He rejects Aristotle's dependence on the mimetic tradition in search for a vision of art as the unveiling of the creative resources that lie within the human being, and yet maintains Aristotle's vivid depiction of art as a form of production that is at once cognitive, emotive, and social, one that affects a transformation on the level of imagination that redirects us to ask anew the fundamental questions of human being and doing. Through his extensive knowledge of western art, Castoriadis draws elucidating connections between Aristotle's Poetics, Kant's Critique of Judgment, ancient sculpture, renaissance painting, modern literature, and folk music to explore the work of art as a window into chaos, a creative production that gives form to what cannot be formed: the ground of creativity at the heart of the imagination.