CFP – “Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal or Political Philosophy” Number 15 (December 2019): Cornelius Castoriadis: A philosopher to think about the present

CFP – NUMBER 15 (DECEMBER 2019). CORNELIUS CASTORIADIS: A PHILOSOPHER TO THINK ABOUT THE PRESENT

Coordinators: Iván de los Ríos and Adrián Almazán

Submission Deadline: November  30, 2018.

Last December 2017, we commemorated the 20th anniversary of the death of Cornelius Castoriadis. Born in 1922 in Constantinople, battler against the Metaxas’ dictatorship, exiled in France, member of the mythical magazine “Socialism or Barbarism”, psychoanalyst, professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales… The Greek-French philosopher left us a life as multifaceted and rich as his thinking and philosophy were. The diversity of his interests and his enormous erudition led him to make incursions into the most varied fields: ontology, history of institutions (in particular his work on Ancient Greece), sociology, political analysis, epistemology, etc. We could apply these labels to what was always a united thought linked to a maxim: the radical interrogation of a philosophy that has the pretension to answer questions considered by anyone who wants to understand, in a radical way, his present in order to transform it.

Castoriadis´s  systematic construction is perhaps one of the last major attempts to create an ambitious and praxis oriented philosophical framework. A thought that breaks the isolated approach of philosophies that restrict their field of study to its own history or to the rigorously ontological reflection, a transdisciplinary framework which reflects on all human creations and their interaction with the organic and inorganic world. A systematic effort that Castoriadis bequeathed to all those who do not refuse to direct their efforts towards a radical transformation of society, the same one which he always fought for and which, today, is more urgent than ever.

Despite the wealth, relevance and appropriateness of a corpus of reflection spanned more than four decades, the reality is that the reception of Castoriadis’ work in the Spanish-speaking world is still partial and insufficient. Although there are luckily some publishing initiatives that work to make available some of the works of the Greek-French philosopher for Spanish language readers, the coordinators of this monographic edition of the magazine “The Towers of Lucca” think it is urgent and necessary to make known the works and the central ideas of the Castoriadian political philosophy in greater depth. And that is why we launch this call for papers with the intention of allowing works directed towards the exposition and detailing of the political philosophy problems which occupied the philosophical work of Castoriadis: from its receipt of the Greek tradition to its reflection on the Athenian democratic institutions, the phenomena of institutionality, radical democracy, equality, etc.