Table of Contents

    DiCenso - Splitting Religion - JCRT 1.3

    Splitting Religion: Heteronomy, Autonomy, and Reflection

    James J. DiCenso
    University of Toronto

    Cornelius Castoriadis, who was born in Greece but worked mainly in France, was a practicing psychoanalyst, cultural and political theorist, and philosopher. Recently, Castoriadis’ work has been enjoying some wider recognition, and much of it has been translated into English in the past decade. Castoriadis has developed some seminal inquiries into the inter-relations of subjectivity and culture, focusing specifically on issues of heteronomy and autonomy. In the course of these inquiries, which in my view are themselves highly relevant for contemporary religious reflection, Castoriadis formulates some pointed critical arguments concerning the status of religion in relation to these issues. There have also been several other thinkers emerging on the French scene in the past fifteen years or so, quite different in style and background from Castoriadis, who share some of his core concerns with the over-riding issues of autonomy and heteronomy in the relations between individual and society. Here, I will mainly draw upon some ideas of Marcel Gauchet, whose notion of a ‘split’ within religion will be used to develop a critical augmentation of Castoriadis’ arguments concerning religion and heteronomy.

    Notes

    James J. DiCenso received his Ph.D. in Religion from Syracuse University in 1987, and has taught there, at Oberlin College, at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and is currently Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Toronto. DiCenso specializes in modern and contemporary thought, especially in the psychoanalytic and Continental philosophy traditions, and its application to religious issues. DiCenso’s work has been consistent in exploring the possibilities of re-interpreting religion as related to current concerns with ethics, meaning and orientation on the personal and cultural levels. He is the author of two books: Hermeneutics and the Disclosure of Truth: A Study in the Work of Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur (University of Virginia Press, 1990), and The Other Freud: Religion, Culture and Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 1999). He has also published numerous articles on the intersections between religion and philosophy in Derrida, Lacan, Kristeva, and others. He is currently working on a third book analyzing religion in relation to ethical and socio-political issues, focussing on resources for actualizing justice, freedom, and human rights.

    2000 James J. DiCenso. All rights reserved.
    Updated 07/28/21.
    http://jcrt.org/archives/01.3/dicenso/

    1. .Cornelius Castoriadis,’ The Imaginary Institution of Society, translated by Kathleen Blamey’ (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1987), p. 146. ↩︎

    2. .Idem, emphasis added. ↩︎

    3. .Cornelius Castoriadis, World in Fragments: Writings on Politics, Society, Psychoanalysis, and’ the Imagination, translated by David Ames Curtis (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp,150-52. ↩︎

    4. .The Imaginary Institution of Society, p.145. ↩︎

    5. .Ibid, p,235. ↩︎

    6. .Ibid, p.301. ↩︎

    7. .World in Fragments, p.52. ↩︎

    8. .Ibid, p.184. ↩︎

    9. .The Imaginary Institution of Society, p.156. ↩︎

    10. .World in Fragments, p.158. ↩︎

    11. .Cornelius Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy: Essays in Political Philosophy, translated by David Ames Curtis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991),’ p.66. ↩︎

    12. .Cf. Ibid, p.111. ↩︎

    13. .Ibid, p.87. ↩︎

    14. .Ibid, p.17. ↩︎

    15. .Ibid, p.158. ↩︎

    16. .Katherine N. Hayles, How We Became Post-Human: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p.145. ↩︎

    17. . Ibid, p.148. ↩︎

    18. .World in Fragments, p.17. ↩︎

    19. .Idem. ↩︎

    20. .Idem. ↩︎

    21. .Ibid, p.159. ↩︎

    22. .Ibid, p.128. ↩︎

    23. .Ibid, p.131. ↩︎

    24. .Ibid, p.133. ↩︎

    25. .Ibid, p.264. ↩︎

    26. .The Imaginary Institution of Society, p.103. ↩︎

    27. .World in Fragments, p.23. ↩︎

    28. .Ibid, p.25. ↩︎

    29. .Ibid, p.29. ↩︎

    30. .Ibid, p.122. ↩︎

    31. .Ibid, p.132. ↩︎

    32. .I develop such an interpretation of religion, within a psychoanalytic framework, in The Other Freud: Religion, Culture and Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 1999). ↩︎

    33. .World in Fragments, p.9. ↩︎

    34. . Ibid, p.316. One might note parallels with Peter Berger’s discussions of religion, legitimation, and reality maintenance in The Sacred Canopy (New York: Anchor Books, 1967). ↩︎

    35. .World in Fragments, p.329. ↩︎

    36. .Ibid, p.326. ↩︎

    37. .Ibid, p.324. ↩︎

    38. .Idem. ↩︎

    39. .Ibid, p.325, emphasis added. ↩︎

    40. .Marcel Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion, translated by Oscar Burge (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p.3. ↩︎

    41. .Ibid, p.46. ↩︎

    42. .Ibid, p.4 (emphasis added). ↩︎

    43. .Ibid, p.11. ↩︎

    44. .Ibid, p.22. ↩︎

    45. .Ibid, p.26. ↩︎

    46. .Ibid, p.52. ↩︎

    47. .Ibid, p.110. ↩︎

    48. .Ibid, p.51. ↩︎

    49. .Ibid, p.82. ↩︎

    50. .Ibid, p.62. ↩︎

    51. .Ibid, p.83. ↩︎

    52. .Ibid, p.85. ↩︎

    53. .Ibid, p.91. ↩︎

    54. .Ibid, p.147. ↩︎

    55. .Idem. ↩︎

    56. .See Pierre Manent, ‘The Modern State’ in New French Thought: Political Philosophy, edited by Mark Lilla (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p.124. ↩︎

    57. .Blandine Kriegel, The State and the Rule of Law, translated by Marc A. Lepain and Jeffrey C. Cohen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), p.51. ↩︎

    58. .Ibid, p.34. ↩︎

    59. .Ibid, p.61 (emphasis added). ↩︎

    60. .The Disenchantment of the World,’ p.60. ↩︎

    61. .Ibid, p.90. ↩︎

    62. .Ibid, p.104. ↩︎

    63. .Ibid, p.165. ↩︎

    64. .Idem. ↩︎

    65. .Ibid, p.163. It should be clear that Gauchet’s arguments cannot be reduced to a statistical level of analysis concerning proclaimed religious belief; they rather concern the over-riding ends and values shaping contemporary Western societies. ↩︎

    66. .Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, p.173. ↩︎

    67. .The Disenchantment of the World,’ p.95. ↩︎

    68. .Alain Renaut, The Era of the Individual: A Contribution to a History of Subjectivity, translated by M. B. DeBevoise and Franklin Philip (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), p.19. ↩︎

    69. .See Ibid, pp.19 and 39. ↩︎

    70. . See Ibid, p.148. The reference to Levinas is germane to the issue of founding ethics and religion upon inter-human relations. However, it also raises a number of potentially fascinating debates. For example, how might Levinas’ declaration of an ‘ethics of heteronomy’ stand in relation to the pointed critiques of heteronomy of both Castoriadis and Gauchet? While this issue cannot be properly addressed here, suffice it to say that all three thinkers share a model of ethical subjectivity that requires interconnectedness with others. ↩︎

    71. .See Luc Ferry, Political Philosophy 2: The System of Philosophies of History, translated by Franklin Philip (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 85, and cf. p.163. ↩︎

    72. .Ibid, p.159. ↩︎

    73. .Peter Dews, The Limits of Disenchantment: Essays on Contemporary European Philosophy (London: Verso, 1995), p.14. ↩︎