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Introduction to Part I: The Importance of Nomos
- Fordham University Press
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Introduction to Part I The Importance of Nomos The significance of the ancient Greek institution of the physis and nomos was a lasting problematic for Castoriadis.1 As distinguished from the normative order of physis, nomos indicated the order of self-institution and human convention for Castoriadis, and, as such, it encompassed the two central motifs of his thought: Autonomy and human creation.2 As the epigraph states, he considers it as ‘‘our imaginary creative institution’’ (PA). Nevertheless, as he observed in an earlier, 1974 essay ‘‘no ontological place,’’ it had not been elaborated for the being of nomos (VEJP: 326). Rectifying this situation was the result, in retrospect at least, of his ontological turn in The Imaginary Institution of Society (1989[1975]) and his elucidation of the social-historical as a regional ontology of nomos. The order of nomos, as a distinctly human, that is, self-creating order, was originally directed against all versions of physis as an order in which preexisting, extrasocial ‘‘natural norms’’ were embedded.3 The separate etymological and social-historical trajectories of nomos and physis emerge first in archaic Greek thought. As such, their respective elaborations are not straightforward; much is obscure and contested.4 Nonetheless, a couple of points are worth noting: It seems clear that Homer utilized an early form of physis—phua—that indicated variously generation and growth, although it was limited to the vegetative domain (Kaulbach 1984), as well as prefiguring the polis and human forms of autonomy (CQFG). However, it was Heraclitus who first extended an anthropological dimension to physis, that is, as an order with direct relevance 19 to the human condition. The idea of physis received its classic articulation in Aristotle, and as Gadamer (1998) maintains, it is only by way of Aristotle that one can hermeneutically access the shifting pre-Socratic imaginary of physis at all. According to Cornford (1957), nomos was prefigured in archaic thought in the impersonal power of moira. The order of nomos appears also in Hesiod, where the gods gave not only humans but also animals their appropriate nomoi: Humans were separated from animals by the bestowal of dike. Although the invention of physis, in particular, has long been regarded as the watershed moment that marks the shift from mythic to rational, that is, philosophical thought in ancient Greece, Castoriadis (CQFG) agrees with Gadamer (1998) in noting that only after physis comes into opposition with nomos is real philosophical momentum and creativity achieved.5 One of the many reasons for which Castoriadis critiqued Heidegger can be traced to Heidegger’s interest in and reliance on a physis that was pre-nomos, and hence an acceptance of a certain kind of a top-down unveiling (or ‘‘disclosure’’) rather than a bottom-up institution (or ‘‘creation’’).6 Castoriadis takes an alternative approach. Although the importance of physis to pre-Socratic thought is acknowledged, in his ancient Greek seminars, Castoriadis traces the archaic antecedents to nomos, not physis, as the key motif by which to grasp the importance of the Greek breakthrough and trajectory.7 He argues that nomos, as a particular kind of human order that created itself ex nihilo, was implicit in Greek thought as an imaginary signification—instituted in Greek social doing—even before its later opposition to physis. In his seminars on Ancient Greece, Castoriadis counted the physis/ nomos problematic as the most important of three Greek philosophical creations (CQFG). In emphasizing the uniqueness of the ancient Greek trajectory—in comparison to other axial civilizations—and its breakthrough to autonomy, Castoriadis identifies three vital philosophical oppositions particular to the Greeks: aletheia (truth/opinion), einai/ phainesthei (being/appearance), and the nomos/physis problematic.8 Emerging in the fifth century bce, the invention of the nomos/physis opposition was both later and more enigmatic than the earlier two (CQFG). The elaboration of the nomos/physis distinction did not signal the invention of absolutely new terms, but rather the transformations and creative interpretation of particular historical meaning-constellations. In this vein, the nomos/physis opposition of the Sophist debates concerned the naturalness or conventionality of language; this is a key point to which Castoriadis continually returned. Conversely, Plato relocated the nomos and physis problematic. In Plato, the problematic of human convention and innovations previously associated with nomos is relegated to the realm of 20 Introduction to Part I [3.236.214.123] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:35 GMT) appearances as subject to incessant change and opinion, whereas the...