An Interview with Cornelius Castoriadis

Castoriadis was interviewed by Pascal Egre November 16 and 29 1992. The interview originally appeared in a French collection ‘Planete Verte – L’ecologie en Question’ under the title ‘La Force Revolutionairre de L’ecologie’. The interview was translated into English by Helen Arnold and appears in an invaluable collection of Castoriadis interviews and articles that focus on ecology, democracy, autonomy and politics entitled: ‘A Society Adrift: Interviews and Debates 1974-1997’ (Fordham University Press, 2010) translated by Helen Arnold.

Interviewer: What does ecology mean to you?

Castoriadis: Understanding of the fundamental fact that social life must necessarily be primarily concerned with the environment in which it takes place. Strangely, that understanding seems to have been much more present in the archaic and traditional societies of the past than nowadays. In the 1970s, there were still villages in Greece that recycled almost everything. In France, concern with maintaining waterways, forests, and so on, has been constant for centuries. People had a ‘‘naive’’ but correct awareness of their vital dependence on the environment, without any ‘‘scientific knowledge’’ (the film ‘Dersu Uzala’ gives another example). That has changed radically with capitalism and modern technoscience, based on the continuous, rapid growth of production and consumption, catastrophically affecting the ecosphere of this planet, as is already visible. If scientific discourse bores you, just look at the beaches, or breathe the air in large cities. So there can no longer be any conception of politics worth speaking about in which ecology is not a major concern.

Interviewer: Can ecology be scientific?

Castoriadis: Ecology is primarily political; it isn’t ‘‘scientific.’’ Science as such is unable to set its own limits or its ends. If we ask it for the most efficient or the most economical means of exterminating the global population, it can (and actually must!) furnish a scientific answer. In its role as science it has strictly nothing to say about whether that project is ‘‘good’’ or ‘‘bad.’’ We can and certainly should, call upon scientific research to explore the effects of various kinds of productive activity on the environment, and occasionally to explore ways of preventing some undesirable side effect. But in the last analysis the response can only be political. To claim, as do the people who signed the ‘‘Heidelberg Appeal’’ (I personally prefer to call it the Nuremberg Appeal), that science and science only can solve every problem is absolutely dismaying. On the part of so many Nobel Prize winners, it indicates a basic illiteracy, a lack of thought about their own activity, and total historical amnesia. They make those statements, whereas just a few years ago the main inventors and makers of atomic bombs were publicly doing acts of contrition, beating their breasts, proclaiming their guilt, and so forth—take Oppenheimer and Sakharov, to mention a few. It wasn’t philosophers who built atomic bombs—nor was it the scientists who decided whether or not to use them. It’s precisely the development of technoscience, and the fact that scientists don’t and never will have anything to say about its use, or even about its capitalist orientation, that has created the environmental problem and made it so serious today. What we realize now is the huge margin of uncertainty as to the facts and prospects for the future of the environment on Earth. That margin goes both ways, of course. My personal opinion is that the darkest prospects are the most probable ones. But the true question is elsewhere: it’s the complete disappearance of cautiousness, of phronesis. Since no-one can say conclusively that the greenhouse effect will or will not cause the level of the oceans to rise, or how many years it will take for the ozone hole to extend to the whole atmosphere, the only proper attitude is that of the diligens pater familias, the conscientious father who says to himself, since the stakes are so huge, even if the probabilities are unknown, I’ll proceed extremely cautiously, and not as if the problem didn’t exist. Now, what we’re seeing presently, at the Rio carnival (known as the Rio Summit), for example, is total irresponsibility. It’s Bush and the neoliberals relentlessly pushing on, precisely invoking the argument of uncertainty in reverse (since it hasn’t been ‘‘proved,’’ we can continue on the same course . . .). It’s the monstrous alliance between right-wing American Protestants and the Catholic Church to oppose any aid for birth control in the third world, whereas the link between the population explosion and environmental problems is obvious. At the same time, the height of hypocrisy is their so-called concern with those peoples’ standard of living. But to improve their standard of living would require a further acceleration of the production and consumption that are destroying non-renewable resources.

Interviewer: Still and all, the Rio Summit adopted two conventions that some people view as historic: the Climate Change Convention and the one on biological diversity. Are they part of the ‘‘carnival’’?

Castoriadis: Yes, since they don’t propose a single concrete measure or include a single sanction. They are the tribute paid by vice to virtue. Just a word about biodiversity. Really, the signatories of the Heidelberg Appeal should be reminded that no-one knows how many living species exist on Earth right now. The estimates range from ten to thirty million, but some people have even advanced the figure of one hundred million. Now, we know only a small fraction of those species. But what we do know practically surely is how many species we are causing to disappear each year, especially by destroying tropical forests. E. O. Wilson estimates that thirty years from now we will have exterminated approximately 20 percent of existing species, representing an average of seventy thousand species a year, or two hundred a day, based on the lowest estimate of the overall total! Any other consideration aside, the destruction of a single species can cause the breakdown of a balance and therefore the destruction of a whole ecotope. . . .

Interviewer: When reading some of your writings, one has the impression that ecology is only the tip of an iceberg behind which it’s not just science that is called into question, but the political and economic system as well. Are you a revolutionary?

Castoriadis: Revolution doesn’t mean wanton bloodshed, taking the Winter Palace, and so forth. Revolution means a radical transformation of societal institutions. In that sense I am a revolutionary. But that sort of revolution would require profound changes in the psychosocial structure of people in the Western world, in their attitude toward life, in short, in their imaginary. The idea that the only goal in life is to produce and consume more—an absurd, humiliating idea—must be abandoned. The capitalist imaginary of pseudo-rational pseudo-mastery, and of unlimited expansion, must be abandoned. Only men and women can do that. A single individual, or an organization, can only prepare, criticize, encourage, and sketch out possible orientations, at best.

Interviewer: What parallel can be drawn between the decline of Marxism and of ideologies, and the rise of political ecology?

Castoriadis: The relationship is a complex one, of course. First of all, you have to see that Marx is already entirely in step with the capitalist imaginary. Like the dominant ideology of his time, he thought that everything is conditioned by the increase in productive forces. When production will have reached a sufficiently high level, then we will be able to talk about a truly free, truly equal society, and so on. Nowhere in Marx can you find any criticism of capitalist technology, be it as technology for production or as to the kind and nature of goods made. He views capitalist technology and its products as an integral part of the process of human development. Nor can you find any criticism of the organization of the work process within factories. He does of course criticize some ‘‘outrageous’’ aspects, but he sees that very way of organizing it as a pure and simple rational achievement. Most of his criticism has to do with the way that technology and that organization are used: their use for the benefit of capital only instead of for all of humankind. He doesn’t see that the technology and organization of capitalist production should be criticized as such. That ‘‘omission’’ is strange, in Marx, since many other writers of his time did reflect on the subject. Think of Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Miserables’, to take a well-known example. When Jean Valjean carries Marius through the Paris sewer system to save him, Hugo indulges in one of those digressions of which he is so fond. Basing himself, no doubt, on the calculations by the great chemists of the time, probably Liebig, he says that Paris evacuates the equivalent of five hundred million French gold coins a year to the sea through its sewers. And he contrasts that with the way Chinese peasants fertilize the earth with their own excrement. That’s why, more or less in his words, China’s land is as fertile today as on the first day of the Creation. He knew that traditional economies were based on recycling, whereas contemporary economy is an economy of squandering. Marx overlooked all that, or considered it marginal. And that was to be the attitude of the Marxist movement to the end.

Starting in the late 1950s, several factors combined to change that situation. First, after the 20th Congress of the Russian CP, and the Hungarian revolution that same year (1956), followed by Poland, Prague, and so on, Marxist ideology lost its attraction. The capitalist ideology then began to be criticized. Let me say, in passing, that in one of my writings dated 1957, ‘On the Content of Socialism,’ (1) I developed a radical critique of Marx as having totally refrained from criticizing capitalist technology, especially in production, and as having completely shared the views of his contemporaries in that respect. At the same time, people were beginning to discover the ravages wrought by capitalism on the environment. Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ (2) was one of the first influential books on the subject, describing the way pesticides ravage the environment. Pesticides destroy plant parasites, but also other insects, and therefore the birds that eat them: a clear illustration of the circularity of an ecological balance and of how it is totally destroyed by the destruction of one single element.

An ecological awareness then began to take shape, and has developed all the more rapidly since young people in rich countries, unhappy with the social regimes there, can no longer express their criticism through the traditional Marxist channel, which has practically become pathetic. Criticism emphasizing the most sordid aspects was no longer relevant: you can no longer accuse capitalism of starving the workers when working class families all have a car, and sometimes two. At the same time, the specifically ecological themes merged with antinuclear themes.

Interviewer: So is ecology the new ideology of the late 20th century?

Castoriadis: No, I wouldn’t say that, and at any rate we shouldn’t talk of ecology as an ideology in the traditional sense of the word. But it’s obvious that any true, serious politics must take the environment and the balance between humankind and global resources into account as a central issue. This is made necessary by the unbridled advance of autonomized technoscience and by the huge population explosion whose effects will continue to be felt for at least another half-century. But that taking into account must be integrated in a political project that will necessarily exceed ‘‘ecology’’ alone. And if there is no new movement, no revival of the project of democracy, ‘‘ecology’’ can very well be integrated in a neo-fascist ideology. In the case of a global ecological catastrophe, for instance, one can well imagine authoritarian regimes imposing harsh restrictions on a terrified, apathetic population. The insertion of an ecological component in a radical democratic political project is indispensable. And it is all the more imperative since any such project implies calling into question the values and orientations of present-day society, which is inseparable from the criticism of today’s underlying imaginary of ‘‘development.’’

Interviewer: Do the French ecology movements convey that project?

Castoriadis: I think the political component of both the ‘‘Verts’’ and ‘‘Generation Ecologie’’ is inadequate and insufficient. They are not developing any thinking about the anthropological structures of contemporary society, or about political and institutional structures, the nature of true democracy, the issues that would be raised by its institution and functioning, and so forth. Those movements are exclusively concerned with environmental issues, almost not at all with social and political issues. That they want to be ‘‘neither left nor right’’ is understandable. But making a point of honor, so to speak, of not taking sides on crucial political issues, is highly open to criticism. It tends to turn those movements into lobbies of a sort. When we do see an awareness of the political dimension, it seems insufficient to me. That was the case in Germany, where the Greens had established the rule of rotation/revocability for their parliamentary representatives. Rotation and revocability are central notions in my political thinking. But cut off from the rest they’re meaningless. That’s what happened in Germany where they no longer had any sense, integrated as they were in the parliamentary system. Because the very spirit of the parliamentary system is to elect ‘‘representatives’’ for five years, so as to get rid of political issues, to hand them over to ‘‘representatives’’ so you don’t have to take care of them, which is the exact opposite of a democratic project.

Interviewer: Does that specifically political component of a project for radical change include North–South relations as well?

Castoriadis: Of course. It’s nightmarish to see well-fed people watch Somalians die of hunger on the news, and then return to their football game. But it’s also, from a crudely realistic viewpoint, a terribly shortsighted attitude. You close your eyes and let them die. But they won’t let themselves die off, in the long run. Clandestine immigration is increasing as the demographic pressure rises, and we haven’t seen anything yet, for sure. The Mexicans crossing the Mexican–U.S. border practically meet no hurdles, and soon it won’t be only the Mexicans. For present-day Europe, it’s the straits of Gibraltar, among other places. And they aren’t just Moroccans; there are people coming from everywhere in Africa, including Ethiopia and the Ivory Coast, who endure inconceivable hardships to get to Tangiers and pay people to smuggle them across. But soon it won’t be only Gibraltar. There are something like forty thousand kilometers of Mediterranean coasts bordering what Churchill called ‘‘the soft underbelly of Europe.’’ Iraqi fugitives are already crossing Turkey and entering Greece illegally. Then there is the whole eastern border of the Twelve [European Union countries as of 1992]. Will they build a new Berlin wall, three or four thousand kilometers long, to prevent famished Easterners from entering Europe-the-affluent?

There is a tremendous economic and social imbalance between the affluent West and the rest of the world, as we know. That imbalance isn’t declining; it’s increasing. All that the ‘‘civilized’’ West exports to those countries by way of culture are techniques for coups d’etat, arms, and television exhibiting models for consumerism that are out of those poor peoples’ reach. That imbalance can’t go on, unless Europe becomes a fortress run by a police state.

Interviewer: What do you think of Luc Ferry’s book (3) in which he explains that the Greens are the bearers of a comprehensive vision of the world that calls into question man’s relations with nature?

Castoriadis: Luc Ferry’s book attacks the wrong enemy and finally turns into a diversionary maneuver. With the house on fire and the planet in danger, Luc Ferry takes on an easy enemy, in the form of some marginal ideologists who are neither representative nor threatening, and says nothing or next to nothing about the real problems. At the same time, he sets an extremely superficial ‘‘humanist,’’ or ‘‘anthropocentric,’’ ideology in opposition to a ‘‘naturalist’’ ideology. Human beings are anchored in something other than themselves; the fact that they are not ‘‘natural’’ beings doesn’t mean they are hanging in thin air. There’s no sense in harping on the finitude of human beings when you’re talking about the philosophy of knowledge if you forget that finitude when talking about practical philosophy.

Interviewer: Is any philosopher the founding father of ecology?

Castoriadis: I don’t see any philosopher who could be called the founding father of ecology. There is of course a ‘‘love of nature’’ among the English, German, and French romantics. But ecology isn’t ‘‘love of nature’’: it’s the need for self-limitation (which is true freedom) of human beings with respect to the planet on which they happen to exist by chance, and which they are now destroying. Some philosophies, on the other hand, definitely display that arrogance, that hubris, as the Greeks called it, the presumptuous excess that establishes mankind as the ‘‘master and possessor of nature,’’ a most ridiculous claim, actually. We aren’t even masters of what we will do, individually, tomorrow or a few weeks from now. But hubris always brings on nemesis, punishment, and that’s what may well happen to us.

Interviewer: Would we do well to rediscover the dimension of balance and harmony in ancient philosophy?

Castoriadis: Rediscovering philosophy in general would be a good thing, for we are experiencing one of the least philosophical, if not to say anti-philosophical periods of the history of humankind. But the ancient Greek attitude is not one of balance and harmony. It is grounded in acknowledgment of the invisible limits to our actions, of our inherent mortality, and of the need for self-limitation.

Interviewer: Can growing concern with the environment be viewed as one aspect of the revival of religion, in the form of belief in nature?

Castoriadis: First of all, in spite of everything people are saying, I don’t think there is a revival of religion in the Western world. Next, when correctly conceived (and it almost always is, from that standpoint), ecology doesn’t turn nature—any more than mankind, in fact—into a deity. The only link I can see is quite indirect. It has to do with the hold religion has on almost all societies. We are living in the first society since the inception of the history of humankind in which religion is longer central to social life. Why did religion occupy such a tremendous place? Because it reminded you that you are not the master of the world, that you are living on top of the Abyss, Chaos, the Bottomless Pit, that there is something other than humankind, something that it ‘‘personified’’ in one way or another, and which it called taboo, totem, Amon-Ra, Olympian gods—or the Fates—or Jehovah. . . . Religion showed the Abyss, and at the same time masked it, by putting a face on it: it’s God; God is Love; and so on. By the same token, it gave meaning to human life and death. It did of course project essentially anthropomorphic, anthropocentric attributes on the divine powers or the monotheistic God, and that’s precisely how it ‘‘gave meaning’’ to everything in existence. The Abyss became familiar, something like us, so to speak. But at the same time it reminded humans of their limits, reminded them that Being is unfathomable and uncontrollable. Now ecology, as a part of a political project of autonomy, must simultaneously mark that human limitation and remind us that Being has no meaning, that it is we who create meaning at our own risk (including in the form of religions). So there is a proximity, in some sense, but also, in another sense, there is an insurmountable opposition.

Interviewer: So you are for the defense of humankind, even more than the defense of nature?

Castoriadis: Defending humankind against itself, that’s the question. Humankind is its own main threat. No natural catastrophe equals the catastrophes, massacres, and holocausts produced by people, against people. Today, human beings are still, or more than ever, their own worst enemy, not only because they continue as much as ever to slaughter their fellow creatures, but also because they are digging their own grave by destroying the environment. It’s the awareness of that fact that we should try to awaken again, at a time when religion can no longer play that role, for very good reasons. People must be reminded that there are limits, not only individual, but social. It’s not just that each of us is subject to the law and will die some day; it’s that we all, collectively, cannot do just anything; we have to limit ourselves. Autonomy—true freedom—is that necessary self-limitation, not only with respect to the rules of social behavior but also in the rules we adopt in our behavior toward the environment.

Interviewer: Are you optimistic as to that revival of that awareness of human limits?

Castoriadis: The creative power of human beings, their power to change what exists, is indeterminable and unforeseeable by nature and by definition. But it is neither positive nor negative in itself, and to talk about optimism or pessimism at that level is rash. Man as creative power is just as much man when he builds the Parthenon or Notre-Dame in Paris as when he organizes Auschwitz and the Gulag. Only afterwards can we discuss the value of what he has created (and that’s clearly most important). At present, there is definitely the agonizing interrogation about the way contemporary society is bogged down in increasingly empty repetition; then, supposing that this repetition gives way to a new surge of historical creation, about the nature and value of that creation. We can’t ignore those interrogations or be silent about them, nor can we answer them in advance. That’s what history is about.

 

Notes

(1) Castoriadis’s article can be found in ‘Political and Social Writings Volume 2 – 1955-60: From Workers Struggle Against Bureaucracy to Revolution in the Age of Modern Capitalism’ (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press 1988). ‘The Content of Socialism’ was originally published under the pseudonym Pierre Chaulieu and first appeared in French in Socialisme ou Barbarie no 22 July-September 1957. Translated into English by David Ames Curtis.

(2) Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ was originally published in September 1962 and was hugely influential. Carson focused on the effects of artificial chemical pesticides used in agriculture on the land and wildlife in the US particularly the widespread use of DDT. Despite the fierce attacks of the chemical and pesticides industry on Carson’s work, DDT was banned in the US while the outcry helped lead to the founding of the Environmental Protection Agency.

(3) Luc Ferry ‘Le Nouvel Ordre Ecologique; l’arbre, l’animal et l’homme’ (1992). French philosopher.