Autonomy and Reflexivity

Abstract The paper examines the way in which Castoriadis’s political positions on autonomy and heteronomy relate to his philosophical analysis of the alienation of society from its institutions and the attribution of the origin of its laws to an extra-social source. In this context, autonomy is closely related to the possibility of reflexivity, construed as a critical interrogation of the meaning and content of institutions and laws, which allows to bring to the fore the socially created character of each institution, and, therefore, the possibility of its deliberate and collective change. However, the fact that something is a social product does not automatically entail that it can be modified at will. It is against this background that this piece raises some questions about autonomy and heteronomy in the modern world and explores possible limitations of Castoriadian reflexivity, while attempting to seek answers to these questions through Castoriadis’s work.