Freedom, Agonism and Creative Praxis

Abstract

To set out on a critical reconfiguration of freedom that speaks to the essential predicament of the argument, I turn to Castoriadis’s gloss on the concept in light of the picture of individuality and society that has been sketched out in the book so far. The account put forward here modulates received ideas in a manner that grapples with the deficiencies of essential freedom and negative liberty. This reconstruction recovers the impulses of autonomy, open choice and self-creation that were cherished by Marx, Kant, Berlin and Mill, but were compromised by their residual naturalism or their lack of care for the self.