Unorthodox Leftist

Political and Social Writings
by Cornelius Castoriadis, translated and edited by David Ames Curtis, 2 vols.
University of Minnesota, 1988, 347 pp., and 362 pp., $14.95 each

To open the pages of these two volumes is to breathe the stale air of a distant and remote planet. It is a world inhabited by intellectuals of prodigious energy, undaunted moral fervor, and intransigent political righteousness. Divided into warring sects, they are utterly convinced of the superiority of their vision and blisteringly contemptuous of their com- petitors for the role of true vanguard. The smaller and less influential the sect on this planet, the more overheated the lev...