Castoriadis on the Imaginary

I've just had a chance to read a really excellent piece by Todd Lawson which should be published soon. I'll post a note (I hope) when this volume is released: "Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsā’ī and the World of Images" by Todd Lawson in Shi'ite Trends and Dynamics in Modern Times (1750-1911) / Courants et dynamiques shi‘ites à l’époque moderne (1750-1911). Orient-Institut of Beirut & IFRI [Beiruter Text und Studien, 115], Beirut. Denis Hermann & Sabrina Mervin (eds.) Forthcoming.

Among the gems in Lawson's essay is a marvelous reference to Cornelius Castoriadis (also here) (1922-1997) the Greek philosopher and psychoanalyist, who I've heard of but never read. Lawson writes that "we occasionally find a validation of the imaginal in contemporary intellectual discourse" and quotes Castoriadis as follows:

[P]hilosophers almost always start by saying: “I want to see what being is, what reality is. Now, here is a table; what does this table show to me as characteristic of a real being?” No philosopher ever started by saying: “I want to see what being is, what reality is. Now, here is my memory of my dream of last night; what does this show me as characteristic of a real being?” No philosopher ever starts by saying “Let the Requiem of Mozart be a paradigm of being”, and seeing in the physical world a deficient mode of being, instead of looking at things the other way around, instead of seeing in the imaginary, i.e., human mode of existence, a deficient or secondary mode of being.[1]

[1] Cornelius Castoriadis, “The Imaginary Creation in the Social Historical Domain”, in: Disorder and Order: Proceedings of the Stanford International Symposium (Sept. 14-16, 1981), Edward P. Livingston, ed., Saratoga: Anma Libri, 1984, 146-161, this is from p. 148. See also Castoriadis, World in fragments: writings on politics, society, psychoanalysis, and the imagination, David Ames Curtis, ed. and trans., Stanford, California: Stanford University Press 1997 [originally published as Monde morcelé: Les Carrefours du labyrinthe Paris: Seuil 1990].