The impossible task of education

Abstract

Why a concept as ambiguous as the imaginary would be of interesting to education, which in many cases is difficult to distinguish from its mysterious correlative – imagination? In Cornelius Castoriadis’s work, the imaginary takes on the meaning of the radical power of creating society through a collectivity that is always anonymous; as for imagination, the term refers to the equally radical power that describes the activity of the self-constitution of the human being. This is the good reason that the great philosopher’s work gives us for adopting such concepts: the requirement to think of education under the sign of human creation. For the impossible task of education consists on it: to take part in the resurgence of the project of individual and collective autonomy, that is to say, in the revival of the will of freedom. In those days of loss of meaning, if we still intend to struggle for a change in society, for truly democratic institutions, we cannot discard the struggle for an education geared toward autonomy.