The modern philosophical reflection cannot avoid the confrontation with the thought of Martin Heidegger and the problem of his involvement in National Socialism.

Cornelius Castoriadis' turn towards the human soul and the ontology of the imaginary, his critique of technoscience, his engagement with temporality, and his rupture with traditional logic, bring him into fields where the shadow of Heidegger falls heavily.

There, as well as in the fundamental question of what it means to philosophize, Castoriadis confronts the Heideggerian abyss, identifying a blindness in the face of the social and political activity of humans and the issues of the soul, love, and the city. On the contrary, these points, the soul, love, and the city, are central to Castoriadis' philosophical reflection on human temporality. Thus, Castoriadis emerges as the main philosophical opponent of Heidegger and anti-Enlightenment.