Social Imaginaries 5.2 (2019) 11-36 Mapping the theme of Creativity in Cornelius Castoriadis’s and Paul Ricœur’s Social Imaginaries George Sarantoulias Abstract: Tis paper elucidates the notion that action is creative through the social imaginaries perspective. Hans Joas’s critique of sociological theories on action developed in Te Creativity of Action (1996 [1992]) argued that creativ- ity is an essential concept to better understand social action. Cornelius Casto- riadis and Paul Ricœur employ an understanding of action as being inextrica- bly connected to the social imaginary and capable of bringing forth historically novel forms of being and doing. An elucidation of Castoriadis’s dichotomy between the instituted and instituting imaginaries and Ricœur’s distinction of the ideological and utopian poles of the cultural imagination bring to the sur- face points of convergence and divergence in their respective understandings of the social imaginary and historical novelty. Inspired by Joas’s critique of sociological theories of action through pragmatism, which is underlined by a critique of the philosophical anthropological assumptions held by structural- ism, this essay argues that Castoriadis’s and Ricœur’s distinct insights on the creative dimension of social action and the way in which social reality emerges can elucidate further an anti-structuralist philosophical anthropology that can help inform sociological theories of action. Keywords: Castoriadis—Ricœur—Creativity of Action—Social Imaginaries In Te Creativity of Action (1996 [1992]) Hans Joas critiqued the structur- alist and normative foundations of sociological theories of action and argued that creativity is an essential concept to better understand social action. 1 Joas employed the insights of the pragmatist tradition and worked towards cor- recting sociological theories of action by emphasising that they needed to consider action’s creative dimension. Te notion that action is creative is also emphasised in both Cornelius Castoriadis’s and Paul Ricœur’s distinct oeuvres.