edited by Dieter Roelstraete Machines à penser CONTENTS NOTE TO THE READER This publication accompanies the exhibition “Machines à penser,” conceived and Dieter Roelstraete Trois machines à penser 19 curated by Dieter Roelstraete at Fondazione Prada, Venice. The project recounts the archi‑ Ludwig Wittgenstein Culture and Value 179 tectural typology of the hut as a “machine for thinking,” made for or named after the three Shumon Basar The Eternal Return 197 German philosophers Theodor Adorno, Martin Heidegger of the Primitive Hut and Ludwig Wittgenstein. In addition to the lead essay Theodor Adorno Refuge for the Homeless 251 by the curator, the volume con ‑ tains two essays and a poem written by scholars, theorists, Alec Finlay HUTOPIA 257 and participating artists. Also included are a selection of excerpts relating to the Martin Heidegger Why Do I Stay in the Provinces? 323 theme of dwelling by Adorno, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Saint Jerome, and three con‑ Goschka Macuga versations with artists commis‑ sioned to make new works for the exhibition project: Leonor Leonor Antunes Conversations 339, 357, 369 Antunes, Alexander Kluge, and Goshka Macuga. The publica‑ tion features a bibliography, the Alexander Kluge } Italian translations of the texts, and a list of exhibited works and illustrations. Mark Riley Thinking Place: 403 All the images in the book, apart from the cover cards, Imagining Heidegger at Todtnauberg are accompanied by a short and Wittgenstein at Skjolden caption with the name of the artist or maker, title of the work, and date. Complete captions Saint Jerome Letter XLIII to Marcella 443 for the illustrations can be found in the list of exhibited works and illustrations. Key images are accompanied by Bibliography 449 an extended caption (in italic) Italian Translations 453 written by the curator. List of Illustrations and Exhibited Works 529 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Dieter Roelstraete Trois machines à penser 18 When men were scattered over German philosophy as a whole the earth, finding their shelter […] is the most fundamental in dugouts or some fissured rock form of romanticism and home‑ or hollow tree, philosophy sickness that has ever been. […] taught them to raise up roofs. One is no longer at home anywhere. 1 2 Seneca Friedrich Nietzsche Previous pages: Bartolomeo Montagna Saint Jerome in Bethlehem, 1505–10 11 Hendrick van Steenwyck the Younger Saint Jerome in His Study, 1630 12 Vincenzo Catena , Saint Jerome in His Study 1 Quoted in Joseph Rykwert, 1510 14 c. On Adam’s House in Paradise: Albrecht Dürer The Idea of the Primitive Hut in Saint Jerome in His Study, Architectural History (Cambridge, post 1511 16 MA: The MIT Press, 1981; second edition), p. 110. Dieter Roelstraete Remains of Wittgenstein’s hut, 2 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Skjolden, October 2017 17 Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann Bartolomeo Montagna and Reginald J. Hollingdale Saint Jerome in the Desert, n.d., (New York: Random House, 15th century 18 1968), p. 225. 21 DIETER ROELSTRAETE 0. Corner Stones attracting a steady stream of phenome- nological pilgrims and philosophical Theodor Adorno (born 1903 in tourists, all of whom are greeted by the Frankfurt am Main), Martin Heidegger same emphatic road sign identifying (born 1889 in Messkirch) and Ludwig the mythical hut as inaccessible private Wittgenstein (born 1889 in Vienna) property, still in the hands of the occupy the opposing corners of the pro - Heidegger family. Wittgenstein’s hut verbial Bermuda triangle that constitutes is a slightly more specialist— and there- 20th-century German-language philos- fore more enigmatic and alluring — ophy, while simultaneously bridging affair, its footprint remains much the gap between the so-called “conti- harder to reach and find in the remote nental” and “Anglo-Saxon” traditions mountainous folds at the far end of — the central drama, one could say, Norway’s Sognefjord. Not entirely un- of 20th-century philosophy proper — surprisingly, however, this hut too — between them. Curiously, all three have or rather, the shadow cast by its memory: also had huts named after them, or have Wittgenstein’s hut has not stood at seen their names associated with certain its original location in the village of modest dwellings, from the well-known, Skjolden for many years now — has widely photographed and thoroughly become something of a tourist destina- documented to the obscurantist and tion. “Adorno’s Hut,” finally, I trust rarely seen: Wittgenstein’s hut, very few people have ever heard of: Heidegger’s hut, Adorno’s hut. Of it comes bracketed in the quotation these three, Heidegger’s hut is far and marks of a title— that of a faintly away the best known: built in the early hut-like artwork by the late Scottish 1920s, it still stands today outside the poet and sculptor Ian Hamilton Finlay, Black Forest village of Todtnauberg, who surely knew only too well that 22 23 TROIS MACHINES À PENSER DIETER ROELSTRAETE Theodor Adorno, of all people, could the fact, back then, that these philoso- never have chosen to live in a hut on phers, with their curiously mirroring the edge of the known world, much less biographies — both were born in 1889, have built one himself. Finlay himself, and although their intellectual trajecto- however, was a hut-builder of sorts— ries took them in starkly differing phil- and a hermit for sure: Adorno’s hut osophical directions, they kept quietly is really Finlay’s hut; the philosopher’s respectful track of each other’s work exile akin to the poet’s escape. Adorno throughout their lives— shared the was certainly indebted to the hermetic, habit of hut-dwelling, and that the world-denying tradition in philosophy, landmarks that would come to define yet there is little in his thought, so an- their respective philosophical legacies xious to root out any trace of the un- were both conceived, in large part, in reflectively romantic, that could be simple wooden cabins built for this very considered less Adornian than hut- purpose in the same seven-year span. dwelling. Still, “Adorno’s Hut” The significance of this particular con- stands out as a powerful summation, gruence is something I only grasped in the wood and steel of Finlay’s later on, while leafing through a lavishly chosen treatment, of modern illustrated tome on postmodern art and philosophy’s enduring infatuation architecture (the title of which, like so with fantasies of flight and much postmodernism, I’ve long since the architecture of retreat. forgotten) and coming across a single As a philosophy student in the early photograph of an artwork— assemblage, 1990s, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin installation, sculpture— by Ian Hamilton Heidegger each made a deep and lasting Finlay titled Adorno’s Hut. The writings impression on me, though I do not of Theodor Adorno had by then remember ever being made aware of become another cornerstone of my 24 25 TROIS MACHINES À PENSER philosophical and art-theoretical formation, and it was the encounter with this curiously titled (and decidedly odd-looking) work of art that planted the seed for the present curatorial thought experiment — the ultimate aim of which it is to recast, to some extent, the often troubled relationships between these three key thinkers, whose lives and thoughts have done so much to enrich our own reflections on the subjects of building and dwelling, exile and retreat, rootlessness and belonging, homeliness and homeless- 3 The title of this essay, “Trois ness, as seen through the allegorical machines à penser”, alludes to Le Corbusier’s famous prism of the hut, or the hut as both characterization of the house as a “machine‑à‑habiter.” a figure of and home for thought: It is of course worth noting Wittgenstein’s, Heidegger’s, Adorno’s that Le Corbusier likewise had a hut (called “le cabanon”) “machines for thinking” are machines built for his private living use for rethinking philosophy’s very own in Roquebrune‑Cap‑Martin 3 on the French Riviera. edifice complex. 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 DIETER ROELSTRAETE Though they themselves would doubt- lessly, and predictably, have objected to the reductionist risks and facile lure of biographical anecdote, the respective Previous pages: life stories of Heidegger and Wittgen- Patrick Lakey stein hold important clues to a deeper Hegel: Collegium, Jena, 4 Germany, 2004 27 appreciation of their philosophies. Schopenhauer: Schöne Aussicht, It can be insightful and rewarding, Frankfurt, Germany, I, 2004 28 for the philosophically challenged, Marx: Reading Room, Great to see for themselves, for instance, Hall, British Museum, London, I, 2004 30 where a certain philosopher was born, Nietzsche: Lake Silvaplana, grew up, lived and worked, or lies Surlej, Switzerland, IV, 2004 32 buried — where he or she thought, Heidegger: (Hut) Todtnauberg, that is, or what they considered a Black Forest, Germany, I, suitable home for thinking. I, for one, 2004 34 Patrick Lakey’s German Photo- have long enjoyed visiting philoso- graphs (1724–2005) series docu- phers’ birthplaces, graves and hide- ments the places where German- speaking philosophers—from outs, and two telling anecdotes related Immanuel Kant to Theodor Adorno—lived and worked, to my early passion for Heidegger recorded with the clinical precision (since considerably toned down) of a certain idea of “German” photography. Traveling through and Wittgenstein (since cautiously Germany, England, Switzerland, and ending up in his adopted rekindled) are worth recounting hometown of Los Angeles, Lakey in this regard. photographed the places where these