Architecture and Phenomenology Brendan O’Byrne, Patrick Healy, Editors

1 Introduction Architecture and Phenomenology Brendan O’Byrne, Patrick Healy, editors The relation of architecture to discussions in philo- emerged from such theory was often circumscribed sophical aesthetics, it might be argued, has taken as: What is the difference between architecture and two turns. The first turn is an aversion of architecture building? Another question that became dominant to philosophical reflection. On such a view architec- in the theoretical work emanating from practition- ture has for the most part, and in the long span of ers was: Are there normative values attaching to its history, had little or nothing to do with philoso- architecture? In some sense the second turning is phy. Even given the development of aesthetics as reflected in the dominant directions of responses a discipline in the eighteenth century, with the publi- among philosophers. cation of Baumgarten’s Aesthetica (1750/1758), architecture received only passing, often glancing Roger Scruton, in his The Aesthetics of Architec- attention. In Burke’s A Philosohical Enquiry into ture (1979), exhibits the Kantian inheritance, and the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beau- in the work of Karsten Harries, The Ethical Func- tiful (1757), the principal reference to architecture tion of Architecture (1997), a challenge has been relates to a ridiculing of the Vitruvian body/building issued to architecture as practice to be more than analogy, and some considerations on the question a ‘decorated shed’. This provocative address of a of scale and monumentality for the sublime. In the philosopher to architecture, came from what can be third Critique (1790), Kant deals with architecture called a Hegelian-Heideggerian position. However in a passing fashion, and cites buildings he had this provenance needs to be modified in light of the never visited, for example St. Peter’s in Rome, to explicit situation of Harries’s The Ethical Function of suggest a sense of magnificence and to consider Architecture. There is clearly a rejection of the impor- the monumental which overwhelms and provokes tant tradition emanating from Ruskin’s Lectures on an experience of the sublime. An attempt at a fuller Architecture from 1853, where ornament is regarded and detailed treatment emerges only in the lectures as the principal part of architecture, a position that of Hegel, published as Lectures on Aesthetics (first Harries vividly de-constructs. published by Hotho between 1835-8). As long as architectural theory remains ruled by the The second turn might be described as the move- aesthetic approach, it has to understand architec- ment into theory from practice. In so far as one finds ture as Kant did, as a functional building with an a consistent thread of theoretical reflection, it came added aesthetic component, that is a decorated for the most part from practitioners, a point that is shed. (Harries, p. 26) clearly detailed in Wittkower’s Architectural Princi- ples in the Age of Humanism (1949), especially in No doubt it can be shown that the response of the work of Alberti and Palladio. The questions which Harries against ornamentation is close to the early 03 Architecture and Phenomenology, Autumn 2008, pp. 1-6. 2 modernist reaction to the implications of the Neo- University Press, 2003, pp. 555-71): Gothic espoused by Ruskin as exemplary, and especially in the response of practitioners such as Harries gives Hegelian expression to themes and Loos and Le Corbusier. Although it should be said issues that can be seen to occupy all the principal that Harries in no way achieves the crescendo of philosophers of architecture… Haldane, Scruton, fury and polemic that characterises Loos’s diatribe Carlson, Pevsner.… (p. 569) on ornament, Ornament und Verbrechen (1908), which was succinctly characterised by Karl Kraus What needs to be considered here is the meaning as demonstrating that there is a difference between of the Kantian inheritance, which has its most signif- an ‘urn and a chamber pot’, and in that difference icant consequence in the way that his discussion of there was scope for culture. This concern of Loos ‘free’ and ‘dependent’ beauty affected functionalist also transited to the ethical, and was caught in and mimetic theories for an ethics of architecture, Loos’s view of ornament as a deceit, an embellish- since for Kant architecture exhibits a species of ment, a tromperie. ‘dependent beauty’. Loos often has the exuberance of a preacher Recently James Kirwan in his The Aesthetic in tracking sin to its lairs, and his denunciation of orna- Kant: A Critique (London, New York: Continuum, ment as degenerate, diseased, was also his call to 2004; pp. 19-28), has offered a strong defense of arms for an architecture which would exhibit truth what he robustly characterises as the misappropria- as nudity, and form as the triumph of grace over the tion in almost all subsequent debates in aesthetics sin of ornament. More pragmatically, Loos’s thought of the original meaning of beauty in Kant, which has that if a member of a modern society tattoo his skin, disastrously distorted and perverted Kant’s argu- it is a sure sign he suffers from criminal or patho- ments in his Critique of the Power of Judgement. logical tendencies. Modern man, he argued, had transcended ornament. The evolution of culture is Part of this misappropriation he sees as the result taken by Loos as identical with the removal of orna- of the fact that most subsequent theories in aesthet- ment from objects of utility, since such ornament is ics are dependent on Hegel, and this is where a waste of labour, material and capital. the root of the mis-reading of Kant lies. How can one retrieve the distinction of free and dependent Harries has added in a paper delivered to the beauty? Kirwan’s argument, put briefly, is that the DSD in 2005 a further argument from his publication Kantian requirements for the judgement of taste, of a decade earlier, and suggested that ‘theory’ in the aesthetic judgement, which establishes the architecture now functioned as ‘ornament’. Harries analytic of the beautiful, involves a pleasure felt by calls for a new understanding of the ethical func- someone reporting such a judgement, a pleasure tion of architecture, which however is at odds with which is apart from any interest in the object, that the work of Scruton and Watkin (David Watkin, is non-utilitarian. The immediate apprehension is of Morality and Architecture, 2001, 2nd edition), both beauty in such a judgement, and is not related to of whom remain in a functionalist Kantian interpre- a concept or a determinate cognition. Its manifes- tation. Harries, through his Hegelian-Heideggerian tation is given immediately in its pleasing, but also argument, calls for a new understanding of the universally, the stipulation of this latter part of the ethical function of architecture. This has been noted claim says that this very subjective judgement can by Gordon Graham in his influential entry for the be grounded in common sense, so, in saying ‘this is Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics (ed. Levison, Oxford beautiful’, we also impute our satisfaction to every- 3 one else; otherwise there would only be a hedonistic a horse, a building, such as a church, a palace, and solipsism, an aesthetic autism. The judgement even arsenal, or a garden-house, the examples cited by in its singularity, immediacy and disinterestedness Kant, presuppose a concept of the end of what the communicates the notion of a sensus communis. thing should be, hence a concept of its perfection, ‘and is thus merely adherent beauty’ (Critique of the Kirwan argues that there are two points which are Power of Judgement, section 16). fundamental to Kant’s discussion, two matters of fact we must accept if we are to understand Kant For Kant beauty must be distinguished from correctly; one is that objects appear to please us usefulness, even though it is compatible with the immediately, and that such an object which pleases object. Kant argues that the combination of aesthetic in this way is to be called beautiful, and this is the satisfaction with the intellectual can lead to rules, notion of ‘free beauty’, which is the pleasure attend- which are not however universal, and that these ant on the mere reflection on a given intuition. rules can be prescribed in regard to certain purpo- sively determined objects. In effect these rules are Nevertheless Kant goes on to argue that there the unification of taste with reason, through which are two forms of beauty. One is free beauty which the beautiful becomes usable as an instrument of presupposes no concept of what the object should intention with regard to the good. Where there is be, and the other is ‘dependent’ beauty which an intention, and an end, or, in a thing that is possi- presupposes a concept and in a certain sense is ble only through an intention - a building, an animal less pure than free beauty. What is at play in this - the regularity that consists in symmetry must distinction is that the idea of dependent beauty express the unity of the intuition, which accom- has become conflated with the idea of normative panies the concept of the end and belongs to the and evaluative aesthetic claims, and indicates that cognition. Where, however, only a free play of the the study of art is the principal activity of aesthetic powers of representation - the understanding not education. suffering any offence - is in issue, for example in pleasure gardens, the decoration of rooms, tasteful Perhaps the distinction is just simply that on one utensils, and the like, regularity that comes across hand there is a beauty that is relative, as when we as constraint is to be avoided as far as possible.

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