Karsten Harries

Winner of the 8th Annual AIA International Architecture Book Award for CriticismCanarchitecture help us find our place and way in today's complex world? Can it return individuals to awhole, to a world, to a community? Developing Giedion¹s claim that contemporary architecture's maintask is to interpret a way of life valid for our time, philosopher Karsten Harries answers thatarchitecture should serve a common ethos. But if architecture is to meet that task, it first has tofree itself from the dominant formalist approach, and get beyond the notion that its purpose is toproduce endless variations of the decorated shed.In a series of cogent and balanced arguments,Harries questions the premises on which architects and theorists have long relied -- premises whichhave contributed to architecture's current identity crisis and marginalization. He first criticizesthe aesthetic approach, focusing on the problems of decoration and ornament. He then turns to thelanguage of architecture. If the main task of architecture is indeed interpretation, in just whatsense can it be said to speak, and what should it be speaking about? Expanding upon suggestions madeby Martin Heidegger, Harries also considers the relationship of building to the idea and meaning ofdwelling.Architecture, Harries observes, has a responsibility to community; but its ethical functionis inevitably also political, He concludes by examining these seemingly paradoxicalfunctions.

The Ethical Function of Architecture

a critical commentary on Heidegger's "The origin of the work of art"

Art matters

That modern art is different from earlier art is so obvious as to be hardly worth mentioning. Yet there is little agreement as to the meaning or the importance of this difference. Indeed, contemporary aestheticians, especially, seem to feel that modern art does not depart in any essential way from the art of the past. One reason for this view is that, with the exception of Marxism, the leading philosophical schools today are ahistorical in orientation. This is as true of phenomenology and existentialism as it is of contemporary analytic philosophy. As a result there have been few attempts by philosophers to understand the meaning of the history of art—an understanding fundamental to any grasp of the difference between modern art and its predecessors. Art expresses an ideal image of man, and an essential part of understanding the meaning of a work of art is understanding this image. When the ideal image changes, art, too, must change. It is thus possible to look at the emergence of modern art as a function of the disintegration of the Platonic-Christian conception of man. The artist no longer has an obvious, generally accepted route to follow. One sign of this is that there is no one style today comparable to Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, or Baroque. This lack of direction has given the artist a new freedom. Today there is a great variety of answers to the question, "What is art?" Such variety, however, betrays an uncertainty about the meaning of art. An uneasiness about the meaning of art has led modern artists to enter into dialogue with art historians, psychologists and philosophers. Perhaps this interpretation can contribute to that dialogue.

Meaning of Modern Art

One thing this book attempts to show is that Kant's antinomies open a way towards an overcoming of that nihilism that is a corollary of the understanding of reality that presides over our science and technology. But when Harries is speaking of the antinomy of Being he is not so much thinking of Kant, as of Heidegger. Not that Heidegger speaks of an antinomy of Being. But his thinking of Being leads him and will lead those who follow him on his path of thinking into this antinomy. At bottom, however, the author is neither concerned with Heidegger’s nor Kant’s thought. He shows that our thinking inevitably leads us into some version of this antinomy whenever it attempts to grasp reality in toto, without loss. All such attempts will fall short of their goal. And that they do so, Harries claims, is not something to be grudgingly accepted, but embraced as a necessary condition of living a meaningful life. That is why the antinomy of Being matters and should concern us all.

The Antinomy of Being

If the Enlightenment turned to reason to reoccupy the place left vacant by the death of God, the last two centuries have undermined such faith in reason. We cannot escape this history. The specter of nihilism haunts Either/Or. To exorcize it is Kierkegaard’s most fundamental concern. But where are we to turn? To an aesthetic transfiguration of, or escape from reality? Does ethics promise an answer? Or is all that is left an irrational leap to religion? All such questions are shadowed by the specter of Kitsch. What does it mean to be authentic in the modern world?

A Commentary on Either/Or

Between Nihilism and Faith

Lebbeus Woods

Tracy Myers

Edited by Tracy Myers. Essays by Tracy Myers, Karsten Harries and Lebbeus Woods. Foreword by Richard Armstrong.

Experimental Architecture

A philosophical exploration of the origin and limits of the modern world.

Karsten Harries

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