We continue to publish video recordings of Alexander Rappaport's lectures.
Was it easy to communicate with the audience?
- Yes and no. I tried my best to make this communication sincere and intelligible. But then I was faced with the fact that modern students from school to graduation have not mastered thinking itself. They are guided by knowledge and authorities, their personal position, principles remain at the mercy of authorities and common opinions. The language of their reflection, as a rule, does not have a philosophical cultural background, that is, a repertoire of possible points of view, and all these points of view are reduced to the outdated categories of “truth-falsehood” and “ours and others”.
For Russian students, this is reflected in the legacy of the totalitarian ideology of the last century, and for Western students - the cult of fashionable philosophical criticism - both can be considered an unfortunate legacy of dogmatic and critical Marxism.
They are still guided by someone else's knowledge and someone else's technology - be it mathematics, physics, sociology, or computer and space technology. But today, in my opinion, this is already an anachronism and the future of architecture can not be determined either by the infantilism of the avant-garde of the twenties, or by the wisdom of natural and social sciences (the latter, moreover, do not yet demonstrate much wisdom).
And it is impossible to take on the development of their own professional ideology without the appropriate thinking skill, which they lack, and as a result, architecture slips into the area of design consumer goods, which exists in time fundamentally differently than architecture in my understanding - that is, focused on a long time and immortality. And design - for a short time and death. Hence the death of all modern architecture.
And this is confirmed by the current lack of spirituality of architecture, its orientation towards hygiene, comfort and fashion, that is, the modern idols of public opinion of the mass society.
In order to comprehend this situation, the architect must be able to critically comprehend the most basic categories of being and the world - space, time, substance, individuality, life and death. And this can only be afforded by a very deeply educated and free mind, free from ideological indoctrination and propaganda.
