Propedeutics is the preliminary knowledge of a discipline, an introduction to the profession. The problems of propaedeutics in the absence of disciplinary boundaries are becoming more acute. Contemporary architecture also seeks to discover the foundations of its thinking in the general cultural field. But how to discover and form architectural knowledge where it does not yet exist?
Archi.ru:
Developing themes of propaedeutics and theory of architecture, you turn to scholasticism. What is the reason for this interest?
Alexander Rappaport:
- Because I see that the following paradoxical phenomenon was achieved in it: a fairly limited number of dogmas adopted in the first five hundred years of Christianity are productively processed by scholasticism over the next thousand years. She did not require new experimental data and, nevertheless, found ways of endless deepening, expanding the semantic structures of these dogmas. The thousand-year experience of scholasticism shows that the meanings of religious consciousness can deepen and develop without resorting to new actual experiments. Of course, miracles and experiments were in the Middle Ages, but they did not play a big role in scholasticism. Scholasticism worked on the logic of semantic constructions of language and ethical norms, which already existed in dogma.
Scholasticism was a system closed on itself and did not turn to empiricism and sensory experience. Was not scholasticism in this case completely alienated from reality, from life?
- This observation would be true if we believed that this scholastic system itself is something alien to life, external to it. But if we assume that it is an organic part of this life itself, then its existence is the self-development of vital meanings. She did not take them indirectly from somewhere, but developed them from the very logic of the unfolding of meanings, in fact, she extracted meanings from the language.
Thus, modern architectural thought must rehabilitate scholasticism in order to develop new ideas from existing ones?
- Modern architects lack not new ideas and not even new forms, but rather apparatus of thought regarding ideas already known to them, embodied in language and rather rich cultural experience. The poverty of architectural thought is determined not by the fact that new data has not come from somewhere, but by the fact that this idea itself is poor, which does not know how to work with this data. Scholasticism has a perspective of development, because it was an example of a closed thought that did not require new external revelations or dogmas. In other words, scholasticism has shown what our thinking is capable of.
In medieval philosophy, it is customary to distinguish between two methods of philosophizing: scholastic and mystical. In your reflections, you also turn to mysticism. What properties are necessary for architectural thought?
- Mysticism, of course, was the opposite of scholasticism. It retained the idea of intuition: mysticism and intuition turned out to be closer than scholasticism and intuition. Scholastics have studied all their lives - it was mental, ascetic, heroic work. Mysticism, of course, did not assume such work, did not require education and training. Interesting is the very attitude that the concept of freedom and intuition leads us to mysticism, and scholasticism is neglected - as an internally sterile sphere of reasoning and logical tautologies. In fact, what we refer to as intuition did not exist in the Middle Ages. Intuition is a new concept. In the Middle Ages, intuition was reduced to supernatural revelations: uncontrollable by normative structures, it is such a beginning of irresponsible, in the sense of sacred, supernaturalness. In the Middle Ages, intuition was a revelation, that is, it was inspired by God. In modern times, the sender of intuition remains unknown, and the norms of control of this sender are absent, but there are norms of understanding it within the framework of the categories of scholasticism. Today this could be called brain work.
Is it possible already here, in the modern understanding of intuition and brain structures, to find the answers? Is there an opportunity to develop, for example, Bergson's concept of intuition, or is it still necessary to turn to mysticism itself?
- I think it would be very useful, but it requires a special study not only of Bergson, but of the philosophy of life in general - Nietzsche, Spengler, Dilthey. Moreover, this whole line was very close and parallel to the phenomenological and hermeneutic line, where the same foundations were again subjected to consideration, analysis and criticism. There, too, problems of intuition arise. If efforts in this direction were intensified, we could hope to obtain important results.
A kind of thinking, close to the philosophy of life and mysticism, often repels skeptical thinking architects. They seem to be more keen on clearly developed and described science-based methods. Can scientific research contribute to the development of architectural knowledge?
- In the modern intellectual and rational tradition, in which both avant-garde and modernism were born, architectural thought wanted to become scientific. It was believed that scientific evidence could be used in lieu of revelations. Experience shows that this is not always the case, although in some happy cases, creative intuition, relying on science, comes to non-trivial ideas. Science does not carry any norms of form-creation in itself. But the question is, does architecture have a chance to develop its ideas productively without resorting to experiment? Here it is important to be aware of what a scientific experiment is and how it differs from an artistic experiment. All scientific experiments are based on the use of artificial instruments for observation and measurement. Since in architecture, experimental processes are not mediated by measuring equipment, but are carried out by individual consciousness, the data of this intuition bear the subjective features of the person himself, in contrast to rulers or scales, which are measured and weighed regardless of who takes the measurements. And although we understand that they are received by consciousness, we do not know where they come from.
Sociology, for example, does not use experiment, nevertheless, it has its own capabilities for reflecting reality
- Sociology refers to measurements, although it does not have tools like an ammeter or a microscope. Her experiments are based on the analysis of opinions, which can be qualitatively divided into delusions and revelations. Errors can partly be refuted by logic or scholasticism, which tests opinions for compliance with scripture or the meaning of concepts, and revelations remain in question, because the source of revelation in a religious tradition can be disputed: one can see in it a divine revelation or a diabolical obsession. For modern sociology, the truth is implicitly seen in the most widespread opinion. Sociology believes that by borrowing someone's opinions and examining them with the help of sociological theories, which in themselves are just opinions, it expands and improves the semantic comprehension of life. How much you can trust the results of sociological analyzes, no one knows for sure. Very often the opinions, which at the same time serve as the basis for intellectual processing, are themselves illusory. In general, the question of sociology, its status and its role in architecture is too complex to be dealt with on the fly. But after sociology became fully accepted in Russia, I did not notice any results that sociology would bring to life. But I am not a sociologist and I do not follow her events. But for architecture, sociology turned out to be a very distant relative, its impact on architecture is comparable to the influence of bureaucracy, which can hardly be called beneficial.
“However, trying to improve its semantic apparatus, architecture can forget about the existence of man. How does architecture address the human?
- This is a very interesting question. If we already started with scholasticism and sociology, then I would put them in connection with several medieval institutions: the institution of confession and the institution of preaching. The institution of confession is being replaced today by sociological polls, in which they find out what a person thinks and what he wants. And sermons are now becoming propaganda - ideological or even architectural. In confession, the believer confesses to the confessor his desires and doubts; in the sermon, the priest tries to offer believers a solution to problems, relying on sacred norms and principles available for inner comprehension. Religion proceeds from the premise that a person's problems can be solved only by himself, listening to the voice of God, and modern architects believe that problems that worry a person can be solved externally. Architecture can solve important problems in human life, but, as a rule, not those that sociology discusses. To some extent, the architect has always assumed the function of a preacher. But in order to fulfill this mission, he must listen to the voice of his professional conscience, intuition and logic, and customer requirements must be dealt with by design, which, of course, differs from architecture. When designing, you need to take into account the desires of residents and, as far as possible, satisfy them. But in architecture we are not talking about technical and regulatory issues, but about the forms and meanings of life. The professional mission of the architect is to translate human needs and desires into architectural forms. Understanding between the architect and his clients does not develop due to the lack of the appropriate language. Architects still do not understand that they do not have that meaningful professional language in which to speak with people. This is one of the main problems of the theory of architecture.
You write that architectural propaedeutics is an intermediary between the general cultural and professional field. But it seems that the architectural profession is becoming more and more closed, fencing itself off from other disciplines, and losing touch with culture
- Architecture is dissolved in culture, not concentrated in the profession. Only responsibility is concentrated in the profession. But architecture today finds itself in a position of forced irresponsibility. Due to the absence of a meaningful professional language, architecture is trying to compensate for its irresponsibility with the data of sociology or psychology, which are supposedly capable of giving architecture some kind of foundation. Do you know the joke - the question: “What is the house holding on to? - On the wallpaper. This kind of wallpaper is the current architectural typology and propaedeutics, devoid of solid theoretical principles, on which architecture rests. One of the tasks of propaedeutics is to restore the connection of the profession with people and culture. But that propaedeutics, which is now practiced with the light hand of the avant-garde artists of the Vkhutemas and Bauhaus, unfortunately, cannot fulfill this task. In the avant-garde of the early 20th century, architecture was understood as something independent of culture, and propaedeutics, in a random and arbitrary way, replaced the connection between architecture and life, offering such innovations in life that broke away from the old world and its languages, building a New World, which remained what something hazy. I would like to hope that in the coming century this situation will change, although there are still no grounds for such optimism today, since the real world is gradually being ousted from life by the virtual world.
