Content uploaded by David Kolb
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by David Kolb on Dec 15, 2017
Content may be subject to copyright.
The Spirit of Gravity, 1
The Spirit of Gravity: Architecture and Externality
ゥ David Kolb, 1996
Bates College
Hegel wrote that “Die Architektur ... ist die Kunst am \usserlichenモ (A 14.271).1 We
might translate this as "Architecture is art in the external." But since all art is sensuous
externalization, perhaps we should translate Hegel as saying "Architecture is the art of the
external." Architecture is art at its most external. Let us ask what this メexternalityモ might be
that is so important to architecture. There are more dimensions to the answer than may at
first appear.
We might say that architecture is “external” because architecture constructs in physical
space “out there” and uses external material such as wood and stone and steel. But other
arts, for instance sculpture and painting, do the same. There are kinds of externality more
specific to architecture. I will discuss first architecture’s special relation to gravity, then the
unorganic externality of architectural purpose, the outward architectonic act, and the
externality of meaning in symbolic art. My conclusion will suggest going beyond Hegel on
this topic by following his directions.
Gravity
First, then, to gravity: Hegel states that architecture “becomes an inorganic surrounding,
a whole built and ordered according to the laws of gravity.” (A 14.303)2 That is, architecture
produces works posited as explicitly subject to the external law of gravity.
Though I just read you Wallace's translation, Hegel's German could be read as "the law of
weight." His phrase
Gesetz der Schwere
is the normal German for "law of gravity," and
"gravity" is
Schwerkraft
. (what we call "center of gravity" is
Schwerpunkt
. ) But it is
particularly appropriate that Hegel will talk about what we could translate as "the law of
weight" in connection with architecture since in what he considers the most authentic
architecture it is weight and bearing and support whose expression will o"er conceptual
necessity to the built forms.
In the philosophy of nature Hegel distinguishes gravity as weight (
Schwere
) which is
expressed in falling, as bodies seek a center outside themselves (treated in E 262-268),
from the conceptually more complex and concrete notion of the system of gravity
(
Gravitation
) which is expressed in the free motion of the planets of the solar system
(treated in E 269-270). Both of these words are distinguished from that conceptually more
primitive attraction (
Attraktion
) which is the negative unity of the being-for-self of matter in
its being outside itself (
die negative Einheit dieses au呈reinander-seienden F殲sichseins
) (E
262). Weight (
Schwere
) is the unity of that attraction and the equally primitive repulsion
(
Repulsion
) that expresses the being-for-self of matter.
Hegel is here reworking and arguing with Kant's construction of matter out of two forces
of attraction and repulsion, and refusing to separate the forces or to identify gravity or
weight with the one force of attraction. Hegel is also working towards one of his polemics
against Newton (see E 266 and 270). He also shows a curious hesitation about dealing with
gravity in terms of the attraction of many di"erent bodies for one another; later I will
discuss briefly this lingering Aristotelianism in Hegel's notion of gravity.
For our architectural purposes we do not need to concentrate on these distinctions
because though they are on di"erent levels what they all express is a togetherness of matter
in its very separateness. Externality is both posited and overcome in these attractions.
Gravity, through its very externality, denies the seemingly immediate separation and next-
to-each-other-ness of material objects. That external linkage is conceptually necessary in
The Spirit of Gravity, 2
The Spirit of Gravity, 3
order for bodies to be spread out at all.
Likewise, on all the levels of discussion, gravity and weight o"er relation and attraction
that ignore internal di"erentiation. Gravity disregards the details of a body's inner
composition or inner structure. Gravity is the premier external relationship, dealing with
items characterized by weight as one abstract totalizing characteristic. Such undi"erentiated
heaviness opposes spirit’s inner self-di"erentiation, but also shows how spirit's motion of
self-return has already begun in the pure external side-by-side-ness of matter.
Heaviness is an external prefiguring of spirit’s turning to itself: “The concept of
heaviness . . . contains both the moment of being-for-itself and the continuity that sublates
that [isolated] being-for-itself.”3 Gravity provides a unity within external relations and
forces. This is already a first—external—overcoming of externality.
In the realm of art, architecture does much the same; it provides a first—external—
overcoming of externality. It is the art of the external because it posits and proclaims its
own externality as an—external—way of transcending that externality. The architect creates
a structure that speaks its subservience to gravity. But the building’s functional unity goes
beyond what the physical law can demand or notice. In architecture gravity is shown as
transcended within spirit’s self-construction. Architecture displays the external as external
in relation to other more inner unities.
External Nature
Hegel says that it is メthe special vocation of architecture, to be a pure enclosure . . . to
show an unorganic nature built by human handsモ (A 14.294/2.653).4
What does it mean to say that this built surrounding is
unorganic
? It means more than
that we build with non-living material. The architect builds in unorganic nature and
produces unorganic unities. Introducing architecture, Hegel says that
The first task of art consists in giving shape to . . . the external environment of
spirit, and so to build into what has no interiority (
dem Innerlichkeitslosen
) a
meaning and form which remain external to it because this meaning and
form are not immanent in the objective world itself. (A 14.267/2.631, my
emphasis)5
The external environment has no inner life of its own, and the meaning and form we
build remain external to that external nature.
The nature in and with which architecture builds does not itself have any organic
principle that determines its form. Of course unorganic nature has its own structures that
are studied by science and discussed in the first two divisions of Hegel’s philosophy of
nature, but such structures have no inner self-directed teleology. They have neither the
self-contained purposiveness of the organism nor the external purposiveness of the tool.
This lack of purpose is exactly unorganic nature's place in the system. We might say that the
purpose and meaning of the unorganic is to lack purpose and meaning, to be the other, the
surrounding for spirit's world.6 As part of the overall vocation of spirit to come to itself, this
unorganic aspect of spirit's self-othering needs to be shown as itself, but this showing can
only be to spirit, not to unorganic nature it-self, since unorganic nature has no self.
This positing of external nature as external means that in the overall career of spirit we
need something like architecture. Architecture is the art that works in the outer world, with
material things, and produces products whose purpose remains external to the objects
produced. A piece of music or a poem, for Hegel the most spiritual of the arts, will
transcend such externality. But then we might ask, why still have architecture as an art; why
not let architecture be merely a collection of functionally built tools? The answer is that
architecture does something artistic that a poem cannot do. It does not merely function; it
The Spirit of Gravity, 2
The Spirit of Gravity, 3
The Spirit of Gravity, 4
symbolizes and shows forth its own functioning.7 It symbolizes and enacts our relation to
outer unorganic reality, to gravity, to bearing and covering and enclosing, and, in romantic
architecture, it spatializes our movement beyond the spatially external. Poetry can talk
about these but not enact them in this (albeit external and unique precisely because it is
external) way. Architecture makes art—a self-showing of spirit—out of something that has
only externality and lack of purpose to o"er, and architecture shows that externality forth in
its imposition of--external--purpose and internality.8
Architecture's self-display of externality will be our constant theme as we move through
Hegel’s discussions of outwardness in architecture, and I will try to push this positing the
external as external beyond what Hegel would allow.
External Purposes and Art
Architecture deals with external unorganic nature as such, as still Other. It makes of that
nature purposive structures. Their purpose, however, remains “outside” the material and the
structure. We may speak metaphorically of this or that function as “the soul of the building”
but in fact architectural structure as such has no true inner governing and limiting principle.
This lack of immanent form and meaning is the key to architecture’s vocation as an art.
[Architecture掇] vocation lies precisely in fashioning external nature as an
enclosure shaped into beauty by art out of the resources of the spirit itself, and
fashioning it for the spirit already present, for man, or for the divine images
which he has framed and set up as objects. This enclosure does not carry its
meaning in itself but finds it in something else, in man and his needs and
aims in family life, the state, or religion, etc., and therefore the independence of
the buildings is sacrificed. (A 14.270/2.633, my emphasis)9
When architecture acquires the place belonging to it in accordance with its own
essential nature, its productions are subservient to an end and a meaning
not immanent in itself. It becomes a inorganic surrounding, a whole built and
ordered according to the laws of gravity. . . . Architecture at this stage . . .
corresponds with its authentic concept, because it cannot entirely endow the
spiritual with an adequate existence and therefore can only frame the external
and spiritless into a reflection of the spiritual. (A 14.303/2.660, my emphasis)10
In line with what I have maintained more than once already, the fundamental
character of architecture proper consists in the fact that the spiritual
meaning does not reside exclusively in the building (for, if it did, the
building would become an independent symbol of its inner meaning) but in the
fact that this meaning has already attained its existence in freedom outside
architecture. (A 14.303-4/2.661, my emphasis)11
In order to pursue these ideas further, we need to know more precisely what it means to
say that the purpose of architecture remains external to the building.
Hegel develops several concepts of purpose. The most external is the purpose of tools,
which have the shape they do because that shape serves some end held by another being.
A house, a clock, may appear as ends in relation to the tools employed for
their production; but the stones and beams, or wheels and axles, and so on,
which constitute the actuality of the end fulfil that end only through the
pressure that they su!er, through the chemical processes with air, light, and
water to which they are exposed and that deprive man of them by their friction
and so forth. Accordingly, they fulfil their destiny only by being used and
worn away and they correspond to what they are supposed to be only through
their negation. They are not positively united with the end, because they
possess self-determination only externally and are only relative ends, or
The Spirit of Gravity, 3
The Spirit of Gravity, 4
The Spirit of Gravity, 5
essentially nothing but means. (L 402/750, my emphasis)12
Deeper than such external purpose is the inner teleology of an organism, which is メthe
ideal unity which has found itself and is for itselfモ (E 252). An organism contains a unity that
“as its own goal, possesses its means in the objectivity and posits the latter as its means,
yet is immanent in this means and is therein the realized end that is identical with itself” (L
412/760).13 In an organism
objectivity is . . . taken up into the subjective unity, . . . .Since the concept is
immanent in it, the purposiveness of the living being is to be grasped as
inner; the concept is in it as determinate concept, distinct from its
externality, and in its distinguishing, pervading the externality and
remaining identical with itself. . . . the concept constitutes its substance; but
for that very reason this means and instrument is itself the realized end. . . .
In respect of its externality the organism is a manifold, not of parts but of
members. (L 420/766, my emphasis)14
This is the kind of realized unity that architecture can never achieve. Buildings are at
least tools, and their purpose is to be found in the activities of some other being. Hegel says
that:
Organic products, as they are portrayed by sculpture in the shape of animals
and men, have their beginning and end in their own free outlines, because it is
the rational organism itself which settles the boundaries of its shape from
within outwards. For the [architectural] column and its shape, however,
architecture has nothing but the mechanical determinant of load-bearing
and the spatial distance from the ground to the point where the load to be
carried terminates the column.
However, buildings are also works of art, self-showings of spirit, so they are more than
tools. Their externally-derived purposes result in shapes that should be given an
appearance of inner inevitability. Hegel continues:
But the particular moments implicit in this determining [of their proportions]
belong to the column, and art must bring them out and give shape to them.
Consequently the column掇 specific length, its two boundaries above and
below, and its carrying power should not appear to be only accidental and
introduced into it by something else but must be displayed as also
immanent in itself. (A 14.311f/2.668, my emphasis)15
Architecture must perform its art and bring the external as external into an appearance
of indwelling unity, even as the purpose of the building remains external rather than a true
organic form. But it does so by external means.
Externality is most extreme in the stage Hegel calls symbolic architecture. Although no
architectural work can have organic unity in the strong sense in which an animal body
possesses such unity, symbolic architecture is particularly unorganic. Symbolic architecture
is more paratactic than syntactic. According to Hegel, Egyptian temples combine sculptures,
columns, rooms, and other elements, but their mode of combination is an uncontrolled
one-thing-next-to-another, not guided by the more complex internal relations typical of
classical architecture.
This adjoined-ness or next-to-ness is not only characteristic of symbolic art; it is what
is specifically architectural. Hegel argues that the use of sculpture in Egyptian temples
remains “more . . . architectonic than sculptural” (A 14.282/2.643).16 What is it that
distinguishes the architectonic from the sculptural? The Egyptian sculptures are ordered in
rows, and “in this ordering in rows acquire their architectural character” (A 14.284/2.644).17
The Spirit of Gravity, 4
The Spirit of Gravity, 5
The Spirit of Gravity, 6
It is in classical architecture that the external putting things next to other things
becomes permeated by an inner logic (deriving from the structural actions of the building
parts) that supplements their external purpose and gives the building a sense of
inevitability. Hegel even speaks of classical architecture as "organic." But even in classical
architecture externality wins the day. Concerning the parts of classical columns, Hegel says
the
the di"erences . . . must come into appearance as di"erences; on the other
hand it is equally necessary for them to be united into a whole. . . this
unification, which in architecture cannot be more than a juxtaposition, and
an association, and a thorough-going eurhythmy of proportion. (A
14.318/2.674, my emphasis)18
Even in classical architecture, then, the architectonic deals in next-to-each-other-ness
and stuck-together-ness rather than true inner development.
External Meanings
There is a further dimension of externality to architecture. The mode of signification
found in all architecture is the symbolic, where there are no inner links between form and
meaning, nor among the various meanings presented.
Hegel says that in symbolic art and symbolic modes of signification we find an abstract
mode of thought where general representations, concepts, and philosophical categories are
adjoined, treated (by the understanding, not reason) as separable and permutable without
necessary orders or links.
The meanings taken as content here, as in symbolic art generally, are as it were
vague and general representations, elemental, variously confused and sundered
abstractions of the life of nature, intermingled with thoughts of the actuality of
spirit, without being ideally collected together as moments within a single
subjectivity. (A 14.274/2.637, my emphasis)19
These many meanings are not themselves united in an inner articulated unity; they
remain external to one another. Symbolic thought does with ideas and images what
architecture does with blocks and beams: puts one next to another.
Architecture remains low in the hierarchy of the arts because of this mutual externality
of purpose and parts, and of meanings to one another and to their symbols. On the other
hand, this low position is a necessary aspect of spirit’s articulation of itself. Spirit could not
make everything purely inner, or there would be no inner. Spirit’s being and activity demand
that externality be both real and expressed.
Positing Externality as Such
In discussing symbolic art in general, Hegel says that the externality of its meaning
relations should itself be expressed within the art. “Since this externality is present in itself
in the symbolic, it must also be posited” (A 13.486/1.378).20
If spirit is to be, that is, if spirit is to come to itself, then all the dimensions and
presuppositions of its being must be explicitly posited and incorporated as such. For Hegel,
art is a mode in which spirit presents its reality to itself. So the externality characteristic of
symbolic art should be itself thematically expressed in an artwork where the externality of
the relation between the meanings involved becomes itself the action performed by the
artwork.
Can this happen within symbolic art itself? It does, for Hegel, in those forms of symbolic
literary art which make explicit external comparisons relating diverse areas of meaning as
The Spirit of Gravity, 5
The Spirit of Gravity, 6
The Spirit of Gravity, 7
external to one another. These are discussed under the headings of the self-conscious
symbol (
bew殱ste Symbol
) and the comparing art (
vergleichende Kunstform
), and include
fables, parables, riddles, allegories, explicit metaphors and similes, and other verbal forms
whose action is to bring about comparisons between diverse areas of meaning.
However, there is no stage in Hegel’s treatment of architecture that functions as do
those types of symbolic literary art. There is no self-conscious positing of architectural
externality as such. Architecture is called to bring externality under at least the appearance
of inner necessity. The externality of its material and purpose is never completely mastered
by that inner necessity, for the inner necessity is itself an external imposition of loosely
associated meanings. But there is no stage of architecture which itself posits, performs, or
comments on this or the other dimensions of specifically architectural externality. The
externality of symbolic art as such is shown within the stronger interiorization of literary art.
Nowhere is architectural externality made the explicit theme or action of an artwork.
There is one seeming exception. During his general discussion of symbolic art Hegel
discusses the Egyptian pyramid as a meta-symbol of the enigmatic quality of symbols in
general (13.459f). Hegel discusses the pyramid’s closed shape and hidden content to itself
symbolize the more general relation of symbols to meaning.21 However, Hegel does not
discuss the pyramid as showing forth a specifically architectural externality.
I said earlier that architecture “is the art of the external because it posits and proclaims
its own externality as an—external—way of transcending that externality.” Now we can see
that that is not entirely true. Architecture does not make art that explicitly takes up all the
dimensions of its own externality.
Need this be so? Might there be an architecture whose action was to present and
thematize the dimensions of architectural externality in the self-performance of the
building? Could or should there be an architecture that explicitly posited its symbolic,
external, un-organic meaning and relation to meaning? That “did” its architectonic unity as
external next-to-ness, or that presented its purpose as external to its form? Could there be
an architecture that explicitly showed forth the externality of adjoined forms or elements or
meanings to one another? Or, recalling our first dimension of externality, a building that
presented itself as a presentation of the lack of intrinsic meaning in material objects?
Such buildings would not be traditional, if traditional means to sit neatly within a
received set of meanings presented as organically united with one another. The meanings
borne by the building would be shown as adjoined and uneasily in their relation. Such
buildings would be not modern, if modern means to be permeated by function and
rationality. Rather their forms would refuse to be controlled by function and rational unity.
Such buildings would not be postmodern, if postmodern means to be infused with historical
quotation or ironic sensibility, for that too manifests a form of interiorizing subjectivity,
though one that finds its inwardness in its distance from the material it treats.22 The
building might be postmodern in a more relaxed sense of the term, for having come after
modernism, but it would not necessarily belong to some particular stylistic wave.
One thinks for example of some of Zaha Hadid's designs, or of Frank Gehry’s own house
and others of his early buildings where materials and functions and forms were separated
and adjoined to one another. Some of the work of architects like Peter Eisenman and
Bernard Tschumi may also attempt such moves, though unlike Gehry’s works their buildings
often stand more as illustrations to theories. Those buildinga cannot be “understood”
without reading certain texts, so their demonstrations of externality are compromised.
Buildings that really “did” externality would have to resist being footnotes to theories. Even
Hegel's theories.
How might such resistance come about? Like brute matter, the building would be held
together by a law of gravity that kept its adjoined forms and functions and meanings
together without inquiring into their inner structures or producing internal semiotic
The Spirit of Gravity, 6
The Spirit of Gravity, 7
The Spirit of Gravity, 8
relations. Such gravitational attraction would refuse the transparency of the building’s parts
to one another or to any overarching purpose or meaning or essence. Togetherness in
exteriority.
The points raised in these last several paragraphs o"er challenging suggestions.
However, we should remember that Frank Gehry’s externalism was quickly recouped for
narrative by being labeled with his name and region. In fact we should realize that it is
impossible for any building to fulfill completely these requirements. Pure externality and
otherness cannot be presented as such, since any “presentation” involves semiosis. The
external singular presence of the building can not remain totally mute. No building can
purely “do” pure externality.
Nor, in fact, is gravity totally indi"erent to internal structure. We should not forget the
tides. In physics it is not strictly true that an object is a"ected by gravity independently of
its internal structure. While for many calculations gravitational forces can be summed up as
if they acted at the single center of gravity, in fact each mass point in the one object is
a"ected by each point in the others. This means that if an object is su#ciently large it can
feel tidal forces when di"erent parts of the object are closer and farther away from an
attracting second object. This near part is attracted more than that farther away part, and
the object is as a consequence subject to tidal forces. Depending on the internal structure of
the object, tidal forces can move its parts (as with our oceans), warp its form and change its
motion (as with our moon) or disrupt its unity and even tear it apart (as with Roche's Limit
and the rings of Saturn).23
So our building that is trying to posit externality will find that its juxtaposed parts and
functions and meanings influence one another even while and because they stand apart.
This influence is not a general indi"erent attraction but a tidal influence that distorts and
bends the shape e"ects, meanings and functions in ways depending on their specific
constitutions. There is no pure juxtaposition.
But if this is so, then how could a building posit its externality as such? Presumably the
building would return, as it were, to that silent nature of that first dimension of exteriority.
It would have to foreground its external, physical presence in a way that emphasized both
its put-together-ness and the physical muteness and singular otherness that everywhere
underlie and resist transparency. A building might be designed in such a way as to show
itself as resisting incorporation into narratives and meanings, even as those narratives and
meanings could not be fully kept away.
This the examples cited earlier achieve, but it can happen to some degree with any
building, in any style. Still some ways of building might make this resistance more
prominent. Even though they cannot escape inclusion in meanings and
narratives, they might help us become more aware both of our inevitable
complicity in those narratives, and of our life as more than what those
narratives comprehend.
But such a "more" and such resistance to categorization cannot be made the direct
object of presentation. It can be shown as slipping aside, as it were, from the conceptual or
narrative thrust. Art can enact this better than philosophy. Architecture can enact it better
than poetry.
Conclusion
So we have arrived back where we began, with the need for the art of architecture in
Hegel's story. But we have also put pressure on that story. For if we consider Hegel's notions
about art showing the moments of spirit掇 becoming as such, and if we take Hegel掇
treatment of architectural externality even more seriously than he does, then architecture
does play the role he assigns it, indeed even better than he realizes. But architecture also
The Spirit of Gravity, 7
The Spirit of Gravity, 8
The Spirit of Gravity, 9
resists Hegel掇 attempt to keep it on the first level of a hierarchical story that presents
externalization self-consciously only in more interiorized literary art and philosophy.
There is a tension between the externality Hegel attributes to architecture (and to
symbolic art generally) and the interiorizing narrative drive of his philosophy of art. This is
something like a dialectical tension, because it is precisely the attempt to fulfill the demands
of Hegel’s narrative that reveals in buildings something 'in' their being that refuses to be
incorporated into Hegel’s narrative, and therefore refuses to be subject to those demands.
In fulfilling the role Hegel assigns to it architecture resists its location in his story of the
arts. This dialectic does not lead to full enfolding, but to the positing of externality as
external even to the dialectical story. Following the prescriptive of the narrative to
posit every condition we posit features that put the building outside the
prescriptive power of the narrative. But not simply outside. Nor simply a
dialectical relation.
The spiritual aspect of physical gravity is its positing of a necessary external
togetherness that links things together and allows them to remain external to one another.
It is the physical analogue of every being's sharing in that overall motion of what it means to
be.
But there is a lingering Aristotelianism in Hegel's discussion of gravity. This can be seen
when he makes falling the first concept of concrete motion. It can be seen when he claims
that thrust and friction and pulling apply to an existence of matter other than the free god-
like motion of the celestial bodies (E 269z). It shows in his curious reluctance to discuss
gravity in terms of mutual attraction of every body for every other. In his discussion of
falling he emphasizes the movement of bodies towards an ideal center rather than shared
motion of mutually attracting other bodies.24 In his discussion of the solar system Hegel
speaks of a free motion of each body rather than mutual forces acting on each from each. In
his insistence that Kepler is superior to Newton he emphasizes mathematical pattern and
conceptual divisions rather than motion as resulting from a composition of empirical forces.
Hegel’s discussion of gravity gives a privileged place to ideal and real centers, expressed
finally by the sun as the posited embodiment of the unity of the gravitational system. We
could insist on an account that dealt more with the mutual interaction of bodies external to
one another, perhaps by bringing his astronomy up to date, perhaps by insisting on the
conceptual priority of the notion of mass over that of weight, and perhaps also by pointing
to dimensions of externality that resist Hegel's narrative.
What I have just said makes a familiar deconstructive gesture. But it could be rather
more Hegelian than the usual deconstructive scholasticism, for it would retain the spirit of
gravity.
We might think of di"erent buildings and art works as being external to one another in
ways that cannot be totally encompassed or interiorized, but also as all a"ecting one
another, not by a uniform indi"erent attraction or central gravity but rather by tidal
attractions that a"ect each di"erentially, reshaping and pulling each away from its self-
enclosed roundness. This would also be true for social unities and discourses and practices.
These would not be quite dialectical relationships. (Tidal e"ects take hold not directly on the
central concept but on the extended bodies of moons, discourses, art objects, social
practices. To use evolutionary language, they work on the phenotype, not the genotype.)
Tidal influences move across conceptual borders, warping conceptual skeletons, bringing
contaminations and denying the separation of levels.
In that case we might find ourselves within a polycentric system of mutual attractions.
Yet this lack of a center would not result in a dramatic explosion of disunity, but rather in a
complex skein of relations and tidal influences.
The Spirit of Gravity, 8
The Spirit of Gravity, 9
The Spirit of Gravity, 10
What would come of rethinking the externality of buildings and social practices and
discourses in tidal terms? Could we think the influences of architectural context that way?
Would dialectic be mimicked by a version of Roche's Limit for the approach to one another
of buildings, or discourses or art works or practices? Would close approach put enough
pressure on one another to warp or tear them apart?
In closing I remind you that our title phrase, “the spirit of gravity,” has other more
famous connotations. Nietzsche vigorously opposes a “spirit of gravity” that denies our
Dionysian freedom to create our own values and dance with masks. There is no doubt that
anything even vaguely Hegelian, even if polycentric, will maintain something of the
seriousness that Nietzsche attacks. Hegel's dance of relations and transitions includes the
work of the concept and the negative, and both of these require more constitutive
connections than do Nietzsche's contending wills to power, for the spirit of gravity, in
Hegel's sense, insists on mutual attractions and tensions precisely in externality.
The Spirit of Gravity, 9
The Spirit of Gravity, 10
The Spirit of Gravity, 11
1Notes:
, Page references in the text refer to Hegel’s works according to the following
abbreviations:
A:
Vorlesungen 歟er die \sthetik
, edd. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel,
G.W.F. Hegel Werke in zwanzig B穫den
, vol. 13, 14, 15 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970). English
translation by T. M. Knox,
Aesthetics
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975)
L:
Wissenschaft der Logik
, ed. Friedrich Lasson (Hamburg: Meiner, 1963)
E:
Enzyclop嚇ie der philosophischen Wissenschaften
(1830), edd. Friedhelm Nicolin
and Otto Pöggeler (Hamburg: Meiner, 1959).
I have occasionally modified the translations.
2, Sie wird eine unorganische Umgebung, ein den Gesetzen der Schwere nach geordnetes und
gebautes Ganzes. (A 14.303) This, like many of Hegel’s general statements about architecture
applies best to classical architecture.
3, Im Begri"e der Schwere sind, wie gezeigt, selbst die beiden Momente der Fürsichseins und
der das Fürsichsein aufhebenden Kontinuität enthalten. (E 269z)
4, Die spezialle Bestimmung der Architektur, blosse Umschliessung zu sein . . . eine
unorganische Natur zeige, von Menschenhänden da hingebaut (A 14.294/2.653).
5, Die erste Aufgabe der Kunst darin bestehe, das an sich selbst Objektive, den Boden der
Natur, die äussere Umgebung des Geistes zu gestalten und somit dem Innerlichkeitslosen eine
Bedeutung und Form einzubilden, welche demselben äusserlich bleibt, da sie nicht die dem
Objektiven selber immanente Form und Bedeutung ist. (A 14.267/2.631)
6, The parallels here to Heidegger's notion of earth are not as close as they might seem to be.
7, I have discussed the relation of Hegel's three stages of architecture to the expression of
function, and the several di"erent kinds of function involved, especially in Hegel's ideas about
classical architecture, together with some possible changes in Hegel's scheme, in “Before
Beyond Function” (forthcoming in a volume based on a conference held at VPI on Hegel and
architecture).
8, The survival of older forms of art raises the same issues for Hegel as the survival of previous
social forms within a modern society. They may be changed (slavery, duelling, feudal loyalty) or
they may survive as a moment (family and clan), but in either case they are no longer able to
make ultimate claims. Hegel says that certain stages of spirit expressed themselves in symbolic
art, and architecture was the form most appropriate for symbolic art (because architecture's
outer-ness and next-to-each-other-ness and its use of mixed items and symbolisms from/in
nature are the way symbolic art signifies). Architecture still expresses our self-conception,
though no longer adequately. It only did so adequately when that self-conception was
unmediated enough to be adequately expressed through symbolic art. In our world the mode of
expression that architecture is capable of is not the most adequate mode we have available.
Architecture survives as a part of the modern self-presentation of spirit to itself but not as a
dominant or leading part. It is qualified and reduced, but it is not replaced. Nothing replaces
anything else in Hegel, though things lose their absoluteness.
9, Ihr Beruf liegt eben darin, dem für sich schon vorhandenen Geist, dem Menschen oder seinen
objektiv von him herausgestalteten und aufgestellten Göterbildern, die äussere Natur als eine
aus dem Geiste selbst durch die Kunst, zur Schönheit gestaltete Umschliessung heraufzubilden,
die ihre Bedeutung nicht mehr in sich selbst trägt, sondern dieselbe in einem anderen, dem
Menschen und dessen Bedürfnissen und Zwecken des Familienlebens, des Starchitecturets,
Kultus, usf. findet und deshalb die Selbständigkeit der Bauwerke aufgibt. (A 14.270/2.633)
The Spirit of Gravity, 10
The Spirit of Gravity, 11
The Spirit of Gravity, 12
10, Die Baukunst, wenn sie ihre eigentümliche begri"sgemässe Stellung erhält, dient in ihrem
Werke einem Zweck und einer Bedeutung, die sie nicht in sich selbst hat. Sie wird eine
unorganische Umgebung, ein den Gesetzen der Schwere nach geordnetes und gebautes
Ganzes. . . . Ihrem eigentlichen Begri" aber entspricht die Architekture auf dieser Stufe, weil sie
an und für sich das Geistige zu seinem gemässen Dasein zu bringen nicht imstande ist und
deshalb nur das Äusserliche und Geistlose zum Widerschein des Geistigen umzubilden vermag.
(A 14.303/2.660)
11, (Demgem郭s, was ich mehrmals bereits angef殄rt habe, besteht der
Grundbegri" der eigentlichen Baukunst darin, dass die geistige Bedeutung nicht
ausschliesslich in das Bauwerk selbst hineingelegt ist, das dadurch zu einem
selbst穫digen Symbol des Innern wird, sondern dass diese Bedeutung
umgekehrt ausserhalb der Architekture schon ihr freies Dasein gewonnen hat.)
(A 14.303-4/2.661)
12, Ein Haus, eine Uhr k嗜nen als die Zwecke erscheinen gegen die zu ihrer Hervorbringung
gebrauchten Werkzeuge; aber die Steine, Balken, oder R嚇er, Axen usf., welche die Wirklichkeit
des Zweckes ausmachen, erf殕len ihn nur durch de Druck, den sie erleiden, durch die
chemischen Prozesse, denen sie mit Luft, Licht, Wasser preisgaben sind und die sie dem
Menschen abnehmen, durch ihre Reibung usf. Sie erf殕len also ihre Bestimmung nur durch
ihren Gebrauch und Abnutzung und entsprechen nur durch ihre Negation dem, was sie sein
sollen. Sie sind nicht positiv mit dem Zwecke vereinigt, weil sie die Selbstbestimmung nur 隔
sserlich an ihnen haben, und sind nur relative Zwecke, oder wesentlich auch nur Mittel. (L
402/750)
13, Als Selbstzweck an ihr sein Mittel hat und sie als sein Mittel setzt, aber in diesem Mittel
immanent und darin der realisierte mit sich identische Zweck ist. (L 412/760)
14, Weil nun diese Objektivität Prädikat des Individuums und in die subjektive Einheit
aufgenommen ist, so kommen ihr nicht die frühern Bestimmungen des Objekts, das
mechanische oder chemische Verhältnis, noch weniger die abstrakten Reflexionsverhältnisse
von Ganzem und Teilen u. dgl. zu. Als Äußerlichkeit ist sie solcher Verältnisse zwar fähig, aber
insofern ist sie nicht lebendiges Dasein; wenn das Lebendige als ein mechanische oder
chemische Ursache einwirken, als mechanische oder chemisdches Produkt, es sei bloß als
solches oder auch durch ein äußerlichen Zweck Bestimmtes, genommen wird, so wirt der Begri"
ihm als außerlich, es wirt als ein Totes genommen. Da ihm der Begri" immanent ist, so ist die
Zweckmäßigkeit des Lebendigen als innre zu fassen; er ist in him als bestimmter, von seiner
Äußerlichkeit unterschiedener und in seinem Unterscheiden sie durchdringender und mit sich
identischer Begri". Diese Objektivität des Lebendigen ist Organismus; sie ist das Mittel und
Werkzeug des Zwecks, volkommen zweckmäßig, da der Begri" ihre Substanz ausbacht; aber
eben deswegen ist dies Mittel und Werkzeug selbst der ausgeührte Zweck, in welchem der
subjektive Zweck insofern unmittelbar mit sich selbst zusammengeschlossen ist. Nach der
Äußerlichkeit des Organismus ist er ein Viefaches nicht von Teilen, sondern von Gliedern. (L
420/766)
15, Organische Gebilde, wie die Skulptur sie in der tierischen und menschlichen Gestalt
darstellt, haben ihren Anfang und ihr Ende in freien Konturen in sich selbst, indem es der
vernünftige Organismus selber ist, der die Begrenzung der Gastalt von innen heraus macht; die
Architektur dagegen hat für die Säule und deren Gestalt nichts anderes als die mechanische
Bestimmung des Tragens und der räumlichen Entfernung vom Boden a bis zu dem Punkt hin,
wo die getragene Last die Säule endigt. Die besonderen Seiten aber, welche in dieser
Bestimmung liegen, muss die Kunst, weil sie der Säule angehoren, auch heraustreten lassen
und gestalten. Ihre bestimmte Länge und deren zweifache Grenze nach unten und oben sowie
ihr Tragen darf deshalb nicht als nur zufällig und durch anderes in sie hineinkommend
The Spirit of Gravity, 11
The Spirit of Gravity, 12
erscheinen, sondern muss auch als ihr selber immanent dargestellt sein. (A 14.311f/2.668)
16, [D]urch ihre Grandiosität und Massenhaftigkeit mehr unorganisch und architektonisch als
skulpturartig (A 14.282/2.643)
17, [Z]u Reihen werden und eben ihrer dadurch architektonische Bestimmung nur in dieser
Reihe und Ordung erhalten. (A 14.284/2.644)
18, die Unterschiede . . . auch in ihrer Unterscheidung zum Vorschein kommen müssen, so ist
es andererseits ebensosehr notwendig, dass sie such zu einem Ganzen vereinen. Auf diese
Einigung, welche in der Architectur mehr nur ein Nebeneinandertreten und Zusammenfügen
und eine durchgängige Eurhythmie des Masses sein kann. (A 14.318/2.674)
19, Die Bedeutungen n確lich, welche zum Inhalt genommen werden, bleiben, wie in
Symbolischen 歟erhaupt, gleichsam unf嗷mliche allgemeine Vorstellungen, elementarische,
vielfach gesonderte und durcheinandergeworfene Abstraktionen des Naturlebens, mit
Gedanken der geistigen Wirklichkeit gemischt, ohne als Momente eines Subjektes ideell
zusammengefasst zu sein. (A 14.274/2.637)
20, Diese \usserlichkeit aber, da sie an sich im Symbolischen vorhanden, muァ auch gesetzt
werden. (A 13.486/1.378)
21, The relation of symbolic meaning to its external expression remains distant and
approximate. Elsewhere Hegel asserts that “the symbol, strictly so called, is inherently
enigmatical because the external existent by means of which a universal meaning is to be
brought to our contemplation still remains di"erent from the meaning that it has to represent,
and it is therefore open to doubt in what sense the shape has to be taken." (Das eigentlich
Symbol ist an sich rätselhaft, insofern die Äusserlichkeit, durch welche eine allgemeine
Bedeutung zur Anschauung kommen soll, noch verschieden bleibt von der Bedeutung, die sie
darzustellen hat, und es deshalb dem Zweifel unterworfen ist, in welchem Sinne die Gestalt
genommen werden müsse.) (A 13.509/1.397)
22, See my
Postmodern Sophistications
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) for a
discussions of the relation of modern subjectivityand postmodern irony.
23, Roche's Limit is that distance from the planet at which a moon will be pulled apart by tidal
forces. Closer than the limit, the di"erence between the attractive force felt by the near side
and that felt by the far side will be greater than the strength of rock to resist being torn apart.
The rings around the large outer planets may have been caused by older moons being
destroyed in this way, or by the inability of a stable moon to accrete from chunks of material
located inside that limit.
24, M. J. Petry equates the movement to an ideal center with movement about their common
center of gravity, but this seems to ignore how Hegel discusses falling in terms of each body
singly, and it seems to confuse Hegel's discussion of weight with his later discussion of gravity.
(See M. Petry,
Hegel's Philosophy of Nature
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1970), vol. i, 322.)