UCH of what Mr Scruton diagnoses in both Modern/Post Modern Architecture I fear is correct. I think part of the reason involves the process by which ordinary people have lost the ability and/or interest and sensibility needed to form judgements about Lebenswelt. This term coined by the German Philosopher Edmund Husserl in the 1920s denoted a concept which existed within and between people and the society in which each member existed as an individual formed by, but also apart from this process. This apartness that Husserl inferred in many of his writings and which Mr Scruton has also mentioned, is the place (not space) where the singular person felt his own presence and freedom dwell. In such a place a man/woman was no longer the office worker/the commander/the husband/the Manager/the Youth. Here one could distill and discern the contours of oneself and society. In our Lebenswelt today all places apart must be filled unquestionably and without exception. It abhors any clearing, the mechanism of which cannot fill with its pseudo-desires, defaced language, and crass pop Freudian gossip. Yet for one to continue in what Socrates would consider the only worthwhile project, the examination of one's life, a grammar apart from what ultimately endorses all without question in our society must be resisted. This is what I think Mr Scruton means by a Grammar for Architecture, the most visible manifestation of the Lebenswelt. Without that grammar I fear muteness to be the only defense.

   Read also: Victor Hugo, Variety, Eternity, Proportion: Time was the architect—Europe was the builder J. O. y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses Pericles Giannopoulos, The Greek line & the Greek color

 

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