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Nader El-Bizri PDF
Nader El-Bizri PDF
Nader El-Bizri
Prolegomenon: ‘In-der-Welt-sein’
‘intercultural roles’ of architecture. This line of inquiry focuses on some of the salient
interconnections that this question may have with ontology, epistemology, and
theories of value. We proceed in this context with prudence, since we are perhaps
still unprepared for the interpretation of this question, given that the realm from which
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it addresses us has not been hitherto sufficiently thought in terms of its metaphysical
connected with the existential dimensions that underpin the worldly nature of the
envelopment of ‘the kinaesthetic spatiality of the human body’ and its ocular-motor
conditions of possibility for enclosing the everyday existence of human beings, from
birth till death; while retaining also the material traces of past mortals, the physical
localities of pleasure and pain, safety and trauma, and of memories in-between. By
in the continuum of their manifold appearances, instead of letting them simply appear
as ‘objects’.
After all, not a thing is seen in its entirety at once, nor is it given to immediate
intuition in its multiple visible aspects. Rather, things manifest their visible properties
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unveiled ‘authentic appearances’ conceal hidden potential appearances that are
measure, and is principally saturated with imagining; in the sense that ‘genuine
subtle proportions in physical reality, and facilitate their reflection a fortiori through
scales, orders and ratios, through the formal modelling agency of geometry.
[Slide 2: The West-Bank Wall, cutting the Occupied Territories, 21st century]
Praxis
depths that ground the sequence of civilisation and the unfolding of its multifarious
accommodating nature and the manner it produces space and apportions its regions
and localities. Architectural settings can allow for the improvement and betterment of
the conditions of the built and natural environment in which they are emplaced; and,
contrastingly, they could also hinder the emancipating possibilities of the milieu that
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the politico-economic practices of oppression.4 In making and use, architecture
serves instrumental functions that operatively reflect, perhaps, almost the entirety of
formal qualities; and yet, it requires in praxis far more dramatic dialectical
exists its actualised physical appearance; its construction is the objectified sign of the
Tekhnē
The making of architecture, in its materiality, and in its spatial and formal
interrogations about architecture relate again to ontology, and also to the epistemic
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on ‘truth’ and the conditions of its un-concealment through tekhnē, scientific-artistic
more essentially, as what is lifted from the spheres of use and the commerce of work,
amidst the loud cacophony, speed, and disarray in everydayness; especially in the flux
affairs does not point to tranquil absorptions in contemplation with solitary repose,
which are not determined through productivity or the ‘metaphysics of making’, or that
The picturing of objects in the world as ‘ready and present at hand entities’, as
care endures, contrasts with the production of tools, the manufacturing of equipment,
the erection of edifices in the arts of making and the precincts of procurement.
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architecture’, and the conscious critical engagement of the architectural thinker with
the humanities, arts and letters. The prevailing exemplars of education and
the exact sciences and the visualisations of geometry, with their epistemic directives
architecture and its connections with the profession, within mainstream university
its outlooks on the cosmos, on beauty, goodness, truth, justice, law and governance.
Yet, judging the intercultural role of architecture is contingent upon reflections that
developments within 20th century philosophy, and its ‘linguistic turn’, facilitated the
the nineteenth century, and their integration in physics. Arithmetic and algebraic
This state of affairs unfurled in parallel with the focus on the play of language in
‘Continental philosophical thought’, which shifted away from the exact sciences and
‘reality’. Historically, the textual served as a source of inspiration to the visual and
plastic arts; particularly in its scriptural manuscripts and codices. This association
with the letters was not separated from the classical epistemic role assigned to the
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study of reality and nature via the agency of geometrical visualisations, or the belief
in their veridical qualities in terms of securing a firm ground for the construction of
rational knowledge.
constitute ‘scientific disciplines’ that study signs and symbols, and can thus offer
unclear how a transition takes place from the focus on natural language, its
grammatical structures, its interrelated systems of signs, and its modes of generating
meaning, into the spheres of their applicability within architectural analytics. Even if
such ‘scientific disciplines’ can guide certain domains of research in architecture and
its ‘play of signifiers’, their role cannot replace the need of architectural thought to be
more directly engaged with the exact and mathematical sciences; and especially with
fields focused on optics, mechanics, and geometry. This calls for thinking about the
epistemic and conceptual dimensions that underpin the positivistic directions in the
information technology, the sources of renewable energy, and the policies associated
The theoretical text in our era is becoming the prime intellectual guide in
understanding design drawings and maquettes (architectural models) and the manner
they potentially translate into constructed-built forms and authorial agents of finesse
and culture. The role once played by architectural thought and inquiry, in terms of
phenomena (and even rethinking the problems of philosophy itself), through the
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agencies of geometry, optics, mechanics, the visual and plastic modelling of space
on textual analysis, without sustaining the ancient gravity of ‘the Word’ due to the
research on pathways that leave behind the historic role of being actively involved in
technology, along with the refraction of these domains within the practicing of art and
its expressive meditations on religion, its signifiers and symbols. The architect is
an honest rational and poetising interpreter of its ‘cultures’, away from facile or
insecurities in the search for epistemic and practical legitimacies. Confronted with
this picture, we proceed by way of indecision; and yet, we abide by the matter to be
thought; while also cautioning that a call for certainty in this regard constitutes an
Exodus … Phronēsis
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vernacular settings; all revealing the complexities of the architectural manifestation of
the decline, demise and fall of a people, as well as their collective renewal,
rejuvenation and rise from the ruins. The names of cities become synonymous with
the destinies of nations and civilisations, since the earliest dawns of history and its
And yet, this outlook on the ‘civitates orbis terrarum’ invites reflections on the
and geographical determinants. On symbolic levels, the ‘natural’ feeds also into the
idea of the ‘garden’, ‘the orchard’, as a paradisiacal realm, which invokes also the
Island (Patmos...), the Mount (Jabal al-nūr...), and the Cave (Ghār Hira’...); along
with the natural shrines of Gnostics and hermits; grottoes of apparitions; blessed-
spiritual meadows... All let architecture appear from afar in different lights (and at
times with the impress of disquietude and sorrowful regret) as delicate pointers to the
[Slide 6: ‘St. Simeon Stylites’; Wellcome Library] To the ‘placeless’ what are
east or west, north or south? To the ‘homeless’ what cities or gardens do architects
display? Sour-faced; does the alienated and deprived eye look with resentfulness or
coveting? Lodging in the hidden, dwelling the unseen, being a temple of divinities;
this is the journey of the self out of self; the cogito recoiling on itself in
circumambulation; brought into the circling sphere; thinking with anguish about
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penitence and resurrection are sought in patient waiting, in fasting. A liminal
clearing, a leeway, takes place in-between ecstasy and despair, weeping and laughing.
mysticism drifting away in the drunkenness of ‘Love’ from the logos of theology, the
laws of the polis. In evoking the longing adoration of ‘what presences in its absence’
more than all appearing actuality, we recollect the memory of the steadfast Syrian
ascetic, St. Simeon Stylite (Mār Sim‘ān al-‘Āmūdī; d. 459 CE), surviving for three
decades on a small platform, ever abiding at the top of a pillar; there, in the vicinities
‘cities of words’ in toil and pain, with stone, mortar, masonry; elevating edifices that
gather ‘mortals, earth, heavens, divinities’.8 Like the Prophets, Zarathustra descended
from the mountain,9 and the dwellers on the summits of Olympus were called upon to
[Slide 7: Pieter Bruegel’s ‘The Tower of Babel’; ca. 1563] Enshrined in language,
the tongue stutters in encountering the ineffable (l’indicible); for all may have been
exhaustively said, and what remains un-thought is so ever shrinking; and with it, is
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reduced the capacity of testimony, of veridical testament. In an epoch when the
NOTES
∗
This present paper offers a dense account of complementary investigations that I conducted
45.5×33cm; undated.
2
Appealing to Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit.
3
Heeding the ‘phenomenological analysis’ of Edmund Husserl (Ideen I; Ding und Raum), of
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Selected Publications
Nader El-Bizri, 'Qui-êtes vous Khôra?: Receiving Plato's Timaeus', Existentia Meletai-
Sophias 11 (2001), 473-490
___________, 'On kai khôra: Situating Heidegger between the Sophist and the Timaeus',
Studia Phaenomenologica 4 (2004), 73-98
___________, 'In Defence of the Sovereignty of Philosophy: al-Baghdadi's Critique of Ibn al-
Haytham's Geometrisation of Place', Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 17 (2007), 57-80
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