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PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
ON PLACE, LIFEWORLDS, AND LIVED
EMPLACEMENT

Phenomenological Perspectives on Place, Lifeworlds, and Lived Emplacement is a compila-

tion of seventeen previously published articles and chapters by David Seamon, one
of the foremost researchers in environmental, architectural, and place phenom-
enology. These entries discuss such topics as body-subject, the lived body, place
ballets, environmental serendipity, homeworlds, and the pedagogy of place and
placemaking.
The volume’s chapters are broken into three parts. Part I includes four entries
that consider what phenomenology offers studies of place and placemaking. These
chapters illustrate the theoretical and practical value of phenomenological concepts
like lifeworld, natural attitude, and bodily actions in place. Part II incorporates five
chapters that aim to understand place and lived emplacement phenomenologically.
Topics covered include environmental situatedness, architectural phenomenology,
environmental serendipity, and the value of phenomenology for a pedagogy of place
and placemaking. Part III presents a number of explications of real-world places
and place experience, drawing on examples from photography (André Kertész’s
Meudon), television (Alan Ball’s Six Feet Under), film (John Sayles’ Limbo and
Sunshine State), and imaginative literature (Doris Lessing’s The Four-Gated City and
Louis Bromfield’s The World We Live in).
Seamon is a major figure in environment-behavior research, particularly as that
work has applied value for design professionals. This volume will be of interest to
geographers, environmental psychologists, architects, planners, policymakers, and
other researchers and practitioners concerned with place, place experience, place
meaning, and placemaking.

David Seamon is Professor of Environment-Behavior and Place Studies in the

Department of Architecture at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, USA.
He is Editor of Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology. His most recent book is
Life Takes Place: Phenomenology, Lifeworlds, and Place Making (Routledge, 2018).
World Library of Educationalists Series

The World Library of Educationalists celebrates the important contributions to edu-

cation made by leading experts in their individual fields of study. Each scholar has
compiled a career-long collection of what they consider to be their finest pieces:
extracts from books, journals, articles, major theoretical and practical contributions,
and salient research findings.
For the first time ever the work of each contributor is presented in a single vol-
ume so readers can follow the themes and progress of their work and identify the
contributions made to, and the development of, the fields themselves.
The distinguished careers of the selected experts span at least two decades and
include Richard Aldrich, Stephen J. Ball, Elliot W. Eisner, John Elliott, Howard
Gardner, John Gilbert, Ivor F. Goodson, David Hargreaves, David Labaree and
E. C. Wragg. Each book in the series features a specially written introduction by
the contributor giving an overview of their career, contextualizing their selection
within the development of the field, and showing how their own thinking devel-
oped over time.
Religious Education in Plural Societies
The Selected Works of Robert Jackson
Robert Jackson
Thinking Philosophically About Education
The Selected Works of Richard Pring
Richard Pring
Language and the Joint Creation of Knowledge
The Selected Works of Neil Mercer
Neil Mercer
Educating Young Children: A Lifetime Journey into a Froebelian
Approach
The Selected Works of Tina Bruce
Tina Bruce
Journeys in Narrative Inquiry
The Selected Works of D. Jean Clandinin
D. Jean Clandinin
Researching Literate Lives
The Selected Works of Jerome C. Harste
Jerome C. Harste
The Sociology of Assessment: Comparative and Policy Perspectives
The Selected Works of Patricia Broadfoot
Patricia Broadfoot
For more titles in this series visit www.routledge.com/
World-Library-of-Educationalists/book-series/WORLDLIBEDU
PHENOMENOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVES ON
PLACE, LIFEWORLDS,
AND LIVED
EMPLACEMENT
The Selected Writings of David
Seamon

David Seamon
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 David Seamon
The right of David Seamon to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-35729-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-35732-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-32822-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003328223
Typeset in Bembo
by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)
CONTENTS

List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgments viii

1 An Introduction: Going Places 1

PART I
The Value of Phenomenology for Studying Place 13

2 Lived Bodies, Place, and Phenomenology 15

3 The Wellbeing of People and Place 39

4 Body-Subject, Time-Space Routines, and Place Ballets 51

5 Whither Phenomenological Research?: Possibilities for

Environmental and Place Studies 66

PART II
Understanding Place Phenomenologically 85

6 Merleau-Ponty, Lived Body, and Place: Toward a Phenomenology

of Human Situatedness 87

7 Serendipitous Events in Place: The Weave of Bodies and

Context via Environmental Unexpectedness and Chance 113
vi Contents

8 Architecture, Place, and Phenomenology: Buildings as

Lifeworlds, Atmospheres, and Environmental Wholes 122

9 The Value of Phenomenology for a Pedagogy of Place and

Placemaking 137

10 A Phenomenological Reading of Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life

of Great American Cities 152

PART III
Places, Lived Emplacement, and Place Presence 163

11 Place, Placelessness, Insideness, and Outsideness in American

Filmmaker John Sayles’ Sunshine State 165

12 Place, Belonging, and Environmental Humility: The Experience

of “Teched” as Portrayed by American Writer Louis Bromfield 181

13 Finding One’s Place: Environmental and Human Risk in

American Filmmaker John Sayles’ Limbo 194

14 Phenomenology and Uncanny Homecomings: Homeworld,

Alienworld, and Being-at-Home in Alan Ball’s HBO Television
Series, Six Feet Under 210

15 A Phenomenology of Inhabitation: The Lived Reciprocity

between Houses and Inhabitants as Portrayed by American
Writer Louis Bromfield 223

16 Using Place to Understand Lifeworld: The Example of British

Novelist Penelope Lively’s Spiderweb 232

17 Moments of Realization: Extending Homeworld in

British-African Novelist Doris Lessing’s Four-Gated City 244

18 Looking at a Photograph—André Kertész’s 1928 Meudon:

Interpreting Aesthetic Experience Phenomenologically 260

Appendix: Other Selected Works by David Seamon (1978–2022) 272

Index 278
ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURES
9.1 Simplified rendition of the give-and-take linkages among the six
place processes 142
9.2 A more lifelike rendition of the give-and-take linkages among
the six place processes 142
9.3 Key patterns for the Meadowcreek Site Design 146
9.4 Patterns used to design a path to Ripple Ridge 147
18.1 André Kertész, Meudon, 1928 261
18.2 Word cloud of students’ single-word descriptors of Kertész’s Meudon 263

TABLES
9.1 Pattern language written for Meadowcreek 145
18.1 Descriptors of Meudon provided by 74 Kansas State University
architecture students, January 2013. 262
18.2 Author's two descriptions (1986 and 2013) of André Kertész’s 1928
photograph Meudon 265
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The chapters in this volume run from 1980 to the present. Each has been published
because of the support and goodwill of a wide range of editors and publishing
venues. I am grateful to Routledge editor Hannah Shakespeare, who supported
my earlier Life Takes Place and suggested a collection of my published writings in
the Routledge series, “World Library of Educationalists.” I also thank Routledge’s
Matthew Bickerton, who expertly shepherded this volume through production. I
want to thank the following individuals who originally sponsored the chapters in
this volume and provided them a place in journals or edited collections: Anna Grear
and Karen Morrow (Ch. 2); Kathleen Galvin (Ch. 3); Nigel Thrift (Ch. 4); Ryan
Otto (Ch. 5); Thomas Hünefeldt and Annika Schlitte (Ch. 6); Alessandro Gattara,
Sarah Robinson, and Davide Ruzzon (Ch. 7); Janet Donohoe (Ch. 8); Gert
Biesta, Andrew Foran, Patrick Howard, and Tone Saevi (Ch. 9); Conn Holohan
and Elizabeth Patton (Ch. 10); Chris Lukinbeal (Ch. 11); Daniel Payne (Ch. 12);
Daniel Boscaljon (Ch. 14); Carol Manix (Ch. 15); Jefferson Rodrigues de Oliveira
(Ch. 16); Iulian Apostolescu, Stefano Marino, and Anthony Steinbock (Ch. 17);
Steen Halling, Kirsten Bach Larsen, Finn Thorbjørn Hansen, and Ann Starbæk
Bager (Ch. 18).
I dedicate this book to three individuals without whom my research and writing
efforts would be so much less than otherwise. First, I thank the late Anne Buttimer
(1933–2017), geographer, teacher, dissertation advisor, colleague, and frank critic.
If one believes in serendipitous encounters, then Anne’s arrival at Clark University
in Fall 1970, the same semester I began doctoral work, is perhaps the single most
fortuitous event in my professional career. Without what she taught me via her
intelligence, guidance, wisdom, and good sense, I would never have been able to
write the chapters of this volume.
 Acknowledgments ix

Second, I thank the late Robert Mugerauer (1945–2022), philosopher, friend,

and ecumenical thinker. Via our mutual interest in how phenomenology might
contribute to environmental and architectural research, Bob and I partook in many
academic efforts together, including our co-editing Dwelling, Place and Environment,
a volume that became a seminal reference for environmental and architectural phe-
nomenology. Though solidly versed in phenomenological thinking, especially the
work of Martin Heidegger, Bob also mastered the geographical, environmental,
and architectural literature. As his lucid writings demonstrate, he held a clear vision
of how phenomenology might offer a grounded means for better understanding
built environments. Bob gave me confidence that what we were attempting, in our
editing and organizing efforts, had great importance for making everyday worlds
better, particularly via design and planning.
Finally, I thank my wonderful architecture colleague Gary Coates, who brought
me to Kansas State University almost 40 years ago and has steadfastly supported my
teaching and research. As with meeting Anne Buttimer, my encountering Gary was
serendipitous. In 1981, he had published an edited collection, Resettling America,
the title of which was a hopeful rephrasing of writer and poet Wendell Berry’s
1977 The Unsettling of America. At the time, I was teaching at the University of
Oklahoma and always perused the university library’s “new book” shelves, which
were placed conveniently by the library entrance. One day in early 1982, I dis-
covered Gary’s book and was doubly impressed: first, because of the reassuring
title; second, because so many of the book’s chapters offered reasonable, practical
solutions to environmental and ecological problems. I wrote Gary a letter, explain-
ing how much I admired his book. We became good friends and, in spring 1983,
I accepted a tenure-track position at Kansas State and became Gary’s colleague.
I thank him for his friendship, ideas, practical advice, and critiques of my writing.

David Seamon
Manhattan, Kansas USA
September 11, 2022
1
AN INTRODUCTION
Going Places

I originally proposed “Going Places” for this book’s title, but the Routledge editors
requested a more focused phrasing, thus “phenomenological perspectives on place,
lifeworlds, and environmental emplacement.” This title better depicts the book’s
content, though “going places” marks the heart of my professional trajectory: fig-
uring out how places are significant in human life and asking how design, planning,
policy, and advocacy might facilitate better placemaking.
Though it has taken me many years to move toward clarity, my central proposition
is that places and their users are inseparable. To speak of human beings apart from
their worlds is inaccurate conceptually and destructive practically. Rather, human
beings are always already bound up with and subsumed by the worlds in which they
find themselves. In everyday experience, this non-contingent, always-present, lived
entwinement is place, place experience, and lived emplacement. Only since the early
2000s has this integral interconnectedness between people and place been recog-
nized and clarified conceptually, especially through the superlative phenomenolog-
ical work of philosophers Edward Casey (2009) and Jeff Malpas (2018).
Unfortunately, most academics and professionals continue to presuppose human
beings as somehow separate from the world in which they find themselves. For sure,
technology, globalization, and the erosion of locality and community allow many of
the world’s peoples to live in a footloose, mobile way that largely ignores potentially
imposing aspects of spatial relationships, physical worlds, and real-world places.
Even so, the vast majority of human beings today continue to be inured in place.1
At the same time, those individuals who, until recently, could live independently
of their places now confront an unsettling world that includes climate change, eco-
nomic disruption, political uncertainty, and pandemics. Suddenly, places matter again,
and this lived fact remains stubbornly true even as actual real-world places are called
into question via virtual reality, digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and ever
more sophisticated social media (Relph 2021; Seamon 2018).2
DOI: 10.4324/9781003328223-1
2 An Introduction

In the following seventeen chapters, this lived inurement in place is the central
focus and is overviewed in this introduction. I begin by highlighting the two
themes of “discovering phenomenology” and “studying place and environmental
experience.” These two themes mark the volume’s research core. Next, I discuss
chapters themselves as I have divided them into three parts: first, phenomenology
as a means for studying place; second, phenomenological insights relating to place;
third, phenomenological studies of specific place experiences and situations. I end
this introduction by discussing the current state of place and lived emplacement.
I suggest that, today, the most encouraging possibility is human beings’ realizing
the significance of places in their lives and finding ways that those places might be
regenerated, sustained, and revitalized.

Discovering Phenomenology
In 1970, I began my doctoral work in the School of Geography at Clark University
in Worcester, Massachusetts. At that time, it was assumed academically that grad-
uate students would produce positivist research grounded in hypothesis testing via
measurable variables and quantitative validation. This emphasis on scientific method
held little interest for me because it seemed to demand that the researcher arbitrar-
ily simplify and thereby unintentionally misrepresent the situation being studied,
necessarily defined via a measurable set of independent and dependent variables.
To me, this quantitative work assumed a mode of pre-decided imposition too often
out of touch with the situation that the researcher claimed to describe and explain.3
Fortunately, the early 1970s were a time when humanistic geography had come
into prominence with its emphasis on human experience and the ways that human
beings relate to their worlds environmentally and spatially (Seamon 2015; Seamon
and Larsen 2021). For humanistic geographers like Yi-Fu Tuan (1974) and Edward
Relph (1976), one could not study geography without considering how human
beings engaged with their geographical worlds experientially and existentially.
What is space-as-lived and how does it relate to place? How do people encounter
their geographical worlds, and is there some continuum of lived ways in which
environments and places are engaged with and understood? Why are places impor-
tant in human life and how can changes in places, whether supportive or under-
mining, be understood processually?
At Clark University, geographer Anne Buttimer had arrived as a post-doctoral
fellow in autumn, 1970, the same semester I began my graduate studies. Partly
because of her earlier research on French social geography, Buttimer had a strong
interest in humanistic and phenomenological themes as they had significance for
geographic study (Buttimer 1971a, 1971b, 1974, 1976, 1980). Within a semester,
I had asked her to be my doctoral advisor. Largely through Buttimer, I was intro-
duced to humanistic geography and the possibilities of phenomenology for consid-
ering such topics as place experience and environmental encounter. Also at Clark
was philosophy professor Gary Overvold, who offered seminars in phenomenolog-
ical philosophy. As a first-year graduate student, I found Overvold’s presentation of
 An Introduction 3

phenomenology to be a revelation because it offered a new way of doing research

and described aspects of my own life experience that I had never before seen iden-
tified or discussed.
Immediately, I was enamored of phenomenological method, so entirely differ-
ent from positivist reductionism because it pictured the researcher as a perpetual
beginner never assuming absolute or final knowledge. Unlike the simplistic ren-
ditions required by quantitative research, phenomenology sought an intellectual
openness with the aim of allowing the phenomenon to present itself accurately and
comprehensively. Rather than define the phenomenon in measurable parts relatable
quantitatively, the phenomenologist sought trustworthy description arising from
the phenomenon itself as much as possible.
Though I hugely admired the empathetic method of phenomenology, I was
even more attracted to its innovative articulation of human action and experience
in a way I had never heard described before. One feature of this innovative articu-
lation was an aspect of my own personal life about which I began to wonder when
I was four or five years old: How can it be that I always find myself in the midst of
a world that is always there, inescapable but responsive to possibilities? That world
shifts as events and situations shift, but a world at every moment is always already
present in some form, whether supportive, hostile, or indifferent. Assuming con-
ventional realist and idealist conceptions of the world, all the philosophy and social
science I had studied claimed that either human beings shape the world (idealism)
or the world shapes humans (realism). In contrast, phenomenologists argued that
people and world are always already present together, and each contributes to how
we understand and act in the world. This recognition of people-immersed-in-
world was a remarkable intellectual discovery because this manner of understanding
validated philosophically a quality of personal experience that I had never seen
accurately described before.
Further, I still remember the exhilaration and surprise I felt when Overvold
first introduced Husserl’s concepts of lifeworld and natural attitude. Though now
part of the academic literature for more than a 100 years, even today few academics
and professionals understand the profound implications and possibilities of these
two extraordinary concepts. On one hand, the lifeworld is the everyday world of
taken-for-grantedness, so fascinating phenomenologically because most of the time
people are unaware of their lifeworlds, which are thus unnoticed and out of sight.
On the other hand, the natural attitude is the inner co-constituent of the lifeworld:
the taken-for-granted understanding whereby the everyday world is assumed to be
as it is and as it should be. In relation to both lifeworld and natural attitude, the world
simply is as it is.
As I became more alert to phenomenology, I realized that directly related to
questions about geographical and environmental experience was the existential
grounding in lifeworld and natural attitude: How were places and environments
taken-for-granted and thus automatically setting forth an unquestioned grounding
of human lives? If places are integral to how people understand themselves per-
sonally, socially, and culturally, how might this taken-for-granted embeddedness be
4 An Introduction

described and perhaps drawn upon to sustain better human lives? How did qualities
of the physical environment contribute to this taken-for-grantedness of human life,
and how could researchers and practitioners draw on this taken-for-grantedness as it
might be improved via design, planning, and policy? Phenomenological possibilities
provoke these and related questions that underlie the chapters in this book.4

Studying Place and Environmental Experience

Finding phenomenology set me on an academic trajectory that I would follow
throughout my professional career. My aim became understanding geographical
and environmental aspects of lifeworlds and natural attitudes. Though there was a
wide range of potential topics, I eventually settled on understanding everyday envi-
ronmental experience and the significance of places in human beings’ day-to-day
lives. I came to this research interest mostly through Buttimer, who had focused on
the place theme in her earlier writings (Buttimer 1969, 1971b). In the two years
before arriving at Clark as a post-doctoral fellow, she had conducted research on
four housing projects in Glasgow, Scotland. She focused on the residential satisfac-
tion of the project residents, most of whom were working-class families relocated
from slum-clearance districts. The research aim was to determine whether official
planning standards made a difference in residential satisfaction. What was intriguing
about Buttimer’s study was its conceptual underpinnings: She had envisioned three
interconnected ways environmentally and socially to structure the interpretations of
resident responses: patterns of territorial identification, everyday activity networks,
and environmental images (Buttimer 1972). I found this threefold structuring of
place experience unusual and innovative because it portrayed the residents’ situation
in a multimodal way that seemed attuned to everyday lifeworlds.5
As I continued my doctoral work under Buttimer’s direction, the emphasis on
place, place experience, and place meaning became progressively central. Humanistic
geographer Yi-Fu Tuan’s Topophilia, a book on positive place attachment, was
published in 1974; and phenomenological geographer Edward Relph’s Place and
Placelessness, a phenomenology of place, was published in 1976. The latter work was
central to envisioning my dissertation, which became a phenomenological explica-
tion of a phenomenon I labeled “everyday environmental ­experience”—“the sum
total of a person’s firsthand involvements with the geographical world in which he
or she typically lives” (Seamon 1979, pp. 15–16).
That work made ‘place’ a center of research attention, a focus I have brought
forward in most of my research and writings since A Geography of the Lifeworld was
published in 1979. What is perhaps most encouraging about the place concept is
the way it has solidified over the years, particularly through the work of Casey and
Malpas. In the 1970s, place was largely understood as one portion of individual and
group identity; it was pictured as one aspect of human meaning that was subjec-
tive and shifting according to the particular person or group (Manzo and Divine-
Wright 2021). The work of Casey and Malpas in the early 2000s offered a radically
new interpretation of the inescapable importance of place in human life. In these
 An Introduction 5

philosophers’ understanding, place was ontologically an aspect of human being: As

Casey (2009, p. 14) made the point directly, “To be is to be in place.” This new way
of interpreting place was revolutionary conceptually because it presupposes that
people and place are one lived whole; to break this wholeness changes both places
and the individuals associated with those places. Even in a world of globalization,
mobility, and dramatic technological changes, the inertia of places remains signif-
icant. One must recognize that there is much about human wellbeing integrally
related to place and lived emplacement.6

Part I. The Value of Phenomenology for Studying Place

In a range of ways, all the following seventeen chapters consider place, place expe-
rience, and lived experience. The four chapters in Part I discuss phenomenology
broadly and consider its value for place and placemaking. Chapter 2, “Lived Bodies,
Place, and Phenomenology,” was first published in the Journal of Human Rights and
the Environment for a special 2013 issue on human bodies and material space. This
chapter introduces the phenomenological concepts of lifeworld, lived bodies, and
environmental embodiment. I explain why I became keen on the phenomenologi-
cal concept of lifeworld and how it relates to place and placemaking. Written origi-
nally for a 2018 edited collection on human wellbeing, Chapter 3, “The Wellbeing
of People and Place,” considers the lived relationship between place experience and
the quality of human life. The chapter introduces Edmund Husserl’s concept of
homeworld, a theme that appears several times in later chapters. One’s homeworld
is a portion of her lifeworld: The everyday, taken-for-granted world in which she
feels most herself and “at home.”
Chapter 4, “Body-Subject, Time-Space Routines, and Place Ballets,” was orig-
inally published in The Human Experience of Space and Place, a volume I co-edited
with Anne Buttimer (Buttimer and Seamon 1980). This chapter is a synopsis of sev-
eral chapters published in A Geography of the Lifeworld (Seamon 1979). Drawing on
the phenomenological philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the chapter illustrates
the importance of the lived body in human experience, including what I called
“place ballet”—a regularity of place grounded in the bodily habituality of users.7
The last chapter in Part I is “Whither Phenomenology?” Originally written in
2020 for the 30th anniversary issue of Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology,
this chapter considers how phenomenological research is currently understood in
the human sciences and what that understanding might mean for architectural and
environmental concerns. The chapter illustrates the wide range of ways in which
phenomenology is interpreted today and points to the recent development of
“post” and “critical” phenomenology, which aims to integrate phenomenological
and post-structural insights. I conclude that this integrative effort is largely unneces-
sary because the post-structural emphasis on differences and inequities can be ade-
quately addressed by conventional phenomenological methods and principles. I end
this chapter by calling into question the current research emphasis on globalization,
mobility, and interconnections at the expense of localities, places, and rootedness.
6 An Introduction

Part II. Understanding Place Phenomenologically

The five chapters of Part II consider conceptual and practical means whereby places
and lived emplacement might be understood phenomenologically, including in rela-
tion to architecture, design pedagogy, and urban placemaking. Originally written
for an edited collection on place situatedness published in 2013, Chapter 6 consid-
ers the wide-ranging value of phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s thinking
for understanding human actions in place. I draw on accounts from Colombian
novelist Gabriel García Márquez and from my own everyday experiences to illus-
trate how Merleau-Ponty’s concept of lived body has significant implications for
understanding environmental behaviors, routines, and encounters. Chapter 7, writ-
ten originally in 2021 for the Italian architectural journal Interweavings, draws on
themes in my Life Takes Place (Seamon 2018) to examine unexpected environmental
events and experiences. The chapter considers contrasting examples of place seren-
dipity—on one hand, the fortunate happenstance event of meeting one’s life part-
ner by chance because of place; on the other hand, the unfortunate happenstance
event of losing one’s life because of place.
Chapters 8, 9, and 10 of Part II point toward the practical value of understanding
place and lived emplacement. Originally published in the 2017 edited collection,
Phenomenology and Place, Chapter 8 discusses the practical value of phenomenolog-
ical thinking for architecture by considering designed environments in terms of
lifeworlds, atmospheres, and environmental wholes. Chapter 9, written for a 2021
edited volume on phenomenological dimensions of pedagogy, grounds these possi-
bilities by illustrating the value of a place-grounded pedagogy for an architectural-de-
sign studio project involving an environmental education center in Arkansas’ Ozark
mountains. This chapter draws on place-as-process as well as architect Christopher
Alexander’s design method of “pattern language” to illustrate how practical design
can be grounded via phenomenological and related thinking. Chapter 10 was orig-
inally published in the online urban magazine Mediapolis in 2019 and argues that
the seminal work of urbanist Jane Jacobs can be reinterpreted phenomenologically
to illustrate an urban rendition of lived emplacement. My notion of place ballet was
originally drawn from Jacobs, and I discuss how habitual place regularity is central
in Jacobs’ work. Chapters 8, 9, and 10 all illustrate how broad phenomenological
principles relating to lifeworlds and lived emplacement can be useful conceptual,
pedagogical, and practical guides for real-world placemaking.

Part III. Places, Lived Emplacement, and Place Presence

The eight chapters of Part III highlight my research interest in specific place expe-
riences and specific modes of lived emplacement. These chapters illustrate the
wide range of ways in which people are inured in their places and lifeworlds. The
chapters are arranged broadly from entries that deal with larger-scaled places and
natural environments to houses, at-homeness, and outsiders to place attempting to
become insiders. These chapters demonstrate how the phenomenological concepts
 An Introduction 7

of lifeworld, natural attitude, homeworld, and alienworld provide valuable thematic

foci for understanding specific places, place situations, and place experiences. The
focus is how, phenomenologically, researchers might clarify the vast subtlety of
lifeworld possibilities and the vast range of ways in which human beings relate
themselves to places experientially and existentially.
The eight chapters of Part III demonstrate the value of artistic media like films,
novels, short stories, and photographs for concretizing human experience and for
providing real-world groundings to identify more general aspects of human life and
place events. Two chapters illustrate the value of film for explicating phenomenol-
ogies of place. Originally published in 2008, Chapter 11 identifies the modes of
insideness and outsideness in American filmmaker John Sayles’ 2000 Sunshine State¸
a compelling cinematic portrait of competing place conceptions in 21st-century
Florida. In a complementary way, Chapter 13, published in a 2019 volume on place
and spirituality, draws on Sayles’ 1999 Limbo, a film about current-day Alaska, to
explicate the existential concepts of authenticity and inauthenticity as they relate
to contrasting visions of what the natural world might become if place replicas and
simulacra of the natural world should replace real-world environments.
Two chapters in Part III draw on short stories by twentieth-century American
writer Louis Bromfield to consider questions relating to lived qualities of homes
and natural environments. Chapter 12 was originally published in Writing the Land,
a 2008 edited collection dealing with American nature writing. This chapter exam-
ines two 1944 short stories by Bromfield that depict intimate encounters with place
and the natural world. Chapter 15 was originally a conference presentation for the
2008 annual meeting of the American Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA).
The focus is a 1939 short story by Bromfield that considers how houses shape and
are shaped by their inhabitants. Originally published in a 2013 edited collection on
“uncanny houses and homes,” Chapter 14 considers a house and at-homeness as
pictured in Alan Ball’s Six Feet Under, an early-2000s television series focusing on
characters who operate and reside in a Los Angeles funeral home. This chapter’s
central question is how a conservative, stabilizing quality like at-homeness can be
a starting point and impetus for openness to “otherness” and engaged personal and
social change.
Chapters 16 and 17 of Part III consider various ways in which outsiders to place
become insiders or remain outsiders. Originally published in 2021, Chapter 16
draws on British writer Penelope Lively’s Spiderweb, a 1998 novel describing one
outsider’s efforts to inhabit a place—a fictitious present-day village in the south-
western British county of Somerset. Originally published in 2022, Chapter 17
focuses on homeworld and alienworld as portrayed in The Four-Gated City, a 1969
novel by African-British novelist Doris Lessing. I use the novel to argue that one
way in which a taken-for-granted homeworld can be extended is via moments of
revelation in which a person suddenly realizes new aspects of her taken-for-granted
world not seen or understood before.
The last chapter of the volume was originally published in 2014 and consid-
ers one celebrated photograph of André Kertész, the eminent twentieth-century
8 An Introduction

American-Hungarian photographer well known for his perceptive images of every-

day, taken-for-granted life. The focus is Meudon, his 1928 photograph of an indus-
trial suburb of Paris. This street scene is remarkable because all the parts seem of a
whole. The chapter’s central question is how one can explain the considerable dif-
ference between my understanding of the photograph and that of students I teach
in a required, second-year architecture course. I explicate these differences via the
helpful conceptual language of British philosopher Henri Bortoft, who speaks of
assimilation, appropriation, and participatory understanding.

Three Aspects of Places

In Life Takes Place (Seamon 2018), I argue that places incorporate three interrelated
aspects: (1) environmental ensemble; (2) people-in-place; and (3) common presence. The
environmental ensemble is the physical setting of place—its environmental, spatial,
and geographical foundations, including topography, geology, weather, landscape,
roads, streets, parks, buildings, furnishings, and the like. Most of the time, the envi-
ronmental ensemble is passive in relation to human events, but its manner of pres-
ence and quality of design can play a major role in the kinds of experiences, actions,
and meanings with which a place is associated. The second aspect is p­ eople-in-place—
the individuals and groups associated with a place, whether residents, users, or pas-
sersby. Most of the time, places do not exist without human beings who experience
and know those places and make them what they are. The third aspect of place is
a more subtle, less effable lived quality that I called common presence—the relative
spatial and environmental “togetherness” of a place that grounds and evokes its less
tangible expression of atmosphere, character, and sense of place. Common presence
relates to the degree of life and ambience of a place—for example, the “West-End-
ness” of London’s West End, the “Paris-ness” of Paris, the “Capri-ness” of Capri, or
the “Japan-ness” of Japan. The major point about common presence is that human
and environmental elements gathered together spatially evoke a specific manner of
presence and sensibility, sometimes wonderfully pleasant in expression and some-
times unpleasant, inert, or even threatening.
All the chapters in this volume make a range of references to these three aspects
of place. Some chapters point to the importance of the environmental ensemble in
place experience and place meaning—for example, the impinging presence of the
Alaskan wilderness or Jane Jacobs’ diverse, exuberant city neighborhoods marked
by short blocks, primary uses, and a wide range of building types. One striking
example is described in Chapter 1, when I discuss sociologist Eric Klinenberg’s
study of how contrasting physical features of two adjacent Chicago neighbor-
hoods contributed to dramatically different death rates during the heat wave that
hit the city in 1995. For the Ozark environmental education center described in
Chapter 9, the environmental ensemble took center stage as architecture students
used Christopher Alexander’s pattern language to conceptualize and generate their
design. Their work drew on the Ozark site’s natural features to ground and envi-
sion design elements like the placement of new buildings and the layout of trails
 An Introduction 9

minimizing environmental damage. The finalized proposal illustrates how an envi-

ronmental ensemble can be protected, extended, and intensified via thoughtful
planning and design.
Other entries in the volume give central attention to people-in-place. Chapters
describe how people-in-place work to make themselves at home, or how quali-
ties of one’s lived body play a central role in everyday environmental experiences.
Several chapters picture outsiders working to become insiders, or dissatisfied insiders
who seek some other, more appropriate place. The chapter on John Sayles’ Alaska
film Limbo illustrates how people-in-place sometimes understand the same place in
contrasting ways. Sayles presents some characters who accept without question the
collapse of traditional Alaskan ways of life, while other characters, mostly outsiders,
aim to profit from that collapse by misguided business schemes that would under-
mine the integrity of Alaskan communities and unsettle and destroy the natural
environment.
As the third aspect of place, common presence is largely ineffable and impossible
to specify or facilitate directly. The striking sense of street presence evoked in André
Kertész’s photograph of Meudon is one real-world depiction of common presence.
Jane Jacobs’ street ballets and urban diversity sustain a powerful common presence
in urban situations. In the chapter on phenomenology and architecture, I point
to ways that architectural design might propel a robust common presence via des-
ignable features like appropriate pathway layouts and integrated building elements
grounded in environmental wholeness. The most explicit depictions of common
presence are in the two chapters discussing place in Louis Bromfield’s short stories.
The imposing presence of the Dakota pond or the Basque farmhouse both evoke,
in Bromfield’s evocative phrase, a place that “grows around the heart” (Bromfield
1939, p. 226). This strong emotional attachment relating to the pond and the farm-
house arises from and intensifies the singular common presence of these two places.
A central question for our time is how, for specific places, common presence might
be activated and strengthened (Seamon 2018).

Robust Places and Husserl’s Renewal

At the end of Chapter 17, I explain that, in the early 1920s, phenomenology
founder Edmund Husserl published three articles on “renewal” for a Japanese jour-
nal. Husserl spoke of the need for a “better humanity” (Steinbock 1995, p. 200).
He pointed out that, if there is to be a “genuine human culture,” there must be
continuous renewal, which he described as doing “that which is the best possible at
a given time and, in this way, [becoming] better and better according to the present
possibility” (Husserl 1989, p. 36; quoted in Steinbock 1995, p. 203).
I hope that the chapters in this volume contribute to Husserl’s renewal by pro-
voking a better understanding of the non-contingent importance of places and
place experience in human life. If our world is to become better, then one impor-
tant constituent is better human places. How these better places are to be envi-
sioned and actualized is a hugely difficult question. But an answer to the question
10 An Introduction

assumes that people already realize that they are place-bound creatures and that so
much of whether human life is good or bad, worthwhile or destructive, is grounded
in qualities of place, lived emplacement, and constructive placemaking.8

Notes
1 For example, a 2022 study found that 80% of young American adults at age 26 have
moved less than a 100 miles from where they grew up; only 10% have moved more than
500 miles away. The research was based on census and tax data for individuals born in the
U.S. between 1984 and 1992. The study was conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau in
collaboration with Harvard University (Torchinsky 2022, p. A3). An earlier study found
that almost 40% of Americans have never left their hometown; another 20% have never
left their home state (Cohn and Morin 2008).
2 Philosopher Albert Borgmann (1992, p. 92) emphasizes that reality and virtual reality
are crucially different because the former “encumbers and confines.” Virtual reality may
superficially seem real but can readily circumvent such inescapable, real-world constraints
as obligations, demands, consequences, and material resources. Borgmann identifies sev-
eral qualities that activate enhancements, distortions, or reductions of what “experience”
is in virtual reality. One such quality is brilliance, the way virtual reality can intensify an
experience’s attractive aspects and reduce or eliminate their unpleasant, uninteresting,
or irrelevant aspects. Another quality is disposability, via which virtual users can end the
virtual experience at any time and feel no responsibility for the virtual “events” and
“experiences” in which they were involved (see Borgmann 1992, pp. 87–192; Borgmann
1999; Seamon 2018, pp. 62–63; Greenfield 2017, p. 83).
3 The Clark graduate programs in Geography and Psychology were centers of innovation
in the 1970s, partly because there was a laudable effort to institute an interdisciplinary
Ph.D. between the two fields—“environmental psychology,” as the psychologists called
it; and “behavioral geography,” in the geographers’ phrasing. The result was that these
programs attracted a stellar gathering of faculty and students (Canter and Craig 1987).
I discuss the Clark experience in Seamon 1980, 1987, 2015; also see Buttimer and
Seamon 1980.
4 One excellent explication of lifeworld and natural attitude (as well as homeworld and
alienworld) is the first chapter in Luft 2011.
5 In criticizing the emphasis on environmental cognition that dominated environment-­
behavior thinking at that time, Buttimer wrote that the “cerebral orientation struck me
as being too narrow, especially for the kinds of curiosities that were raised in my Glasgow
study. There were emotional, moral, aesthetic, and habitual aspects to [residents’] taken-
for-granted images of home that could not be adequately described in the language of
‘mental maps’. I argued for a focus on environmental experience rather than environ-
mental perception ….” (Buttimer 1987, p. 311).
6 Philosopher Jeff Malpas (2018, p. 30) argued that the early work on place by humanistic
geographers was subjectivist because place was understood as a subjective representation
inside experiencers without existential or ontological connection to the objective environ-
ment outside. He explained that this way of understanding person-place relatedness merely
conjoined “the idea of a part of objective physical space with the subjective emotional …
quality or set of qualities …” He suggested that these geographers only understood place
as “a purely psychological or experiential construct” (Malpas 2018, p. 44, n. 35). This crit-
icism is somewhat unfair, since Buttimer, Tuan, and Relph all emphasized the non-con-
tingent, existential bonding of people and place. For example, Relph (1976, pp. 1, 50)
wrote that “to be human is to have and know your place …. [W]e are always at the centre
of our perceptual space and hence in a place” Particularly prescient is Tuan’s 1965 article,
“‘Environment’ and ‘World’,” in which he argued that a world of any person is a field of
relations: “Only a being capable of having relations, only a being of whom ‘inner’ as well
as ‘outer’ may be predicated, has a world” (Tuan 1965, p. 7).
 An Introduction 11

7 Recent research on place ballet includes Broadway and Engelhardt (2019), Kubla (2021),
Pearce (2019), Rink (2019), and van Eck and Pijpers (2016).
8 Two of the best current overviews of effective placemaking are Carmona (2021) and van
Nes and Yamu (2021).

References
Borgmann, A. (1992). Crossing the postmodern divide. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Borgmann, A. (1999). Holding on to reality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Broadway, M. J. and Engelhardt, O. (2019). Designing places to be alone or together: A look
at independently owned Minneapolis coffeehouses. Space and Culture, 22, 1–18.
Bromfield, L. (1939). It takes all kinds. New York: Harper and Brothers.
Buttimer, A. (1969). Social space in interdisciplinary perspective, Geographical Review, 59,
417–426.
Buttimer, A. (1971a). Society and milieu in the French geographic tradition. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Buttimer, A. (1971b). Sociology and planning. Town Planning Review, 42, 135–180.
Buttimer, A. (1972). Social space and the planning of residential areas. Environment and
Behavior, 4, 279–318.
Buttimer, A. (1974). Values in geography (resource paper no. 24). Washington, DC: Association
of American Geographers.
Buttimer, A, (1976). Grasping the dynamism of lifeworld. Annals of the Association of American
Geographers, 66, 277–292.
Buttimer, A. (1980). Home, reach, and the sense of place. In Buttimer, A. and Seamon, D.,
eds. The human experience of space and place (pp. 66–187). London: Croom Helm.
Buttimer, A, (1987). A social topography of home and horizon. Journal of Environmental
Psychology, 7, 307–319.
Buttimer, A. and Seamon, D., eds., (1980). The human experience of space and place. London:
Croom Helm [reprinted, Routledge Revivals, 2015].
Canter, D. and Craig, K.H., eds., (1987). Special Clark University issue, Journal of
Environmental Psychology, 7 (4).
Carmona, M. (2021). Public places, urban spaces: The dimensions of urban design, 3rd edn.
London: Routledge.
Casey, E. (2009). Getting back into place, 2nd edn. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Cohn, D. and Morin, R. (2008). Who moves? Who stays put? Where’s home? Pew demographic
trends. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.
Greenfield, A. (2017). Radical technologies: The design of everyday life. London: Verso.
Husserl, E. (1989). Nenon, T. and Sepp H.-R., eds., Aufsätze und vorträge (1911–1921), Vol.
XXVII. Boston: Kluwer.
Kubla, Q. R. (2021). City living: How urban spaces and urban dwellers make one another. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Luft, S. (2011). Subjectivity and lifeworld in transcendental phenomenology. Evanston, Illinois:
Northwestern University Press.
Malpas, J. (2018). Place and experience, 2nd edn. London: Routledge.
Manzo, L. and Divine-Wright, P., eds. (2021). Place attachment, 2nd edn. London: Routledge.
Pearce, L. (2019). Mobility, memory and the lifecourse in twentieth-century literature and culture.
London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Relph, E. (1976). Place and placelessness. London: Pion [reprinted with new introduction,
2008].
12 An Introduction

Relph, E. (2021). Electronically mediated sense of place. In C. M. Raymond, L. C. Manzo,

and D. R. Williams, eds., Changing senses of place: Navigating global challenges (pp. 247–258).
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Rink, B. (2019). Place ballet in a South African minibus taxi rank. In D. Agbiboa, ed.,
Transport, transgression and politics in African cities (pp. 81–98). New York: Routledge.
Seamon, D. (1979). A geography of the lifeworld. New York: St. Martin’s [reprinted, Routledge
Revivals, 2015].
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Seamon, D. (1987). Phenomenology and the Clark experience. Journal of Environmental
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Seamon, D. (2015). Lived emplacement and the locality of being: A return to humanistic
geography? In S. C. Aitken and G. Valentine, eds., Approaches to Human Geography, 2nd
edn. (pp. 35–48). Los Angeles: SAGE.
Seamon, D. (2018). Life takes place: Phenomenology, lifeworlds, and placemaking. London:
Routledge.
Seamon, D. and Larsen, T. (2021). Humanistic geography. in D. Richardson, ed., International
encyclopedia of geography [online]. New York: Wiley.
Steinbock, A. (1995). Home and beyond: Generative phenomenology after Husserl. Evanston,
Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
Torchinsky, R. (2022). Most young adults lived not too far from home. Wall Street Journal,
July 25, p. A3.
Tuan, Y.-F. (1965). “Environment” and “World.” The Professional Geographer, 17 (5), 6–7.
Tuan, Y.-F. (1974). Topophilia. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
van Eck, D. & Pijpers, R. (2016). Encounters in place ballet: A phenomenological perspec-
tive on older people’s walking routines in an urban park.” Area, 49, 166–173.
van Nes, A. and Yamu, C. (2021). Introduction to space syntax in urban studies. Cham,
Switzerland: Springer.
PART I
The Value of Phenomenology
for Studying Place
2
LIVED BODIES, PLACE, AND
PHENOMENOLOGY

Most simply, phenomenology is the description and interpretation of human

­experience.1 As philosopher Robert Sokolowski (2000, p. 2) wrote, “Phenomenology
is the study of human experience and of the ways things present themselves to
us in and through such experience.”2 A central focus is the lifeworld—the typical,
­taken-for-granted context of everyday experience of which, most of the time, we
are unaware. Phenomenologists argue that an integral structure of the lifeworld is
the lived body which, through unique modes of encounter and interaction with the
world at hand, contributes to the generative structure of each person’s experiences
and lifeways. In this chapter, I review the notion of lifeworld and highlight the
significance of the lived body in human experience. I suggest that lived bodies are
in an intimate relationship with the worlds in which they find themselves. This sit-
uation can at least be partly described in terms of environmental embodiment. In turn,
environmental embodiment points to the crucial significance of places in human life.
I examine the dynamic relations between lived body and place by highlighting how
each interanimates the other.

Encountering the Lifeworld

Even as a child, I remember wondering how the world could always be present
before me—just happening, no one or nothing doing anything—the world just
unfolding moment by moment, always already there, one instant before I could catch
it. As a doctoral student, I came to phenomenology academically because it was the
only conceptual tradition I could find that recognized this remarkable instantaneity
of the world and gave it voice in words and concepts (Seamon 1979, 1987).
One ontological and epistemological dilemma faced by phenomenological
researchers is how to describe in accurate academic language this always-already

DOI: 10.4324/9781003328223-3
16 The Value of Phenomenology

givenness of the world at hand. From a phenomenological perspective, there is no

dualistic person/world or people/environment relationship. Instead, there is only a
people-world immersion, entwinement, and commingling whereby what is con-
ventionally understood as two conceptually—person/world, subject/object—is
realized as one existentially—person-intertwined-with-world. How thoroughly and
fairly to identify and depict this lived wholeness of people-in-world is a challenging
phenomenological problem.
One of the most precise and insightful terms to portray this lived wholeness is
lifeworld, which refers to the normally unnoticed, automatic unfolding of everyday
life as it happens for the people involved as well as for the world in which that
unfolding happens (Finlay 2011; Luft 2011). In other words, there is a lifeworld for
each experiencing person but there is also a lifeworld of the place or situation that
houses these individual lifeworlds and is, totally or in part, shaped and sustained by
those individual lifeworlds just as they, totally or in part, are shaped and sustained
by the larger lifeworlds of which they are a part. As a conceptual term, ‘lifeworld’
is invaluable because it insulates one from falling back into the dualistic phrasing
of people apart from world or person apart from environment. I still remember
vividly the magical moment as a graduate student when I first discovered ‘lifeworld’
and realized its immense conceptual and practical power for describing the auto-
matic, unfolding structure of human life and experience. I deeply respect the word
because it speaks accurately to the lived immersion of human beings in worlds—to
the dynamic synergy of all the lived parts of a piece as they unfold. As phenomeno-
logical founder Edmund Husserl wrote,

[T]he lifeworld … is always already there, existing in advance for us, the “ground”
of all praxis whether theoretical or extratheoretical. The world is pregiven to
us … not occasionally but always and necessarily as the universal field of all
actual and possible praxis, as horizon. To live is always to live-in-certainty-
of-the-world.
(Husserl 1970, p. 142)

As this passage suggests, the lifeworld existentially is simply there. Always. Though its
particular constitution and significance shift from situation to situation, the lifeworld
is the latent, normally unexamined givenness of experiences, situations, events, and
places. The lifeworld typically goes forward without self-conscious intervention
or purposive design; it incorporates an unnoticed, unprompted expectedness. As
I prepare morning coffee before I go to bed, I fill the counter pitcher with water,
pull out a paper filter, take two tablespoons of coffee from the coffee tin, place the
filter in the coffee maker, close the lid, push the coffee maker to the back of the
counter, and turn toward the bathroom where I floss and brush my teeth—this
entire bedtime routine just happens night after night and requires or wills little self-­
conscious attention. Much, but not all, of the lifeworld is such repetitive, pedestrian
routines unfolding predictably with no or minimal regulatory guidance. Most of the
 Lived Bodies, Place, and Phenomenology 17

time, lifeworlds just happen, and this automatic unfolding is so even for the conscious
behaviors and willed actions that are a taken-for-granted portion of more deliberate
lifeworld happenings (Moran 2011, 2014; Seamon 1979).
In this sense, lifeworlds are typically regular and, to an outsider, perhaps seem-
ingly humdrum or even dreary, though for each person his or her lifeworld is
his or her life and mostly a transparent, lived trajectory that is what it is and, for
the most part, rarely changes and cannot be otherwise (Relph 1976, pp. 41–42).
Only when some taken-for-granted aspect of a lifeworld shifts (for example, my
coffee machine breaks, or my house and neighborhood are severely damaged by
a storm) does the lifeworld become apparent (my considerable dependence on a
morning cup of coffee or the sustaining everdayness of my home and local envi-
ronment now dramatically out of kilter because of the storm’s destruction). But
even this temporary awareness of what-my-lifeworld-was is within the lifeworld
(and will fall back out of awareness once I replace my coffee maker or repair my
home and see my neighborhood return to a mode of life akin to what it was
before the storm).

The Natural Attitude, Epoché, and Phenomenological Reductions

Unless they shift in some noticeable way, we are almost always, in our typical
human lives, unaware of our lifeworlds as our lives unfold in an everyday manner in
the only way we expect them to be. This typically unquestioned acceptance of the
lifeworld is what Husserl called the natural attitude (Moran 2005, pp. 7, 54–56).3 In
this taken-for-granted mode of living and understanding, we “accept the world and
its forms of givenness as simply there, ‘on hand’ for us” (Moran 2005, p. 7). Because
of the natural attitude, we habitually assume that the world as we know and experi-
ence it is the only world. The essential feature of the natural attitude is to:

put in abeyance any contradiction to the naïve realism of the everyday assump-
tions of ordinary life. Phenomena anomalous to the assumptions of the nat-
ural attitude are put aside. It tellingly exhibits intolerance to the strange, the
weird, or the uncanny, as much as it suspends the reality of personal death, or
sexuality, or even social phenomena such as the pervasive economic injustice
that surrounds us.
(Morley 2010, p. 301)

One aim of phenomenological research is to disclose and describe the various lived
structures and dynamics of the natural attitude and lifeworld—for example, the
mostly unnoticed importance of the lived body and places in people’s daily lives. In
working toward a self-conscious understanding of the lifeworld and natural attitude,
Husserl aimed toward the possibility of epoché—a liberated mode of encountering
and understanding whereby we realize that experience and the world of that expe-
rience might be otherwise, both for ourselves and for others with similar or vastly
18 The Value of Phenomenology

different lifeworlds and natural attitudes. Phenomenological psychologist James

Morley (2010, p. 296) suggested that the epoché is “a profoundly challenging and
painfully difficult undertaking,” the aim of which is to “hold back our existential
commitment to the very existence of the world, i.e., the reality positing power at
the very core of consciousness itself ” (Morley 2010, pp. 295–296).
Drawing on phenomenological sociologist Alfred Schutz (1962, p. 229), Morley
(2010, p. 301) pointed out that there is, paradoxically, an epoché of the natural
attitude whereby the ordinary experiencer assumes that the world can only be the
way he encounters and understands it: “What he puts in brackets is doubt that the
world and its objects might be otherwise than it appears to him.” This epoché of
the natural attitude presupposes, for each person, a range of assumed worlds, each
“distinguished from one another through a sort of amnesiac barrier that is the nat-
ural attitude.” Morley wrote:

Like soap bubbles, each region of meaning is self-contained until contact

with another region pops one bubble into another. There is the world of
aggressive office politics that bursts when one enters a place of religious wor-
ship, a world of fantasy or daydreaming that ceases when I am forced to attend
to the car I am driving ….
(Morley 2010, pp. 301–302)

The intellectual device Husserl developed to circumvent the natural attitude and
thereby to bring lifeworlds to more articulated presence is the phenomenological reduc-
tion, which refers to ways to facilitate understanding whereby the phenomenon of
interest can be spotlighted in increasingly stronger light (Moran 2000, p. 78; 2005,
pp. 26–28). On one hand, Husserl spoke of eidetic reductions, whereby one sus-
pends as completely as possible all assumptions about the phenomenon or considers
its nature from a particular thematic or disciplinary point of reference (as I will do
shortly in regard to the lived body and place). On the other hand, Husserl spoke
of a broader, deeper, lived understanding of the phenomenon—what he called the
transcendental reduction, whereby I seek to suspend my taken-for-granted standpoint
as a cognizant being and place myself in a more comprehensive and empathetic
encounter with all phenomena and with my own existence as I live it (Moran 2000,
pp. 146–154).
Morley (2010, p. 297) pointed out that poststructuralists and social construc-
tionists have incorrectly interpreted the transcendental reduction “as an absolute
standpoint that [is] itself another variation of the foundationalism (or the metaphys-
ics of presence) of scientism on the one hand or romantic idealism on the other.”
Grounding his argument in the most recently published Husserl texts (Zahavi 2003;
Weldon 2003), Morley (2010, p. 298) contended that this postmodernist inter-
pretation is erroneous because Husserl’s “transcendental” did not involve “an iso-
lated disembodied ego extending at a distance above the lived world of perceptual
experience.” Rather, especially in his later work, Husserl’s transcendental reduction
 Lived Bodies, Place, and Phenomenology 19

presupposed a field of existence always incorporating the bodily dimensions of

human life: “corporeal experience is itself, for Husserl, the transcendental ground
…. [T]he living present, which is the carnal presence of the body, is a spontaneously
self-generating act” (Morley 2010, p. 298). As Husserl wrote,

How the consciousness originates through which my living body neverthe-

less acquires the ontic validity of one physical body among others, and how,
on the other hand, certain physical bodies in my perceptual field come to
count as living bodies, living bodies of “alien” ego-subjects—these are now
necessary questions.
(Husserl 1970, p. 107)

The Lived Body, Environmental Embodiment, and Body-Subject

If Husserl was one of the first twentieth-century philosophers to recognize phe-
nomenologically that all human experience is always corporeal, it is French phe-
nomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962), who more thoroughly probed the
bodily dimension of human being and life.4 Merleau-Ponty’s foundational concept
is perception, defined as the immediate, taken-for-granted givenness of the world
(Cerbone 2008; Evans 2008). In turn, perception is grounded existentially in the
lived body—a body that simultaneously experiences, acts in, and knows a world
that, normally, responds with immediate pattern, meaning, and contextual pres-
ence (Carman 2008; Cerbone 2008; Evans 2008; Seamon 2018b). Merleau-Ponty
(1962, p. 5) argued that perception is the lived grounding of human experience
and meaning. Perception is difficult to grasp and depict intellectually: first, because
its presence and significance typically lie beneath conscious cerebral awareness;
and second, because perception is almost always in the background as it draws us
out into the more organized, directed happenings of our world (Merleau-Ponty
1962, p. 58).
In moving toward a phenomenological understanding of the lived body as it
relates to place experience, one can examine the lived body’s relationship to the
physical environment and spaces in which experiencers find themselves. We can
speak of environmental embodiment—the various lived ways, sensorily and mobil-
ity-wise, that the body in its pre-reflective perceptual presence encounters and
works with the world at hand, especially environmental and place dimensions (Low
2003; Finlay 2011, Ch. 3; Seamon 2018b). Merleau-Ponty claimed that perception
involves a lived dynamic between perceptual body and world such that aspects of
that world—for example, hearing the wet softness of gurgling spring water or seeing
the cold hardness of a shiny chrome stair railing (Merleau-Ponty 1962, p. 229)—are
known because they immediately evoke in the lived body their experienced qual-
ities. Merleau-Ponty drew on the lived body to also identify a more active, motor
dimension of perception—what he termed body-subject, or pre-reflective corporeal
awareness manifested through action and typically in sync with the physical world
20 The Value of Phenomenology

in which the action unfolds (Barral 1965; Merleau-Ponty 1962; Seamon 1979,
2018b).5 Merleau-Ponty wrote:

[M]y body appears to me as an attitude directed towards a certain existing or

possible task. And indeed its spatiality is not, like that of external objects … a
spatiality of position, but a spatiality of situation …. The word “here” applied to
my body does not refer to a determinate position in relation to other positions
or to external co-ordinates, but the laying down of the first co-­ordinates, the
anchoring of the active body in an object, the situation of the body in face of
its tasks. Bodily space can be distinguished from external space and envelop
its parts instead of spreading them out ….
(Merleau-Ponty 1962, p. 100)

In this sense, body-subject is a synergy of pre-reflective but integrated gestures and

behaviors; one has mastered a specific corporeal behavior or set of behaviors when
body-subject has incorporated those behaviors into its sphere of unself-conscious
taken-for-grantedness (Merleau-Ponty 1962, pp. 138–139). This pre-reflective style
of corporeal sensibility evoked through a flow of in-sync actions points toward an
intentional bodily unfolding in the world as that world typically sustains the bodily
unfolding. Through a repertoire of unself-conscious but intentional gestures and
movements seamlessly interconnected, the body-subject automatically offers up the
behaviors and activities affording and afforded by the person’s typical lifeworld.
Referring to the concept of body-subject, other phenomenological studies
have pointed to its spatial versatility as expressed in more complex bodily ensem-
bles extending over time and space and contributing to a wider lived geography
(Allen 2004; Toombs 1995, 2000; Jacobson 2010). In my work (Seamon 1979),
I have highlighted two such bodily ensembles: first, body routines—sets of integrated
gestures, behaviors, and actions that sustain a particular task or aim, for example,
sewing on a button, doing home repair, driving a car, and so forth; and, second,
time-space routines—sets of more or less habitual bodily actions extending through
a considerable portion of time, for example, going-to-bed routines, or weekend
shopping-and-lunch routines. These extended ensembles of body-subject relate to
the lived corporeality and spatiality of place, but before I explore that relationship,
place as a phenomenological concept needs to be introduced.

The Phenomenology of Place

I next work through phenomenological possibilities for relating the lived body
and environmental embodiment to the world in which the lived body finds itself.
As I’ve already pointed out, a central ontological assumption in phenomenology
is that people and their worlds are integrally intertwined. As the large literature
on the topic suggests, one phenomenological possibility for articulating the lived
intimacy between people and world is the notion of place which, from a phenome-
nological perspective, is powerful conceptually and practically because, by its very
 Lived Bodies, Place, and Phenomenology 21

nature, it offers a way to articulate more precisely the experienced wholeness of

lifeworlds.
Phenomenologically, place can be defined as any environmental locus that draws
human experiences, actions, and meanings together spatially and temporally (Casey 2009;
Malpas 2018; Relph 1976; Seamon 2012, 2018a). By this definition, a place can
range in presence from an environmental feature or room to a complete building,
neighborhood, city, or geographical region (Cresswell 2014; Lewicka 2011, p. 211).
From a phenomenological perspective, place is not the material environment dis-
tinct from people related to it but, rather, the indivisible, typically unnoticed phe-
nomenon of person-or-people-experiencing-place. Place is typically complex in
its lived constitution, involving generative processes through which a place and its
experiences and meanings for the people associated with that place evolve, devolve,
or remain more or less the same (Seamon 2018a).
One of the most precise descriptions of the inescapable centrality of place for
human being is provided by phenomenological philosopher Edward Casey (2009,
pp. 15–16), who wrote that “[B]y virtue of its unencompassability by anything
other than itself, place is at once the limit and the condition of all that exists … To
be is to be in place.” Note the remarkable power of place that Casey claims here.
First, he contends that place is “unencompassable”’ by anything else because there
is no thing, creature, situation, event, or experience that can exist without finding
itself emplaced in some wider world, “whether the tiniest locale or the cosmos
at large”’ (Casey 2009, p. 15). In this sense, place is a limit of all existing things
because there is nothing beyond the emplaced thing or situation except another
place for some other thing or situation (as in the way, for example, that a person is
nested in a chair nested in a room nested in a house nested in a neighborhood and
so forth). Second, Casey contends that, simultaneously with its unencompassability
by nothing else, place provides a condition for the “being” of all things, creatures,
situations, and events: “Place belongs to the very concept of existence. To be is to
be bounded by place, limited by it …. Place-being is part of an entity’s own-being”
(Casey 2009, pp. 15–16).
As Casey’s understanding of place indicates, the phenomenologist recognizes
that the lived body is typically an integral constituent of place and place experience
because “lived bodies belong to places and help to constitute them” just as, simulta-
neously, “places belong to lived bodies and depend on them” (Casey 2009, p. 327).
Through bodily encounters and actions, the person or group contributes to the
particular constitution of a place as, at the same time, those encounters and actions
contribute to the person or group’s sense of lived involvement and identification
with that place. In short, lived bodies and places “interanimate each other”’ (Casey
2009, p. 327).
This interanimation of lived bodies and places is significant because it suggests
that the habitual, unself-conscious familiarity of body-subject is one way by which
individuals and groups actualize a taken-for-granted involvement with place. In this
regard is the possibility that, in a supportive physical environment, individuals’
bodily routines can come together in time and space, thereby contributing to a
22 The Value of Phenomenology

larger-scale environmental ensemble that I have called, after Jane Jacobs (1961), a
place ballet—an interaction of individual bodily routines rooted in a particular envi-
ronment, which often becomes an important place of interpersonal and communal
exchange, meaning, and attachment, for example, a popular neighborhood café, a
lively urban park, a vibrant stretch of city street, or a thriving urban neighborhood
(Fullilove 2004, 2011; Oldenburg 1999; Rink 2019; Seamon 1979, 2004; van Eck
and Pijpers 2017). Place ballet points to the possibility that everyday habitual rou-
tines regularly happening in material space can transform that space into a lived
place with a unique character and ambience (Rink 2019; Seamon and Nordin
1980). This possibility is powerfully demonstrated in work by Jane Jacobs and Eric
Klinenberg, to which I now turn.

Environmental Embodiment, Urban Place, and Street Ballet

In considering further the interanimation between places and lived bodies, I draw on
two perspicacious accounts of place in the city—urbanist Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life
of Great American Cities; and sociologist Eric Klinenberg’s Heat Wave. Published in
1961, Jacobs’ Death and Life explored the interconnected human and environmental
qualities supporting robust urban neighborhoods. Jacobs argued that a diversity of
place grounded in spatial and material features like short blocks, anchor functions,
and sufficient numbers of people are the real-world fabric that sustains thriving urban
districts and lively street life (Jacobs 1961). Published in 2002, Klinenberg’s Heat
Wave examined why some 700 Chicago residents, most of them elderly and poor,
died in a five-day heat wave in 1995 (Klinenberg 2002). Klinenberg demonstrated
how the environmental, spatial, and human qualities of two contrasting Chicago
neighborhoods protected or imperiled residents during this extreme weather event.
In their interpretations of urban place, Jacobs and Klinenberg both said much about
environmental embodiment. A major conclusion for both thinkers is that successful
urban places incorporate an intricate ­people-place web that Jacobs termed organized
complexity—a sophisticated synergy of intertwined environmental and human ele-
ments, processes, experiences, and relationships always in flux, sometimes evolving
and sometimes devolving in their degree of coherence, resonance, and life (Jacobs
1961, Ch. 22). As intimated by both Jacobs and Klinenberg, an integral part of this
place synergy is habitual bodies involved in reoccurring urban actions and events
that are first of all familiar corporeally. I consider Jacobs’ and Klinenberg’s arguments
and then relate points of commonality to environmental embodiment and place.
Though Jacobs’ work has never been associated with phenomenology, one can
argue that, in terms of method and findings, Death and Life illustrates an implicit
phenomenology of urban place (Seamon 2012). Jacobs contended that the primary
engine of robust urban districts is diversity—an intricate, close-grained mixture of
uses, activities, and environmental elements that mutually support each other, spa-
tially, socially, and economically. Drawing on real-world evidence from her own
Hudson Street neighborhood in New York City’s West Greenwich Village, Jacobs
argued that urban diversity sustains and is sustained by a dynamic place structure
 Lived Bodies, Place, and Phenomenology 23

that she called street ballet—an exuberance of place diversity and sidewalk life sup-
ported by the more or less regular, everyday comings and goings of many people
carrying out their own ordinary needs, obligations, and activities (Jacobs 1961,
pp. 50–54). Out of the independent actions and situations of individuals arises a
more comprehensive synergistic structure of urban place with a distinctive ambi-
ence and rhythm. Using choreographic imagery, Jacobs wrote:

Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working
successfully, is a marvelous order for maintain the safety of the streets and the
freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk
use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed
of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully
call it the art from of the city and liken it to the dance—not to a simple-mind-
ed precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time … but to an
intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinc-
tive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly
whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to
place and in any one place is always replete with new improvisations.
The stretch of Hudson Street where I live is each day the scene of an
intricate sidewalk ballet. I make my own first entrance into it a little after
eight when I put out the garbage can, surely a prosaic occupation, but I enjoy
my part, my little clang, as the droves of junior high school students walk by
the center of the stage dropping candy wrappers … While I sweep up the
wrappers I watch the other rituals of the morning: Mr. Halpert unlocking
the laundry’s handcart from its mooring to a cellar door, Joe Cornacchia’s
son-in-law stacking out the empty crates from the delicatessen, the barber
bringing out his sidewalk folding chair …. Now the primary children, head-
ing for St. Luke’s, dribble through to the west, and the children from P.S. 41,
heading toward the east.
(Jacobs 1961, pp. 50–51)

In Jacobs’ engaging picture of urban place ballet, one immediately recognizes the
partially predictable and partially unpredictable intertwining of many lived bodies
and the material spaces in which they conduct their everyday lives. Much of the
place dynamic of Hudson Street is regular; phenomenologically, one can say this
regularity is grounded primarily in the extended time-space routines of individu-
als coalescing in supportive material space and contributing to the larger, holistic
structure of place ballet. In this sense, the most successful urban districts are a
rich, tightly woven fabric of people and place interactions undergirded by a good
amount of time-space regularity. One recognizes a continuous people-place inter-
animation arising from daily, weekly, and seasonal actions, events, and situations of
residents, workers, visitors, and passersby commingling synergistically to support
urban place ballet. Because each neighborhood ballet is a different mix of users and
material environment, it radiates a unique ambience and character that, in turn,
24 The Value of Phenomenology

evoke a sense of place identity that may motivate participants to take responsibility
and care for their urban place. Jacobs emphasized that these place participants:

profess an intense attachment to their street neighborhood. It is a big part of

their life. They seem to think that their neighborhood is unique and irre-
placeable in all the world and remarkably valuable in spite of its shortcomings.
In this they are correct, for the multitude of relationships and public charac-
ters that make up an animated city street neighborhood are always unique,
intricate and have the value of the unreproducible original.
(Jacobs 1961, p. 279)

Lived Bodies and Jacobs’ Four Conditions for Diversity

Jacobs, however, was not interested in only describing the workings of robust urban
neighborhoods. She also sought to understand the underlying spatial, environmen-
tal, and human factors that generated this urban exuberance. Mostly drawing on
observational evidence from New York and other large American cities, Jacobs
contended that efficient urban diversity and vibrant city street life require four spe-
cific material and spatial foundations: short blocks; a range of building types; a high
concentration of people; and a mixture of primary uses—in other words, anchor
functions like residences and workplaces to which people must necessarily go. As
Jacobs summarized her argument:

In our American cities, we need all kinds of diversity, intricately mingled in

mutual support …. [M]ost city diversity is the creation of incredible numbers
of different people and different private organizations, with vastly differing
ideas and purposes, planning and contriving outside the formal framework
of public action. The main responsibility of city planning and design should
be to develop—insofar as public policy and action can do so—cities that are
congenial places for this great range of unofficial plans, ideas and opportu-
nities to flourish, along with the flourishing of the public enterprises. City
districts will be economically and socially congenial places for diversity to
generate itself and reach its best potential if the districts possess good mixtures
of primary uses, frequent streets, a close-grained mingling of different ages in
their buildings, and a high concentration of people.
(Jacobs 1961, p. 241)

For understanding environmental embodiment, Jacobs’ four conditions are piv-

otal, since each activates and is activated by a certain degree of interanimation
between lived bodies and the urban place in which those lived bodies find them-
selves. Primary uses like dwellings, workplaces, and places of education are crucial
because they provide regular, guaranteed pools of street and sidewalk users. Jacobs
emphasized that a neighborhood should include at least two primary uses and,
ideally, more, since different primary uses provide different people on the streets at
 Lived Bodies, Place, and Phenomenology 25

different times. In turn, these people contribute to the neighborhood’s place ballet
and provide “eyes on the street”—in other words, an informal policing structure
that promotes neighborhood order, safety, community, and the socialization of chil-
dren (Jacobs 1961, Chs. 2–4).
The users drawn by primary functions are also important because they provide
much of the economic support for a neighborhood’s secondary functions—uses like
eateries, cafés, taverns, and shops, whose patrons are only present because of primary
functions like residence, work, schooling, and so forth (Jacobs 1961, pp. 161–164).
Most secondary uses are small, independent establishments that can survive only
because of another of Jacobs’ four conditions—a dense concentration of would be users,
provided largely by sufficient primary uses and generating, “in small geographical
compass, a great and exuberant richness of differences and possibilities, many of
these differences unique and unpredictable, and all the more valuable because they
are” (Jacobs 1961, pp. 220–221). In lively urban neighborhoods, secondary uses far
outnumber primary uses because many people close together require a wide range
of needs, products, and activities:

Even quite standard, but small, operations like proprietor-and-one-clerk

hardware stores, drug stores, candy stores and bars can and do flourish in
extraordinary numbers and incidence in lively districts of cities because there
are enough people to support their presence at short, convenient intervals….
(Jacobs 1961, p. 147)

Building Variety and Short Blocks

In the first two conditions of primary uses and user density, one notes a synergistic
dynamic between material functions and people: Human density generated and sus-
tained by place uses and activities in turn generates and sustains the economic and
existential support for the primary and secondary functions. People and material
space power each other in a kind of virtuous circle of urban placemaking. Jacobs’
two other conditions for robust urban neighborhoods are a range of building types
and small blocks. In regard to architectural fabric, Jacobs argues that the district
must provide a close-grained mingling of buildings ranging in age and condition,
including a good amount of smaller, older structures for incubating new primary
diversity and risky, start-up secondary enterprises not typically able to afford high
rent. This range of building types becomes “the shelter … for many varieties of
middling-, low-, and no-yield diversity” (Jacobs 1961, p. 199). In terms of envi-
ronmental embodiment, smaller structures are particularly significant because they
offer more building units per sidewalk length than larger structures that are typically
monolithic and controlled by non-local parties. Smaller buildings also contribute
to a more diverse range of uses, activities, and users all propelling the visual, func-
tional, and social variety of the neighborhood’s street ballet.
Jacobs’ second requirement for robust urban districts is short blocks, which
she sees as integral to a district’s street ballet because permeable, interconnected
26 The Value of Phenomenology

sidewalks and streets support intermingling pedestrian cross use and a longer string
of street-front locations than longer blocks can provide. In short blocks, individuals
involved in particular body- and time-space routines have many more route choices
than in longer blocks, making traversals more convenient and interesting. As Jacobs
explains,

Long blocks … thwart the potential advantages that cities offer to incuba-
tion, experimentation, and many small or special enterprises, insofar as these
depend upon drawing their customers or clients from among much larger
cross-sections of passing public. Long blocks also thwart the principles that if
city mixtures of use are to be more than a fiction on maps, they must result
in different people, bent on different purposes, appearing at different times,
but using the same streets …. [F]requent streets and short blocks are valuable
because of the fabric of intricate cross use that they permit among the users
of a city neighborhood.
(Jacobs 1961, pp. 183, 186)

Place and Pathway Configuration

In highlighting the significance of short blocks for robust urban neighborhoods,
Jacobs’ argument foreshadows more recent research on how the spatial configura-
tion of streets and sidewalks plays a major role in whether they are well used and
animated or empty and lifeless. First developed in the early 1980s by British archi-
tectural theorists Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson, this work has come to be called
the theory of space syntax (Hillier 1996, 2008; Hillier and Hanson 1984; Seamon
2004, 2015). Though quantitative and instrumentalist rather than phenomeno-
logical, this research has demonstrated that different pathway configurations bring
users together spatially or keep them apart. Using an argument that partly parallels
Jacobs’, Hillier and Hanson examined how the particular spatial configuration of
a place’s pathway fabric lays out a potential movement field that gathers or sepa-
rates people in material space. Natural movement is the term these researchers use
to describe the potential power of a pathway network to automatically stymie or
facilitate movement and the face-to-face interactions of pedestrians and other place
users (Hillier 1996, p. 161).
Echoing the criticisms of modernist urban design brought forth by Jacobs in
the first chapter of Death and Life, Hillier and Hanson demonstrate that twentieth-­
century urban planning and design typically replaced the permeable, short-block
pathway configurations favored by Jacobs with treelike systems of longer blocks and
fragmented pathways that stymied or destroyed ease of pedestrian movement and
thereby eliminated much face-to-face interaction—for example, the “cul-de-sac
and loop” pattern of low-density, automobile-dependent suburbs or the hierar-
chical circulation layouts of many modernist housing estates (Hillier 1996, Ch. 4;
Hanson 2000). Modernist pathway structure regularly separates lived bodies rather
than brings them together face to face through an integrated, permeable pathway
 Lived Bodies, Place, and Phenomenology 27

network of sidewalks and streets. Users that otherwise might feel a sense of spatial
community—a situation that Jacobs’ short blocks readily afford—remain apart cor-
poreally and environmentally. They do not as readily meet in the course of daily life
grounded in the regularity and routine of lived bodies-in-place.

A Heat Wave in Chicago

In Jacobs’ interpretation of robust urban neighborhoods, lived bodies are envi-
ronmentally intertwined in a place-grounded choreography. I next turn to Eric
Klinenberg’s research on city mortality patterns in the 1995 heat wave in Chicago
(Klinenberg 2002). Drawing on public documents, intensive fieldwork, and in-depth
interviews with residents and public officials, Klinenberg demonstrated how spatial
and material aspects of two adjacent Chicago neighborhoods played a major role
in contributing to dramatically different heat-wave mortality rates. Several of his
findings validate, in a real-world context, Jacobs’ four principles for city diversity.
The two Chicago neighborhoods studied by Klinenberg are North Lawndale,
a predominantly African-American neighborhood with a 1995 heat-related death
rate of 40 per 100,000 residents; and South Lawndale (colloquially known as
Little Village), a predominantly Latino neighborhood with a much lower heat-­
related death rate of less than four per 100,000 residents (Klinenberg 2002, p. 87).
Klinenberg selected North Lawndale and Little Village because, even though they
are geographically adjacent and include similar proportions of seniors living in
poverty and seniors living alone (the two groups the Center for Disease Control
originally claimed as most vulnerable in the heat wave), the neighborhoods had
dramatically different heat-wave mortality rates. Drawing on the Chicago School
tradition of social ecology, Klinenberg wondered whether this difference in deaths
might at least partly be related to contrasting environmental and ecological aspects
of the two neighborhoods (Klinenberg 2002, pp. 21–22).6
An earlier study of the 1995 heat-wave mortality data had demonstrated that
elderly and poor African-Americans faced the greatest mortality risk during the
heat wave, whereas Latinos, despite high levels of poverty, fared better than both
blacks and whites (Semenza et al. 1996). Rethinking heat-wave deaths from a
social-ecological perspective, Klinenberg chose to study the two adjacent neigh-
borhoods because he wondered whether environmental and place characteristics
also played a role in heat-wave deaths. As he became more familiar with North
Lawndale and Little Village, Klinenberg came to realize that the two neighbor-
hoods were vastly different in terms of place structure and human sociability. These
contrasting environmental and social differences included:

the ways in which residents use sidewalks and public spaces, the role of com-
mercial outlets in stimulating social contact, the strategies through which
residents protect themselves from local dangers, and the role of community
organizations and institutions in providing social protection.
(Klinenberg 2002, p. 86)
28 The Value of Phenomenology

Klinenberg came to see that, during the heat wave, local place features inhibited
vulnerable North Lawndale residents from finding the social contact that would
help them survive. In contrast, local place features helped vulnerable Little Village
residents to find that help. He concluded that North Lawndale had many more
heat-wave deaths than Little Village largely because the latter was a place of lively
streets, much commercial activity, residential concentration, and a relatively low
crime rate. All these positive place features contributed to a sense of community
especially important for older people, who were more likely to leave home when
nearby amenities were safely available. In contrast, North Lawndale was a neighbor-
hood of violent crime, devolving commerce, abandoned buildings, empty streets,
and lower density, all of which undermined the viability of public life, setting the
stage for fearful older people who rarely left their dwellings. During the heat wave,
these dramatically contrasting place situations undermined or sustained “the pos-
sibilities for social contact that helped vulnerable Chicagoans survive” (Klinenberg
2002, p. 91).

Contrasting Urban Places

In Heat Wave, Klinenberg provided a detailed portrait of the two Chicago neigh-
borhoods’ environmental and social differences. He described North Lawndale as a
neighborhood of derelict buildings, shuttered stores, second-tier fast-food eateries,
abandoned lots, deteriorating housing stock, few employment opportunities, and
much crime, especially drug dealing. One result is that Lawndale residents have
few neighborhood places to go or to work. As one long-time resident explained
to Klinenberg (2002, p. 94), “There’s not very much in the streets for people to do
here anymore.”
The deterioration of North Lawndale’s local economy and commercial activity
had been devastating for the neighborhood’s street life. Klinenberg referred to Jane
Jacobs’ claim that a good number of shops, eateries, and other secondary functions
are crucial in maintaining informal sidewalk and street safety: “Commercial insti-
tutions draw residents and passersby out into the sidewalks and streets, inviting foot
traffic and promoting social interaction among consumers, merchants, and peo-
ple who simply enjoy participating in or observing street life” (Klinenberg 2002,
p. 94). As North Lawndale’s economy declined, residents able to do so forsook the
area, leaving behind empty houses as well as neighbors who had neither the will
nor resources to leave. These residents who remained isolated themselves or found
social support beyond the neighborhood. Klinenberg determined that, during the
heat wave, it was largely the place-alienated individuals who died. They had nei-
ther the social contacts to assist them nor the courage to seek help in a threatening
neighborhood offering few public or commercial establishments where they might
escape the heat. There was little collective life that might have protected these
isolated individuals, most of whom were older persons living alone “with lim-
ited social contacts and weak support networks during normal times” (Klinenberg
2002, p. 41). Klinenberg encapsulated the situation well when he wrote that: “The
 Lived Bodies, Place, and Phenomenology 29

heat wave puts into focus the ways that connections made or missed, visible or
unrecognized, can determine the fate of the city and its residents” (Klinenberg
2002, p. 21).
Clearly, many of these connections happened or did not happen because of
habitual body-subjects spatially commingling or remaining apart. If the material
space of North Lawndale contributed to a mode of environmental embodiment
that isolated vulnerable residents, the environmental and spatial qualities of Little
Village drew habitual bodies together in exuberant place ballets. Though Little
Village is just one street south of North Lawndale, Klinenberg described the dra-
matic environmental changes one noticed in moving toward Little Village’s com-
mercial core on 26th Street, called by locals Calle Mexico. Even though Little Village
had similar proportions of poor elderly and elderly living alone, the neighborhood
incorporated lively retail, bustling sidewalks, and many more intact dwellings, all
of which were occupied. Whereas North Lawndale’s place ensemble undermined
neighborhood activity, Little Village’s facilitated “public life and informal social
support for residents” (Klinenberg 2002, p. 109). This robust place activity was par-
ticularly important for older residents living alone because it drew them out of their
dwellings into the streets and public places where they made the social contact that
isolated individuals in North Lawndale were much less able to establish. During the
heat wave, the activity of nearby streets provided shops, eateries, and other places
where these individuals might find respite from the heat. Most vulnerable during
the heat wave were older white residents remaining in the neighborhood after it
had become mostly Latino. For the most part, however, they too were protected.
Klinenberg concluded that “the robust public life of the region draws all but the
most infirm residents out of their homes, promoting social interaction, network
ties, and healthy behavior” (Klinenberg 2002, p. 21).
In discussing the two neighborhoods, Klinenberg also considered social and cul-
ture differences and the contrasting significance of more formal social and cultural
institutions, including churches and block clubs. But most of the explanation for
the two neighborhoods’ dramatically different heat-wave death rates he assigned to
the neighborhoods’ contrasting place qualities. Most important was Little Village’s
lively neighborhood sidewalk and street life largely supporting and supported by an
environmental and human diversity grounded in lived bodies meeting in interper-
sonal neighborhood encounters. Klinenberg concluded that

Many of the [Little Village] elderly I interviewed explained that during the
heat wave they sought relief in the air-conditioned stores on Twenty-sixth
Street, just as they do on ordinary summer days. Not only did elderly resi-
dents in Little Village have less to fear on the sidewalks and streets than did
their neighbors in North Lawndale; living in a region with busy commercial
traffic and active streets, they also had more incentive to go outdoors and
walk to places where they could get relief. The rich commercial resources
and a flourishing sidewalk culture animated public areas throughout the
neighborhood; and there were always people, including seniors with their
30 The Value of Phenomenology

pushcarts full of groceries and small bags of goods, in the streets when I did
my fieldwork …. [T]he sidewalks are primary conduits for social contact and
control. The relative security of these public areas makes it easier for residents
of Little Village—even the older whites—to engage with their neighbors and
participate in community events.
(Klinenberg 2002, pp. 116–117)

Jacobs and Klinenberg Together

Klinenberg’s findings parallel many of Jane Jacobs’ conclusions, including her argu-
ment that the street ballet’s bodily regularity sustains and is sustained by an informal
social network that, in Chicago’s 1995 heat wave, played a major role in protect-
ing vulnerable Little Village residents. Klinenberg’s findings demonstrated the par-
ticular importance of Jacobs’ sufficiently high density in explaining the contrasting
victim rates in the two neighborhoods. North Lawndale’s population density was
much lower than Little Village’s because former North Lawndale residents, most
of them Jewish, had relocated to the Chicago suburbs, and no immigrants had
moved in to replace them. The remaining North Lawn population was insufficient
to support businesses, and much of the neighborhood became a commercial and
workplace wasteland, which in turn inhibited newcomers from relocating there.
In contrast, Little Village retained a dense population, which supported commerce
and a lively street life. In fact, so many newcomers were attracted to Little Village
that, at the time of Klinenberg’s research, the neighborhood was experiencing a
housing shortage (Klinenberg 2002, pp. 115–118). Like Jacobs’ work, Klinenberg’s
research demonstrated the intimate lived relationships between people and place,
particularly the ways that material and spatial qualities contribute to interpersonal
corporeality, co-encounter, and everyday mutual assistant grounded in place regu-
larity and familiarity.
In her 2004 Dark Age Ahead, Jacobs (2004, pp. 81–87) expressed her admiration
for Klinenberg’s study. She contrasted his place-based approach with the earlier
Center for Disease Control study (Semenza et al. 1996), “the findings of which
were misleading” because the study “did not take neighborhood variations into
account” but instead “turned up only what everybody already knew” that:

those who died had run out of water, had no air-conditioning, did not
leave their rooms to find cool refuge, and were not successfully checked on.
Indeed, the researchers’ findings were worse than useless. Survivors differed
in having successfully kept cool. The findings were misleading because they
encouraged blaming the victims; after all, they hadn’t looked after themselves.
(Jacobs 2004, p. 82)

In contrast to the incomplete conclusions of the CDC study, Klinenberg demon-

strated that many victims were unable to look after themselves because their neigh-
borhood lifeworld offered little back-up support. Literally and existentially, these
 Lived Bodies, Place, and Phenomenology 31

victims were isolated from the world in which they found themselves. In her
discussion of Klinenberg’s work, Jacobs mentioned that the influential American
community organizer and Chicago native Saul Alinsky worked in the 1990s “to
persuade residents and large businesses not to abandon North Lawndale …, with
little understanding or help from city officials or planning staff and none from
Chicago employers” (Jacobs 2004, p. 197). As Jacobs’ criticism intimates, contin-
uing professional and political ignorance of the crucial importance of lifeworld,
natural attitude, body-subject, spatiality, and place remains a blind spot for urban
planners, designers, and policymakers attempting to strengthen community, both in
cities as well as in other kinds of places.

The Inertia of Lived Bodies and Places

In illustrating the phenomenological perspective on lived embodiment and place,
I have emphasized the work of Jacobs and Klinenberg because both authors demon-
strate the multifaceted, lived intricacies of people and place. Both writers illus-
trate how regular bodily actions and routines transform material space into a lived
place informally gathering people together and sustaining a sense of environmental
belonging. This place-people interanimation is grounded in individual lived bodies
carrying out day-to-day lifeworld needs. Clearly, human beings’ relationships with
place are more than just bodily and spatial as place also involves emotional, cog-
nitive, volitional, social, cultural, and economic dimensions (e.g., Lewicka 2011;
Manzo 2003, 2005; Manzo and Devine-Wright 2021; Relph 1976). In spite of
this lived multivalence, however, it is important to emphasize that human life, first of
all, is corporeal. As evidenced in Jacobs’ and Klinenberg’s accounts of vigorous and
faltering urban places, lived bodies-commingling-in-space is a material and spatial
grounding for place interanimation.
In the last several years, it has been fashionable in post-structural and social
constructionist theory to criticize the place concept in two contrasting ways. One
group of critics contend that phenomenological interpretations too readily empha-
sized the centered, constraining, and parochial aspects of place (Cresswell 2014;
Massey 2005; Morley 2000; Rose 1993). This criticism is partly accurate in that
the first phenomenological studies of place in the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Buttimer
1976, Norberg-Schulz 1971, 1980; Relph 1976; Seamon 1979; Tuan 1974) drew
on earlier phenomenological work of philosophers like Gaston Bachelard (1964),
Otto Bollnow (1967, 2011), and Martin Heidegger (1971), who gave considera-
ble attention to the static, bounded qualities of place. Critics of this conservative
place perspective speak instead of a “progressive sense of place.” They ask how
places relate and respond to their larger social, economic, and political contexts. For
these critics, places are given attention, but the important practical and conceptual
need is delineating ways whereby the particular place becomes more connected
and permeable in relation to the wider, surrounding world. How, in other words,
might place incorporate diversity and the integration of differences? As geographer
Doreen Massey (1997, p. 220) asked, “Can’t we rethink our sense of place? Is it not
32 The Value of Phenomenology

possible for a sense of place to be progressive; not self-enclosing and defensive, but
outward looking?”
A second group of critics contend that, because of current trends toward glo-
balization and virtual realities, real-world places are, in many ways, increasingly
irrelevant and obsolete. Motivated in part by the work of post-structural thinkers
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1987), these critics dispute the rigid, centered
stasis of place. They speak instead of shifting movements and flows “between iden-
tities, between nation-states, between ideas, between places, between peoples, and
so forth” (Kogl 2008, p. 57). These critics emphasize such themes as mobility,
hybridity, non-places, hyper-worlds, nomadism, and smooth and striated spaces. A
central concept is Deleuze and Guattari’s metaphor of rhizome: a spatial structure of
free, unpredictable flows and movements generating centerless networks that abjure
boundaries or containments. Political philosopher Alexandra Kogl (2008, p. 1) per-
ceptively summarized this post-structural criticism of place:

The early twenty-first century appears to be an era of radically shifting geog-

raphies: from the space of place to the space of flows, from the space of the
nation-state to global space, from a round world to a flat one. Places, as the
tangible, distinctive spaces to which peoples and states attach meanings, and
in which people live their everyday lives, appear to be overwhelmed by flows
of values, people, information, capital, pollution, ideas, technology, culture,
language, and diseases.

Though Kogl (2008, p. 1) appreciated this post-structuralist critique, she pointed

out that the perspective is too simplistic, partly because, even as globalization and
flows undermine some places, these same processes strengthen other places and
facilitate new kinds of places (for example, exporting-processing zones and global
cities). Most significantly, places retain their importance because “the human body
is always local, living a particular life in a particular place, with others, for better
or worse.” (Kogl 2008, p. 143). Even in the mobile United States, for example,
almost 40 percent of Americans have never left their hometown and another twenty
percent have never left their home state (Cohn and Morin 2008, n.p.). British
residence patterns are similar, in that around half of British adults live within five
miles of where they were born (Morley 2000, p. 14). In terms of global patterns,
about 97 percent of the world’s population continues to live in their home coun-
try. Though the percentage of migrants varies from country to country, the total
percentage has remained relatively stable as a share of the Earth’s total population,
increasing by only 0.2% (from 2.9% to 3.1%), over the decade of 2000–2010 (UN
DESA 2010, n.p.).7
In this sense, place remains one of the great stabilizing constituents of human life
in that it automatically ‘places’ and holds lived bodies spatially and geographically.
Because of this “bodily placement through place,” human beings are automati-
cally provided one mode of spatial order and environmental identity (Manzo and
Divine-Wright 2021; Seamon 2018a, Ch. 10). Unless human life becomes entirely
 Lived Bodies, Place, and Phenomenology 33

virtual, non-material, and secondhand because of continuing developments in dig-

ital technologies and robotics, places will remain a part of human being. Though
not all individuals are equally identified with and attached to the places of their
lives, those places are still inescapable in the sense that they provide the everyday,
taken-for-granted spatial and environmental context for each person and group’s
lifeworld, at least in terms of body-subjects and environmental corporeality.
This inescapable corporeality of place is often ignored by the first group of place
critics who seeks a more progressive sense of place. These critics are correct that,
in our postmodernist age, we must locate ways whereby the stasis of a particular
place might be invigorated and in turn invigorate other places through a vibrant
interconnectedness that facilitates diversity and contributes to the acceptance of dif-
ference. But much of such dynamic exchange will remain grounded in the habitual
regularity of body-subjects commingling with place. Nor can these critics discount
the reality that a dynamic interchange among places presupposes a robust integrity
of each place itself; this robust integrity is at least in part founded in the inertial
regularity of lived bodies in material space.

Places Facilitating Lifeworlds

As I’ve worked to demonstrate in this chapter, a phenomenological understanding
of human life emphasizes that, because of lifeworld, natural attitude, and habitual
corporeality, daily living for most people simply happens. Unless ordinary life shifts
dramatically and one is forced to do otherwise than usual, most human beings rarely
question the nature of their world or suppose that their world might change. The
lifeworld is transparent and, because of the natural attitude, people accept that life-
world as their only world. The isolated Chicago elderly who died in the 1995 heat
wave took their social and environmental isolation for granted and had little will or
active means to shift their situation in time of crisis. If the inertia of lifeworld is an
integral part of being-human-in-place, then positive change whereby one becomes
more free and more whole may be most effectively supported by changing qualities
of individuals’ worlds, particularly by understanding how spatial and environmen-
tal structures contribute to robust placemaking and incorporating those elements
accordingly.
On one hand, it was very much North Lawndale’s fragmented, withering neigh-
borhood that limited the vulnerable elderly in finding help during the heat wave.
While conversely, it was very much Little Village’s intact, vibrant neighborhood
that allowed the same vulnerable elderly to survive. The key point phenomenolog-
ically is that this support just happened or did not just happen largely because of contrasting
place qualities. Officially sponsored institutional structures and agencies appear to
have done little formally to guarantee this support which, rather, was or was not
provided by specific spatial, environmental, and human features of the neighbor-
hood lifeworld, most of them informal, unplanned, and serendipitous.8
In short, the need is to reconfigure places that facilitate lifeworlds in which peo-
ple feel a part rather than apart. This manner of improving lifeworlds is indirect in
34 The Value of Phenomenology

that helpful change arises, not by formally allotting power, through legal and politi-
cal means, to powerless individuals, but by making their place better materially and
spatially so that qualities of the place contribute to these individuals’ wellbeing as
they simply live their everyday lives (Seamon 2018a). The aim of such placemaking
would be what political philosopher Daniel Kemmis (1995, p. 22) called the “good
life,” which “makes it possible for humans to be fully present—to themselves, to
one another, and to their surroundings. Such presence is precisely opposite of the
distractedness—the being beside—that is so prevalent in our political culture.”
I repeat that much of the lifeworld and natural attitude is unself-consciously grounded,
partly because of body-subject and environmental embodiment. This sphere of
unreflected-upon life points to the importance of thoughtfully devising ways
whereby places are transformed indirectly through creative spatial and material
changes like those argued for by Jane Jacobs—that is, adding primary uses, making
a more permeable street structure, increasing residential and employment density,
and so forth. In other words, the better alternative to enhancing lifeworlds and
improving places is sometimes making constructive shifts in the material environ-
ment rather than emphasizing self-conscious behavioral or attitudinal shifts in the
human beings associated with those places or environments.

The Agentic Potential of Material Realities

From this place-based perspective, a major weakness in many large-scale efforts
to improve human life is ignorance of the power of the lifeworld’s material, non-­
human aspects to contribute to the particular lifeworld’s being one way rather
than another. Sociologist Thomas Gieryn labeled this ignorance “social determin-
ism”—an emphasis on the human experiencers and experiences of the lifeworld
at the expense of the material, spatial, physical, and environmental qualities of
that lifeworld. This incomplete understanding presupposes a situation where the
“materialities of both ‘space’ and ‘nature’ are ascribed lesser explanatory weight in
sociological explanation, which centers instead on what people do to those things”
(Gieryn 2002, p. 341). Gieryn (2002, p. 341) used the evocative phrase “the agentic
capacity of material realities” to pinpoint the active possibilities of the non-hu-
man world. He argued that the conceptual need is to “acknowledge that outcomes
(beliefs about nature, behavior patterns, social change) are substantively and auton-
omously caused by this ‘stuff’” (Gieryn 2002, p. 341).
I have elsewhere described this “agentic capacity of material realities” as place
intensification, which I defined as the independent power of well-crafted designs and
fabrications to revive and strengthen place by being one way materially and spa-
tially rather than some other (Seamon 2018a, Ch. 13). In this sense, place is active
in relation to human beings, since physical, environmental, and spatial changes in
the place reconfigure human actions and experiences. Place intensification sheds
light on how the physical and designed environments, though they may be only
passive, material ‘stuff,’ can be an active contributor to enhancing place quality and
­character. The result is that the place becomes better or more durable in some
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vanité, jalousie, et une légèreté qui le rendait Amm. l. 21, c.
l'esclave de ses femmes, de ses flatteurs, de ses 16.
eunuques et le jouet des Ariens: indifférence pour le Liban. or. 12, t.
mérite, insensibilité à l'égard des provinces 2, p. 399 et 400.
accablées, dont les plaintes ne le réveillèrent jamais; Themist. or. 4,
une timidité et une défiance qui le portèrent souvent p. 60.
à la cruauté. Au travers de tant de défauts on Vict. epit. p. 227
aperçoit quelques-unes de ces vertus qui peuvent et 228.
s'assortir avec la médiocrité du génie: il était sobre; Eutr. l. 10.
aussi fut-il rarement malade; mais toutes ses
Zon. l. 13, t. 2,
maladies furent dangereuses. Il dormait peu; sa p. 22.
chasteté fut irréprochable. Il maintenait avec soin la
subordination entre les officiers, et la distinction
entre les dignités civiles et militaires, dont il voulait que les fonctions
fussent exactement séparées. Il se faisait une loi de ne donner les
premières charges du palais qu'à ceux qui avaient passé par les
grades inférieurs. Il récompensait assez libéralement les services, et
se ressentait peu des injures personnelles. On dit que les habitants
d'Édesse ayant, dans une sédition, abattu et traité avec outrage une
de ses statues, en criant que celui dont la statue méritait un tel
affront, n'était pas digne de régner, il ne tira aucune vengeance de
cette insolence criminelle. Naturellement porté à rendre justice, il
commit des injustices sans nombre, toujours trompé par ses
courtisans, ou aveuglé par ses soupçons. Il avait quelque teinture
des belles-lettres, et on l'y aurait cru plus habile, s'il n'eût pas
succombé à la tentation de faire de mauvais vers. Il établit à
Constantinople une bibliothèque, dont il donna le soin à un
intendant. Il acheva les murailles de cette grande ville; il rebâtit
plusieurs édifices qui commençaient à tomber en ruine. Il décorait
les églises avec magnificence; il y attachait des revenus
considérables, et traitait les évêques Ariens avec beaucoup de
respect: mais les prélats catholiques n'éprouvaient de sa part que
des rigueurs.
Comme il est plus aisé d'établir des lois pour les
autres, que de s'en imposer à soi-même, il fit l. Dernières lois
plusieurs lois utiles pendant les sept dernières de Constance.
années de son règne. Nous allons rassembler ici les
plus importantes de celles dont nous n'avons pas Cod. Th. l. 1, tit.
encore eu l'occasion de parler. Il déclara qu'il 2, leg. 5.
prendrait connaissance des jugements rendus par le L. 2, tit. 21.
préfet de Rome et par les proconsuls, quand il serait leg. 1, 2 et ibi
averti que les parties n'auraient osé en appeler. Il God.
menaça de punition les juges qui négligeraient ou L. 3, tit. 18. leg.
différeraient d'exécuter les rescrits du prince. La unic. et ff. l. 25,
jurisprudence avait souvent varié au sujet des biens tit. 6, leg. 2.
de ceux qui étaient condamnés à mort: tantôt on les L. 6, tit. 29; tit.
avait laissés aux héritiers, tantôt ils avaient été saisis 1, 2, 3. 4, 5, et
au profit du fisc. Constance ordonna d'abord qu'ils ibi God.
passeraient aux parents jusqu'au troisième degré: L. 8, tit. 1, leg.
deux ans après, son caractère s'aigrissant de plus 5.
en plus par la malignité des délateurs, il décida par L. 9, tit. 23. leg.
une loi contraire, que ces biens seraient confisqués. 1, et tit. 42, leg.
Il permit de révoquer les donations faites au prince 2, 3. 4, et ibi
par testament: jusqu'alors la flatterie dictait ces God.
testaments, et une crainte servile les avait rendus L. 10, tit. 20.
irrévocables. L'empereur Sévère avait ordonné que leg. 2, 6, 7, 8, 9
les mères veuves, qui négligeraient de faire nommer et ibi God.
des tuteurs à leurs enfants, seraient privées de leur L. 11, tit. 24, leg.
héritage: Constance renouvela cette loi. Souvent les 1, et tit. 34, leg.
pères, en mariant leurs filles, les avantageaient au 2.
préjudice des autres enfants; et les veuves qui se L. 13, tit. 5, leg.
remariaient, frustraient les enfants du premier lit: il 9.
remédia par deux lois à ces injustices. Ce prince L. 14, tit. 1, leg.
estimait les lettres: il veut qu'on lui fasse connaître 1, et ibi God.
les officiers subalternes qui se distinguent par leurs L. 15, tit. 12,
connaissances ou par leur éloquence, afin de les leg. 2.
avancer. Il défendit sous peine capitale de refondre
Cod. Just. l. 6,
la monnaie, ni d'en faire commerce en la changeant tit. 22, leg. 6.
contre la monnaie étrangère: Elle ne doit pas être,
L. 12, tit. 1, leg.
dit-il, une marchandise, mais le prix des
6.
marchandises. Pour empêcher toute fraude sur cet
article, il fixa la somme qu'il serait permis aux Liban. or. 10, t.
2, p. 293-295.
marchands de porter pour les frais de leurs voyages.
Tout commerce étranger ne devait se faire que par
échange, afin que les espèces marquées au coin du Aurel. Vict. in
prince ne sortissent pas de l'empire. Il condamna à Gallien. p. 158;
une amende de dix livres d'or ceux qui oseraient et Dioclet. p.
166.
troubler en aucune manière la navigation des
vaisseaux qui apportaient à Rome le blé de La Bleterie, vie
de Julien, l. 2, p.
Carthage. Les terres de l'Afrique et de l'Égypte 140.
étaient taxées à une certaine quantité de blé,
qu'elles devaient fournir pour la provision de Rome
et de Constantinople: les propriétaires cherchaient à s'attacher à des
personnes constituées en dignité, qui avaient le privilége d'affranchir
leurs biens de cette obligation; par ce moyen ils s'en exemptaient, et
tout le poids de cette charge retombait sur les autres habitants.
Constance, instruit de cet abus, ordonna que ces patrons frauduleux
seraient forcés à contribuer en la place de leurs prétendus clients. Il
y avait des manufactures établies pour fabriquer les étoffes qui
servaient à l'habillement des soldats, auxquels on délivrait les habits
à l'entrée de l'hiver: on choisissait pour ce travail les ouvriers les plus
habiles, qui étaient attachés à ces manufactures à titre de servitude;
les particuliers les débauchaient souvent pour les employer à leur
service; Constance défendit sur peine de cinq livres d'or d'en receler
aucun: cette fraude ne laissa pas de subsister, comme on le voit par
plusieurs lois des empereurs suivants. Les commis chargés de la
subsistance des troupes s'enrichissaient aux dépens des soldats:
cette fonction était depuis long-temps décriée et toujours
recherchée; ils étaient comptables et même assujettis à la question,
si leurs comptes n'étaient pas en règle; mais ils obtenaient par
argent et par intrigues des dignités qui les exemptaient de la torture:
Constance leur enleva cette ressource d'impunité, en les déclarant
incapables de posséder aucune charge jusqu'à l'apurement de leurs
comptes. Constantin n'avait pu abolir à Rome les spectacles de
gladiateurs; les soldats et les gardes mêmes du prince, accoutumés
à manier les armes, se louaient volontiers pour ces combats cruels:
Constance leur défendit cet infâme trafic de leur propre sang; il
condamna à six livres d'or ceux qui les y engageraient; et s'ils se
présentaient d'eux-mêmes, il ordonna de les charger de chaînes et
de les remettre entre les mains de leurs officiers. Pour maintenir
l'honneur des dignités, et les sauver de l'avilissement où elles ne
manquent pas de tomber, quand l'argent seul y donne entrée, il en
interdit l'accès aux marchands, aux monétaires, aux commis, aux
stationnaires (c'étaient de bas-officiers destinés à observer les
délinquants dans les provinces et à les dénoncer aux juges), en un
mot à tous ceux qui exercent ces professions, ces emplois, qu'on ne
recherche que pour le profit: il ordonna d'écarter des charges ces
sortes de gens et de les renvoyer à leur premier état. Les empereurs
précédents avaient établi une sorte d'officiers publics pour avoir soin
de faire transporter les blés nécessaires à la nourriture des armées,
ou de recueillir les sommes d'argent qu'on exigeait quelquefois au
lieu de blé. Ces officiers portaient pour cette raison le nom de
frumentaires. Comme leur fonction les obligeait de parcourir les
provinces, les princes se servirent d'eux comme d'autant de couriers
et d'espions, pour porter et exécuter leurs ordres, rechercher,
arrêter, et quelquefois même punir les criminels, et pour donner avis
à l'empereur de tout ce qui se passait contre son service dans toute
l'étendue de l'empire. Il leur arriva ce qui ne manque jamais d'arriver
à des hommes de néant honorés de la confiance de leur maître; ils
en abusèrent: leurs calomnies et leurs rapines les rendirent si
odieux, que Dioclétien fut obligé de les supprimer. Il est difficile à
ceux qui gouvernent de se détacher tout-à-fait d'un usage même
dangereux, quand il paraît propre à les soulager dans les soins du
gouvernement; les bons princes se flattent d'en écarter les abus; les
méchants ne considèrent que leur propre commodité. Ces délateurs
en titre d'office reparurent bientôt sous un autre nom qui exprimait
mieux leur destination: on les appela les curieux; ils se nommaient
eux-mêmes les yeux du prince, titre qui avait été honorable en Perse
dès le temps de Cyrus. Ceux-ci n'avaient pas le pouvoir d'exécuter
ni même d'arrêter les criminels; ils ne pouvaient que les dénoncer
aux magistrats; ce qui leur était commun avec les stationnaires: ils
furent de plus chargés d'empêcher l'exportation des marchandises
qu'il n'était pas permis de faire sortir de l'empire, et de veiller à la
conservation des postes et des voitures publiques. Constance les
choisissait entre ceux qu'on appelait les agents de l'empereur. Sous
un règne aussi faible, ils s'érigèrent bientôt en tyrans, surtout dans
les provinces éloignées: ils mettaient à contribution le crime et
l'innocence; point de coupable qui ne pût à force d'argent se
procurer l'impunité; point d'innocent qui ne fût réduit à se racheter de
leurs calomnies. Constance fit plusieurs lois pour retenir dans de
justes bornes cette inquisition d'état. La facilité de s'enrichir les avait
multipliés; il les réduisit à deux pour chaque province. Julien fit
mieux; il abolit entièrement cet office. Mais on le vit renaître sous ses
successeurs.

FIN DU LIVRE ONZIÈME.

 LIVRE XII.
i. Julien arrive à Constantinople. ii. Caractère de Julien, iii.
Funérailles de Constance. iv. Punition des courtisans de
Constance. v. Réforme du palais. vi. Rétablissement de la
discipline militaire. vii. Modération de Julien. viii. Il soulage
les provinces. ix. Sa manière de rendre la justice. x. Il
donne audience aux ambassadeurs. xi. Nouveaux
consuls. xii. Occupations de Julien à Constantinople. xiii.
Il ajoute à Constantinople de nouveaux embellissements.
xiv. Requête de plusieurs Égyptiens rejetée. xv.
Ambassades des nations étrangères. xvi. Julien
environné de sophistes. xvii. Plan de Julien pour détruire
la religion chrétienne. xviii. Il travaille à rétablir le
paganisme. xix. Il veut imiter le christianisme. xx.
Perfection qu'il exigeait des prêtres païens. xxi. Feinte
douceur de Julien. xxii. Rappel des chrétiens exilés. xxiii.
Nouveaux excès des Donatistes. xxiv. Julien défend aux
chrétiens d'enseigner ni d'étudier les lettres humaines.
xxv. Exécution de cet édit. xxvi. Douleur de l'église. xxvii.
Conduite de Julien à l'égard des médecins. xxviii. Il
accable les chrétiens. xxix. Il tâche de surprendre les
soldats. xxx. Constance de Jovien, de Valentinien et de
Valens. xxxi. Persécution dans les provinces. xxxii. Julien
part de Constantinople. xxxiii. Il va à Pessinunte. xxxiv.
Julien à Ancyre. xxxv. A Césarée de Cappadoce. xxxvi. Il
arrive à Antioche.

JULIEN.
La mort de Constance était un événement si imprévu
et si heureux, pour le nouvel empereur, que la An 361.
plupart des amis de Julien n'osaient la croire. C'était,
à leur avis, une fausse nouvelle, par laquelle on i. Julien arrive à
voulait endormir sa vigilance, et l'attirer dans un Constantinople.
piége. Pour vaincre leur défiance, Julien leur mit Amm. l. 22, c. 2.
sous les yeux une prédiction plus ancienne, qui lui Liban, or. 10, t.
promettait la victoire sans tirer l'épée. Cette 2, p. 289.
prétendue prophétie, qui pour des esprits Mamert. pan. c.
raisonnables aurait eu besoin d'être confirmée par le 27.
fait, y servit de preuve. Julien, exercé depuis long-
Idatius, chron.
temps à prendre toutes les formes convenables aux
circonstances, n'oublia pas de se faire honneur en Zos. l. 3, c. 11.
versant quelques larmes, que ses panégyristes ont Socr. l. 3, c. 1.
soigneusement recueillies: il recommanda qu'on Zon. l. 13, t. 2,
rendît au corps de Constance tous les honneurs dus p. 24.
aux empereurs; il prit l'habit de deuil; il reçut avec un
chagrin affecté les témoignages de joie de toutes ses légions, qui le
saluèrent de nouveau du titre d'Auguste. Il marcha aussitôt, traversa
sans obstacle le défilé de Sucques, passa par Philippopolis, et vint à
Héraclée[353]. Tous les corps de troupes envoyés pour lui disputer
les passages, se rangeaient sous ses enseignes; toutes les villes
ouvraient leurs portes et reconnaissaient leur nouveau souverain.
Les habitants de Constantinople vinrent en foule à sa rencontre. Il y
entra le 11 de décembre, au milieu des acclamations du peuple, qui
se mêlant parmi ses soldats le considérait avec des transports
d'admiration et de tendresse. On se rappelait qu'il avait reçu dans
cette ville la naissance et la première nourriture: on comparait avec
sa jeunesse, avec son extérieur qui n'annonçait rien de grand, tout
ce qu'avait publié de lui la renommée, tout ce qu'on voyait exécuté;
tant de batailles et de victoires; la rapidité d'une marche pénible,
semée de périls et d'obstacles qui n'avaient fait qu'accroître ses
forces; la protection divine qui le mettait en possession de l'empire
sans qu'il en coûtât une goutte de sang. Le concours de tant de
circonstances extraordinaires frappait tous les esprits[354]: on formait
les plus heureux présages d'un règne qui s'était annoncé par tant de
merveilles.
[353] Cette ville, située sur la Propontide, actuellement mer de
Marmara, était à une vingtaine de lieues à l'ouest de
Constantinople. Elle avait porté antérieurement le nom de
 Périnthe. On trouve souvent les deux noms réunis dans les
auteurs. Elle avait été long-temps la métropole de la portion de la
Thrace, qui se nommait Europe. Du temps de Procope (de ædif.
L. 4, c. 9), elle tenait le premier rang après Constantinople.—S.-
M.
[354] Paulò ante in laceratis Galliæ provinciis lapsus, inimicorum
capitalium apertis armis, et occultis insidiis petebatur; in pauculis
mensibus, divino munere, Libyæ, Europæ, Asiæque regnator est.
Mamert. Pan. c. 27.—S.-M.

Ses officiers et ses soldats, témoins de la conduite

qu'il avait tenue dans la Gaule, confirmaient ces ii. Caractère de
belles espérances: ils promettaient un empereur Julien.
égal aux Titus, aux Trajans, aux Antonins: ils ne Amm. l. 25, c. 4.
cessaient de louer sa tempérance, sa justice, sa
prudence et son courage: ils le représentaient sobre,
chaste, vigilant, infatigable, affable sans bassesse, gardant sa
dignité sans orgueil, montrant dans la plus vive jeunesse toute la
maturité d'un vieillard consommé dans les affaires; plein d'équité et
de douceur, même à l'égard de ses ennemis; sachant allier la
sévérité du commandement avec une bonté paternelle; détaché des
richesses, des plaisirs, de lui-même; ne vivant, ne respirant que
dans ses sujets, dont il partageait tous les maux, pour leur
communiquer tous ses biens. Ils racontaient ses combats; combien
de fois l'avaient-ils vu, soldat en même temps que capitaine, tantôt
attaquer l'épée à la main les plus redoutables ennemis, tantôt arrêter
la fuite des siens en leur opposant sa personne, et toujours
déterminer la victoire autant par ses actions que par ses ordres? Ils
relevaient son habileté dans les campements, dans les siéges, dans
la disposition des batailles; la force de ses paroles et plus encore de
ses exemples capables d'adoucir les plus extrêmes fatigues, et
d'inspirer le courage dans les plus grands périls; sa libéralité qui ne
lui laissait de trésors que ceux qu'il avait placés entre les mains de
ses peuples. Quel bonheur pour l'empire, où il allait répandre les
mêmes biens qu'il avait procurés à la Gaule! Ces éloges étaient
véritables; et il faut avouer que si l'on retranche la superstition et la
bizarre affectation de philosophie, Julien César fut le modèle des
empereurs les plus accomplis. Mais il paraît que tant de qualités
brillantes étaient accommodées au théâtre, et quelles n'avaient pour
la plupart d'autre source que la vanité et peut-être la haine qu'il
portait à Constance; et je ne sais si l'on ne peut pas dire qu'il doit à
ce prince presque toutes ses vertus, comme tous ses malheurs. Son
antipathie pour le meurtrier de sa famille, l'éloigna de tous les vices
de Constance: il n'en fallait guère davantage pour faire un grand
prince. Les faits justifient ce que j'avance. Sa conduite équivoque
dans la rébellion, le rend d'abord suspect: la guerre ouverte qu'il
entreprit ensuite contre son empereur, démasque son infidélité et
son ambition: celle qu'il déclara au christianisme montre une malice
réfléchie, qui se portait à la cruauté, quand elle en pouvait éviter le
reproche: enfin, son expédition contre les Perses, en lui laissant la
gloire du courage, lui enlève entièrement le mérite de la prudence.
Le premier soin de Julien fut de rendre à son
prédécesseur les devoirs funèbres. Le corps de iii. Funérailles
Constance embaumé et enfermé dans un cercueil de Constance.
était parti de Cilicie, suivi de toute l'armée. Jovien,
Amm. l. 21, c.
capitaine des gardes, assis dans le char funèbre, 16.
représentait l'empereur. On lui adressait les
Liban. or. 10, t.
honneurs qu'on avait coutume de rendre au 2, p. 289.
souverain, quand il traversait les provinces. Les
députés des villes se rendaient sur le passage: on lui Greg. Naz. or.
4, p. 115.
offrait l'essai du blé déposé dans les magasins pour
la subsistance des troupes; on lui présentait les Mamert. pan. c.
animaux entretenus pour le service des postes et 3 et 27.
des voitures publiques. On remarqua après Socr. l. 3, c. 1.
l'événement, que ces honneurs passagers avaient Philost. l. 6, c.
été en même temps pour Jovien un présage de son 6.
élévation à l'empire et celui d'une mort prochaine. Le Zon. l. 13, t. 2,
char étant arrivé au bord du Bosphore, fut placé sur p. 24.
un vaisseau. Julien sans diadème, revêtu de la Cedr. t. 1, p.
pourpre, mais dépouillé de tous les ornements 303.
impériaux, l'attendait sur le rivage, à la tête de ses
soldats sous les armes et rangés en ordre de bataille. Il le reçut avec
respect; il toucha le cercueil, et le conduisit en versant des larmes à
l'église des Saints-Apôtres, où Constance fut déposé dans le
tombeau de son père à côté de sa femme Eusébia. Saint Grégoire,
dans le détail de cette pompe funèbre, parle de prières, de chants
nocturnes et de cierges portés par les assistants, comme de choses
dès lors en usage dans les funérailles des chrétiens. Mamertinus,
panégyriste de Julien, et païen comme lui, donne à Constance le
titre de Divus. Ce nom, consacré par le paganisme à l'apothéose
des empereurs, se trouve quelquefois employé par les chrétiens
mêmes. Ce n'était plus qu'un terme de respect, qui avait perdu sa
signification primitive.
La faveur de ceux qui avaient abusé de la faiblesse
de Constance, ne devait pas lui survivre. Julien iv. Punition de
forma une chambre de justice à Chalcédoine, courtisans de
établissement souvent utile après un mauvais Constance.
gouvernement, mais toujours dangereux, et qui Amm. l. 22, c. 3
exige de la part du prince beaucoup de sagesse et 7.
pour ne rien donner à la passion, de lumières pour Jul. ep. 23, p.
bien choisir les juges, et de vigilance pour éclairer 389.
par lui-même leur conduite et contrôler leurs
Liban. or. 10, t.
jugements. Il paraît que ces qualités manquèrent à 2, p. 298.
Julien dans cette occasion. Il nomma pour président
Salluste Second [Sallustius Secundus], différent de [Greg. Naz. or.
3, t. 1, p. 91.
l'autre Salluste qu'il avait laissé dans la Gaule. Il ne
pouvait faire un meilleur choix: c'était un homme Soz. l. 5, c. 10.
sage et modéré qu'il venait d'élever à la dignité de Theoph. p. 39.]
préfet du prétoire d'Orient en la place d'Helpidius. Cod. Th. l. 9, t.
Mais il lui donna pour assesseur Arbétion, qui aurait 42, leg. 5.
dû des premiers éprouver la sévérité de ce tribunal. Till. Julien, note
Ce politique corrompu, auteur de tant de sourdes 5.
intrigues, autrefois ennemi de Gallus et de Julien
même, avait déja su par sa souplesse surprendre la confiance du
nouvel empereur. Il était l'ame de la commission[355]; les autres
n'agissaient qu'en sous-ordre: c'étaient Mamertinus, Agilon, Névitta,
Jovinus, depuis peu général de la cavalerie en Illyrie[356], et les
principaux officiers des deux légions qui portaient le nom de Joviens
et d'Herculiens. Ces commissaires, s'étant transportés à
Chalcédoine, montrèrent plus de rigueur que de justice. Entre un
assez grand nombre de coupables, ils confondirent plusieurs
innocents. Les deux consuls furent les premiers sacrifiés à la haine
de Julien. Florentius l'avait bien méritée: il fut condamné à mort;
mais il avait pris la précaution de se sauver avec sa femme dès la
première nouvelle de la mort de Constance, et il ne reparut
jamais[357]. Quelque temps après, deux délateurs[358] étant venus
offrir à Julien de lui découvrir le lieu où Florentius était caché, il les
rebuta avec mépris, en leur disant qu'il était indigne d'un empereur
de profiter de leur malice pour découvrir l'asyle d'un misérable, que
la crainte de la mort punissait assez. Taurus fut exilé à Verceil
[Vercellum]. On lui fit un crime d'avoir été fidèle à son maître, en
quittant l'Italie lorsqu'elle s'était déclarée pour Julien. C'était la
première fois qu'on voyait une sentence de condamnation datée du
consulat de ceux même qui en étaient l'objet[359], et ce contraste
faisait horreur. On exila Palladius dans la Grande-Bretagne, sur le
simple soupçon qu'il avait envoyé à Constance des mémoires contre
Gallus. Pentadius fut accusé d'avoir prêté son ministère pour faire
périr Gallus: il prouva qu'il n'avait fait qu'obéir, et fut renvoyé absous.
Florentius maître des offices, fils de Nigrinianus, fut relégué dans l'île
de Boa[360], sur les côtes de Dalmatie. Evagrius, receveur du
domaine[361]; Saturninus, qui avait été maître du palais[362], et
Cyrinus, secrétaire[363] du défunt empereur, éprouvèrent le même
sort: on les accusa d'avoir tenu des discours injurieux au prince
régnant, et d'avoir tramé des complots contre lui après la mort de
Constance: ils furent condamnés sans avoir été convaincus. La
vengeance publique triompha par la punition de trois fameux
scélérats: l'agent[364] Apodémius, le délateur Paul surnommé la
Chaîne, et le grand-chambellan Eusèbe, cet esclave impérieux qui
s'était rendu le maître de l'empereur, et le tyran de l'état, furent
brûlés vifs; et l'on regretta, dit un auteur[365], de ne pouvoir leur faire
subir cet horrible supplice autant de fois qu'ils l'avaient mérité. Mais
la justice elle-même pleura[366] la mort d'Ursule, trésorier de
l'épargne[367], envers lequel Julien se rendit coupable de la plus
noire ingratitude. Lorsque Constance l'avait envoyé dans la Gaule
sans argent, et sans aucun pouvoir d'en toucher, afin de lui ôter le
moyen de s'attacher le cœur des soldats, Ursule avait secrètement
donné ordre au trésorier[368] de la province de fournir au César
toutes les sommes qu'il demanderait. Julien s'apercevant que cette
mort injuste révoltait tous les esprits, prétendit s'en disculper en
faisant courir le bruit, qu'il n'y avait aucune part, et qu'Ursule avait
été à son insu la victime du ressentiment des soldats, qu'il avait
offensés l'année précédente à l'occasion des ruines d'Amid. Il crut
accréditer ce prétexte en laissant à la fille d'Ursule une partie de
l'héritage de son père. Mais n'était-ce pas se démentir, que de n'en
laisser qu'une partie? Les biens des autres furent confisqués; et peu
de temps après, comme plusieurs personnes tâchaient par des
fraudes charitables de mettre à couvert les débris de la fortune de
tant de malheureux, il condamna par une loi les receleurs à la
confiscation de leurs propres biens, s'ils en avaient, et à la peine
capitale, s'ils étaient pauvres.
[355] Le choix de cet homme peu estimé faisait imputer à Julien
un défaut de vigueur ou de lumières. Ideoque timidus videbatur,
vel parùm intelligens quid conveniret, dit Ammien Marcellin, l. 22,
c. 3.—S.-M.
[356] Magister equitum per Illyricum. Amm. Marc. l. 22, c. 3.—S.-
M.
[357] Pendant la vie de Julien, diu delituit, dit Ammien Marcellin, l.
22, c. 3, nec redire ante mortem (Juliani) potuit.—S-.M.
[358] C'étaient deux officiers du palais, agentes in rebus.—S.-M.
[359] Elle débutait ainsi: Consulatu Tauri et Florentii, inducto sub
præconibus Tauro.—S.-M.
[360] Actuellement Bua, l'une des plus petites îles de la mer
Adriatique, vis-à-vis de Spalatro, en Dalmatie. C'était un lieu
ordinaire d'exil pour les condamnés.—S.-M.
[361] Comes rei privatæ.—S.-M.
[362] Ex cura palatii.—S.-M.
[363] Ex notario.—S.-M.
[364] Ex agente in rebus.—S.-M.
[365] C'est Libanius qui s'exprime ainsi. Or. 10, t. 2, p. 298.—S.-
M.
 [366] Ursuli verò necem..... ipsa mihi videtur flesse justitia. Amm.
Marc. l. 22, c. 3.—S.-M.
[367] Largitionum Comes.—S.-M.
[368] Ad eum qui Gallicanos tuebatur thesauros. Amm. Marc. l.
22, c. 3.—S.-M.
Résolu de rétablir le bon ordre dans toutes les
parties de l'état, il commença par la réforme de la v. Réforme du
maison du prince. Les officiers s'y étaient multipliés palais.
à l'infini. Il y trouva mille cuisiniers, autant de Amm. l. 22, c. 4.
barbiers, un plus grand nombre d'échansons et de
maîtres d'hôtel, une multitude innombrable Liban. or. 10, t.
2, p. 292 et 293.
d'eunuques[369]. Tous les fainéants de l'empire
accouraient au service du palais; et après s'être Mamert. 11.
pan. c.
ruinés à se procurer des offices que les favoris
vendaient fort cher, ils s'enrichissaient bientôt aux Socr. l. 3, c. 1.
dépens du prince qu'ils pillaient, et de la patrie qu'ils Soz. l. 5, c. 5.
traitaient comme un pays de conquête. Leur luxe, Zon. l. 13, t. 2,
quelque excessif qu'il fût, trouvait des ressources p. 24.
inépuisables dans le trafic des emplois et des Vales. ad Amm.
grâces, dans les usurpations, dans les injustices l. 22, c. 7.
toujours impunies. Julien ayant demandé un barbier, Cod. Th. l. 6, tit.
fut fort étonné de voir entrer un homme superbement 27, leg. 2.
vêtu: C'est un barbier, dit-il, que je demandais, et
non pas un sénateur[370]. Mais il fut plus surpris encore, quand, par
les questions qu'il fit à ce domestique, il apprit que l'état lui
fournissait tous les jours la nourriture de vingt hommes et de vingt
chevaux, indépendamment des gages considérables et des
gratifications qui montaient encore plus haut[371]. Un autre jour,
voyant passer un des cuisiniers de Constance, habillé
magnifiquement, il l'arrêta; et ayant fait paraître le sien, vêtu selon
son état, il donna aux assistants à deviner qui des deux était officier
de cuisine: on décida en faveur de celui de Julien qui congédia
l'autre et tous ses camarades, en leur disant qu'ils perdraient à son
service tous leurs talents. Il ne garda qu'un seul barbier: C'en est
encore trop, disait-il, pour un homme qui laisse croître sa barbe. Il
chassa tous les eunuques, dont il déclara qu'il n'avait pas besoin,
puisqu'il n'avait plus de femme. Nous avons déja dit qu'il abolit cette
sorte d'officiers, qu'on appelait les curieux: il réduisit à dix-sept les
agents du prince, qui sous ses successeurs se multiplièrent jusqu'à
dix mille. Il ne choisit pour cet emploi que des hommes
incorruptibles, et il augmenta leurs priviléges. Il purgea aussi la cour
d'une multitude de commis et de secrétaires, plus connus par leurs
concussions que par leurs services. Ces suppressions d'offices ne
pouvaient manquer d'exciter des murmures passagers: on reprochait
à Julien une austérité cynique; on le blâmait de dépouiller le trône de
cet éclat qui, tout emprunté qu'il est, sert à le rendre plus
respectable. Mais les gens sensés trouvaient dans cette réforme
plus de bien que de mal; et sans approuver ce qu'elle avait d'outré et
de bizarre, ils pensaient que l'excès en ce genre est moins fâcheux
pour les peuples, et moins contagieux pour les successeurs.
[369] Μαγείρους μὲν χιλίους· κουρέας δὲ οὐκ ἐλάττους, οἰνοχόους
δὲ πλείους, σμήνη τραπεζοποιῶν, εὐνούχους ὑπερ τάς μυίας
παρά τοῖς ποιμέσιν ἐν ᾖρι. Liban., or. 10, t. 2, p. 292.—S.-M.
[370] Ammien Marcellin, l. 22, c. 4: Ego non rationalem jussi, sed
tonsorem acciri. Un rationalis était un intendant des finances.
Dans Zonare, Julien s'exprime ainsi: κουρέα ζητεῖν άλλ' οὐ
συγκλητίκον.—S.-M.
[371] Vicenas diurnas respondit annonas, totidemque pabula
jumentorum (quæ vulgo dictitant capita), et annuum stipendium
grave, absque fructuosis petitionibus multis. Ammien Marcell. l.
22, c. 4. Nous appelons rations ce que les Latins nommaient
capita.—S.-M.
Le luxe qui régnait à la cour, s'était introduit dans les
armées. Ce n'étaient plus ces soldats sobres et vi.
infatigables, qui couchaient tout armés sur la terre Rétablissement
nue ou sur la paille, et dont toute la vaisselle de la discipline
consistait en un vase de terre: c'étaient des hommes militaire.
délicats et voluptueux, corrompus par l'oisiveté, qui Amm. l. 22, c. 4
regardaient leurs lits comme une partie de leur et 7.
équipage plus nécessaire que leurs armes, qui Cod. Th. l. 7, tit.
portaient des coupes d'argent plus pesantes que 4, leg. 7, 8, et
leurs épées. Leurs officiers, parvenus par l'intrigue, ibi God.
ne pouvaient loger que dans des palais; ils
s'enrichissaient aux dépens des soldats, et les soldats aux dépens
des provinces, à qui seules ils faisaient la guerre par leurs pillages,
ne sachant que fuir devant l'ennemi. Plus de subordination ni
d'obéissance; plus d'honneur ni de courage. Julien rétablit la
discipline: il ne mit en place que des officiers éprouvés par de longs
services: il prit soin que les soldats ne manquassent ni de bonnes
armes, ni d'habillements, ni de paie, ni de nourriture; mais il
retrancha sévèrement tout ce qui tendait au luxe. Il leur fit reprendre
l'habitude du travail: une de ses lois ordonne que le fourrage, qui est
fourni par les provinces, ne sera apporté que jusqu'à vingt milles du
camp, ou du lieu dans lequel les soldats font leur séjour, et qu'ils
seront obligés de l'aller chercher à cette distance: c'était la marche
ordinaire d'une journée.
L'exemple du prince était une loi de frugalité et de
tempérance. La puissance souveraine ne changea vii. Modération
rien dans les mœurs de Julien, non plus que dans sa de Julien.
dépense personnelle. Modeste sur le trône, comme
Jul. misop. p.
il l'avait été dans l'oppression, il rejeta le titre de 343, 365, et
seigneur, que l'usage avait attaché aux empereurs: 367.
c'était l'offenser que de l'appeler de ce nom. Nulle Liban. or. 4, t. 2,
recherche dans ses habits. La pourpre impériale p. 161 et 162.
était d'une teinture distinguée et beaucoup plus
éclatante; il se contenta de la plus commune. Il Mamert. pan. c.
27, Eunap.
voulut même plusieurs fois quitter le diadème, et ne excerpt. hist.
le retint que par bienséance. Selon une ancienne Byz. p. 17 et 18.
coutume, les provinces envoyaient par leurs députés Cod. Th. l. 12,
des couronnes d'or à l'empereur, soit lorsqu'il tit. 13, leg. 1, et
parvenait à l'empire, soit à l'occasion d'un ibi God.
événement heureux, ou pour le remercier d'un
bienfait; et cet usage était devenu une obligation[372]. Les bons
princes en avaient quelquefois dispensé; les autres exigeaient ce
présent comme un droit de la souveraineté. Les préfets du prétoire
imposaient à cet effet une taxe arbitraire, sans en exempter ceux
mêmes qui étaient privilégiés à l'égard des autres contributions.
L'avarice des empereurs et la flatterie des préfets avaient fait monter
ces couronnes à un prix excessif; il y en avait de mille onces,
quelquefois de deux mille. Julien rendit à ce présent sa liberté
primitive, et par conséquent son mérite: il voulut qu'il fût purement
volontaire; il défendit même d'excéder dans ces couronnes le poids
de soixante-dix onces. C'était, à son avis, dénaturer un hommage
que de le tourner en profit; et tout ce que saisissait l'avarice était
perdu pour l'honneur.
[372] Julien se plaint dans son Misopogon de ce que les habitants
d'Antioche avaient été les derniers à lui envoyer des députés, et
de ce qu'ils avaient été prévenus par les Alexandrins, bien plus
éloignés qu'eux.—S.-M.
La réforme du palais et les bornes étroites qu'il
prescrivit à sa dépense, le mirent en état de viii. Il soulage
soulager les provinces. Il s'attachait à n'y envoyer les provinces.
que des gouverneurs désintéressés et incorruptibles. Amm. l. 25, c. 4.
Il modéra les taxes autant que le permirent les
Mamert. pan. c.
besoins de l'état; et l'on dit que dans le cours de son
25.
expédition en Perse, on l'entendit plusieurs fois au
milieu des plus grands périls, demander à ses Dieux Liban. or. 4, t. 2,
p. 161. et or. 10,
la grâce de terminer promptement la guerre, afin de
p. 306.
pouvoir réduire les tributs. Il défendit aux préfets de
rien imposer de nouveau, ni de rien relâcher des Jul. misop. p.
365, epist. 47,
impositions ordinaires, sans un ordre exprès de sa p. 428.
part. Tous ceux qui jouissaient du revenu actuel des
terres, sans en excepter ceux qui possédaient les Eutr. l. 10.
fonds patrimoniaux du prince cédés à des [Greg. Naz. or.
particuliers, payaient leur part des tailles. Ce n'était 3, t. 1, p. 80.]
pas pour l'intérêt de son trésor, c'était pour celui des Ambros. or. de
peuples, qu'il se rendait difficile sur les exemptions obitu Valent. t.
et sur les remises: il ne croyait pas que les princes 2, p. 1173.
fussent en droit de faire payer par leurs sujets leurs Cod. Th. l. 5, t.
faveurs particulières; et comme les priviléges 12, leg. unic. L.
retombaient à la charge du public, il pensait qu'ils 8, tit. 1, leg. 6,
7, 8; tit. 5, l. 12,
n'étaient dus qu'à ceux auxquels le public était
13, 14, 15, 16; l.
redevable. En ce cas, il donnait à ces priviléges 10, tit. 3, leg. 1.
toute l'étendue qu'ils pouvaient avoir sans restriction L. 11, tit. 3, leg.
ni épargne; aimant mieux, disait-il, accorder le 3, 4; tit. 12, leg.
bienfait tout entier, que de l'affaiblir en le divisant et 2; tit. 16, leg.
en le faisant demander à diverses reprises. Mais si 10; tit. 19. leg.
la faveur ne procurait jamais de remises, la 2; tit. 28. leg. 1.
nécessité les obtenait aisément: ce fut par ce motif L. 12, tit. 1, leg.
50. et seq. L.
qu'il en fit de considérables aux Africains, aux 15, tit. 1, leg. 8,
Thraces, à la ville d'Antioche. Il fit éclairer de près la 9, 10, tit. 3, leg.
conduite des officiers des rôles, qui, étant chargés 2.
de répartir les tributs et les fonctions onéreuses, Cod. Just. l. 11,
pouvaient commettre beaucoup d'injustices. Les t. 69, leg. 1 et 2.
bienfaits mêmes du souverain avaient été
auparavant à charge aux provinces, par les présents qu'il fallait
prodiguer aux porteurs des ordonnances. Ceux-ci, loin de rien exiger
sous le règne de Julien, n'osaient même rien accepter, persuadés
que ces gratifications illicites ne pouvaient ni échapper à sa
vigilance, ni se déguiser sous aucun titre. Il rétablit l'ancien usage
pour la réparation et l'entretien des chemins publics; chaque
propriétaire était tenu d'en faire la dépense à proportion de l'étendue
de ses possessions. Le mauvais état des postes que Constance
avait ruinées, causait un grand dommage aux provinces obligées de
les entretenir; Julien ne négligea pas cette partie: il réforma dans le
plus grand détail tous les abus qui s'y étaient introduits. On voit, par
plusieurs de ses lois, qu'il n'eut rien plus à cœur que de rétablir les
finances des villes, et de leur rendre leur ancienne splendeur. Il
encouragea l'ordre municipal par des exemptions modérées; il y
rappela ceux qui tâchaient de s'y soustraire; il y fit entrer des gens
qui jusqu'alors n'y avaient pas été engagés. Les deux empereurs
précédents avaient concédé ou laissé envahir des terres, des
édifices, des places qui appartenaient aux communes des villes:
Julien ordonna que ces terres seraient restituées et affermées, et
que le revenu en serait appliqué aux réparations des ouvrages
publics; que les édifices, dont on avait changé l'usage, seraient
rendus à leur ancienne destination: il accorda cependant que les
bâtiments élevés par des particuliers sur un terrain public, leur
demeurassent à condition d'une redevance. On croit que ces
dernières lois attaquaient principalement les chrétiens, auxquels
Constantin et Constance avaient accordé des fonds, des temples, et
d'autres édifices pour les églises et pour l'entretien du culte et des
ministres de la religion. Il paraît encore qu'il en voulait au
christianisme en établissant dans une de ses lois un principe
d'ailleurs très-sensé et avoué des chrétiens eux-mêmes: C'est que
les siècles précédents sont l'école de la postérité, et qu'il faut s'en
tenir aux lois et aux coutumes anciennes, à moins qu'une grande
utilité publique n'oblige d'y déroger. C'était le langage de Julien et
des autres païens de son temps, d'accuser de nouveauté la religion
chrétienne, dont ils voulaient ignorer l'ancienneté.
Il aimait à rendre la justice, il se piquait d'en suivre
scrupuleusement les règles dans sa conduite, et ne ix. Sa manière
s'en écartait jamais dans les jugements, si ce n'est à de rendre la
l'égard des chrétiens. Sévère sans être cruel, il usait justice.
plus souvent de menaces que de punitions. Très- Amm. l. 22, c.
instruit des lois et des usages, il balançait sans 10, et l. 25, c. 4.
aucune faveur le droit des parties. Le premier de ses Liban. or. 10, t.
officiers n'avait nul avantage sur le dernier de ses 2, p. 304.
sujets. Il abrégeait la longueur des procédures, et les
regardait comme une fièvre lente qui mine et Greg. Naz. or.
4, t. 1, p. 120.
consume le bon droit. Dès que l'injustice lui était
dénoncée, il s'en croyait chargé tant qu'il la laisserait Suidas.
subsister. Nous avons de lui plusieurs lois claires et Cod. Th. l. 1, tit.
précises, qui ont pour but d'accélérer les jugements, 7, quædam, L.
de faciliter les appels et d'en rendre l'expédition plus 11. tit. 30. leg.
29, 30, 51.
prompte. L'iniquité murmurait de la dureté d'un
gouvernement où elle ne pouvait espérer l'impunité,
ni même une longue jouissance; et ce qui achevait de la désoler,
c'est que l'opprimé trouvait auprès de Julien l'accès le plus facile.
Comme il paraissait souvent en public pour des fêtes et pour des
sacrifices, rien n'était si aisé que de l'aborder; il était toujours prêt à
recevoir les requêtes et à écouter les plaintes. Il laissait toute liberté
aux avocats, et il ne tenait qu'à eux d'épargner la flatterie; mais le
règne précédent les y avait trop accoutumés. Un jour qu'ils
applaudissaient avec une sorte d'enthousiasme à une sentence qu'il
venait de prononcer: Je serais, dit-il, flatté de ces éloges, si je
croyais que ceux qui me les adressent osassent me censurer en
face dans le cas où j'aurais jugé le contraire. On le blâme cependant
d'avoir quelquefois interrompu l'audience par des questions hors de
saison; pour demander, par exemple, de quelle religion étaient les
plaideurs: s'il en faut croire Ammien Marcellin, ce n'était qu'une
curiosité déplacée[373]; ni le motif de la religion, ni aucune autre
considération étrangère à la justice, n'influait sur ses jugements;
mais il est démenti en ce point par tous les historiens
ecclésiastiques. Ce qui l'entretenait dans cet esprit de droiture,
ajoute le même auteur, c'est que connaissant sa légèreté
naturelle[374], il permettait à ses conseillers de le rappeler de ses
écarts, et les remerciait de leurs avis. Saint Grégoire de Nazianze
nous donne cependant des idées bien différentes: il reproche à
Julien, comme un fait connu de tout l'empire, que dans ses
audiences publiques il criait, il s'agitait avec violence, comme s'il eût
été l'offensé; et que quand des gens grossiers s'approchaient de lui
pour lui présenter une requête, il les recevait à coups de poings et à
coups de pieds, et les renvoyait sans autre réponse. Je serais tenté
de croire que ceux que Julien rebutait ainsi, étaient des délateurs; et
que l'indignation publique contre ces misérables excusait ces
emportements, quelque indécents qu'ils fussent dans la personne
d'un prince. Mais comment accorder les idées avantageuses que les
auteurs païens nous donnent de Julien, avec le portrait affreux qu'en
ont fait des écrivains qu'on ne peut sans témérité soupçonner de
mensonge? Je pense que l'unique moyen de concilier des
témoignages si opposés, c'est de dire que la haine dont ce prince
était animé contre le christianisme, le faisait sortir de la route qu'il
s'était tracée; qu'étant par choix déterminé à la douceur et à la
justice, il devenait par passion à l'égard des chrétiens, inhumain,
injuste, ravisseur.
[373] Et quamquam in disceptando aliquoties erat intempestivus,
quid quisque jurgantium coleret, tempore alieno interrogans:
tamen nulla ejus definitio litis à vero dissonans reperitur: nec argui
umquam potuit ob religionem vel quodcumque aliud, ab æquitatis
recto tramite deviasse. Amm. Marc. l. 22, c. 10.—S.-M.
[374] Levitatem agnoscens commotioris ingenii sui, præfectis
proximisque permittebat, ut fidenter impetus suos aliorsùs
tendentes, ad quæ decebat monitu opportuno frenarent. Amm.
Marc. l. 22, c. 10.—S.-M.
Après avoir tracé ce plan général du gouvernement de Julien, nous
allons entrer dans le détail des événements de son règne. Il trouva à
Constantinople plusieurs ambassadeurs que les
nations étrangères avaient envoyés à Constance. Il x. Il donne
leur donna audience et les congédia honorablement, audience aux
à l'exception des Goths qui contestaient sur les ambassadeurs.
termes du traité fait avec eux. Julien les renvoya en Amm. l. 22, c. 7.
les menaçant de la guerre. Plusieurs de ses officiers
Liban. or. 8. t. 2,
lui conseillaient d'effectuer cette menace: il répondit p. 245.
qu'il cherchait des ennemis plus redoutables, et que
Zon. l. 13, t. 2,
les pirates de Galatie[375] suffiraient pour lui faire p. 24.
raison de la perfidie de cette nation. Ces corsaires
courant alors les côtes du Pont-Euxin enlevaient les
Goths et les allaient vendre comme esclaves. Il se contenta de
réparer les fortifications des villes de Thrace, et de poster des corps
de troupes le long des bords du Danube.
[375] Lebeau se trompe en disant que les Galates couraient les
côtes de l'Euxin pour y faire des esclaves. La Galatie, située au
centre de l'Asie-Mineure, n'avait point de port; et quand même
elle eût été dans une position maritime, il est difficile de croire que
les principes de gouvernement admis par l'administration romaine
eussent toléré de telles entreprises. Il n'était pas nécessaire que
les Galates fussent pirates pour faire le commerce d'esclaves;
cette sorte de trafic a toujours eu lieu dans les régions limitrophes
de la mer Noire. Il est encore en usage parmi les nations du
Caucase. Il suffisait que les Galates se rendissent dans les villes
où se vendaient des esclaves, qu'ils plaçaient ensuite dans
l'empire. Les choses se passaient ainsi. Ammien Marcellin, le seul
auteur qui ait fait mention de la réponse de Julien rapportée dans
le texte de Lebeau, ne parle que de marchands et non de pirates
Galates. Illis sufficere, dit-il, mercatores Galatas, per quos ubique
sine conditionis discrimine venumdantur. Amm. Marc. l. 22, c. 7. Il
est clair que les Galates faisaient métier de marchands
d'esclaves; ce qui est encore attesté par ce vers de Claudien (l. I.
contr. Eutrop. v. 59):
Hinc fora venalis Galata ductore frequentat.—S.-M.
Dans la cour de Constance le consulat avait été le
prix de l'intrigue. Il fallait l'acheter par des bassesses An 362.
et par des sommes d'argent prodiguées aux favoris,
xi. Nouveaux
aux femmes, aux eunuques. Sous Julien cette consuls.