Architecture and Nihilism: On the Philosophy of Modern Architecture
by Mr. Massimo Cacciari
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"Massimo Cacciari, one of the most influential social philosophers in Italy today, is the founder of the trend of criticism known as "negative thought" that focuses on the failure of traditional logic to explicate the problems of modernity. This book, which introduces his writings to an English-speaking audience, provides a striking social and philosophical account of the twentieth-century metropolis. Patrizia Lombardo's extensive introduction situates Cacciari's thought within the milieu of show more Italian political activism and philosophy between the 1960s and the 1980s, from his collaboration on the leftist journal Contropiano to his long association with Manfredo Tafuri." "Cacciari studies the relation between philosophy and modern architecture and applies the thinking of avant-garde architects, artists, and writers to the social and political problems raised by technological society. He begins by defining the modern metropolis, using the terms and ideas of Georg Simmel and Max Weber, but revealing where their frameworks are limited. He then examines the work of Adolf Loos and other architects and designers in early twentieth-century Vienna, showing how their architecture and criticism expose the alienation and utopianism in notions of the organic city. Cacciari demonstrates how architecture intersects with the city and the state but also with the interior of the private dwelling and with its resistance to the external world. Bringing together philosophy, sociology, urbanism, labor history, economics, and aesthetics, he helps us comprehend via these disciplines a crucial period in the history of modernity."--Jacket. show lessTags
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This volume collects earlier writings by noted critical theorist Massimo Cacciari. A longish introduction by Patrizia Lombardo puts these into an intellectual and political context in the Europe of the 1970s and 1980s. What they demand from the reader, however, is an extensive familiarity with a great deal of Continental text and culture from the beginning of the 20th century. In particular, the history of Vienna and its intellectual luminaries is the basis for much of Cacciari's discussion. The German sociologist Georg Simmel is a focus of Part I ("The Dialectics of the Negative and the Metropolis"), while Parts II and III are constructed with constant reference to Austrian architect Adolf Loos.
Stephen Sartarelli's translation from the show more Italian only gets the anglophone reader just so far, alas. For one thing, Cacciari used prodigious amounts of German for technical purposes in reference to various German thinkers and their ideas. While these terms are usually glossed parenthetically in their first instances, there are so many of them that even I, with quite a few years of German language study to my credit, found them confusing and hard to follow after a while. They are, after all, abstruse rather than quotidian verbiage even in their own language. Beyond this difficulty, there are an assortment of neologisms and coinages that are deployed without explicit definitions. Maybe you already know what "transcrescence" means--if so, you are likely the audience for this book!
Of the three parts, I best liked Part III "Loos and His Angel," but found it the hardest to follow despite its shorter chapters and closer approach to my own interests and concerns. In Cacciari's epilogue, I found confirmation that this book did indeed belong in the universe of ideas that I often navigate, with references not just to Nietzsche, but to Derrida, Guenon (!), and Corbin (!!).
I can recommend this book only with the gravest of reservations regarding its intellectual accessibility. show less
Stephen Sartarelli's translation from the show more Italian only gets the anglophone reader just so far, alas. For one thing, Cacciari used prodigious amounts of German for technical purposes in reference to various German thinkers and their ideas. While these terms are usually glossed parenthetically in their first instances, there are so many of them that even I, with quite a few years of German language study to my credit, found them confusing and hard to follow after a while. They are, after all, abstruse rather than quotidian verbiage even in their own language. Beyond this difficulty, there are an assortment of neologisms and coinages that are deployed without explicit definitions. Maybe you already know what "transcrescence" means--if so, you are likely the audience for this book!
Of the three parts, I best liked Part III "Loos and His Angel," but found it the hardest to follow despite its shorter chapters and closer approach to my own interests and concerns. In Cacciari's epilogue, I found confirmation that this book did indeed belong in the universe of ideas that I often navigate, with references not just to Nietzsche, but to Derrida, Guenon (!), and Corbin (!!).
I can recommend this book only with the gravest of reservations regarding its intellectual accessibility. show less
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