










































isparchitecture.com

ENIGMA AS MORAL REQUIREMENT IN THE 
WAKE OF LEDOUX’S WORK: AUTONOMY 
AND EXPRESSION IN ARCHITECTURE

ALBERTO RUBIO GARRIDO

Architecture’s alleged capacity to meet ever new 
cultural and social challenges raises the dilemma 
between considering architecture a modern art or 
a vehicle for the realization of  social good. The 
nature of  the dilemma and its potential resolution 
in favor of  the preservation of  architecture’s artistic 
autonomy are this paper’s two leading concerns. 
To pursue them we first need to get clearer what 
renders art ‘autonomous’.

As a concept, autonomy defies easy definition. 
It acquired multiple meanings in the history of  
ideas and frequently appeared under various guises, 
especially throughout the nineteenth century. 
Purity, the absolute, perfection, freedom, self-
determination, l’art pour l’art, futility, and more: 
such notions were, and continue to be, understood 
by reference to art’s struggle for autonomy. Yet 
our understanding of  that struggle, indeed of  art’s 
autonomy, remains contested.1

On the face of  it, ‘autonomy’ designates a thing’s 
(or someone’s) independence when determining its 
own laws. Such laws, we shall see, can range over 
the ontological, the ethical, and even the aesthetic. 
Autonomy expresses the fundamental modern 
principle of  something’s giving itself  its own laws 
and setting its own ends. 

If  this minimal gloss is correct, its application to 
architecture requires clarification and defense right 
away. Architecture as, or insofar as it is, a particular 

Purity, the 
absolute, 

perfection,  [...] 
continue to be 

understood by 
reference to 

art’s struggle 
for autonomy.

“

”



AP . vol 2 . No 1 . 2016

64

R
UB

IO
 G

A
R

R
ID

O

art faces external constraints and limits on its autonomy; limits it cannot 
evade. Perhaps the most noticeable limitation arises from architecture’s 
having to fulfill a function. Insofar as the product of  architecture has to 
satisfy this prerequisite, that product’s aesthetic form is already to some 
degree pre-determined. Recognition of  this fact hardly necessitates 
subscription to the claim that form ‘follows’ (is conclusively and solely 
determined by) function. Yet that ‘fact’ may explain why functionalism (in 
this strong sense) remains autonomism’s bête noire in architecture.

There are further (and just as obvious) limitations to architecture’s 
autonomy. Let me mention two. Firstly, architecture incorporates advances 
from other disciplines. Often, those disciplines and their advances have 
not previously responded to aesthetic motivation: why should they do 
so now? Secondly, architecture is a public art and as such resists being 
understood as the expression of  individual will or as an isolated element 
alien to its socio-historical context.

Such limitations notwithstanding, an architectural theory and practice 
was established during the twentieth century with a determined effort 
to reach autonomous architecture, or something very much like it, as its 
cornerstone. This ‘effort’ began with Emil Kaufmann’s 1933 founding 
manifesto From Ledoux to Le Corbusier: Origin and Development of  Autonomous 
Architecture.2 Since then, others have deepened and multiplied, if  hardly 
clarified, the meaning(s) of  ‘autonomous architecture’. Indeed, the degree 
of  consensus among later authors, authors as diverse as Johnson, Rossi, 
Eisenman, Hays, and Aureli (one could easily mention more), terminates 
at their referring to the same concept and laying claim to the same sources. 
That the semantic stability of  the term autonomy might be an issue, it seems, 
is never contemplated.

In order to clarify this situation and move the debate beyond a collision 
of  idiolects,3 the present study postulates the need to recover the genuine 
sense of  the concept of  autonomy in its philosophical sources—and 
to (re-)introduce that concept to artistic and historical discussions of  
architecture only thereafter. To that end, the paper proceeds as follows. 
Sections 1 and 2 recover the Kantian concept of  autonomy and explain 
its implications in architecture: among these implications, a ‘requirement 
of  expression’ is shown to reign supreme by the end of  section 2. Both 
sections discuss how this concept and its implications measure up against 
what Kaufmann considered to be the two main features of  autonomy in 
architecture. 

Section 3 enlists Schiller’s interpretation of  Kant’s autonomy to take into 
account the effective risks of  autonomy in (and for) architecture. Section 
4 draws on Adorno’s oeuvre to present an alternative to both Schiller and 
Kant. Section V deploys that ‘alternative’ to demonstrate autonomy as one 
of  the greatest (and definitely ongoing) challenges modern architecture 



65

isparchitecture.com

has faced since the Enlightenment. 
Before we begin, a word of  caution. Recognizing 

clear geo-historical differentiation, Kaufmann 
regarded ‘the Enlightenment’ as ideologically quite 
unified, certainly in relation to architecture. This 
paper follows suit (largely for the sake of  argument) 
but acknowledges that more recent studies rightly 
urge us to regard the Enlightenment as considerably 
more pluralistic—especially in its relation to ‘the 
revolutionary’, a relation that strongly exercised 
Kaufmann.4 Regardless of  whether or not there 
is one Enlightenment or multiple Enlightenments, 
my minimal reliance on the fate of  this argument 
should leave the essence of  what is proposed here 
intact.

1. KAUFMANN WITH KANT, ONE: AUTONOMY AS SELF-DETERMINATION
Autonomy occupies a central position and gains 

new points of  emphasis and relevance in philosophy 
from Kant’s time onward.5 Indeed, Kant himself  
places the concept of  autonomy at the very center 
of  his practical philosophy. He claims that human 
reason is an autonomous source of  principles of  
conduct, both in its value determinations and its 
active decisions. Thus, human autonomy is both 
the highest value and the condition for all other 
values, with  ‘autonomy of  the will’ understood as 
the supreme principle of  morality.6 In fact, Kant 
never spoke about the autonomy of  art.

So, in a ‘transcendental’ sense, autonomy in art 
belongs to a broader project of  humans’ autonomy 
from both natural and social determinations. 
In Kant, autonomy implies the spontaneity of  
its powers given some formal exigencies, and it 
should be able to establish the laws governing the 
legitimation of  their feasibility, scope, and limits. 
Therefore, if  we can distinguish a specific kind, 
more or less independent, of  autonomous power 
in the field of  art, the first type of  autonomy 
should be regarded as fundamentally linked to the 
autonomous function of  the power of  judgment as a faculty 
of  the soul distinct from reason and understanding.7 
This Kantian transcendental order is primarily 

That the 
semantic 

stability of the 
term 

autonomy might 
be an issue,

it seems, is never 
contemplated.

“

”



AP . vol 2 . No 1 . 2016

66

R
UB

IO
 G

A
R

R
ID

O

determined by the subject who transcends; and who, in his experience 
of  reality, allows the object to transcend insofar as it is conceived as that 
subject’s representation. The work of  art should not be considered as an 
entity sufficient unto itself  but as a representation connected with the 
individual subject. Pursuing Kant’s line of  thought to its conclusion in the 
artistic field, autonomy turns out to be at first sight a power with no clear 
regulatory impact on either artistic or political practice.

In From Ledoux, Kaufmann interpreted autonomy with explicit reference 
to Kant,8 and defined it as a form of  self-determination that brooks no 
sociocultural constraint. Crucially, Kaufmann claimed that such autonomy 
is manifested in a pure abstraction of  creative mechanisms in architecture. 
In that regard Kaufmann’s interpretation of  the ‘transcendental’ version 
of  autonomy in architecture might be accused of  opening the way for 
isolating architecture from society. A typical case of  this isolation might 
be, for instance, Kaufmann’s description of  Ledoux’s project Retour de 
Chasse:

At first glance, the [Ledoux’s] Hunting Lodge [...] seems to be Baroque in its 
general layout. But on closer view we note significant changes. The composition 
lacks in binding power. Although the building masses seem to be grouped in a 
manner very similar to Baroque disposition, and, although the main house rules 
over the outlying buildings, each block is independent from the other, and from 
its natural setting.9

In other baroque buildings types, such   as a monastery or a palace—where 
differentiated volumes like the church, the cloister, or dependencies should 
be articulated—some correspondence between the parts was established, 
although they could be detached. On the contrary, for Kaufmann, Ledoux 
imposes in his projects a ‘repetition’ criterion: as we can see, the pavilion 
structure is repeated in the three volumes without any alteration, despite 
the additional volume overlapped onto the central pavilion. Supported 
by a rather idiosyncratic interpretation of  Kant, Kaufmann emphasizes 
the exemplary nature of  the Retour de Chasse (Figures 1 and 2) as an 
illustration of  the transitional figure that Ledoux represents between 
pre-revolutionary and revolutionary architecture. From Ledoux, free 
association of  independent elements (against Baroque unity) would 
become the ultimate compositional mechanism. This is what Kaufmann 
called the pavilion system or later the new individualism:10 a configuration where 
compositional mechanisms such as ‘repetition’, ‘antithesis’, and ‘multiple 
response’ dominate.11 In other terms, it is an abstract and supposedly 
autonomous mechanism insofar as for Kaufmann these compositional 
mechanisms emerged in architecture from an internal logic beyond 
sociocultural constraints.



67

isparchitecture.com

FIGURE 1: Hunting lodge, perspective view. Vue perspective d’un Retour de 
Chasse, sheet 110 from Claude Nicolas Ledoux, L’architecture considérée 
sous le rapport de l’art, des moeurset de la législation (Paris: H. L. Perronneau, 
1804).

FIGURE 2: Hunting Lodge, elevation. Elévation d’un Retour de Chasse, sheet 
111 from Claude Nicolas Ledoux, L’architecture considérée sous le rapport de 
l’art, des moeurset de la législation (Paris: H. L. Perronneau, 1804).



AP . vol 1 . No 2 . 2015

68

R
UB

IO
 G

A
R

R
iD

O

2. KANT AGAINST KAUFMANN, TWO: EXPRESSION AS A BOND WITH SOCIETY
Architecture, however, holds an inner corrective mechanism against 

Kaufmann’s thesis. And, in fact, this resistance of  architecture to ‘self-
determination’ was explicitly referred to in Kant’s Critique of  the Power of  
Judgment.

Firstly, it is not true that Kant proposes a theory of  art as disengaged 
from the social, as Kaufmann suggests, in its own interest.12 More precisely, 
for Kant, the underlying content of  artistic experience is the relationship 
between fundamental ideas of  metaphysics and morality—above all, the 
foundational notion that the will can be freely determined by the principle 
of  morality.13 In addition, as Kant put it in his ‘Analytic of  the Beautiful’, 
in the case of  architecture a building’s suitability to its purpose is a 
preliminary condition to any subjective aesthetic judgment. Consequently, 
it is impossible to aesthetically appraise or ‘judge’ architecture without the 
intervention of  reason to evaluate its suitability for purpose, which reveals 
an inherent and inevitable restriction of  architecture’s autonomy. That is 
why Kant illustrated his conception of  ‘adherent beauty’ with architectural 
examples:

The beauty [...] of  a building (such as a church, a palace, an arsenal, or a 
summer-house) presupposes a concept of  the end that determines what the thing 

FIGURE 3: Pacifère, sheet 40 from Ledoux, L’architecture (1804).



69

isparchitecture.com

should be, hence a concept of  its perfection, and is 
thus merely adherent beauty [...]. One would be able 
to add much to a building that would be pleasing in 
the intuition of  it if  only it were not supposed to be 
a church.14

Hence, the expression of  ‘aesthetic ideas’—
as representations of  the imagination that give 
cause for the free interplay of  the powers of  
the soul—should be restricted to (or, at the very 
least, by) morally significant ideas as in any form 
of  art. However, in architecture, these ‘aesthetic 
ideas’ must be compatible with the orientation 
of  architecture towards an objective end.15 Since 
what might be called the ‘Kantian revolution’ in 
aesthetics of  architecture, the combination of  
beauty and purpose remains influenced by the 
expression of  moral ideas, taking the aesthetics of  
architecture beyond Classicist theories. With Kant, 
architecture’s primary task is no longer to imitate 
past perfections (as Classicist theories adduced) but 
its social comprehensibility, which is ultimately the 
measure of  its inseparable bond with society. By 
‘aesthetic idea’ Kant means:

that representation of  the imagination that occasions 
much thinking though without it being possible for any 
determinate thought, i.e., concept, to be adequate to 
it, which, consequently, no language fully attains or 
can make intelligible.—One readily sees that it is 
the counter-part (pendant) of  an idea of  reason, 
which is, conversely, a concept to which no intuition 
(representation of  the imagination) can be adequate.16

If  Boffrand and Blondel17 epitomized the vanguard 
of  this shift, Ledoux constitutes a paradigmatic 
and especially elucidative case for the crudeness 
of  tensions present in his work. And yet, when 
referring to Ledoux’s ‘revolution’ in architecture, 
did Kaufmann use a correct interpretation of  
Kant’s major claims isolated above? Did Kaufmann 
correctly assume (which is central here) Kant’s 
implied imperative of  ‘comprehensibility’ in 
architecture, a cornerstone of  Kant’s transcendental 
order applied to this discipline? Let us see what 
Kaufmann stated about (what one could call) ‘the 

For Kant, the 
underlying 

content 
of artistic 

experience is 
the relationship 

between [...] 
metaphysics and 

morality

“

”



AP . vol 2 . No 1 . 2016

70

R
UB

IO
 G

A
R

R
ID

O

requirement of  expression’ in Ledoux’s work with another example, the 
Pacifère:

The massive walls of  Pacifère and Panarétéon do not even allow a guess 
at the disposition of  the interior. The ideal of  geometry has got the better of  
the Baroque principle of  animation [...]. The exterior of  the Baroque château 
clearly expresses the differentiation between the lordly grand salon, the private 
apartments, and the mezzanine of  the servants. The blocks of  the revolution are 
mute. As soon as the architects will renounce the petty devices of  “Narrative” 
architecture, the purposes of  their structures will no longer be reflected in the 
outside.18

This assumption of  muteness in the Pacifère (Figure 3) is far from a minor 
premise in Kaufmann’s proposal, as we shall see immediately, although it 
clearly contrasts with what Ledoux himself  wrote about the Pacifère: 

if  the artists wished to follow the symbolic system that characterizes their 
production, they would acquire as much glory as the poets; they would elevate the 
ideas of  those who consult them, and there would not be a stone in their works 
which would not speak to the eyes of  persons passing by.19 

Kaufmann justifies this symbolism in Ledoux (evident too in Maison des 
directeurs de la Loue or Maison des Cercles) by relying on two hypotheses: it 
should be understood as surrender to the rising Romanticism or—even 
worse—as the persistence of  Baroque criteria. The new trend that can 
already be identified in Ledoux is the paucity of  the discretion, in contrast 
to the Baroque culture or Romanticism, which led him to “show his 
feelings openly and often in excess”. For Kaufmann, then, expression 
in architecture is linked to both pre- and post-revolutionary narrative to 
the extent that “the purposes of  their structure” (or construction) are 
reflected on the outside. Or, in other terms, the identity between the 

FIGURE 4: Prison in Aix-en-Proence. Extracted from Vues perspectives du 
Palais du Gouverneur et de la Prison, sheet 189 from Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, 
Architecture de C.-N. Ledoux: Collection qui rassemble tous les genres de 
bâtiments employés dans l’ordre social, ed. Daniel Ramée (Lenoir éditeur, 5. 
Quai Malaquais. Paris, 1847).



71

isparchitecture.com

internal narrative of  this architecture with its outer 
appearance becomes the communicative value of  
that architecture, as opposed to examples from 
(in Kaufmann’s nomenclature) the revolutionary 
period, a period whose buildings in his view “are 
mute.” Evidently buildings’ muteness collides with 
Ledoux’s main purpose in developing a ‘symbolic 
architecture’, in which “there would be no stone 
in their works [artists’ whose works follow the 
symbolic system] which would not speak to the 
eyes of  persons passing by.”

3. THE EMPIRE OF THE SYMBOL
 Apart from the fact that Kaufmann is 

demonstrably mistaken in refusing to attribute 
expressive content to Ledoux’s architecture, 
Kant’s ‘aesthetic ideas’ theory seems insufficient 
to take account of  this particular interpretation 
of  autonomy in Ledoux’s work. In point of  fact, 
with Kant it is possible to explain the imperative 
of  expression in architecture, but what is to be 
expressed remains indeterminate in his philosophy.20

This communicative motivation of  art was 
recovered in the second sense of  autonomy 
formulated by Schiller, which indirectly explains the 
drifting of  the concept of  autonomy in its reception 
in architecture. This second conceptualization 
counteracts the perception of  human fragmentation 
that characterizes modernity. For Schiller, autonomy 
in art would be the precondition for establishing a 
new utopian alternative to an ailing society.21 This 
premise—distinct from what Kaufmann terms ‘the 
revolutionary’ and its ideas—focuses all its efforts 
on the transformation of  the material conditions 
of  society and inaugurates the critical aesthetic 
device based on a negative relationship between 
art and society. In this way, art is provided with 
both diagnostic and proactive capabilities based on 
Schiller’s concept of  ‘heautonomy.’22 

Similarly, Enlightenment critical rationality is 
transferred to architecture through a commitment 
to improving society. In France, such authors as 
Laugier, Boffrand, and Blondel put criticism into 

the prison in 
Aix-en-Provence 

[...] clearly 
transmits 

threat and 
ruthlessness.

“

”



AP . vol 2 . No 1 . 2016

72

R
UB

IO
 G

A
R

R
ID

O

action by adopting a firm attitude to intervene in artistic practices in order 
to promote certain social orientations. As Schiller made evident, this 
renewal should go hand-in-hand with the symbolic role of  art through the 
identification of  beauty and truth.23 Thus, a great deal of  revolutionary 
efforts revolved around the elaboration of  a discourse based in self-
determination that could transmit an emancipatory message. The link 
between proportions and feelings or Blondel’s theory of  caractère responds 
to the need to establish an identity between the created objects and 
creation as an autonomous action. Indeed, Ledoux establishes a symbolic 
expression inside the process of  constitution of  the form, with the 
particularity, unlike his contemporaries, that he moved towards a utopian 
creation of  a new social order, like, for instance, in the prison in Aix-en-
Provence (Figure 4), which clearly transmits threat and ruthlessness.

The symbol in architecture thus acquires a role, which depends on the 
work’s functional orientation, beyond its former decorative or formal 
repertoire. In other words, an explicit function replaces the implicit one 
of  symbolism in previous periods. In this regard, we can draw at least two 
major implications.

Firstly, the attempt to create a utopia through figuration plunges the 
process into a deep paradox. On the one hand, the acknowledgment of  
the inadequacy of  resources for the fulfillment of  an ideally conceived 
future stimulates the utopia. But on the other hand, as in Ledoux’s 
architecture, the wish to present materially such an unattainable future at 
that very historical moment associates the ideal world with reality, and thus 
acquires an absolute character that ultimately overrides all alternatives. 

FIGURE 5: Vue perspective de la ville de Chaux, sheet 15 from Ledoux, L’architecture (1804).



73

isparchitecture.com

These aspirations of  universalism in Ledoux’s 
architecture are evident in the projects where 
future becomes a chimera (Figure 5). On the one 
hand then, this brand new expression of  a utopia 
through architecture provides hope for a promised 
land, while on the other, assumes its unattainability.

Secondly, precisely because of  the legitimation 
of  this universal value of  architecture, nature 
acquires a redemptive character, though not in 
sense of  Rousseau—whereby the immersion in 
the natural cycle would immunize humans against 
their inner corruption—but in the Kantian sense 
of  autonomy. Therefore, the return to a mechanism 
of  mimesis with regard to natural processes collides 
with the intent to break with tradition, launching a 
new type of  determination.

As a result of  this process, the symbol in 
architecture was presented in a markedly closed 
nature, where the signifier (figuration) is identified 
with the signified (utopia), confirming the 
Enlightenment’s mechanism of  particularizing 
abstract universals. Thus addressed, the attempt 
of  reconciliation with society and nature reveals 
its ultimate reversal process of  mythologization, 
bringing both society and nature back to the realm 
of  what humanity can dominate and manipulate. 
This reactive movement can be seen in Jean-
Nicolas-Louis Durand or Louis-Ambroise Dubut’s 
postulates, whose work once captivated Kaufmann. 
The naïve emancipatory impulse became mere 
ideology on which to support a no longer renovating 
program.

The truth is that, specifically in architecture, the 
two necessary correctives that Schiller puts forward 
to protect Kant’s principle of  autonomy from the 
functional orientation of  art—that is, ‘immunity’ 
and ‘indifference’24—may not be present in a 
practice that is inseparable from society and its needs. 
Without these correctives, architecture acquires a 
hegemonic overtone in its messianic positioning, 
something evident in Ledoux’s architecture. As 
an internal corrective to the tendency to isolation 
of  autonomous art, Kant showed what in Schiller 

[T]he symbol in 
architecture 

thus acquires a 
role [...] beyond 

its former 
decorative 
or formal 

repertoire.

“

”



AP . vol 2 . No 1 . 2016

74

R
UB

IO
 G

A
R

R
ID

O

summons the threat of  the mystifying absoluteness, aggravated by the 
heteronomous nature of  architecture, which brings closer (and even 
equates) morals and aesthetics, expression and utopia. Hence, Adorno’s 
critique of  Schiller,25 perhaps precipitated in the exclusively aesthetic level, 
becomes extremely relevant in the case of  architecture.

4. ENIGMA AND SOCIAL COMMITMENT 
For Adorno, all references to the exteriority of  art—such as its 

legitimacy through commitment to society or its compressibility—must 
be articulated from its immanence as an object. That is why he insists on 
the need for autonomy “as imprisonment of  aesthetics to the realm of  
aesthetics.” This is, in fact, a requirement to make negative dialectics in art 
feasible. As opposed to sovereign aesthetics (Schiller’s proposal), he states 
that negativity beyond aesthetics is powerless against social conditions. The 
work of  art must be autonomous to fulfill its function as social criticism. 
The autonomy of  art must account for the status of  aesthetics demanding 
its own rules without compromising its mission of  transgressing its own 
limits, which would constrain its sovereignty. It is not only art that must 
meet the requirement of  autonomy, but the work of  art itself  should also 
follow general discourse: “By crystallising in itself  as something unique to 
itself, rather than complying with existing social norms and qualifying as 
‘socially useful’, it criticizes society by merely existing.”26

Derived from this antinomy of  the autonomy in art with a critical purpose, 
one of  the first renunciations that art—and architecture insofar it is a 
form of  art—must accept is communication in its heteronomous sense. 
Adorno harshly criticized the alleged social role of  art as communicability; 
namely, the thesis that art becomes social as soon as it provides an 
accessible meaning.27 In this there is an evident risk, Adorno claimed, for 
communicative art to grow ideological. Art cannot claim both its sovereignty 
in society and its autonomy. It must present itself  as criticizing society by 
evidencing society’s contradictions. Its mere existence constitutes a critique 
of  society by standing against the prevailing codes, instrumentalization 
being chief  among them. Art should be art in itself  and it should not 
depend on alien instances of  legitimation to be autonomous. In turn, art 
must be autonomous to preserve in itself  a remnant of  its social nature.

In short, Adorno considered autonomy and emancipation as two 
counteracting dialectical poles. And in this sense, he claimed the 
independence of  all reality, which Kant had cast doubt on by placing art in 
a pre-rational place. Yet, at the same time Adorno vindicated the truthful 
content of  the work of  art, externalizing autonomy in the object: the 
work of  art, then, opens a space of  denial as long as it can be presented 
as another self, something outside historical constraints, providing an 
alternative in this regard. His aim is to prevent autonomy from becoming 



75

isparchitecture.com

an accomplice of  instrumental rationality, as indeed 
is the case in Ledoux insofar as he sets a new utopia 
crystallized in his projects under the premises of  
“welfare” or “progress.”

In this sense, the cornerstone of  Adorno’s 
argumentation lies in the location of  a space of  
freedom that simultaneously accounts for art’s 
renunciation of  any external commitment and for 
its integration with reality. In an Adornian sense, 
the lack of  functionality in art, alienated and insular, 
endows it with an internal consistency that, in its 
autonomy, manifests itself  to reality as something 
impossible to be instrumentalized. Art has to pursue the 
restructuring of  life without imposing any structures 
on that life. It intervenes as a reflection of  society, 
projecting what is denied on who denies it, returning 
unacknowledged internal contradictions to the 
source of  these contradictions. In this regard, with 
the theoretical support provided by Adorno, the 
enigma as an epistemological content—opposed 
to the truth understood as adaequatio—acquires an 
internal moral status which dissolves the aporia faced 
by aesthetic modernity and opens the way for the 
possibility of  an autonomy in architecture without 
compromising architecture’s inherent nature. 

What explains this ‘inherent nature’? And what 
is its relation to the enigmatic? I will answer these 
questions in reverse order, effectively delegating 
treatment of  the first question to section 5.

Adorno refers to the epistemological status 
of  the enigma in art in many passages of  his 
Aesthetic Theory, due both to its importance and its 
complexity. For instance:

[T]he need of  artworks for interpretation, their need 
for the production of  their truth content is the stigma 
of  their constitutive deficiency. Artworks do not 
achieve what is objectively sought in them. The zone 
of  indeterminacy between the unreachable and what 
has been realized constitutes their enigma. They have 
truth content and they do not have it.28

Art has its own truth content, but it does not 
pass through empirical verification, nor through 
realization of  the concept in Hegelian sense, as 

Adorno’s 
critique of 

Schiller [...] 
becomes 

extremely 
relevant in 
the case of 

architecture.

“

”



AP . vol 2 . No 1 . 2016

76

R
UB

IO
 G

A
R

R
ID

O

both represent an identity theory. There is a truth of  art that lies in the 
formal constitution of  the work; that is, an autonomous truth. A recent 
study by Ferris, entitled “Politics and the Enigma of  Art,” explains the 
passage’s likely intent as follows:

[P]recisely because art does not affirm any meaning claimed on its behalf, it 
remains, in a word Adorno emphasizes, an enigma […]. This tendency of  art 
to express its uncertainty by asserting a function that would seem to carry all the 
certainty of  self-evidence becomes the sign of  art’s inability to recognize its own 
inmost tendencies.29

Ferris highlights how Adorno’s stance of  art as enigma30 effectively resists 
Kant’s obligation for comprehensibility. This, however, does not leave 
Adorno—or a philosophy of  architecture built on his foundations—
bereft of  communicative potential: 

In the end, all roads lead to this enigma in Adorno. Why artworks have and 
do not have a truth content is because the enigmatic character of  art, as Adorno 
defines it, requires that artworks ‘say something and in the same breath conceal 
it’. Their truth content is a saying that does not say what it says, but does say 
that it says. The content of  the artwork is consequently tied to its form by this 
enigma. As a result, the enigmatic is what constitutes form as constitutive of  art. 
What this means is that, if  form is how art is mediated as art, form cannot 
represent an object. This is because art, for Adorno, resists objectification in its 
very concept. As a result, whatever content art has must be a content that takes 
away such an object even as it affirms it. This is the task of  the enigmatic.31

As we can see here, understood aright, Adorno does not challenge so 
much as modify Kant’s obligation for art to be ‘comprehensible’: he alters 
the demands of  what art needs to communicate, and how it does so, to 
enter meaningful relations with society without lapsing into an identity 
theory (for Adorno, the source of  modern instrumentalization). And this, 
in turn, explains how we can endorse, as my argument urges we should, 
an analogous demand for art to be enigmatic (in Adorno’s sense) also in 
architecture. That Ledoux halfway meets Kant’s obligation in just this way 
was precisely argued above. Where this leaves architecture and autonomy 
more widely remains to be seen. To this we turn next.

5. AUTONOMY AND MODERNITY IN ARCHITECTURE
Clearly, for Adorno the very possibility of  art as enigma did not arrive 

in literary and musical composition until the avant-garde with Beckett 
and Schönberg. In fact, for Adorno a pure and rigorous concept of  art 
should be just music32 and, in that sense, (especially) architecture assumes 
an inner limitation as a specific art: its dependence on function determines 
in some degree a dialectic between form and matter.33 Yet it is also true 
that Adorno never explicitly refused to include architecture among 
modern arts. Moreover, in his analysis of  functionalism he assumes that 



77

isparchitecture.com

architecture and art in general share the same 
challenges, quoting Scharoun’s Philharmonic as an 
example of  architecture’s capacity to overcome 
such challenges.34

Adorno’s insistence on the radical defense of  
the autonomy of  art—a defense that motivates 
inquiry into the enigmatic in the first place—aspires 
to be an antidote against the specific totalitarian 
movements (whether from fascism or from the 
culture industry) that prevailed throughout the 
first half  of  the twentieth century. Persisting in the 
separation of  spheres and avoiding absolutism is 
part of  Adorno’s resistance against regression. This 
was under the premise of  taking the unavoidability 
of  modernity in its emancipatory impulse without 
thereby obviating the danger of  radical isolation.

Thus interpreted, the avant-gardes evince in 
their inner struggles the tension between the 
real and the loss of  human identity. From within 
modernity and in their deepening in the criticism 
of  modernity, the various avant-gardes provide the 
scale of  the insufficiency of  their internal project 
of  emancipation. This liberating surge, even in 
a negative sense, is perhaps the most indelible 
contribution of  the avant-gardes, to such an 
extent that not even the mannerisms of  the 1960s 
and the attempts to overcome postmodernism 
have managed to unseat it. The successive crises 
of  modernity merely confirm the relevance of  
modernity, to the extent that it appears as an 
unavoidable project.35 Even today—and probably 
more than ever—the recognition of  dissatisfaction 
with what currently exists prevails to the extent that 
the project of  modernity has not been reversed.

Modernity leads to a perpetual attempt to 
establish a solid foundation despite the intimate 
awareness of  its futility. This is the case of  the avant-
garde and it was also at the heart of  Ledoux’s work. 
With the dissolution of  the classical categories, 
architecture had to face the new dialectics between 
rational and sensitive, ideal and real, without any 
solid anchors. And it is precisely to the extent 
that architecture cannot abandon its commitment 

The 
impossibility 

of autonomy in 
architecture 

transforms 
its project into 

a paradigm of 
modernity.

“

”



AP . vol 2 . No 1 . 2016

78

R
UB

IO
 G

A
R

R
ID

O

to social needs, given its internal heteronomy, that it turns out to be 
prefigurative for the rest of  the arts: in the movement toward the self-
absorption of  art that modernity brings with it, architecture paradoxically 
becomes a different social self. Internalizing the antinomy of  Adorno’s 
autonomy in architecture, the impossibility of  autonomy in architecture 
transforms its project of  autonomy into a paradigm of  modernity, which 
thus becomes exemplary for the other arts.

The radical shift represented by the avant-gardes and, in particular, 
its problematization of  the autonomy of  art, soon revealed the reverse 
commitment in architecture, which could be illustrated in Ledoux’s work. 
Today, the avant-garde’s vindictive nature is perceived in a heteronomous 
sense: its integration into the canons of  dominant logic invigorated its 
immunity and expanded its domain. Adorno retrieves this internal tearing 
of  modernity and incorporates it into art through its negativity. Any 
attempt of  positivity, either from social commitment or the defense of  the 
ideal of  progress, would precisely encourage the false expectation of  its 
realization. Reconciliation is only possible by experiencing the impossibility 
of  envisaging the way forward. Adorno channeled the aspirations of  the 
Enlightenment towards confrontation with the world, and in that sense, 
art becomes indispensable.

It is precisely because autonomy belongs to this modern movement 
that it holds the very paradox of  modernity: the foundation of  concepts, 
possibilities, promises, etc., encompasses the threat of  their loss. Along with 
the idea of  an autonomous architecture, the possibility of  a struggle for 
emancipation and freedom vanishes, as so does the possibility of  its total 
dissolution, as architecture may not find the way to become immediately 
social. Alienated from its original social function and provided with a 
critical role against society due to its autonomy, a sense of  free humanity 
feeds architecture, while, by its own autonomy, architecture has to deny 
society the access to that refuge of  humanity. Or, as Adorno would say, 
as an autonomous art, architecture has to negate society for the sake of  a 
promise of  a different society. But, as an intrinsically heteronomous art (as 
a functional art), architecture must serve society.36

In this sense, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux’s work may be seen to presage 
the antinomies of  autonomy which architecture would face during the 
avant-garde: the paradox that architecture imposes on its social milieu a 
hegemonic order which ultimately leads it to abandon its social commitment. 
Although only intuitively, we can say that the situation of  architecture 
during the nineteenth century with regard to the revolutionary period finds 
its parallel in its present situation since the avant-gardes. To find again its 
role in society, architecture should regain its social commitment with a 
new problematization of  its autonomy in response to the actual changing 
paradigms (as could be the consolidation of  globalization: there is nothing 



79

isparchitecture.com

outside modernity, the collapse of  the Keynesian ideal, the problem of  
political representation, etc.). 

The capacity of  architecture to meet new challenges involves the 
dilemma of  whether architecture can actually still be considered a 
modern art—that is, an autonomous art—or whether, on the contrary, 
we should assume its pre-modern nature and embrace unproblematically 
the reconciling essentialist paradigms or even the explicitly reactionary 
ones, as the diatribe between Kaufmann and Sedlmayr illustrated.37 Since 
the Enlightenment, architecture has simultaneously experienced its period 
of  greatest prominence in society and the intimate conviction that it 
can no longer change anything. Modernity bequeathed to architecture 
an uncertainty which remains unresolved. This uncertainty is likely to 
contain some modern values as long as it remains indefinite and calls us 
back to this kind of  radical question. We either accept this, or accept that 
architecture is essentially a pre-modern art.

ENDNOTES
1. The Historical Dictionary of  Philosophy opens its entry on “Autonomie” 
with a warning of  sorts, entitling its opening section “The Problematic 
History of  the Concept.” See Joachim Ritter, Karlfried Gründer, and 
Gottfried Gabriel, eds., ‘Autonomie’, Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie 
(Basel: Schmabe, 2007), 431-479.
2. See Emil Kaufmann, Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier: Ursprung und Entwicklung 
der autonomen Architektur (Vienna: R. Passer, 1933). No English translation 
of  this book exists, but fragments thereof  surface in English translations 
of  Walter Benjamin’s (nearly contemporaneous) Arcades Project. See Walter 
Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin 
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).
3. A ‘collision’ well documented in the papers by Coleman, Owen, and others 
presented at the International Society for the Philosophy of  Architecture 
conference in 2014, and now published in Architecture Philosophy. See 
Nathaniel Coleman, “The Myth of  Autonomy,” Architecture Philosophy 1, 
no. 2 (2015): 157-178 and Graham Owen, “Whatever Happened to Semi-
Autonomy,” ArchitecturePhilosophy 2, no 1. (2016): 6-20.
4. Cf. Jonathan I. Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and 
Human Rights, 1750-1790 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
5. See Ernst Feil, “Autonomie-Heteronomie,” in Antithetik neuzeitlicher 
Vernunft: “Autonomie-Heteronomie” und “rational-irrational” (Göttingen: 
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987).
6. In his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of  Morals (1785), Kant formulates the 
moral law with the help of  the concept of  autonomy (the so called Formula 
of  Autonomy): ‘‘the idea of  the will of  every rational being as a will giving 
universal law’’ (G 4:431; cf. G 4:432) or ‘‘Not to choose otherwise than so 
that the maxims of  one’s choice are at the same time comprehended with 



AP . vol 2 . No 1 . 2016

80

R
UB

IO
 G

A
R

R
ID

O

it in the same volition as universal law’’ (G 4:440; cf. G 4:432, 434, 438). 
See Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of  Morals, ed. and trans. 
Allen W. Wood (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002).
7. I follow here the Cambridge Edition of  the Works of  Immanuel Kant 
and, more precisely, Paul Guyer’s edition of  Critique of  the Power of  Judgment. 
See Immanuel Kant, Critique of  the Power of  Judgement, ed. Paul Guyer, trans. 
Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 
2001).
8. Early in his monograph, Kaufmann draws a parallel between the 
autonomous morality established by Kant and the autonomous architecture 
he wants to defend in (that is, with respect to the work of) Ledoux. See 
Kaufmann, Von Ledoux, 12.
9. Emil Kaufmann, “Three Revolutionary Architects, Boullée, Ledoux, 
and Lequeu,” in Transactions of  the American Philosophical Society 42, no. 3 
(1952): 525.
10. The evolution of  these terms is clearly explained in Detlef  Mertins, 
“System and Freedom: Sigfried Giedion, Emil Kaufmann, and the 
Constitution of  Architectural Modernity,” in Modernity and Ideology, 212-
231. Despite this, it is possible to identify even in Kaufmann’s later works 
the same interpretation of  autonomy as a formal configuration (which 
section I identified as central).
11. As Kaufmann states in Architecture in the Age of  Reason: Baroque and 
Postbaroque in England, Italy, and France (Cambridge: Harvard University 
Press, 1955).
12. Recall from section I that Kaufmann uses Kant’s concept of  autonomy 
in order to justify a new architecture, that of  abstract mechanisms that 
operate autonomously, regardless of  any sociocultural constraint. In that 
sense, this interpretation of  the transcendental version of  autonomy might 
have been accused of  paving the way for the isolation of  architecture from 
society.
13. See Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of  Taste (Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1997), 60-227 and Paul Guyer, “The Harmony of  
the Faculties Revisited,” in Values of  Beauty: Historical Essays in Aesthetics 
(Cambridge University Press, 2005), 77-109.
14.  Kant, Critique of  the Power of  Judgment, §16, 114-115.
15.  Function and form in a successful architecture intensify each other 
more than being just added. See Paul Guyer, “Free and Adherent Beauty: 
A Modest Proposal,” The British Journal of  Aesthetics 42, no. 4 (2002): 357-
366. 
16.  Kant, Critique of  the Power of  Judgment, §49, 192.
17. Throughout this paper, I intend the ‘younger’ of  the two Blondels, 
Jacques-François (1705-1774).
18. Kaufmann, “Three Revolutionary Architects,” 520.
19. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, L’architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’art, des 



81

isparchitecture.com

moeurset de la législation (Paris: H. L. Perronneau, 1804), 115. The original 
French reads: “si les artistes vouloient suivre le système symbolique qui 
caractérise chaque production, ils acquéreroient autant de gloire que les 
poètes; ils éléveroient les idées de ceux qui les consultent, et il n’y auroit 
pas une pierre qui, dans leurs ouvrages, ne parlât aux yeux des passants.”
20. This is the main thesis of  Paul Guyer, “Kant and the Philosophy of  
Architecture,” The Journal of  Aesthetics and Art Criticism 69, no. 1 (2011): 
7-19.
21. Friedrich Schiller, Kallias, oder, Über die Schönheit: Fragment aus dem 
Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Koerner; Über Anmut und Würde (Stuttgart: P. 
Reclam., 1971), letters V-VI.
22. Against what he stated in Kallias, in Letters upon the Aesthetic Education 
of  Man, Schiller disclaims nature as a source of  artistic impulse in order to 
link autonomy of  art with a utopian reconciliation. In order to establish 
an “ästhetischen Staat,” Schiller undertakes a project of  objectification 
of  the concept of  beauty and finds its ontological foundation—and 
the foundation of  aesthetical autonomy—in appearance and play. See 
Friedrich Schiller, Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of  Man (Whitefish, MT: 
Kessinger, 2004).
23. See Luigi Pareyson, Etica ed estetica in Schiller (Milan: Mursia, 1983), 60-
70.
24. See Schiller, Letters, letters 9 and 26.
25. Adorno rejects tout court Schiller’s impulse towards the transcendence 
of  art beyond its aesthetic realm. The identification of  an area of  freedom 
in art, thus legitimizing its existence through commitment to society 
counterfeits a totality unreachable from its singular rationality. 

The idea of  freedom, akin to aesthetic autonomy, was shaped by domination, 
which it universalized. This holds true as well for artworks. The more they freed 
themselves from external goals, the more completely they determined themselves 
as their own masters. Because, however, artworks always tum one side toward 
society, the domination they internalized also radiated externally.

See Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. R. Hullot-Kentor (London: 
Athlone, 1997), 17-18.
26. Ibid., 229.
27. See the example of  Van Gogh’s paintings as the end of  identity 
between narrative content and meaning in artworks. For more details, see 
the sections entitled “Enigmaticalness, Truth Content, Metaphysics” and 
“Coherence and Meaning,” in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory. Ibid., 118-162.
28. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 128.
29. David S. Ferris, “Politics and the Enigma of  Art: The Meaning of  
Modernism for Adorno,” Modernist Cultures 1.2 (2005): 192-208: here 195.
30. Adorno’s German term is ‘Rätsel’ and designates for instance the type 
of  riddle the Sphinx used in its attempt to snare Odysseus. The meaning 
and intent of  her riddles are, to the discerning eye, both opaque and visible.



AP . vol 2 . No 1 . 2016

82

R
UB

IO
 G

A
R

R
ID

O

31. Ferris, “Politics,” 204. The quotation within the quotation is to Adorno, 
Aesthetic Theory, 120.
32. Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life, trans. 
E. F. N. Jephcott (New York: Verso, 2005), §143.
33. This is why, for instance, Hilde Heynen has argued that Adorno 
ultimately regarded architecture to be unsuitable for entry into modernity 
and modern art. See Hilde Heynen, Architecture and Modernity: A Critique 
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999), 198-200.
34. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 44.
35. In this sense, Kaufmann’s most significant contribution may be 
the hypothesis of  continuity between the Enlightenment and modern 
architecture, thus taking a broad sense of  modernity. See Kaufmann, 
Architecture in the Age of  Reason. Most pressingly, Ledoux raises the issue of  
how we date the entry point of  modernity in architecture itself, but I leave 
this matter for elsewhere. For discussion, see not only Kaufmann’s works 
cited earlier, but also Joseph Rykwert, The First Moderns: The Architects of  the 
Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1983).
36. See Theodor W. Adorno, “Functionalism Today”, Oppositions 17 (1979): 
31-41.
37. See Sedlmayr’s assessment of  Kaufmann’s From Ledoux in: Hans Sedl-
mayr, Verlust der Mitte: Die bildende Kunst des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts als 
Symptom und Symbol der Zeit (Salzburg: Otto Müller Verlag, 1951). Sedlmayr 
located precisely in the French Revolution’s visionary architecture the 
origin of  the lack of  rootedness and authenticity in modern architecture. 
Following his analysis, architecture had reached its autonomous status 
with Loos and Le Corbusier at the cost of  losing its sense of  responsibility 
with the culture and society, and reduced to an empty ideal geometric 
formal suit.


	_GoBack

