isparchitecture.com Editorial Stefan Koller & Tom Spector The 2014 conference of the International Society for the Philosophy of Architecture and its twin themes of autonomy and morality continue to furnish our journal pages with productive discussion. Graham Owen’s opening essay “Whatever Happened to Semi-Autonomy?” traces a strand of recent architectural discourse by reminding us that architecture theory was not long ago engaged in a serious search for an architectural mode of production existing midway between pure formal autonomy and dissolution in social science. He looks for evidence that such a position is still possible in such efforts as activist architecture. The writings of Sarah Whiting and Robert Somol make a prominent appearance in this essay, as well as in Pauline Lefebvre’s “Varieties of Pragmatism: Architectural Objects Made Moral.” Rather than dissect the discourse, as Owen does, Lefebvre elects to dissect the concept of autonomous architectural objects against the concepts provided by American Pragmatism—especially as outlined by John Dewey and Richard Shusterman. She finds promising avenues of exploration made possible by the pragmatist tradition but no clear solution to the problem of seeking agency within architecture itself. Finding the pragmatist orientation towards placing opposing tendencies along continuums more useful than isolating them into clear-cut categories, she seeks to discredit a stultifying pre- delineated moral domain “where some things are included while others are excluded.” A similar conclusion is reached by Diana Aurenque in her essay on Heidegger’s late ethics, AP . vol 2 . No 1 . 2016 2 ED IT OR IA L “Heidegger on Thinking about Ethos and Man’s Dwelling”: “To dwell poetically one has to forfeit the very domain of the moral, a domain in which good and evil have already been decided upon.” While no one would accuse such Heidegger early and middle work mainstays as Being and Time, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” or “Building Dwelling Thinking,” of being breezy reads, Aurenque and Architecture Philosophy hope to initiate a correction to the neglect of Heidegger’s later works by architectural audiences enthralled with BT, “OWA,” and “BDT,” due in no small part to the later works’ reputation for impenetrability, by mapping a wide range of Heidegger’s works characteristic of the late period—above all, his commentaries on Hölderlin’s poetry. To substantiate these assertions about both the accessibility and resonance for architectural audiences of Heidegger’s later work, a piece of that later work, 1970’s “Man’s Dwelling,” is included here as a companion to Aurenque’s exegetical study. Although nine of its companion essays in volume 13 of Heidegger’s Complete Works have been rendered in English before, “Man’s Dwelling” is here translated, by Cesar A. Cruz, for the first time.1 Aurenque herself stays focused on textual interpretation. She deliberately eschews all attempt to deploy her readings of the later Heidegger in the service of wider- ranging reflections, such as those found in the more explorative, at times speculative, readings of Heidegger’s mid-to-late works offered by, say, the scholarship of Rodolphe Gasché, Hubert Dreyfus, or Philippe Lacoue- Labarthe, scholarship that rarely if ever reckons with “Man’s Dwelling.”2 “Man’s Dwelling” finds Heidegger continuing to explore fundamental questions of building and dwelling raised in 1954’s “Building Dwelling Thinking.” Heidegger writes in his nearly-trademarked strategic mode of initially beguiling the reader into following him into a meticulous, even affectionate, examination of a work (or even a single word) from the past for the purpose of providing the necessary critical distance to abruptly turn the reader around to face the existential questions of our time. Here Hölderlin’s poem “The Archipelago,” as its variations unfolded for the poet in the process of writing, serves as his launchpad to tease-out the ideas to which he wants us to attend. But, uncharacteristic for Heidegger, in this essay he actually projects the reader towards the future as well as the present and the past. Heidegger’s suggestion “that man of the present age too dwells poetically in his own way – namely […] unpoetically,” certainly presages similar assertions by such post-humanist-minded architects as Peter Eisenman against Christopher Alexander’s nostalgic holism. With “Man’s Dwelling” and its careful contextualization by Aurenque now available to an English speaking audience, many questions open up, 3 isparchitecture.com especially for readers and future contributors to this journal: How does the reading of this additional text change or inflect existing discourses on Heidegger in relation to architecture? What does it tell us about his analyses of dwelling and other foundational concerns in architecture philosophy? What does “Man’s Dwelling” add to the discourse or to the understanding of architecture more broadly? By expanding the textual material to be reckoned with, of which “Man’s Dwelling” is one piece, Aurenque has laid a useful beginning for such inquiries, even if her own concerns are largely propaedeutic to them. We hope that future contributors feel sufficiently encouraged (or provoked) to join a debate on this work, and furnish us with critical commentary and elaborations of their own. Aurenque and Lefebvre stake out a common ground of phenomenology and pragmatism: the eschewing of a pre-established domain of the moral itself. Thus, where others have sought to bring ethics to architecture, both Lefebvre’s Dewey and Aurenque’s Heidegger seek to rescue architecture, and dwelling, from a too-prescriptive conception of ethics. They thus subvert and redraw the questions behind the 2014 ISPA conference, just as that conference’s Call for Papers hoped contributors would.3 A similar contestation of architecture ethics resurfaces in the present issue’s final two essays. While Dewey, famously, sought to embed aesthetics more fully in life, Adorno’s contrary insistence that art maintain a privileged existence beyond the clutches of capitalism informs Alberto Rubio-Garrido’s “Autonomy and Expression in Architecture.” Rubio-Garrido sees autonomy not as an established concept, but rather as a struggle unleashed in the Enlightenment that begins with Kant, gains gravity with Schiller, and gets a much- needed reinterpretation with Adorno. Adorno’s conception of autonomy and emancipation as Adorno’s liminal presence in these essays [is] a fascinating development “ ” AP . vol 2 . No 1 . 2016 4 ED IT OR IA L dialectical, counteracting poles presents the prospect of a more complete understanding of the workings of aesthetics and ethics emerging out of— even thriving on—their limits. While Christian Illies and Nick Ray’s concluding essay, “Obliged to Beauty: An Aesthetic Deontology of Architecture” implicitly opposes— and is greatly challenged by—Rubio-Garrido’s argument for an enigmatic architecture that preserves a fenced-off aesthetic realm in Adorno’s mold, the idea of thriving on limits would seem to operate in the background here as well. The authors call into question the autonomy of the aesthetic realm by exploring the possibilities of an obligation to beauty that is itself moral. If such an interpretation holds, it promises to make the familiar tug between function and aesthetics in the design of architectural works no longer incommensurable. Thus, a different kind of freedom can emerge by acknowledging a lack of full autonomy. In conjunction with their essay, Illies and Ray’s new book Philosophy of Architecture is reviewed, and some of its arguments are examined. We find Adorno’s liminal presence in these essays a fascinating development that we hope inaugurates more exploration of the relation of his thought to architecture. More generally, we hope these concerted investigations continue further discussion, and not conclude it, on the subject of autonomy. 2015 saw several developments of importance for ISPA. First, the society’s 2016 conference in Bamberg, Germany was announced. In a purportedly post-modern, post-humanist age, the conference’s focus on the human holds promise for bringing forth refreshingly contrarian thinking. The conference’s announcement and call for papers is reprinted in this issue’s concluding pages. As always with ISPA’s biennial conferences, readers of Architecture Philosophy will be able to read a selection of premier conference papers in an upcoming issue. With the strong growth of society membership in the past two years, ISPA was able to sponsor two smaller events in the conference off-year 2015 to enable more frequent personal interaction among members. Thus, August 2015 saw the inauguration of an annual ISPA symposium series at the Wittgenstein House in Vienna, the next installment of which is announced in this issue. Moreover, readers can look forward to reading the fruits of that event in Architecture Philosophy’s first themed issue, forthcoming spring 2016, to be edited by Carolyn Fahey. In the second ISPA event, marking the first in North America, an intimate workshop in Taos, New Mexico convened in August. Though the workshop had no stated theme, it was clear that the function of aesthetics as life-expression was either an explicit or implicit topic for 5 isparchitecture.com all participants. This event links this issue’s cover with its centerpiece. It feels unavoidable to speculate that if ever there was an architecture apart from his beloved Greek temples that Heidegger would find emblematic of true dwelling in the Fourfold of gods and men, earth and sky, it would be in something like the Taos Pueblo. ENDNOTES 1. Thomas Sheehan maintains an up-to-date document as to which parts of Heidegger’s Complete Works have been translated into English (and where). See Thomas Sheehan, “Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe Texts and their English Translations,” Stanford Academia: Thomas Sheehan, last modified October 2014, https://www.academia.edu/9830630/ Heidegger_S_Gesamtausgabe_texts_and_their_English_translations_as_ of_October_2014_. 2. For a thorough overview of Heidegger’s relevance to architects, see Adam Sharr, Heidegger for Architects (New York: Routledge, 2007) and for a recent review of Heidegger’s reception, especially in relation to architecture, see Glen Hill, “Poetic Measure of Architecture: Martin Heidegger’s ‘…Poetically Man Dwells...,’” Architecture Research Quarterly 18, no. 2 (2014): 145-154. 3. Carolyn Fahey and Stefan Koller, June 27, 2013, “Autonomy Reconsidered,” International Society for the Philosophy of Architecture, http:// isparchitecture.com/events/call-for-papers/. Reprinted in Architecture Philosophy 1, no. 2 (2015): 135-6.