Europe as Project?

"Mit festen Schultern steht der Raum gestemmt gegen das Nichts.
Wo Raum ist, da ist Sein."
(Friedrich Nietzsche) 

From the early Greek myth of Atlantis and Plato’s theory of the Republic, to the Christian image of the ‘Heavenly Jerusalem’, until the properly ‘utopian’ projects of the Renaissance, European thought has never really been contempt with (and within) the limits of an immanent ground, but always projected itself beyond any here-and-now.

Yet, with the arise of nihilism and after the “death of God” (Nietzsche), not only the place, but also the time in which such a transcendent projection might find its realisation seemed to disappear from the horizon of thought, casting it to the domain of the ‘untimely’, or ‘u-chronic’—something which can never possibly be realised.

What implications does such a history have for Europe today? How can architecture—as the techne more than any other able to ‘project’, to ‘cast a form in advance’—help in the understanding of the problem (by nevertheless going beyond mere planning)? In other words: can we conceive of Europe as  project?

In order to avoid reducing Europe to a mere geo-political issue, and therefore trying to go beyond any ‘positive’ affirmation of it , the course will address the complex ‘nature’ of such continent through the eye of contemporary philosophy and architecture theory, with a particular regard to the work of Massimo Cacciari.

Such a perspective will be enriched by outlooks on a kaleidoscope of different concerns: the quest over the ‘origin’ of Europe in mythography (Calasso); the understanding of politics as the ‘in-between’ (Arendt); the relationship between economy (as money) and truth (Hénaff), or money and ‘good’ (Coccia); the ‘exodic’ perspective of transcendence (Corbin); and of course the role of architecture, both in the historical importance of utopia for European urban planning (Klein), as well as in the understanding of the City as a ‘project’ (Aureli).

An early ‘outline’ of the topic can be found at the following link:
https://www.academia.edu/37871332/Europe_or_the_Migrant_Continent
(video here: https://youtu.be/NQGgzHRTLB8)

The course will take place each Wednesday, from 4pm to 6pm in the ATTP seminar room (Wiedner Hauptstraße 7, Stiege 2, 1st floor).

www.attp.tuwien.ac.at 
www.facebook.com/attp.tuwien

In each session participants will discuss a selected excerpt (around 30 pages) from the readings, on the basis of a weekly preparatory exercise; attendance is therefore required. All the texts to be discussed will be made available on TISS in advance.

Eventually, participants will be asked to produce a final paper on a topic related to the themes discussed in class. Examples of previous seminar papers can be found here:
http://www.attp.tuwien.ac.at/wahlseminar-architekturtheorie-ss2017 

The course will be provided in English, but final papers might be delivered both in English or German.

• Roberto Calasso, Chapter I, in The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 3-24.
• Massimo Cacciari, “The Geophilosophy of Europe”, in The Unpolitical: On the Radical Critique of Political Reason (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009), 197-205.
• Robert Klein, “Utopian Urban Planning”, in Form and Meaning: Writings on the Renaissance and Modern Art (The Viking Press, 1970), 89-102.
• Pier Vittorio Aureli, “Means to an End: The Rise and Fall of the Architectural Project of the City”, in The City as a Project (Ruby Press, 2013), 14-38.
• Massimo Cacciari, “Epilogue: On the Architecture of Nihilism” in Architecture and Nihilism: On the Philosophy of Modern Architecture, (Yale University Press, 1993), 199-212.
• Massimo Cacciari, “Project”, in The Unpolitical: On the Radical Critique of Political Reason (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009), 122-145.
• Massimo Cacciari, “Europe or Philosophy”, in: Europe and Empire: On the Political Forms of Globalisation (Fordham University Press, 2016), 57-68.
• Hannah Arendt, “Introduction into Politics”, in The Promise of Politics, (New York: Schocken Books, 2005), 93-201.
• Marcel Hénaff, “The Figure of Merchant in Western Tradition” and “The Scandal of Profit and the Prohibition on Appropriating Time”, in The Price of Truth: Gift, Money, and Philosophy (Stanford University Press, 2010), 59-100.
• Emanuele Coccia, Goods: Advertising, Urban Space, and the Moral Law of the Image(Fordham University Press, 2018), 7-32.
• Massimo Cacciari, “Europe or Christianity”, in: Europe and Empire: On the Political Forms of Globalisation (Fordham University Press, 2016), 69-96.
• Henry Corbin, "The Imago Templi in Confrontation with Secular Norms”, in Temple and Contemplation (KPI, 1986) 263-283.