Rethinking Architecture| A reader in cultural theory

there is not usually so much perfection in works composed of several

parts and produced by various different craftsmen as in the works of one

man. Thus we see that buildings undertaken and completed by a single

architect are usually more attractive and better planned than those which

several have tried to patch up by adapting old walls built for different

purposes. Again, ancient towns which have gradually grown from mere

villages into large towns are usually ill-proportioned, compared with those

ordinary towns that planners lay out as the fancy (fantaisie) on level

ground. Looking at the buildings of the former individually, you will often

find as much art in them, if not more, than in those of the latter; but in

view of their arrangement—a tall one here, a small one there—and the

way they make the streets crooked and irregular, you would say it is

chance (fortune) rather than the will of men using reason (raison) that

placed them so. And when you consider that there have always been

certain officials whose job is to see that private buildings embellish public

places, you will understand how difficult it is to make something perfect

by working only on what others have produced (les ouvrages d’autrui).^2

This passage warrants careful analysis. It is not an isolated instance within Descartes’
writings. It should be remembered, for example, that the actuality of starting again is
articulated within architectural terms in the First Meditation, where he describes his task
in the following way:

to start once again from the foundations

commencer tout de nouveau dès les fondements.

3

It is the possibility of this ‘new’ beginning that defines the relation to as well as the
conception of tradition at work in both the Méditations and the Discours de la méthode.
Now, returning to the passage from the Discours de la méthode, it is essential to note
both the presentation of tradition, its interarticulation within the language of architecture,
and thus its putting into play as well as demanding a specific conception of experience
and thereby of the aesthetic. Rather than working on, ‘les ouvrages d’autrui’, the implicit
suggestion is that the philosopher like the architect (the philosopher as architect) should
‘begin again’. The ‘autrui’ of this passage can be interpreted as standing for tradition.
Inscribed therefore within the more general architectural metaphor is an additional trope.
The relationship between self and other has become mapped onto the possibility of a
departure from tradition. Tradition here, within this framework, is presented as the other.
The other is the already present. The other here is history. The self becomes that
possibility that emerges within the break from that conception of the self/other relation
that views both parts as inextricably linked. The self must emerge as new—in a perpetual
state of renewal—from this linkage. It is precisely in this sense that Descartes’
juxtaposition of the solitary individual working alone and a team—the ‘divers maîtres’—
needs to be understood.
Descartes’ refusal of tradition is connected therefore to the emergence of the
individual subject. It is thus that Cartesian thought establishes the centrality, both within

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