architecture and philosophy, of the subject, and thus of subjectivism. Cartesianism is the
emergence of the centrality of the subject; the subject of epistemology as well as the
subject of sentiment. Rather than pursuing this particular path, however, it is essential to
move to a more detailed analysis of what is at play in the rejection of tradition.
Fundamental to the possibility of this rejection will be a specific construal of repetition.
This has to be the case since Descartes believes that the break with the work of others (a
break or rupture within repetition and therefore occasioning the cessation of repetition)
establishes, and defines, the new. There can be no sense, within the terms of his own
argument, that repetition can operate if repetition is understood as the repetition of a
tradition. It will be seen, however, that there is another sense in which Descartes cannot
escape another repetition. It is this sense that, it will be suggested, checks his claim
concerning that which has already been described in terms of the possibility of an
absolutely new beginning. The detour into repetition will take us to the centre of the
problem of tradition, explanation, interpretation and therefore of a more generalized
aesthetic—general in the sense that its stakes are not reducible simply to architecture.
Descartes understands tradition’s repetition not necessarily in terms of the repetition of
an unchanging and identical content, but rather as a continuity of content; one determined
and structured by the precepts of medieval Aristotelianism, that is, Scholasticism. The
break would be the refusal both to occasion and to sanction the repetition of these
precepts; to take them over and hand them on. The resistance is to their continuity. Two
questions arise here. First, if there is a radical break—one in which it is possible to begin
again—how is the break to be maintained, housed, within Descartes’ own philosophical
adventure? Second, how does the break figure within the implicit conception of tradition
at work in the departure itself? Before it is possible to answer these questions it is vital to
try and understand repetition beyond the confines of Cartesianism. What is at stake now,
therefore, is to move from the relationship between repetition and tradition within
Descartes to a more generalized conception—remembering, of course, that for Descartes
it is possible to call a halt to continuity. Indeed it is possible to interpret the doubt of the
First Meditation as the break, and the subsequent overcoming of doubt as the
recommencement.
There is a sense in which Descartes is correct. Tradition in general terms can be
understood as the determination in advance. The way tradition operates is invariably in
terms of teleology. There is a telos established within and as tradition. In the case of
architecture, the telos refers to function and thus to housing. Architecture must house. Its
being as architecture is, within the terms set by the dominant tradition, to be determined
if not evaluated by the success of any architectural instance—any building—to fulfil such
a criterion. It is, of course, a criterion determined in advance. The incorporation of
teleology into tradition and into architecture does not preclude the possibility of excess.
Indeed excess has to be understood not as a subversive element within a more general
economy but as a designation that flows from the centrality of function. It is therefore
essential to distinguish between excess and transgression. Excess is always going to be
the addition that sustains the law or rule. Transgression is that which robs them of their
power, while maintaining that power as a remnant. It endures but no longer as itself.
Within the purview of teleology, however, the history of architecture, in fact the
philosophy of architecture, have become as a result the history and philosophy of a
Rethinking Architecture 272