Architecture and Hermeneutics
Vesely’s work may be understood primarily as a contribution to cultural hermeneutics, and his exploration of the historical background of modern science in the sixteenth- and seventeenth centuries is particularly rich in detail and insight onto the changing nature of representation. Vesely polemises on concepts such as perspective and anamorphosis, which are traditionally understood to have taken departure from Renaissance culture. Vesely contributes to the current debate with the depth of the problem of representation; a question which has divided Western philosophy with regard to the epistemological possibility of representation and understanding of natural phenomena. The ‘birth’ of modern science and its increasing challenge on traditional views has also marked the divide within the possibilities of representation. In the context of the seventeenth century, this was especially clear as a polemics surrounding the nature of scientific work and philosophical understanding.
According to Vesely, the inevitable partiality of such views is at the very core of the problem that affects the cultural understanding of representation. Its contingent nature was not always understood as a divide originating all kinds of dualisms. Before modern science, representation was naturally contingent and the universal aspirations of science (metaphysics) were bound to the nature of the epistemological ground (arché). Vesely’s work traces back the ontological foundations of the problem to the Greek context, helping to clarify its original meaning. In Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation (2004), Vesely presents the notion of ground as having a provisional nature, that can only be seized as a continuity of reference through different levels of representation, ranging from the more explicit, visible world down to a latent world of potential articulation. Precisely this continuity is what may allow us to address the modern, fragmented notion of representation as a task of rehabilitation, which would trace the fragment back to its original whole.
Read more about this topic: Dalibor Vesely
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