Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

In architecture, the concept of Critical Regionalism gained popularity as a synthesis of universal, “modern” elements and individualistic elements derived from local cultures. Critical Regionalist alternatives are more than a postmodern mix of ethno styles but integrate conceptual qualities like local light, perspective, and tectonic quality into a modern architectural framework. In order to “critically” root architectural works in their corresponding traditions, Critical Regionalists base their conceptual stances on those philosophers that have produced a critical consciousness in European culture like Kant, Ranke, Niebuhr, Humboldt, and others. It must appear as surprising that philosophy, the field from which architectural Critical Regionalism extracted its theoretical foundations, has never developed its own Critical Regionalist tradition. The present article attempts to formulate the relationship between regionalism and philosophy in a different fashion: is it possible and useful to retrospectively use the philosophical insights gained by architectural Critical Regionalism for a definition of the practice of regionalism in contemporary philosophy?

Several Buddhist schools in India, China and Japan concentrate on the interrelationships between waking and dreaming consciousness. In Eastern philosophy, reality can be seen as a dream and an obscure 'reality beyond' can be considered as real. In spite of the overwhelming Platonic-Aristotelian-Freudian influence existent in Western culture, some Western thinkers and artists - Valéry, Baudelaire, and Schnitzler, for example - have been fascinated by a kind of 'simple presence' contained in dreams. I show that this has consequences for a philosophy of space. According to the authors discussed, the dreamer and the player recognize that human space always means the entire cosmos.

There are many links between Kuki Shūzō and the French philosophy of the 1920s that treated the phenomenon of contingency. Examined are (1) the problem of time as it presented itself to French philosophers at the beginning of the twentieth century and its reception by Kuki as an Oriental philosopher and a Buddhist; (2) the problem of liberty and of existence in these French philosophers and in Buddhism; and (3) the phenomenon of the dream as a psychic and aesthetic phenomenon for Kuki and for the French philosophers in question.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethnophilosophy, Comparative Philosophy, Pragmatism:Toward a Philosophy of EthnoscapesThorsten Botz-Bornstein, Associate ResearcherIn this essay I would like to reflect on the place of philosophy within a "globalized" world and reconsider its status as a phenomenon that is potentially linked to a "local" culture. Whenever we question the authority of "general" truths and we look for ways of integrating "local discourses" into the overall construction called "global philosophy," we come across the old idea of "ethnophilosophy." Far from suggesting ethnophilosophy as a model for the philosophy of the future, I intend to rethink certain themes of ethnophilosophy and contrast them with disciplines such as "comparative philosophy" and pragmatism. I will sketch an approach that I believe to be appropriate for the development of philosophy in times of globalization.One of the negative undertones of the term "globalization" is that it is seen as a uniformizing and flattening power that eliminates existing cultural differences. On the other hand, there is an important side effect of globalization represented by those movements acting against it, stressing the importance of "localization" or "regionalization." Ethnophilosophy, in spite of its outdated origin and its potential dangers, remains interesting as an intellectual model as long as it is not formulated in a radical fashion. When it is formulated in a radical fashion it has to face the reproach of relativism and of enclosing itself in a cultural sphere that it declares to be inaccessible to others.Ethnophilosophy: A Renaissance?Ethnophilosophy was developed in Africa in the 1960s, although its origin can be traced back to a book on Bantu philosophy by the Belgian missionary Placide Tempels. In this book, published in 1946, Tempels tried to conclude with the view that primitive peoples have neither ontology nor logic and are unable to recognize the nature of being or even of reality as such. Tempels was looking for an ontology colored by "local" cultural components but also by language,1 and he made a serious attempt to build a philosophical system based on Bantu thought.What followed were endless controversies about the nature of African philosophy that made of "ethnophilosophy" a stream of thought much richer than its name might allow one to suppose. A part of its stimulating power can perhaps be traced to the ambiguity of Tempels' approach: on the one hand it could easily be dismissed as paternalism or the attempt to force African philosophy into the straightjacket of European concepts, while on the other hand the expressed desire to give "ethnic" [End Page 153] philosophy a new role within the international hierarchy of the philosophies was immensely attractive. Be that as it may, Tempels' book became the real manifest of "ethnophilosophy."Another point at issue that spurned internal ethnophilosophical discussions was the question whether African philosophy is advanced by an entire people (that is, by a collective) or by individual philosophers. This question (which does not arise in Tempels' book) was first taken up by the Beninese philosopher Paulin Hountondji,2 who claimed that ethnophilosophy is no philosophy at all because it remains indifferent toward individually critical, that is, typically philosophical, approaches. Related debates touch upon fundamental questions concerning the meaning of "collective thinking" or the nature of philosophy as such.3However subtle the points may be that emerge from these discussions, for the outside observer ethnophilosophy appears to be a kind of anthropology (whose premises it continues to share) with an incorporated interest in metaphysical questions. Its opposite is "conventional" Western philosophy, which persistently explores truth with the help of a single, individual mind, aiming at the crystallization of a truth relevant for everybody. What matters for ethnophilosophy is the truth brought forward by a certain way of life of a group of people that can be found on the "inside" of a culture and that can exist independently of any considerations of those things that exist on the outside. Ethnophilosophy is radical in the sense that it not only aims to reestablish, through its opposition to the all-intruding "international" philosophy, its own philosophy within the borders of a certain nation; going much further than many of today's opponents of globalization would dare to go, ethnophilosophy thinks of philosophy...

I introduce and compare Russian and Japanese notions of community and space. Some characteristic strains of thought that exist in both countries had similar points of departure, overcame similar problems and arrived at similar results. In general, in Japan and Russia, the nostalgia for the community has been strong because one felt that in society through modernization something of the particularity of one's culture had been lost. As a consequence, both in Japan and in Russia allusions to the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies' book Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft are frequent. In the end I associate the Japanese as well as the Russian ideas with neo-Darwinian versions of the theme of evolution as it has been developed by Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari.

Born in Vyborg in 1884 by parents of German descent, Vasily (Wilhelm) Sesemann grew up and studied in St. Petersburg. A close friend of Viktor Zhirmunsky and Lev P. Karsavin, Sesemann taught from the early 1920s until his death in 1963 at the universities of Kaunas and Vilnius in Lithuania (interrupted only by his internment in a Siberian labor camp from 1950 to 1956). Botz-Bornstein's study takes up Sesemann's idea of experience as a dynamic, constantly self-reflective, ungraspable phenomenon that cannot be objectified. Through various studies, the author shows how Sesemann develops an outstanding idea of experience by reflecting it against empathy, Erkenntnistheorie (theory of knowledge), Formalism, Neo-Kantianism, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Bergson's philosophy. Sesemann's thought establishes a link between Formalist thoughts about dynamics and a concept of Being reminiscent of Heidegger. The book contains also translations of two essays by Sesemann as well as of an essay by Karsavin.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Cardboard Houses with Wings:The Architecture of Alabama's Rural StudioThorsten Botz-Bornstein (bio)IntroductionThe Rural Studio, which was founded by Samuel Mockbee in 1992 and lead by him until his death in 2001, continues its activities. Its specialty is, now as before, the design of innovative houses for poor people living in Alabama's second-poorest county, Hale County, by relying largely on donated and salvaged materials. The houses are made of car windshields, surplus carpet tiles, baled cardboard, old street signs, license plates, etc. Alexis de Tocqueville has said that democracy lowers the standards of creation,1 and it seems that, for architecture, this has become a sad truth in many cases in industrialized countries. The Rural Studio wants to contradict this tendency by showing that even within the context of civic engagement, elements like style and art are not bound to disappear. "Participatory design" as well as "community design" are common in the United States in the public as well as in the private sector.2 The Rural Studio's aim to offer decent architecture in terms of material quality as well as remain consistent when it comes to aesthetics sticks out of the landscape not only of community design but even the history of modern Western architecture. There is nothing new in reducing rich people's lives to functionalism, but the ambition to enhance poor people's lives through art can still be considered as rather eccentric.Kitsch Culture and Junk CultureNegotiating style when being engaged in compassionate projects is certainly a difficult task. Everybody needs food, clothing, and shelter, but who needs [End Page 16] art? The worst outcome that such negotiations can have is, of course, the victory of social pragmatism over art, simply declaring that "they don't need that." However, this is not the only miscarriage to be expected. Another likely disaster is that the suggested artistic activity will be refused by the clients at the onset. Community design architects confirm that "when it comes to houses people are much more conservative."3 The aesthetic standards of the lower middle class especially are often determined by numerous prejudices about "what a house should look like."The aesthetic standards of the status-seeking middle class, however, are generally more open, as their visions of an ideal house are often determined by a moderately adventurous hedonism striving to conquer new aesthetic models and experiences. The problem is that, sometimes, their projects will run directly into the aesthetic dead end of kitsch, or camp, because their openness is often superficial; instead of being determined by a kind of postmodern self-criticism, it remains rather dependent on thoughtless consumer attitudes. The desire to display and impress at any cost—a strain already put forward by Tocqueville—corrupts the taste of many American middle-class members and makes truly artistic architectural expressions oftentimes impossible. In the worst case, this attitude will be conducive to the desire to "acquire beautiful junk," which is, according to the aesthetician Matei Calinescu, the classical mechanism leading to the creation of kitsch culture.4 The original German definition of "kitsch" is that "which makes use of refuse taken bodily from the rubbish dump."5The architects of the Rural Studio use predominantly junk, which forces us to consider the question: How do they manage to escape the aesthetics of kitsch? From a historical perspective, kitsch culture is the product of the European middle classes (though it has also constantly been imitated by lower-income classes). It becomes clear that the Rural Studio operates on a completely different anthropological ground. The typical clients of the Rural Studio are not integrated in the spectrum of capitalist societies, as their social habitus eludes most attributes of hedonistic consumer society and comes amazingly close to that of traditional, precapitalist societies. The main characteristics of their economies are frugality and thriftiness. This shows that the success of the Rural Studio depends on the particularity of its place: only within the limited social sphere in which they act can an architecture using junk and waste become a distinct style.It is well known that elements of waste, once they are employed in an artistic context...

Claude Lévi-Strauss holds that history and anthropology differ in their choice of complementary perspectives: history organizes its data in relation to conscious expressions of social life, while anthropology proceeds by examining its unconscious foundations. For R. G. Collingwood historical science discovers not only pure facts but considers a whole series of thoughts constituting historical life. Also Lévi-Strauss sees this: “To understand history it is necessary to know not only how things are, but how they have come to be.” However, Lévi-Strauss does not perceive the double-sense of history, which can first be a record of historical “conscious” facts and second, a chain of unconscious or half-conscious acts. Like Lévi-Strauss, Charles Bally has derived the main theses of his theory from Saussure. However, contrary to Lévi-Strauss, Bally does not find structures at the inside of the phenomena but at their outside: “Our attention is drawn to the expressive side and not to the interior side of the facts of language.” Bally calls those structures not “history” but “style.” In Roland Barthes’s attempt to establish a structuralist system of fashion we can find a definition of style very similar to Bally’s. In the end, however, none of these thinkers addresses the fact that unconscious relations within historical life are constantly interlocked with conscious elements.