Hegel och arkitekturens filosofiska system

Abstract

Hegel’s analysis of architecture is located at a critical juncture in the history of philosophical reflection on the arts. On the one hand it appears to be wholly backward-looking, especially in locating architecture in the realm of the symbolical art-forms, whose essential contribution to the development of spirit occurred before the Greek moment. This is further underwritten by the limited scope of Hegel’s narrative, which takes us no further than the Gothic cathedral. On the other hand, Hegel’s analysis, when read carefully, displays a singular attention to the materiality of architecture, and the way in which it forms a spatial grounding for the other arts. In this way it prefigures many of the theoretical moves that would be made in the 19th century, after the downfall of Vitruvianism, and which would eventually usher in the development of a new theoretical vocabulary, above all in the nascent discourse of ”tectonics.”