Filosofische analyse van het zelfconcept van de Zwitsers-Franse architect (1887-1965), herwaardering van zijn motieven als stadsplanoloog en nieuwe inzichten met betrekking tot zijn intellectuele relaties met andere leden van de avantgarde van de twintigste eeuw.

Les rapports entretenus par Le Corbusier, architecte le plus emblématique de la modernité, avec le pouvoir politique sont foncièrement ambivalents. Promoteur inlassable du bonheur pour tous à travers l’architecture, Le Corbusier a pourtant frayé avec à peu près tous les pouvoirs, apparemment sans témoigner de préférences politiques, d’une manière qui semble contradictoire avec ses propres objectifs. À travers une série de paradoxes, nous cherchons à montrer que l’attitude politique de Le Corbusier ne doit pas simplement être référée (...) à un ensemble d’arguments factuels et historiques, voire à une forme d’opportunisme consubstantiel à l’architecte en recherche de commandes, mais également à une certaine conception théorique et philosophique de la nature du pouvoir lui-même. Le pouvoir, conçu de manière purement formelle et extrêmement individualiste, n’est jamais pensé autrement que comme simple moyen ou cause efficiente visant à mettre en action la seule révolution valable pour Le Corbusier, à savoir la transformation de la culture par l’architecture. Se dessine ainsi la figure d’une pensée profonde des pouvoirs de l’architecture, en même temps que d’une singulière absence d’intelligence du politique. (shrink)

Les rapports entretenus par Le Corbusier, architecte le plus emblématique de la modernité, avec le pouvoir politique sont foncièrement ambivalents. Promoteur inlassable du bonheur pour tous à travers l’architecture, Le Corbusier a pourtant frayé avec à peu près tous les pouvoirs, apparemment sans témoigner de préférences politiques, d’une manière qui semble contradictoire avec ses propres objectifs. À travers une série de paradoxes, nous cherchons à montrer que l’attitude politique de Le Corbusier ne doit pas simplement être référée (...) à un ensemble d’arguments factuels et historiques, voire à une forme d’opportunisme consubstantiel à l’architecte en recherche de commandes, mais également à une certaine conception théorique et philosophique de la nature du pouvoir lui-même. Le pouvoir, conçu de manière purement formelle et extrêmement individualiste, n’est jamais pensé autrement que comme simple moyen ou cause efficiente visant à mettre en action la seule révolution valable pour Le Corbusier, à savoir la transformation de la culture par l’architecture. Se dessine ainsi la figure d’une pensée profonde des pouvoirs de l’architecture, en même temps que d’une singulière absence d’intelligence du politique. (shrink)

In 1949, the photographer Lucien Hervé took a picture of an innovative apartment building in Marseille, France, and sent it to the building's architect, Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier responded by asking Hervé to become his official photographer. This book recounts the creative collaboration between these two groundbreaking Modernists. The author takes the reader on a tour of sixteen of Le Corbusier's most iconic buildings using Hervé's edited sheets of contact prints as visual guides. These sheets, which became (...) an effective tool in the collaborative dissemination of Le Corbusier's work, capture Hervé's dynamic perspectives and dramatic use of light. His sequencing of the individual prints creates an exhilarating rhythm that powerfully showcases the architect's novel forms and materials. (shrink)

. Repetition and Difference: Lefebvre, Le Corbusier and Modernity's moral Landscape: A Commentary. Ethics, Place & Environment: Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 135-144.

The paper gives an analysis of the conception of rationality of two influential representatives of the 20th century theory of urbanism, and their philosophical grounds. It also outlines the problem of modern rationality, questions its character and points out, that for the time being the transition to a new way of thinking is problematic.

If, as Lefebvre argues, every society produces its own social space, then modernity might be characterized by that (anti-)social and instrumental space epitomized and idealized in Le Corbusier's writings. This repetitively patterned space consumes and regulates the differences between places and people; it encapsulates a normalizing morality that seeks to reduce all differences to an economic order of the Same. Lefebvre's dialectical conceptualization of 'difference' can both help explain the operation of this (im)moral landscape and offer the possibility of (...) alternative post-modern social spaces that might produce and respect Otherness. In this sense Lefebvre's work is an incipient 'difference ethics'. (shrink)

Le Corbusier's visionary or realistic urban plans are accompanied by various experimental ways of presentation, all designed to involve the public and political authorities through spectacular installations that play on the dimension of illusionism. In his quest to present his urbanistic ideas, Le Corbusier uses dioramas, photographs and film projections. The aim of his staging is to modify the conventional vision of reality with a systematic bombardment of spectacular images.

Le Corbusier's visionary or realistic urban plans are accompanied by various experimental ways of presentation, all designed to involve the public and political authorities through spectacular installations that play on the dimension of illusionism. In his quest to present his urbanistic ideas, Le Corbusier uses dioramas, photographs and film projections. The aim of his staging is to modify the conventional vision of reality with a systematic bombardment of spectacular images.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aviation and the Aerial View:Le Corbusier's Spatial Transformations in the 1930s and 1940sM. Christine Boyer (bio)Part One: The Aerial ViewAviation and Equipment. A London publishing house, The Studio, Ltd, sent Le Corbusier a letter in January 1935, inquiring whether he would be interested in collaborating on a new series of books to be titled The New Vision. The promoters explained that each book in the series would (...) be devoted to a unique event in industrial design, with specific attention paid to the designers, their aims, and the potential these designs held for social and human development. They would begin the series with a volume on the airplane. Le Corbusier was asked to write an introductory essay, supply captions for the images they had already collected, and offer a few suggestions for additional illustrations.1Accepting the invitation, Le Corbusier in his reply, however, transformed the project: instead of the word "airplane" he preferred "aviation," by which he meant all the prodigious phenomena opening vast new horizons in space and influencing the future of "equipment" in the broadest sense of the word.2 Already in Precisions (1930) he had written, "I replace the word 'urbanism' by the term 'equipment.' I have already replaced the term 'furniture' by that of 'equipment.' Such stubbornness shows well that we are purely and simply claiming tools for work, for we do not want to die of hunger facing the embroidered flowerbeds of aesthetic urbanism" [143]. To his bag of equipment, Le Corbusier now adds "aviation," a tool of modern communication forging new modes of exchange and new links between nations.3The material subsequently sent by the publishing house to Le Corbusier also met with lukewarm reception: he favored more lively documentation such as the view from an airplane as it flew over cities—vast open terrain, the sea, and the forests. And he wanted more picturesque treatment of the lives of aviators, their psychological and social attitudes including analysis of the great aerial routes being drawn between Europe and America, Africa, or Asia. The publishing house was unable to fulfill Le Corbusier's [End Page 93] expectations, reminding him that their focus was limited to "the airplane" and that they expected to receive all his material by May.4What did Le Corbusier mean by "aviation" and the "epic of the air," a phrase he used in the preface of the subsequent book Aircraft (1935)? What new horizons did aviation open and how did this affect the perception of space and the process of reading the terrain as a two-dimensional map or a plan? And what did aviation have to do with "equipment"? Just the year before Le Corbusier had seen the Exposition de l'Aéronautique in Milan for which Mussolini offered the maxim: "Aviation is grand, small, or nothing at all, depending on whether public awareness of aviation is grand, small, or nothing at all."5 Le Corbusier, ever the great publicist, accepted the challenge to spread the meaning of "aviation" in the inclusive sense of the word entailing adventure and service, organization, and machinery.The rapid growth of aviation during the interwar period was mercurial, dramatically reshaping perception of the world and of space. There were daring flights of aviators challenging the breath of oceans and deserts, the heights of Everest, the length of Africa, the uncharted terrain of the North and South Poles. The airplane not only internationalized cartography; it was a tool for exploring and controlling the colonies. While aerial photography, which recorded in precise detail the realistic shape of landmasses, coastlines, seas, deserts, and mountains, perfected the process of mapmaking and enriched the documentary archive of the planet.Yet even more stunning, aviation continually shrunk the size of the globe after the initial KLM flight between Amsterdam and Jakarta took off in 1924. Then the time needed to navigate the 9000 miles was 55 days; within five years it had been reduced to a mere 12 days. A world map criss-crossed with national air routes came into view. In the 1930s civil airlines began to offer passenger and mail service between London and the Middle East, then on to India and... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.2 (2004) 105-115 [Access article in PDF] Intimacy and Monumentality in Chandigarh, North India: Le Corbusier's Capitol Complex and Nek Chand Saini's Rock Garden Sharon Irish School of Architecture University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Chandigarh's Le Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India, by Vikramaditya Prakash. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002, 179pp., $35.00 cloth. The seventh century poet and philosopher Dharmakirti (...) wrote of the path we each must make: No one behind, no one ahead, The path the ancients cleared has closed. And the other path, everyone's path, easy and wide, goes nowhere. I am alone and find my way.1The image in Figure 1 shows the bottom of a concrete ramp that angles back upon itself as it connects two levels of the government complex in Chandigarh and ends in a grassy hillside that has several dirt paths cutting across it. The concrete ramp begins just to the left of Le Corbusier's Assembly Hall (Figure 2). What I hope is evident from just two images is the contrast between the curving, unplanned path that pedestrians have made as they leave the bottom of the ramp, and the axial, monumental path implicit in the organization of the large concrete plaza in front of the Assembly Hall. One is informal and intimate because of the many footprints that have worn away the grass; the other is formal and monumental in its carefully controlled framing of a sculptural presence. They are two very different paths, offering different rewards as we wander upon them.As Vikramaditya Prakash's book, Chandigarh's Le Corbusier, emphasizes, the Capitol Complex derived from Le Corbusier's personal mythology, transmogrified somewhat by the site, the politics, and the climate. Le Corbusier "considered it the true mission of modern architecture to reestablish the aesthetic and poetic forms necessary for the liberation and deliverance of...modern man."2 Le Corbusier's monumentalism, then, was imposed on Chandigarh's landscape and the inhabitants with the assumption that he knew best what architecture was appropriate for "liberation." While there are many aspects of his designs to appreciate and admire, his buildings only indirectly address the visitor, preferring uncanny to intimate relationships.3 [End Page 105] Click for larger viewFigure 1 The bottom of the ramp leading into a path toward the Trench of Consideration, Capitol Complex, Chandigarh. Photo by the author. Click for larger viewFigure 2 Façade of the Assembly Building, Le Corbusier, 1953-61, Chandigarh. Photo by the author. [End Page 106]For six months in 1999, I lived in Chandigarh within a few blocks of Le Corbusier's government complex and another compelling place, the nearby and unrelated Rock Garden. While the paths at the Government Complex are, for the most part, empty, those in the Rock Garden are not and provide chances for intimate interactions that are only hinted at underneath Le Corbusier's concrete ramp. Poignant informality in Le Corbusier's government sector exists in areas that were never completed according to plan.4 Its predominant monumentality provides a useful contrast to the intimate spaces of the Rock Garden.In the 1950s, two men, Le Corbusier and Nek Chand Saini, began two very different projects within a kilometer of each other in Chandigarh. Le Corbusier's Capitol Complex started in the very highest government circles with Prime Minister Jawaharwal Nehru: the plan was to build a new state capital for a newly divided Punjab in a newly independent India. In architectural history, Chandigarh is well known and well studied due to its planning and design. Nek Chand's Rock Garden (under construction since 1958, and open to the public since 1976) began as an illegal private project by one man to give form to his imagination. This essay is my impressionistic response to these two projects.Monumental buildings often function powerfully as icons or as proud isolated structures. Visited on ceremonial occasions, they can provide visually compelling backdrops to large-scale... (shrink)

A boat is a floating piece of space, a place without place, which lives by itself, which is closed in on itself and that is at the same time exposed to the infinity of the sea. Nowadays one cannot conceive a utopia that does not address itself to nomads, peoples and individuals, to the homeless, to the excluded. After World War I a concrete barge made its way up and down the Seine between Rouen and Paris.1 It was called the (...) Liège, and its mission was to supply the French capital with English coal. When it was decommissioned in 1929, the Armée du salut (the French Salvation Army) bought it with the aid of a donation from Madeleine Zillhardt, the recently bereaved long-term companion of the painter .. (shrink)

A sequel to Levinas's Totality and Infinity, this work is generally considered Levinas's most important contribution to the contemporary debate surrounding the closure of metaphysical discourse, much commented upon by Jacques Derrida. This work contains a fundamentally original theory of the ethical relationship and describes the face-to-face relationship, sensibility, responsibility and speech. Renowned Levinas scholar Richard A. Cohen has contributed a new foreword to this edition of Otherwise than Being, which is also the first time the work is available in (...) an affordable paperback edition. This foreword, along with Alphonso Lingis's extensive introduction to the work, is a valuable tool for researchers and students of Levinas's philosophy. (shrink)

"To be a philosopher and to be a feminist are one and the same thing. A feminist is a woman who does not allow anyone to think in her place."-from _Hipparchia's Choice_ A work of rare insight and irreverence, _Hipparchia's Choice_ boldly recasts the history of philosophy from the pre-Socratics to the post-Derrideans as one of masculine texts and male problems. The position of women, therefore, is less the result of a hypothetical "femininity" and more the fault of exclusion by (...) men. Nevertheless, women have been and continue to be drawn to "the exercise of thought." So how does a female philosopher become a conceptually adventurous woman? Focusing on the work of Sartre and Beauvoir (specifically, his sexism and her relation to it), Michèle Le Doeuff shows how women philosophers can reclaim a place for feminist concerns. Is _The Second Sex_ a work of philosophy, and, if so, what can it teach us about the relation of philosophy to experience? Now with a new epilogue, _Hipparchia's Choice_ points the way toward a discipline that is accountable to history, feminism, and society. (shrink)

« Pourquoi les choses tiennent-elles ensemble ? » (Traité d'ontologie, 2009, p. 237). Cette citation me sert de départ à une réflexion sur la nature des relations liantes souvent appelées relations de comprésence à la suite de Russell, ces bundling relations qui nouent les propriétés ensembles pour constituer les objets ordinaires (tables, chaises, individus biologiques) selon la théorie du faisceau. De même que Frédéric Nef, je suis séduit par les nombreuses vertus philosophiques de ces relations liantes. Ma contribution ne portera (...) pas sur une critique ou une défense de ces relations mais sur l'étude de leur nature, et en particulier, de leur possible nature méréologique. Je vais esquisser rapidement certains aspects de la théorie classique du faisceau que je qualifierai de réaliste pour opposer ensuite les variantes réalistes à deux autres versions méréologiques de la théorie, que je qualifierai d'éliminativistes. (shrink)

Arguing for Atheism introduces a wide range of topics in the philosophy of religion and metaphysics. Robin Le Poidevin does not simply defend a denial of God's existence; he presents instead a way of intepreting religious discourse which allows us to make sense of the role of religion in our spiritual and moral lives. Ideal as a textbook for university courses in the philosophy of religion and metaphysics, Arguing for Atheism is also designed to be accessible, in its style and (...) its numerous explanations, to the general reader. (shrink)

A classic source for understanding the connections between information theory and physics, this text was written by one of the giants of 20th-century physics and is appropriate for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students. Topics include the principles of coding, coding problems and solutions, the analysis of signals, a summary of thermodynamics, thermal agitation and Brownian motion, and thermal noise in an electric circuit. A discussion of the negentropy principle of information introduces the author's renowned examination of Maxwell's demon. Concluding chapters (...) explore the associations between information theory, the uncertainty principle, and physical limits of observation, in addition to problems related to computing, organizing information, and inevitable errors. 1962 ed. 81 figures. 14 tables. (shrink)

Combining elements from Heidegger’s philosophy of “being-in-the-world” and the tradition of Jewish theology, Levinas has evolved a new type of ethics based on a concept of “the Other” in two different but complementary aspects. He describes his encounters with those philosophers and literary authors (most of them his contemporaries) whose writings have most significantly contributed to the construction of his own philosophy of “Otherness”: Agnon, Buber, Celan, Delhomme, Derrida, Jabès, Kierkegaard, Lacroix, Laporte, Picard, Proust, Van Breda, Wahl, and, most notably, (...) Blanchot. At the same time, Levinas’s own texts are inscriptions and documents of those encounters with “Others” around which his philosophy is turning. Thus the texts simultaneously convey an immediate experience of how his intellectual position emerged and how it is put into practice. A third potential function of the book is that it unfolds the network of references and persons in philosophical debates since Kierkegaard. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas is one of the most original philosophers in the twentieth century. In this book, continuing his thought on obligation, he investigates the possibility that the word God can be understood now, at the end of the twentieth century, in a meaningful way. The thirteen essays collected in this volume offer an introduction to the wide range of Levinas's thought, addresses philosophical questions concerning politics, language and religion and the philosophies of, amongst others, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Marx and Derrida. The (...) essays also touch on the Marxist concept of ideology, death, hermeneutics, the concept of evil, the philosophy of dialogue, the relation of language to the Other, and the acts of communication and mutual understanding. Nine of the essays appear in English for the first time. (shrink)

In this landmark study, Emmanuel Levinas discusses the aspects and function of intuition in Husserl's thought and its meaning for philosophical self-reflection.

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Contemporary philosophers are increasingly turning to the work of Emmanuel Levinas to bring a consideration of ethics into their own thinking. As an exponent of the phenomenological tradition, Levinas ranks with Heidegger and Sartre; as a disciple of Husserl, he was one of the most independent and original interpreters, testifying to the fruitfulness of Husserl's phenomenology. In collecting almost all of Levinas's articles on Husserlian phenomenology, this volume gathers together a wealth of thoughtful exposition and interpretation by one of the (...) most important European philosophers of the twentieth century. Levinas's thought is relevant to a broad variety of disciplines and concerns. This volume serves as a reliable introduction for the beginning student, as well as satisfying the expert's more demanding and critical desire for insight into the complexities of Levinas's thought. (shrink)

Les divers lieux et aspects d'un paysage riche et changeant, mais essentiellement connexe, sont, pour le mathématicien, une métaphore de l'intelligence. Les deux conceptions contradictoires, une sorte de fractal et une belle variété, font qu'il est nécessaire de faire appel à une multiplicité de points de vue pour faire sentir la nature des mathématiques. C'est le choix qui a clairement guidé la structure novatrice des Grands courants.

1. Le livre de Lao-tseu = Laozi -- 2. Les entretiens de Confucius = Lun yu.

In this brillant meditation on conceptions of history, Le Goff traces the evolution of the historian's craft. Examining real and imagined oppositions between past and present, ancient and modern, oral and written history, _History and Memory_ reveals the strands of continuity that have characterized historiography from ancient Mesopotamia to modern Europe.

The present study emphasizes Chapter Six of Huai-nan Tzu in expounding the theory of kan-ying STIMULUS-RESPONSE; RESONANCE, which postulates that all things in the universe are interrelated and influence each other according to pre-set patterns.

This book brings together new essays on a major focus of debate in contemporary metaphysics: does time really pass, or is our ordinary experience of time as consisting of past, present, and future an illusion? The international contributors broaden this debate by demonstrating the importance of questions about the nature of time for philosophical issues in ethics, aesthetics, psychology, science, religion, and language.

In this brillant meditation on conceptions of history, Le Goff traces the evolution of the historian's craft. Examining real and imagined oppositions between past and present, ancient and modern, oral and written history, _History and Memory_ reveals the strands of continuity that have characterized historiography from ancient Mesopotamia to modern Europe.