Archeticture: Ecstasies of Space, Time, and the Human Body

by David Farrell Krell

In this book, David Farrell Krell challenges contemporary and traditional theories of architecture with archeticture-spelling it new, by design. The thesis of the book is that the heart of the word architecture, the Greek root tec-, can be traced back to an earlier and more pervasive root, tic-. The verb tiktein means "to love", "to engender", "to reproduce". In the course of Western history, however, that older root disappeared under the debris of discarded techniques, technologies, architectonics, and architectures, all of them insisting on technical mastery, technological power, and architectonic solidarity. Yet what would happen to the confidence we place in technique if we realized that its dominion is based on a kind of oblivion-an oblivion of the materials, places, situations, and human bodies that not even the mightiest technician can thoroughly dominate, but that he or she must love? The opening chapter of Archeticture proposes a new reading of Plato's Timaeus, the seminal work in Western philosophy on the architecture of the universe and the human body. It pays close attention to the figures of Chaos, Necessity, and khora in Timaeus, arguing that the Demiurge is less a divine craftsman or technician than a lover and a father-admittedly, a father of an awkward and forgetful sort. Among the things the Demiurge forgets to acknowledge are the elements, spaces, and places, the materiality and the spatiality, in which he finds himself-but which he does not master. Chapter 2 moves from Plato to the modern and contemporary philosophers Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger. It sees in the projects of these thinkers a growing liberation of choric space from time, culminating in an ecstatic interpretation of human spatiality. Yet ecstatic spatiality is anything but familiar; it is essentially unhomelike and uncanny. Chapter 3 offers a series of archetictural sections-as opposed to architectural plans or elevations-of Fre

Genres: Architecture

224 pages, Paperback

First published September 19, 1997

About the author

David Farrell Krell is an American philosopher and professor emeritus at DePaul University, specializing in Continental Philosophy. He earned his Ph.D. from Duquesne University, where he focused on Heidegger and Nietzsche, two figures central to his scholarly work. Krell has taught at various universities in the United States and Europe, contributing extensively to the study of German Idealism, Romanticism, and deconstruction.
He has authored numerous books, including Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life-Philosophy (1992), Infectious Nietzsche (1996), and The Tragic Absolute: German Idealism and the Languishing of God (2005), examining themes of mortality, time, and finitude. His work also explores the intersections of philosophy, literature, and aesthetics, as seen in Lunar Voices (1995) and Archeticture: Ecstasies of Space, Time, and the Human Body (1997). Krell has been a key translator of Heidegger’s lectures on Nietzsche and edited Basic Writings (1977), a widely used collection of Heidegger’s essays.
Influenced by Jacques Derrida, Krell has engaged with deconstructive approaches to Nietzsche and Heidegger, shaping contemporary discussions on these thinkers. His later works, such as Ecstasy, Catastrophe (2015) and The Sea: A Philosophical Encounter (2018), continue his inquiries into existential and aesthetic themes, cementing his reputation as a major voice in modern Continental thought.

Reviews

[Phil Mendez]

I am not the reader for this book. It wants to say something, but I don’t think it does.