Phenomenology, Architecture and the Built World ─ Exercises in Philosophical Anthropology

This volume introduces classical phenomenology, its methods, and basic concepts through the phenomenon of the built world, focusing on the ideas of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger and showing how phenomenology is a way into philosophy. It focuses on the experience of the built world and considers what it means for humans to inhabit a space and find proof of existence in the building of space. It examines the opposition between architect and engineer, or building oriented around the ethical, aesthetic, political, and moral fabric of life vs. the potential for technical manipulation of materials and the organization of making; how the built world bears a reference to purpose, a sense of time or temporality, and opens a space of encounter between subjects; the significance of classical phenomenological reflection for the natural attitude and its suspension in phenomenology; how things bear purpose, time, and encounter; the expression of the built world; and the relationship between space and imagination. Annotation ©2017 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

James Dodd, Ph.D. (1995), Boston University, is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research (The New School) in New York. He has published widely on topics in phenomenology and contemporary philosophy, including Violence and Phenomenology (Routledge, 2009).