steiner.2012_phenomenology-the earth does not move and the ground of the city

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Journal of Comparative Cultural Studies in Architecture 6/2012 - pp 46-55JCCS-a

46 JCCS-a 6/2012

Henriette Steiner

The Earth Does Not Move and the Ground of the City

Die Erde bewegt sich nicht und die Stadtfche

AbstractTaking as a starting point the Husserlianunderstanding that the Earth does not move by which is meant that in everyday experiencewe do not feel the movement of the Earth thisarticle introduces central concepts from thewritings of the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) to a discussion about thepossibility of a phenomenology of the city.According to Merleau-Ponty, philosophyunderstood as the study of the Sinnesboden isto be taken literally: natural Boden [the earth]and cultural-historical Boden which is built onthe earth (Merleau-Ponty 2002a:67-68). In his

late work, Merleau-Ponty orients his philosophytowards what he calls the depth, the ground,the visible, and not in the heights, in the ideas,in the invisible (Merleau-Ponty 2000). The aimof this article is to connect this philosophicalframework to questions of architecture and thecity by suggesting to substitute what Merleau-Ponty calls cultural-historical Boden with city.

The aim of this article is not a completeinterpretation of the selected texts in fact,the nature of Merleau-Pontys writing makesit resist such attempts at categorisation. Thisshould, however, be seen as part and parcel ofwhat makes phenomenology methodologicallydifcult to use when it comes to questions of the

built environment an openness that sometimesmakes the original philosophical texts slipperyat the same time as it makes them prone to themisinterpretations.

Nevertheless, capturing the city as a cultural-historical Boden or ground using a phenomenologyvocabulary of order means that it can be describedboth as a shared horizon for individuals livingin it providing orientation and thus a senseof order and as a topographical structure forpraxis, with a particular ordering. This meansthat phenomenological understandings of therelationship between earth and world allow anarticulation of the city as common ground, in a

way that concomitantly indicates its quality as acivic order. This article considers the implicationsof this proposed understanding of city, of seeingthe city as a cultural product that forms a silentbackground to human life but also as an entitywith a particular order, thus tying togetheraspects of cultural praxis with architectural orbuilt structures in their conjoint development.

Keywords:

Phenomenology, Architecture, the City, Merleau-Ponty, Husserl

Inhalt:Ausgehend von der Husserlianische Idee, dassdie Erde sich nicht bewegt genauer: dass wirdie Rotation der Erde in unserem tglichen Lebennicht spren wird dieser Aufsatz zentraleBegriffe des Philosophen Maurice Merleau-Ponty(1908-1961) wird dieser Aufsatz zentrale Begriffedes Philosophen Maurice Merleyu-Ponty (1908-1961) einfhren und sie im Kontext einer mgli-chen Phnomenologie der Stadt diskutieren.Merleau-Ponty schreibt: philosophy understoodas the study of the Sinnesboden is to be takenliterally: natural Boden [the earth] and cultural-historical Boden which is built on the earth

(Merleau-Ponty 2002a:67-68). In seinem Spt-werk, beschftigt Merleau-Ponty sich mit dem,was er das Sichtbare nennt, die Materialitt,im Gegensatz zu das Unsichtbare, zur Ideen-welt. Dieser Aufsatz hat zum Ziel, diese philoso-phischen Ideen mit Fragen der Architektur undder Stadt zu verknpfen. Was Merleau-Ponty alskulturhistorischen Boden deniert, wird hier

als Synonym fr Stadt begriffen.

Ziel des Aufsatzes ist keine vollstndige Inter-pretation der Texte Merleau-Pontys. Zum einenist dies nicht mglich, weil die besprochenenSchriften einen unvollstndigen Charakteraufweisen. Diese gewisse Offenheit ist jedoch frsein Sptwerk charakterisch, wodurch die Texte

oft hermetisch wirken oder zu Missverstnd-nissen fhren. Zum anderen ist diese Offenheitein wesentlicher Bestandteil dessen, wodurches methodisch schwierig wird, Phnomenologieim Rahmen einer Untersuchung der gebautenUmwelt zu verwenden.

Dennoch werden wir mit Hilfe eines phno-menologischen Begriffsapparats die Ordnungder Stadt als sogenannten kulturhistorischerBoden fassen knnen. Sie lsst sich sowohl alsgeteilter Horizont der Menschen in der Stadtverstehen (sie gibt Orientierung und vermitteltdadurch ein gewisses Verstndnis von Ordnung),als auch als eine topographische Struktur, die

menschliches Handeln ermglicht (und dadurchebenfalls in einem gewissen Sinne ordnet). Derphnomenologische Gebrauch der Begriffe Erdeund Welt gibt uns die Mglichkeit, die Stadt alseine gemeinsame Ebene (common ground) zuverstehen. Dadurch kann in der Folge die Qualittoder Mglichkeit der Stadt als eine Gruppierungvon Menschen mit einem gemeinsamen Ethos(civic order) beschrieben werden. Dieser Artikelerlutert die Konsequenzen dieser Vorstellungvon Stadt: Stadt kann sowohl als ein kulturellesProdukt verstanden werden und so einen Hinter-grund fr menschliches Leben bilden; Stadt kannauch ein Gebilde an und fr sich sein und eineeigene innere Ordnung aufweisen. Das heit,dass in diesem Aufsatz Aspekte kultureller Praxis

mit architektonischen oder gebautenStrukturenin ihrer Zusammenhang erfasst werden.

Keywords:Phenomenology, Architecture, the City, Merleau-Ponty, Husserl


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Preliminaries: Phenomenology, Architectureand the CityAs one of the most signicant traditions ofphilosophical thinking of the twentieth century,phenomenology has an important place in theoriesof architecture. The works of the philosophers

Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Pontyhave been particularly central, and even inarchitectural practice, phenomenology is citedas a key source of inspiration by contemporaryarchitects as different as Peter Zumthor, DanielLibeskind, Steven Holl and Juhani Pallasmaa. Keyseminal publications from the second half of thetwentieth century that have been fundamentalfor transporting phenomenological thinkingto the realm of architectural practice includeGaston Bachelards La potique de lespace(1958) and Steen Eiler Rasmussens ExperiencingArchitecture (1959) as well as Christian Norberg-Schulz Genius Loci Towards a Phenomenologyof Architecture (1980). These works, whichintroduce central phenomenological concepts

to architectural discourse, still feature centrallyon the architecture curriculum. They have beeninstrumental in shedding light on the complexsensory aspects involved when an individualencounters a particular architectural context,and focus has been on cultural, bodily andimaginary elements that in different ways informthis process. At the same time, however, thesepublications, and the tradition of interpretationthat follows from them, often go in the directionof a romanticised preoccupation with individualexperience and personal or poetic imagination(Haddad 2010). To a large extent, they focus onthe individual in a way that is far from and infact completely contrary to the anti-Cartesian

understanding that is central to phenomenologyas a philosophical project. This means that theuse of phenomenology within architecture stillcalls for a fundamental re-reading of the originalphilosophical texts.

If phenomenology may provide a philosophicalvocabulary to understand not so much theindividual but the over-individual and sharedaspects of the encounter with the builtenvironment, the question is what the mostappropriate in-road to open these questions maybe. In this article, the attempt will be made tobypass the focus on individual experience bymoving away from concrete settings or individualbuildings and rather to consider the city as a

manifestation of the collective dimension of thebuilt environment. This collective dimensionmay, in turn, be described as a particular speciesof urban order.

The way in which the word city is used in thepresent context is based on the understandingthat the development of urban built environmentover the course of history displays an intricateinterplay between architectural, socio-culturaland representational elements displaying bothlocal and global characteristics. The word city isused to designate a concrete architectural framefor the life of a group of people so big that noteveryone will know each other nor be familiar

with every place in the city, making anonymityan important condition of urban life. If city asa built entity is a concrete manifestation of ahorizon shared by all citizens, and thus in itsvery nature oriented beyond the individual, thenature of urban order comprises more than whatwe may learn from studying forms and types of

the built environment (Carl 2011). It arises in anintricate interplay between material culture andhuman praxis. Urban order can thereby be seenas a manifestation of the mediative structurebetween what in a phenomenological vocabularyis called earth and world.

In phenomenological thinking, the word earthis used to capture that which is most embodiedand least inuenced by human culture andthe word world is used to designate thoseaspects of human, cultural activities whichare most articulated or arise through praxis.It is signicant to avoid representing therelationship between earth and world as aclear-cut dialectics. When it comes to the city,to grasp urban order as a mediative structure bymeans of a phenomenological enquiry, the wordorder refers to a continuum of levels or strata,which include and lie between earth and world.That is, a structure spanning elements such astopographical structures and the cultural ideas

that are embedded in urban planning, the builtfabric of the city, its institutions and patternsof everyday life. It is the way this differentiatedstructure displays a particular order whichlies at the crux of what phenomenology cancontribute to our understanding of the city as apredicament that is, to parcel out its particularurban characteristics (Vesely 2004, Carl 2011).To develop an understanding of this structure inrelation to concrete topographies of cities in theirdifferent culture and historical contexts can thusbe said to be at the centre of a phenomenologicalanalysis cities.1

The aim of this article is to begin to develop

the philosophical, conceptual framework fora phenomenology of the city. A frameworkwhich may, in turn, be carried over to concreteanalyses of cities in their different geographicaland historical contexts. The article itself thuslargely remains on the level of close reading ofphilosophical texts and is, therefore at the sametime, more descriptive than analytical.The article centres on close readings ofexcerpts of the work of the philosopher MauriceMerleau-Ponty (1908-1961). First, focus is ona couple of passages from Phenomenolgy ofPerception where Merleau-Ponty writes aboutthe experience of Paris. Then, sections fromthe late work of Merleau-Ponty are discussed

in conjunction with the Husserlian idea thatthe Earth does not move by which is meantthat in everyday experience we do not feelthe movement of the Earth centring on thestatement that philosophy understood as thestudy of the Sinnesboden is to be taken literally:natural Boden [the earth] and cultural-historicalBoden which is built on the earth. (Merleau-Ponty 2002a:67-68). By suggesting to substitutewhat Merleau-Ponty calls the cultural-historicalBoden with city, this philosophical frameworkcan be connected to questions of urban ordermore generally. Capturing the city as a cultural-historical Boden or ground in this way means thatit can be described both as a shared horizon for

individuals living in it providing orientation andthus a sense of order and as a topographicalstructure for praxis, with a particularordering. This means that phenomenologicalunderstandings of the relationship betweenearth and world may be used to develop thefoundation for a phenomenology of the city;

1 See my work onCopenhagen in the earlynineteenth c entury as anexample of how this kind ofanalysis may be carried out inpractice, Steiner (2008, 2011,2013).


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it allows an articulation of the city as commonground, which at the same time indicates itsquality as a civic order. This article considersthe implications of this proposed understandingof city; of seeing the city as a cultural productthat forms a silent background to human life but

also as an entity with a particular order, thustying together aspects of cultural praxis witharchitectural or built structures in their conjointdevelopment.

The aim of this article is not completeinterpretation of the selected texts in fact, thenature of Merleau-Pontys writing makes it resistsuch attempts at categorisation. This should,however, be seen as part and parcel of whatmakes phenomenology methodologically difcult

to use to when it comes to questions of the builtenvironment; an openness that sometimesmakes the original philosophical texts slipperyat the same time as it make them prone tothe above-mentioned misinterpretations. The

present argument thus aims at a preliminarymapping of a vocabulary building on Merleau-Pontian thought in order to develop a foundationfor a phenomenology of the city based on thesephilosophical textual sources. It will do so in orderto be able to formulate an argument about therelevance of the city also in the current culturalpredicament. To do so, the concluding sectionof the article will allude at how the proposedphilosophical framework can be used in practiceby means of an example a critical evaluationof a much-discussed current discourse on theurban condition, namely that of the smart city.2

In short, the argument is that the smart-city-

discourse extrapolates a vision of civic orderfrom the idea that there exists something like acommon goal of optimisation which would makepurposiveness and meaning come together in thebuilt environment. While the idea of the smartcity thus constitutes an attempt at formulatinga vision of civic order, it simultaneously raisesquestions about whether this may be thoughtof as a system. Phenomenology allows us toappreciate that in the urban context, civic orderresides in the way in which we commit to the cityas an entity but in a way that is connected to dailypractices of concrete individuals, always situatedwith respect to the concrete built environmentand attuned to the rhythms and moods of thelarger structures of everyday life. This makes

the idea of urban, civic order as a system ofoptimisation seem highly unlikely. It must followa logic that is based on partiality rather thanon expediency and optimisation. Civic order inan urban context or, put otherwise, the cityseen as a cultural-historical ground implyinga meaningful relation between the concretematerial environment and praxis rests onunderstandings so partial and distant that theymay best described through phenomena such asmisunderstanding and conict.

This gives rise to two questions. First, to whichextent are discourses available that tackle thequestion of urban order in a more afrmative

way? Second, what kind of vocabulary isnecessary for this inquiry and how should theinvestigation be structured? This article suggestthat these questions can be broached by meansof an involvement with original philosophicalsources from phenomenology, aimed atdeveloping a phenomenology of the city. To apply

this conceptual framework on a concrete urbantopography is not possible within the frameworkof the present article. Yet, the suggestion tochallenge contemporary theories of bettermentof culture that see the city as a system whichcan be controlled, as is the case with the smart-

city-concept, will illuminate the relevanceof a phenomenology of the city in the light ofcurrent urban developments. Developmentsthat get ever more complex and compel us tore-think the categories we use for describingurban formations and to continue to be scepticalabout to utopian projects of betterment inrelation to cities, as these continue to take onnew forms and faces. The article captures thecity as a horizon within the cultural-historicalpredicament. One with a particular capacity toprovide act as a background for human practice,providing orientation as a common ground, andone which may be seen as an institution in andof itself comprising many institutions in it, butprecisely not one bereft of conict, difference

and contradiction.3

From Paris to the Ground of the City

Maurice Merleau-Pontys magnum opusPhenomenology of Perception, published in1945, is a key work in the phenomenologicaltradition and one which has had an impact onmany disciplines ranging from psychology to thearts. In relation to the built environment, thecentral contribution concerns the anti-Cartesianunderstanding of the centrality of the body toperception. Merleau-Ponty pictures the body asbeing out there amongst the things and objectsof the world which, in turn, may be understood,

even perceived, only by means of this embodiedprocess of knowing. A couple of passages fromthis extensive work concern the experience ofthe city, more precisely, the city of Paris. Theydescribe the process of perception that occurswhen the embodied subject meets the urbanenvironment, at the same time as they begin toreveal central aspects of what might be at stakeif we were to develop a phenomenology of thecity from the writings of Merleau-Ponty.

In the natural attitude, I do not have perceptions,I do not posit this object as beside that one,along with their objective relationships, I have aow of experiences which imply and explain eachother simultaneously and successively. Paris for

me is not an object of many facets, a collection ofperceptions, nor is it the law governing all theseperceptions. Just as a person gives evidence ofthe same emotional essence in his gestures withhis hands, in his way of walking and in the soundof his voice, each express perception occurringin my journey through Paris the cafs, peoplesfaces, the poplars along the quays, the bendsof the Seine stands out against the cityswhole being, and merely conrms that there is acertain style or a certain signicance which Parispossesses.(Merleau-Ponty 2002b:327-8)

In this account, the movement through Parisgives way to a description of the character of

the sensorial process that occurs in the meetingand interaction between a perceiving bodyand the city. Paris is compared to a humanbeing; a familiar person whose characteristicfeatures, movements and gestures embed inthem a certain unarticulated knowledge whichMerleau-Ponty even describes as an essence.

2 See the IBM SmarterPlanet Campaign: http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/uk/en/overview/ideas/ (date accessed14 September 2012).

3 For a more detaileddiscussion of this matter see

my forthcoming article Steiner2013.


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The recollection of a journey through the cityof Paris thus reveals a certain signicancethat this city possesses, one which is exposedthrough a dialectic between the singular,situated impressions of the city and its generalcharacter. This indicates that to Merleau-Ponty,

the city may be seen both as a unity of differenceand as a horizon which provides orientation.This is broken down into topographical andarchitectural elements as well as to socialinstitutions when Merleau-Ponty writes thatagainst the citys whole being stands the deeplyingrained topographical traits of the bends ofthe Seine, the more short-lived poplars alongthe quays, the even more temporary cafeswith their social life and the micro-perspectiveof peoples faces. These are not only obvioustypicalities of the Parisian urbanity all graspedduring an imaginative journey through the city but concern the interplay between the localand the universal which adorns the urbanity ofParis both with particularity and stability. Theyalso imply what may be called the strata or levelsof the mediative structure between what in theheideggerian tradition lies between da and sein,that is, between the conditions or embodiments,earth, and possibilities or articulation, world(Carl 2011:43).

And when I arrived there for the rst time, therst roads that I saw as I left the station were,like the rst words spoken by a stranger, simply

manifestations of a still ambiguous essence, butone already unlike any other. Just as we do notsee the eyes of a familiar face, but simply itslooks and expressions, so we perceive hardlyany object. There is present a latent signicance

diffused throughout the landscape or the city,which we nd in something specic and self-evident which we feel no need to dene .(Merleau-Ponty 2002b:327-8).

To Merleau-Ponty, understanding urban order isa process that can be compared to what it meansto understand language; the process of comingto understand the city thus is likened to the ideaof coming to understand the rst words spoken

by a stranger. If the complexities and intricaciesof sensorial perception is one of the main themesof Phenomenolgy of Perception, here, an intimatecorrelation is drawn up between the way in whichthe body as a sensory apparatus encounters the

claim of the world and the way in which world orcity can yield meaning, structure, even order. Theperson visiting Paris is familiar with the layout ofurban environments, but not this particular one;he is both oriented and partially disoriented,and already in his very rst meeting with the

city, it presented itself as being already unlikeany other. The above quotation explores howconcrete sensations have the potential to openup a dialogue between the visual experience,the rst roads that I saw, and a less tangibleunderstanding of urban order, which is describedas something specic and self-evident andtherefore as something which we feel no needto dene. Sensorial perception and the capacity

for meaningfulness of the material structures ofthe city are thus tied together, a process whichinevitably goes through the body. This pointsto the central argument of Phenomenolgy ofPerception, at the same time as it opens up thepossibility to move from a phenomenology ofperception to a phenomenology of the city.

The correlation between the sensorial process,which makes experience possible, and the waythe city has order is explored further in thefollowing quotation:

I never wholly live in the varieties of humanspace, but am always ultimately rooted in anatural and non-human space. As I walk acrossthe Place de la Concorde, and think of myselfas totally caught up in the city of Paris, I canrest my eyes on one stone of the Tuileries wall,the Square disappears and there is then nothingbut this stone entirely without history: I can,furthermore, allow my gaze to be absorbed bythis yellowish, gritty surface, and then there isno longer even a stone there, but merely the playof light upon an indenite substance (Merleau-Ponty 2002b:342).

In this quotation Merleau-Ponty describes anatural and non-human space which sustains

human space and ensures the rootedness ofhuman existence. According to this understandingthere is a natural world, which underlies the

human world of habits, communication, and theidea of self-hood, and with which it is acted outin a dialogue. In the city, it is possible to loseoneself in the sensorial experience to an extentthat the distinctions fade and the perceptionbecomes self-referential. Nevertheless, merelytaking the sum of these tactile, visual orauditory impulses on its own does not explainhow sensorial perception is given meaningand structure. This provides the philosophicalbackground to the following statement:

My total perception is not compounded of suchanalytical perceptions, but is always capableof dissolving into them, and my body, whichthrough my habits ensures my insertion intothe human world, does so only by projecting mein the rst place into a natural world which can

always be discerned underlying the other, as thecanvas underlies the picture and makes it appearunsubstantial(Merleau-Ponty 2002b:342).

The city fabric thus can be seen to constitute athoroughfare for sense perception, and it is inthe relationship between the perceiving body andthe city that Merleau-Ponty can conclude that

we have said that space is existential; we mightjust as well have said that existence is spatial

(Merleau-Ponty 2002b:342). What is called thehuman world by Merleau-Ponty can be equatedwith the built fabric and social institutions ofthe city. Merleau-Ponty thus infers a dialecticbetween what he calls the non-human and thehuman world, as both are part of the ground thatmake experience possible. The remaining partof this article considers what it might bean toemphasise city in this way; as a cultural productthat at the same time forms a silent backgroundto human life and therefore a privileged toposfor a phenomenologically oriented investigation.As an entity it has a particular order unlike anyother though its order can only be uncoveredtentatively as a (back)ground for experience.

Emphasis is on the idea not of a clear-cutdialectical structure but of a continuum of levelsor strata between topographical elements,which escape manipulation by humans, and thecultural setting of the city from planning andarchitecture to social institutions. A structurewhich ultimately needs to be explored in concrete


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analysis of particular urban environments.4

The search for a vocabulary to tackle thesequestions takes us outside the question ofthe meeting between the city and the sensingbody and concerns the search for a conceptual

apparatus for a phenomenology of the city. Onewhich is based on a more radical dissolution ofthe dialectic between subject and world as ischaracteristic of Merleau-Pontys later writings.

The Earth Does Not Move

An important part of Merleau-Pontys work thatdates after the publication of Phenomenologyof Perception, and which deals with the relationbetween what was called the human and thenon-human space above, concerns a movetowards an ontology of nature. Moving fromPhenomenology of Perception to the laterwork, the text pieces that will be consideredhere include fragments of the unnished book

manuscripts The Visible and the Invisible,published posthumously in 1964, the publicationThe Prose of the World as well as the lecturenotes published in English as Themes from theLectures at the Collge de France, 1952-1960and Nature Course Notes from The Collge deFrance.

As the commentator Claude Lefort writes, inThe Visible and the Invisible Merleau-Pontytakes up again the early analyses of the thing,the body, the relation between the seer and thevisible (Lefort 2000:xxi). This is done, in orderto dissipate their ambiguity and in order to showthat they acquire their full meaning only outside

of a psychological interpretation, when they areenveloped in a new ontology (Lefort 2000:xxi).A continuation of Merleau-Pontys criticismof transcendental philosophy, it concerns, inparticular, the notion of subjectivity. The Visibleand the Invisible develops and deepens thiscriticism, contending that reection is always

situated. This is summed up by the philosopherBernhard Waldenfels in a paragraph that it isuseful to quote at length:

In the course of the attempt to nd anintermediate sphere which no longer functionsas a preceding area of consciousness oran antechamber to the ego, the earlierPhenomenolgy of Perception and ones own body

(corps propre) becomes an ontology of seeing(vision) and esh (chair). Seeing is no longer a

subjective act but an event which occurs betweenthe seer, the visible, and the co-seer, envelopedin a sphere of visibility called esh. This esh

of the world, ones own body and the body ofothers, of time or language, must be thoughtof not in terms of substance, but functionality,as texture, articulation, framework, joints, asan element in which we live and move []. Anintertwining (entrelacs) forms between things,others, and myself, a chiasmus or a chiasm,as Merleau-Ponty calls it. (Waldenfels 1998:288-289)

The lecture notes from the same period, parts ofwhich are published in translation in the volumeHusserl at the Limits of Phenomenology (2002a),illuminate Merleau-Pontys understanding of thisfundamental intertwinement. In the presentcontext, it is the problem of the city as a partof the ground for experience a setting whose

ordering into levels or strata between earthand world may be investigated by means of aphenomenological enquiry which necessitatesthis primary level of discussion. While the ideaof a chiasmus or chiasm emphasises a dialecticstructure, in order to retain an understanding of

a mediative structure between earth and world,the implicit polarisation must be questioned withreference to Phenomenology of Perception. Atthe same time as we can begin to appreciatethe difculty in dealing with the text fragmentsthat constitute the lecture notes, however, thefollowing paragraph introduces an importantpart of the philosophical project they represent:

The theme of is the horizonof the horizons. [] It is the formulation of itsstructure as horizon of culture (implicationin Kultur-Gegenwart of Kulturvergangenheitwith Traditionalisieren in strmendstehenderLebendigkeit). But this structural or concretea priori is neither a Kantian category nor

even a Hegelian idea; it is the allgemeinenSinnesboden =the sense nally, far from being an idea, is aground. Philosophy seeks inthe archaeology of the ground, in the depth andnot in the height (the ideas). (Merleau-Ponty2002a:67)

Merleau-Ponty is orienting his philosophytowards what he calls the depth, the ground, thevisible, and not, as he says, in the heights, in theideas, in the invisible. Before it will be possibleto emphasise these considerations to questionsof architecture and the city more directly, it isnecessary to take a step back and to consider

the philosophical framework for Merleau-Pontysinvestigation in more detail in particular itsHusserlian heritage.

For Husserl, the Earth is pre-objective andpre-Copernian and he aims at outlining thefoundations for a phenomenological doctrine ofspatiality and corporeality. Husserl argues thatin spite of the modern view of the Earth as a bodymoving through innite space, in fact the Earth is

for the experiencing human body a ground thatis not experienced at rst as body but becomes acorporeal ground at higher levels of constitutionof the world by virtue of experience (Husserl2002:118). Therefore, it is possible to say that,in experience, the Earth itself does not move, it

itself knows neither movement nor rest; ratherit is in relation to it that movement and rest aregiven. While this understanding is reected inthe experience of ones own body, it can only beaccepted in a primordial way, outside a scientic

model of explanation (Husserl 2002:126).

According to this argument, the Earth isconstituted with carnality and corporealityand Merleau-Ponty states that, as a corollary,

philosophy understood as the study of theSinnesboden is to be taken literally: naturalBoden [the earth] and cultural-historical Bodenwhich is built on the earth (Merleau-Ponty2002a:67-68). The idea of urban order and

of the built environment as a common groundnds its most basic interpretation in this ideaof a cultural historical ground which is builton the Earth. If earth is a condition for world,in heideggerian language, or, differently put,ground is a condition for culture and history,this formulation emphasises how the city may

4 See my work onCopenhagen in the earlynineteenth century, for exampleSteiner (2008, 2011).


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be seen as a primary institution that may revealthe strata or layers of the mediative structurebetween earth and world. This is so because itis stretched out between what is most embodied topographical features, built structures andwhat is most articulated urban cultural and social

institutions. While this formulation recognisesthe cultural character of urban structures, thedenition is simultaneously concerned with the

notion of Earth or ground, implying that whatis built on the earth has the capacity to carrymeaning and thus to provide orientation. Thisemphasises the preoccupation with embodimentin the phenomenological tradition, and the vexedquestion of a ground for thought or culture thusmay be understood through the concretenessof human situations that give access to whatis at stake in our involvement with the builtenvironment of cities (Vesely 2004:78-9).

In line with this interpretation, for Merleau-Ponty,the Earth also constitutes a ground for experience,

an Erfahrungsboden (Merleau-Ponty 2002a:69).This has to do with how meaning is formed;what Merleau-Ponty calls the Sinnesboden, theground of meaning, which according to the aboveformulation is at the centre of that to whichphilosophy should be oriented. This also echoesthe comments in Phenomenology of Perceptionon the problem of self-evidentiality in relation tohow the city provides orientation. The couplingof the problem of meaning in culture with theproblem of built structures further indicateshow to open the problem of a phenomenologyof the city using Merleau-Pontys writing. Whileit leaves us questioning how urban order may beexperienced in the richness of the stratication

or layers of the mediative structure in itsconcrete manifestation, it indicates the level atwhich the city may be seen as a shared horizonor common ground.

More particularly, Merleau-Ponty distinguishesbetween an Earth-space, Erdraum, and an Earth-ground, Erdboden, as aspects of the way in whichour experience of the Earth has a particularspatiality and a way of constituting a ground(Merleau-Ponty 2002a:68). Concomitantly, hewrites that the surrounding space is given asa system of what may be seen as orientations that is, what Merleau-Ponty calls a systemof possible terminations of motions of bodies(Merleau-Ponty 2002a:70). That this is an

arrangement where the Earth itself has noplace, it constitutes a ground, makes Merleau-Ponty conclude that since the Earth as a groundprovides all possibilities for movement, forexperience, the possibles (even of thought) arepossibles of the Earth, of the Weltmglichkeit(Merleau-Ponty 2002a:68).

The difcult language of these citations maynot only be tied to the unnished nature of thetexts but arises from an attempt to render intothe most articulate horizon of interpretationthe very opposite dimension of existence:the phenomenon of concreteness itself. Byemphasising the dimension of the conditions

for our being-in-the-world in the heideggeriansense, the quotations underscore the ideathat the city forms an ultimate horizon withinthe cultural-historical predicament; that alsothe city has the capacity in a concrete senseto make meaning possible and to constitute aground for experience. They thus provide the

conceptual framework necessary to expandthe understanding of the city to a variation ofor an aspect of that which makes all possiblespossible in the Merleau-Pontian formulation,mediating between earth and world.

Institutions between the Visible and theInvisible

The idea of a divide between a natural and acultural historical ground in the above Merleau-Pontian formulations may be interpreted asan atemporal understanding of order. Thisunderstanding would, however, go against thenature of the reciprocity between earth andworld within the phenomenological traditionof thinking as seen in the above discussion ofPhenomenology of Perception. Merleau-Pontyaddresses the issue of temporality in relationto the Husserlian concept of Stiftung; a term hediscusses in The Prose of the World:

Husserl has used the ne word Stiftung foundation, institution to designate, rst,

the unlimited fecundity of each present which,precisely because it is singular and passes,can never stop having been and thus beinguniversally. Above all he has used Stiftung todesignate that fecundity of the products ofculture which continue to have a value after theirhistorical appearance and open a eld of work

beyond and the same as their own. (Merleau-Ponty 2002a:68)

What is of interest here is Husserls concernfor how a historical tradition is instituted orsedimented, gestift, but always available for

reactivation, Nachstiftung.5

As Merleau-Pontywrites, this means that the fecundity of traditionguarantees that new expression will always bepossible. It indicates that also for Merleau-Ponty,tradition constitutes something like a historicalunconsciousness, which is always already there.Tradition, therefore, shapes what Merleau-Pontycalls a horizon of humanity (Merleau-Ponty2002a:39), of meaning, in which the individualsare inevitably implicated. At the same time,though, Merleau-Ponty states that in oppositionto tradition, nature is there from the rst day,

before the institution of tradition (Merleau-Ponty2003b:4). This conceptual division expoundsthe opposition between a natural ground and acultural-historical ground rather than explaining

its structure, and thus frames the issue in anapparantly stied dialectics that reiterates theusual conceptual dualities of physis/nomos and,ultimately, world/earth. One should thereforebe careful when considering that nature, inthis understanding, is regarded as an absolutepast, as the other side of man, and as Merleau-Ponty writes in the foreword to the course notesNature, nature is the primordial that is, thenonconstructued, the noninstituted (Merleau-Ponty 2003b:4).

Nevertheless, Merleau-Pontys ideas of thereciprocal and structured relationships betweenearth and world, the invisible the visible,

embodiment and language, also may be exploredin terms of the relationship between silenceand expression. In this context, silence is notnecessarily the contrary of language: silence ormuteness is part of the background to language,the unarticulated background. In line withthis idea, Merleau-Ponty makes the following

5 See Merleau-Ponty2003b:xvi-xvii and Merleau-Ponty 2002a:29-30.


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statement in the course notes:1. before language, a mute experienceand an experience which calls from itselffor its expression, but a pure expression,i.e., foundation and not product of language.Therefore a Vor-sprache, a down-side or other

side of language, an Ur-sprung of language.

2. after language, through it, constitutionof a universe of the nameable, of Dingeueberhaupt, of objectivity, coextensive with theWelt. (Merleau-Ponty 2002a:43)

The rst idea to be considered springs directly

from the nexus of silence, muteness andthe invisible. In Phenomenolgy of PerceptionMerleau-Ponty discusses the idea of expressionas a giving form to.6 This understandingclaries that for Merleau-Ponty silence is byno means emptiness, but something that hasno form, what he calls gestaltlos (Merleau-Ponty 2002a:47). As something that provides

latently a possibility for an utterance or fora thought, silence is tied up with speech andlanguage through an intricate relationship bothof opposition and interdependency. Languageis therefore something which already hasform, but which also posits a formless statewhere it requires form, expression, whatis called a fore-language, Vor-sprache. Theunderstanding of a continuum between silenceand expression can be transposed to othermeans of representation than language. Anexample is architecture with its predominantlysilent and embodied characteristics, but whichis still open for participation and which conveysits own embodied kind of non-articulated

meaning (Vesely 2004:60). In order to use thisinsight more directly within the framework ofa phenomenology of architecture or the city,language should be shifted away from having aprimary position in the analysis; a line of inquiryabout which Merleau-Ponty is not very explicit(Lawlor 2002:xxvii).

One clue is, however, given in relation to thetheme of institutions. In Phenomenolgy ofPerception, Merleau-Ponty writes:

The use a man is to make of his body istranscendent in relation to that body as a merebiological entity. It is no more natural, and noless conventional, to shout in anger or to kiss in

love than to call a table a table. Feelings andpassionate conduct are invented like words.Even those which, like paternity, seem to be partand parcel of the human make-up are in realityinstitutions.(Merleau-Ponty 2002b:220)

This demarcation of the institutional backgroundto human life or culture is central to theway Merleau-Ponty discusses the concept ofinstitution. In the manuscript to the lecture

Institution in Personal and Public History(1970), the concept of institution is presented asa way of challenging the conventional ideas ofa philosophy of consciousness. In line with theabove quotation, Merleau-Ponty states that the

subject itself is instituted rather than constituted,and he uses the concept of institution to showhow subjectivity itself is situated and rests ona set of cultural-historical features. In fact heclaims that what he calls the instituted subjectexists between others and myself, between meand myself, like a hinge, the consequence and

the guarantee of our belonging to a commonworld (Merleau-Ponty 1970:40). Opening theproblem of institutions more generally, Merleau-Ponty states the following:

Thus what we understand by the concept of

institution are those events in experience whichendow it with durable dimensions, in relation towhich a whole series of other experiences willacquire meaning, will form an intelligible seriesor a history or again those events whichsediment in me a meaning, not just as survivalsor residues, but as the invitation to a sequel,the necessity of a future. (Merleau-Ponty1970:40-1)

Here, the idea of institution is close to that ofhorizon, most prominently discussed in thephenomenological tradition by Hans-GeorgGadamer in Truth and Method (2001:300-307). For Merleau-Ponty, however, emphasis isagain on the duality of something atemporal,

events that sediment in me meaning, andsomething temporal, the durable dimensions,

an intelligible series or a history. Merleau-Pontyexplores the concept of institution in relation tofour levels, where the rst three concern whathe calls personal or intersubjective history andthe last deals with what he calls public history.The four levels make it possible to connect thisunderstanding of institutions to the idea of amediative structure between earth and world.In this way, a central building block is providedto grasp the city as an institution comprisingmany institutions in it at the same time as itis a background for human practice, providingorientation as a common ground and horizon.

The rst level on which Merleau-Ponty identies

an institutional relation concerns a set of deeplyingrained ways in which we interact with otherpeople on the most intimate level whichapproaches biology:

There exists something comparable toinstitution even at the animal level (the animalis impregnated by the living creatures whichsurround him at birth) and even at the levelof human functions which used to be consideredpurely biological (puberty reveals a conservationrhythm the recall and transcendence of earlierevents relevant here is the oedipal conict which is characteristic of institution.) However,

in man the past is able not only to orient thefuture or to furnish the frame of reference forthe problems of the adult person, [] so thatit becomes impossible to explain behavior interms of its past, anymore than in the future.(Merleau-Ponty 1970:40)

The second level is explained by means of anexample: the institution of a painters work or ofa style in the history of painting (Merleau-Ponty1970:42). Merleau-Ponty claims that a painterlearns to paint by means other than sheerimitation of his predecessors. Rather, he statesthat there is a deeper sense of temporality inplay. What was painted before inuences a

given work, yet from what has been painted,one cannot infer what is to come, which also isclose to what is involved in the idea of Stiftung(Merleau-Ponty 1970:42-3). This also counts onthe more general level with respect to the historyof painting. Here, Merleau-Ponty is interested intwo things: the way in which the cultural praxis

6 See Merleau-Ponty1945:220 (mise en forme).See also Lawlor 2002:xxvi.


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of an individual relates to a temporal dimensionand how this is tied up with common concernsand predicaments.

At this point, the analysis still concerns whatMerleau-Ponty calls personal or interpersonal

history and also the third level talks about thisdomain. Here, Merleau-Ponty inquires into thedevelopment of knowledge as such, and he nds

the same internal circulation between the pastand present which has been observed in otherinstitutions (Merleau-Ponty 1970:43). Thismeans on the most general level that even theprevalent understandings of truth are historicaland endowed with weight through the way inwhich they develop in the interplay betweenpeople in a historical present. Accordingly,the third level can be seen as a generalisationof the second. Because of its scope it appearsmore radical, but in fact it rests on a similarunderstanding and investigation of how thepersonal connects with the interpersonal. On the

fourth level, this is taken further as a kind ofmeta-conclusion when Merleau-Ponty makes thefollowing point:

Thought only has access to another historicalhorizon [] through a lateral penetration and notby a sort of ubiquity in principle [] it producesa table of diverse, complex probabilities, alwaysbound to local circumstances, weighted witha coefcient of facticity, and such that we cannever say of one that it is more true than another,although we can say that one is more false, morearticial, and less open to a future in turn less

rich.(Merleau-Ponty 1970:44)

Here we leave the level of personal historyand approach what Merleau-Ponty calls publichistory. In the same move, we come closer todescribing the way in which institutions have todo with the common-to-all and thus with civicorder when it comes to an urban context evenat that level which Merleau-Ponty calls personalor inter-subjective. If thought is always situated,dependent on the particular setting but alsoalways relational, it provides a means to assessthe level of what Merleau-Ponty calls publichistory. While the claim of the institutions nds a

very direct interpretation in this understanding,it operates on a level where it is difcult to inferdirectly what constitutes the claim: identifyingthe cultural-historical background, the concrete

city. Concerning the search for a phenomenologyof the city, it might be the case that it is necessaryto build up a phenomenology of the city as aphenomenology of institutions. This would meandiscussing urban order as an institutional orderand uncovering this aspect of common groundthrough concrete investigations of the city asan institution with many institutions in it thatdevelops in and through history.7

Towards a Phenomenology of the City

The turn to primary phenomenological discoursegiven in the references to Merleau-Ponty addsa new dimension to the questions regarding

urban order and the need for an understandingof the city as a cultural-historical background.The winding nature of the quoted text fragmentsat times makes them about to recede intoobscurity. The reason for this particular writingstyle is not only the incomplete nature of themanuscripts, however: it is an attempt to avoid

an objectifying, academic discourse. Withoutattempting a complete interpretation of theMerleau-Pontian discourse, the aim here hasbeen to evoke particular philosophical themesin a way that allows this concreteness to beretained. This makes possible a number of

conclusions.First, Merleau-Pontys vocabulary makespossible a formulation of the urban lifeworldof the city as being part of background ofmeaning that provides orientation in everydaylife. The differentiation in Merleau-Pontysthought between a natural ground and acultural-historical ground seems at rst sight tomove focus away from the idea of a mediativestructure between earth and world. And yet,it makes it possible to discuss the latter morespecically as the way in which the city provides

a kind of ground of meaning and a backgroundwhich rather works at the level of straticationbetween world and earth. This makes it possible

to include questions of architecture and urbanityvery directly in the discussion. Second, if theprocesses of Stiftung that regard culturalproduction and the establishment of sharedstructures of meaningfulness and also concernwhat is built on the earth and thus the buildingof cities, it is necessary to take into account atemporal structure of this constitution, whichis dynamic and has to do with tradition andchange. A vehicle to open these questions canbe found in Merleau-Pontys understandingof institutions. This illuminates what might beat stake in a phenomenology of the city in theMerleau-Pontian tradition: an understandingaccording to which urban order is a latent

order, part of the ground for experience, yetas negotiable, changeable and dynamic. This issignicant because it avoids normative-ideal ormoral statements but addresses the problem ofurban context both as a concrete background forhuman practice and as an ultimate horizon.

One example of current discourse on the urbancondition that it is favourable to discuss inthe light of these ideas is represented by theconcept of the smart city. This idea describesthe city as a system of information and ow

that, although complex and wayward, canbe controlled, manipulated and optimisedto increase efciency in sectors such astransportation infrastructures, health care, etc.

The aim is no less than the betterment of cultureas a whole. With respect to infrastructure, forexample, a concrete proposition is complex andself-reexive computations of streetlights that

are monitored through sensors and constantlyadapt to the ever-changing trafc ow, thusaiding peoples way through the city. From suchpropositions, the smart city propagandists movedirectly to visions of a more beautiful, seamlessand happy society. This way of thinking takesfor granted that the city is an entity which isexperienced and comprehended in the same wayby everyone in it and that there exists somethinglike a common goal of optimisation which wouldbenet the larger whole of the city and which

would make purposeness and meaning cometogether in the built environment. But just asit is evident that our individual experiencesof passing through the city rarely cohere withsmooth and linear representations of ow andunhindered passage, it also should be clear thatevery one of us approaches the urban realm

7 See Steiner 2008 forpreliminary enquiries in thisdirection.


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with our different backgrounds and levels ofunderstanding, interests and attention. Whatmay be experienced as smooth and seamless isdependent on many more factors than when redlights are seen as a nuisance. We might, in fact,take pleasure in taking a little break in front of a

red light and use this time to relax, contemplate,listen to the radio, look around, get to know aplace, etc.

This argument also calls attention to the factthat the way in which we commit to the city asan entity that happens through daily practices,which are attuned to the rhythms and moods ofthe larger structure of (our) everyday life, andwhich are always situated with respect to theconcrete built environment. The way in whichmeaning is generated thus has little to do withoptimisation of large-scale systems. And yet,despite these partial involvements, when we callourselves citizens of a city we place ourselvesin relation to the urban context as a larger

horizon. If we were to investigate how the builtenvironment adds meaning to our culture in afundamental sense, thus posing the question ofrelevance, understanding the civic order of thecity is an important undertaking. It is in the urbancontext, in the longue dure of the developmentof culture, that the link between cultural meaningand architectural form has developed explicitly.But if until the end of eighteenth century, idealcities were based on historical precedents aswell as on contemporary literature, philosophyand political thinking and thus were a result of abroad cooperation and accumulated knowledge(Carl 1995), current visions such as the smartcity reduce the relation of meaningfulness to

that of the optimised seamless workings of acomputerised system.

The way in which we commit to the city may beegocentric if this commitment means that wetry to make use of the city to reach a personalgoal. Nevertheless, even if we may have little incommon with our fellow citizens, the minimumof what is shared is the partiality of this greaterorientation. The argument of the present articleis that even if this shared orientation may rest onunderstandings so partial and distant that theyinclude phenomena such as misunderstanding oreven conict, this is precisely the place where

relationships of meaningfulness develop, whichmakes it helpful to turn to the Merleau-Pontian

vocabulary and see the city as a species of thecultural-historical ground or Boden. That this iswhere we can locate something like the relevanceof the city even in the contemporary culture offragmentation of meaning, and by seeing thecity as the cultural-historical ground of meaning as proposed in the present context thisbecomes both plausible and a desirable directionof philosophical questioning to be worked out indetail in future work.

In summary it can be said that the presentarticle has provided a preliminary mapping ofthe philosophical or interpretational eld ofthe problem of a phenomenology of the city.

This has been done by means of close readingof selected fragments from the philosophicaloeuvre of one of the central phenomenologistsof the twentieth century, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The idea of substituting the Merleau-Pontian idea of a cultural-historical groundwith city has been read in conjunction with his

ideas of a fundamental co-dependency betweenhuman practice, the body and the surroundingenvironment, built or non-built, or world. Thedialogical nature of human behaviour whichincludes themes of silence, misunderstanding that is a central understanding here means that

to grasp the order of the city also includes theorder of conict or chaos. It is this frameworkthat should be carried over to concrete analysesof cities in their different geographical andhistorical manifestations within the frameworkof a phenomenology of the city.


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Literatur:

Bachelard, G. (1964). The Poetics of Space, New York, OrionPress

Carl, P. (1995). Renovatio Urbis (Man is a Polluted River),Scroope Cambridge A rchitecture Journal, 6, 34-8.

Carl, P. (2011) Type, Field, Culture, Praxis. TypologicalUrbanism: Projective Citi es: Architectural Design (81), 38-45

Gadamer, H-G. (2001). Truth and Method, London, Sheed andWard

Haddad, E. (2010). Christian Norberg-Schulzsphenomenological project in architecture. ArchitecturalTheor y Review, 15 (1), 88-101

Husserl, E. (2002). Foundational Investigations of thePhenomenological Origin of the Spatiality of Nature: TheOriginary Ark, the Earth, Does Not Move. Husserl at the Limitsof Phenomenology Including Texts by Edmund Husserl,Illinois, Northwestern Univer sity Pre ss: 116-131

Lawlor, L. (2002). Verechtung: The triple Signicanceof Merleau-Pontys Course Notes on Husserls The Originof Geometry. Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology Including Texts by Edmund Husserl, Illinois, NorthwesternUniversity Press: ix-xxxvii.

Lefort, C. (2000). Editors Foreword. The Visible and theInvisible, Illinois: Northwestern University Pre ss

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1970). Themes from the Lectures atthe Collge de France, 1952-1960, Illinois, NorthwesternUniversity Press

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2000). The Visible and the Invisible,Illinois, Northwestern University Press

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002a). Husserl at the Limits ofPhenomenology Including Texts by Edmund Husserl,Illinois, Northwestern University Press

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945). Phnomnologie de la percepti on,Paris, ditions Gallimard

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002b). Phenomenolgy of Perception,London, New York, Routledge

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2003b). Nature Course Notes from TheCollge de France, Illinois, Northwestern University Press

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1974). The Prose of the World, London,Heinemann Educational Books Ltd.

Norbert-Schulz, C. (1980). Genius Loci Towards aPhenomenology of Architecture, New York, Rizzoli

Rasmussen, S. E. (1959). Experie ncing Architec ture, London,Chapman & Hall

Steiner, H. (2008). Kierkegaards Copenhagen and theProblem of Institutional Order. Edinburgh ArchitecturalResearch (30)

Steiner, H. (2011). Writing the City: Sren KierkegaardsUrban Walks in Copenhagen. Imagining Space, ed. by S.Strumper-Knobb and K. James-Chakraborty, Bern, Peter Lang

Steiner, H. (2013, in press). Proximity of Dif ference and theThree Cities of Copenhagen. Phenomenologies of the City.Studies in the History and Philosophy of Architecture, ed. byH. Steiner and M. Sternberg, London, Ashgate.

Vesely, D. (2004). Architecture in the Age of DividedRepresentation: The Question of Creativity in the Shadow ofProduction, Massachusetts, MIT Press

Waldenfels, B. (1998). Merleau-Ponty. A Companion toContinental Philosophy, ed. by S. Critchley and W. R.Schroeder, Oxford, Blackwell

Dr. Henriette Steiner

Research Associate at theDepartment of Architecture,ETH Zurich, since 2009. ADanish citizen, she holds a BAin Comparative Literature anda MA in Modern Culture fromthe University of Copenhagen,Denmark, as well as a MPhilin History and Philosophy fromthe University of Cambridge,UK. In 2008, she graduatedwith a PhD in Architecture fromthe University of Cambridge.She has held visitingfellowships at TU Mnchen,University of Copenhagen,the National University ofSingapore and the Universityof California, Berkeley. Her

research and publicationscross disciplinary boundariesbetween architecture and thehumanities, and her researchinterests concern the waythe modern city has beenrepresented and discussed,read and interpreted.

steiner.2012_phenomenology-the earth does not move and the ground of the city

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