Postmodern Sophistications: Philosophy, Architecture, and Tradition

by David Kolb

Overview

Kolb discusses postmodern architectural styles and theories within the context of philosophical ideas about modernism and postmodernism. He focuses on what it means to dwell in a world and within a history and to act from or against a tradition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226450278
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	04/03/1990
Series:	University of Chicago Geography Research Papers
Edition description:	1
Pages:	223
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

David Kolb is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Philosophy at Bates College and the author of Postmodern Sophistications: Philosophy, Architecture, and Tradition, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Modern and Postmodern
The Course of the Book
1. Socrates and the Story of Inquiry
2. The Last Word in Greek Philosophy
Aristotle
Plato
The Sophists
3. The Power of the Sophist
Plato's Sophists
Knowledge, Opinion, and Metaphysics
Reason and Persuasion
Metaphysical Fear
4. Postmodern Sophistications
Lyotard and Habermas
A German Plato and a French Sophist?
Modern and Postmodern
5. Self-Criticism in a Broken Mirror
Prior Conditions
Discipline and Appropriate Judgment
6. Form and Content in Utopia
Modernity and Tradition
The Three-World Story
Form and Content
7. Life in Balloon
Premodern Ancestors
The Problem of Simple Inhabitation
Spacious Systems
Doubting Modern Distance
8. Modern Architecture from Pillar to Post
Postmodern Architecture
The Modern World: Weber
The Modern World: Hegel
The Modern World: Heidegger
The Postmodern World
Irony and the Suspended Architect
9. Where Do the Architects Live?
Does Architecture Speak a Language?
The Master Language
Equal Access to History
Vocabularies and Memories
10. Extending Architectural Vocabularies
Limits
Changes and Metaphors
Many Forms
Many Intentions
11. Haughty and Humble Ironies
Judgmental Irony
Romantic Irony
Deconstructive Irony
Architectural Irony
Parody, Irony, and Politics
12. Self-Identity and Place
Differential Places
Heidegger's Deep Places
Empirical Places
Deconstructed Places
13. Making Places for Ourselves
Criticism and Possibilities
Archetypal Guidance
Regional Guidance
Precedent and Rereading
The Presence of the Past
14. Building Together / Buildings Together
Is There a Postmodern World?
The Problem of Jumble
Regionalism and the Consumer Society
Self-Criticism Together
Notes
Bibliography
Index