Cosmos, body, and aesthetics in settlement space and architecture

Abstract

This paper investigates the historical course of the projection of certain major cultural constructs on space, which will be investigated with the help of the metalinguistic concept of code. These codes are: the cosmic code (cosmogony and cosmology); the anthropomorphic code, referring to human, frequently bodily, traits; and the aesthetic code. Through two very different examples, one drawn from Africa and the other referring to traditional India, I argue that the cosmic and the anthropomorphic codes in their interrelation have been predominant for the meaningful investment of space, and more generally in the cultural universe, in historical or recent precapitalist societies. I challenge the persistent habit of extrapolating as of major importance an autonomous aesthetic code similar to ours to the cultures of the past and their spatial achievements. I argue that this habit follows from a Eurocentric approach informed by Kantian aesthetics and substantiate this position with historical evidence from ancient Greece as well as traditional India and China, all three cases showing that the very constitution of the “aesthetic” in these cultures depends on the combined dynamics of the two first codes. After a brief reference to the fate of the three codes in modernity, I close with a discussion of certain current philosophical theories defending the universality of aesthetic concepts.