If you are new to the Band, please see this post for an introduction and overview of the point of this blog. Older posts are in the archive on the right.
The previous post continued a historical investigation into the perverse reality that our architecture - the built environment in which our lives unfold - is ruled by a dehumanizing theoretical discourse hostile to the societies that it is purportedly serves. The Renaissance was our inflection point, where the informal architectural developments of the Middle Ages were replaced with a theoretical approach that treated architecture as an "Art", complete with founding principles to distinguish it from mere building as a practice. We then saw how this theoretical structure was applied by Louis XIV in an effort to control the arts for rhetorical purposes, binding architectural theory with authoritarian power in the institutions that came to define the discourse.
The Renaissance humanist origins of Academic architecture theory.
The frontispiece from the French Academy's theoretical corpus builds off of the Renaissance architect Vignola's treatise on the five orders. But look at how the personification of architecture is identified. The hand holding the compass (geometer's instrument) rests on books, symbolizing text-based theory and mathematical harmony. She is surrounded by Classical architecture, representing the authority of antiquity. The commemorative portrait of Vignola indicates that his mastery of this art has earned him lasting fame, the old humanist worldly notion of immortality as the triumph of memory.
There are huge downstream consequences from these developments that need to be made very clear:
1. Defining the fine arts as Liberal Arts separated theory and practice.
Medieval "architects" started as masons, the skilled craft of stonecutting. Since masons began as unskilled apprentices, there was a direct continuity between the project designer/overseer and the laborers.
Thomas Cole, The Architect's Dream, 1840, oil on canvas, 136 cm × 214 cm, Toledo Museum of Art
Theoretical architecture is an intellectualized pursuit, distinct from the building trades. Cole's isolated aristocratic dreamer is a fine metaphor.
This theory/practice division aligned with human vanity to create a hierarchy of prestige between the intellectual designer who creates "architecture" and the ignorant craftsman who merely builds in what are called vernacular styles. Historians reflect this judgment when they refer to high and low, or elite and popular culture. This value judgment is the starting point for all the subsequent criticisms of disapproval of "modern" culture as ignorant. Theory is based on writing and reflecting, which linked it to educational activity - it isn't a coincidence that the word "academy" is now largely synonymous with school. Educational snobbery strengthened the divide, as did the related class issues associated with good schools, refined taste, and the social position to patronize quality architecture.
2. By introducing the notion of improvement into cultural history, the Renaissance also established the idea of artistic "progress."
They thought they were "restoring" culture to a lost perfection, but the idea that artists are supposed to break new ground is the basis of the Modernist concept of the "avant-garde" that has been responsible for so much skill-less pretension in the artworld. Because in a world of discursive self-referentiality like architecture, "progress" is whatever the current academic fashion declares it to be.
Consider this gem from a Pritzker Prize winner (a kiss on the forehead from the globalist elite) and holder of the #91 spot on the Dezeen Hot List of 2017. The charmless and incomplete looking arrangement of blocks scores points for "sustainability", meaning it functions at the Stone Age tech level that seems to be the globalist goal. It is artfully shot in the first image though, in a typical effort to use presentational tricks to compensate for the underwhelming subject.
The interior resembles an institutional bathroom, though a sustainable one without plumbing. That this is considered serious religious architecture is all that is needed to know about elite hatred for Christianity.
How does an abandoned bunker for trigger a devotional response? Exactly.
Calling dehumanizing whims "progress", allows these frauds to tar their critics as not only ignorant but backwards, or literally retarded.
3. The invention of the artistic "genius"is a direct precursor to the pedestalizing of an incoherent atavist like Le Corbusier.
While some have questioned Einstein's originality, his name is linked to huge developments in the world of physics. Regardless of your take on him, there is no comparison with a sociopathic intellectual mediocrity like Le Corbusier. A photo like this reveals the ability of the art world to construct entirely false personae for its made men.
Integrating genius into a theoretical discipline was always a recurring problem. Correctly identifying it has proven to be another.
4. Louis XIV and his absolutist cultural policy demonstrated the link between political and theoretical authoritarianism, something that also echoes in the orthodoxies and thought crimes in the academy of today.
Blondel was the first Director and Professor of the newly formed Académie Royale d'Architecture, and his Cours was the standard text for over a century. Note how the frontispiece includes the same Classical and Egyptian motifs that we saw in the syncretic humanism of Renaissance Rome. The dedication to Ludovico Magno - Louis the Great - is a direct acknowledgment of the tie between the power of the king and the authority of academic theory.
There is no theoretical authority without authority
The signature lie of art theory is that it is anything more than a subjective echo chamber that only thrives when powerful ideologues are able to impose it, either by fiat or through "soft" power. All these ideas - progress, genius, academies, theory itself - are human consensus, or what Postmodernists would call discursive creations. Put more simply, they're things someone made up, and have no substance outside the socio-cultural structures that support them. Look how the arts keep changing, but the idea that there is something called "Art", meaning a special group of images worthy of public display and academic attention, is constant. Art has no single definitive meaning in itself; what it refers to are cultural attitudes or consensus about imagery at a given time. This means that it, and all its wealth and prestige, can be hijacked by whoever attains cultural power.
The Capela do Monte has an incompleteness of form suggestive of the passage of time and the haunting aura of ruins. Yet it is flawless, a roofless boundless yearning for the infinite. It is also more artfully photographed.
On the other hand, the small cinderblock shed has an absolute harmony of form that is a worldly microcosm of the perfection of God's creation, and lays bare the role of the architect as mediator between heaven and earth. It is also affordable, with plans available online.
On the level of the individual architect or critic, the link between authority and theory is what allows for the creation of influence peddlers, gatekeepers, and made men. On the systematic level, it is responsible for the credentialism that plagues much of society today.
Credentialism, or the inflating of educational requirements for positions, is a consequence of yoking government to education in an increasingly sclerotic and socialistic economy. It is also based on deception - in this case, the need by stakeholders to preserve the status quo - rather than any empirical measure of success. Look at these graphs.
The first shows a nearly five-fold increase in college enrollment. This is per capita, and is not effected by change in the population over time. It is not possible to do this without greatly lowering standards, but that aside, people are clearly responding to the government pressure to go to college.
The second shows a correlation (not necessary a causal one) between this increasingly educated workforce and steady increases in per capita productivity that does not correlate at all with wage growth. The reason for the productivity growth is likely centralization and automation more than anything, but the point is that increasing education credentials HASN'T made people richer. Also note that this graph doesn't include debt.
The last is the real shiv. Despite the massive increase in enrollment, prices have soared. Aren't there supposed to be economies of scale? Don't colleges profess to teach economics?
"College: huge debt for jobs high schoolers used to do" isn't so catchy a motto though.
The first shows a nearly five-fold increase in college enrollment. This is per capita, and is not effected by change in the population over time. It is not possible to do this without greatly lowering standards, but that aside, people are clearly responding to the government pressure to go to college.
The second shows a correlation (not necessary a causal one) between this increasingly educated workforce and steady increases in per capita productivity that does not correlate at all with wage growth. The reason for the productivity growth is likely centralization and automation more than anything, but the point is that increasing education credentials HASN'T made people richer. Also note that this graph doesn't include debt.
The last is the real shiv. Despite the massive increase in enrollment, prices have soared. Aren't there supposed to be economies of scale? Don't colleges profess to teach economics?
"College: huge debt for jobs high schoolers used to do" isn't so catchy a motto though.
It's a system that took a long time to put in place. The institutions peddle globalist toxin, and in exchange, globalist governments protect them by massive subsidies and accreditation schemes, while other globalist entities require their certificates of participation for employment. Collective self-deception on this scale is only possible with complete control, since people will opt out of this ponzi scheme when allowed reality-facing alternatives.
Attributed to Pierre Rabon, Portrait of Louis Le Vau or Antoine de Ratabon, circa 1662, oil on canvas, 152 x 127.5 cm, Palace of Versailles
A portrait of an early French academician. Le Vau was the principal architect at Versailles and worked on the Louvre. Ratabon was a Superintendent of Buildings for the king (an official architectural post that preceded the founding of the Academy) and a member of the older Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Whoever he is, note the absence of any hint of the building trades. He appears as a learned gentleman with a Classicizing building appearing, dream-like, behind him.
This is architecture as elite theoretical Art.
It was obvious from the outset that the illusion of sound dialectic was necessary, since the entire humanist project was based on replacing an existing culture with a supposed superior one. Since theirs was a scholarly, rhetorical, literary movement, they naturally defined theory along those lines, and in opposition to the practical, "artless" training of the masons. So theory is particularly slimy by nature, a set of context-driven reactions that claim ontological priority. This allows it to pose as whatever it needs to be to further its advancement through the organs of official culture.
Architecture is a workshop skill taught through apprenticeship?
Theory becomes a universal program taught in the classroom.
Architecture uses organic forms that evolved alongside the European nations?
Theory advocates a single system based on alien classical models.
Architecture applies builders' creativity to meeting client desires?
Theory subordinates creativity and desire to general laws of geometric harmony
and Classical detail.
This list could go on, but there is enough here to see a pattern. The establishment of "theory" in the arts is a reactive power play. Louis simply recognized this before most others. Reversing cause and effect allows "theoreticians" to keep modifying their fictions to keep up with current events while continually claiming the status of first principles.
It seems preposterously absurd when put this way, but theory is like a sort of maze that gives the illusion of intellectual freedom while blocking any sort of liberating meta-analysis.
When you are inside a maze, it defines your entire world. But from above is is easily visible for the man-made creation that is is.
For these and other corn maze pictures, click here.
Theory thrives on the illusion that it is the entire game board, not merely one approach, or piece. Engage on its terms and you concede to be constrained by its rules. Theoreticians and other Postmodernist academics immediately try to overwhelm resistance by appeals to discursive mastery - quibbling over fine shades of discipline-specific terminology and citing obscure authors, or interpretations of well-known ones - but never question the epistemological legitimacy of the discourses themselves. According to accademic legend, deconstruction and other postmodernisms took apart the old theories; deconstruction by demonstrating the ultimate meaninglessness of discursive structures, and Postmodernism in general by rejecting the validity of theoretical master narratives. Yet both were effortlessly absorbed by the very theoretical discourses that they supposedly dismantled, and repackaged into a spot on the historical timeline or a unit in the methodology textbook.
This graphic is an attractive representation of architectural styles and a good example of how the Modern and Postmodern styles slot in next to historical categories. The latter are observed, empirically, with the benefit of hindsight, while the former are declared whims by the made men in the architectural world in real time. Completely different things, yet represented as if exactly the same.This is how theory as a structure supersedes changes in content.
The fatal flaw in all these Postmodern criticisms is that they tried to deconstruct or "problematize" a theoretically-determined space with more theory. This is an epistemological blunder of the form/content variety. The various Postmodernisms want to:
Reject the old rules of the art world (content-level change),
but
Maintain the art world itself (institutional discursive forms)
despite
The very concept of an art world depending on those old rules
Right. Now consider the absurdity of "first principles" that arrive late and keep changing. The fact that a cultural entity can have its founding concepts invalidated while still providing lucrative sinecures and prestige is a sign that it is a purely arbitrary social consensus rather than anything meaningful in itself. An intellectually honest Postmodernist would have attempted to operate outside the discursively-determined institutional world once they realized it was all an illusion, but, as we have seen, Postmodernism was little more than a new guise for Cultural Marxist subversion. The incoherence and obfuscation is nothing more than distracting squid ink to cover the sociopathic pursuit of cultural power at all costs.
Someone at the trough can always remasticate the same discursive slop and reframe the arts in their own image one more time. Architectural theory is always whatever the they theorists dislike in their culture: medieval architecture is ornate and organic? Theory is simple, rational, and Classical. Baroque architecture is too emotional and spiritualized? Theory returns to Renaissance clarity, but the buildings look different. Reactions posing as rules are just effects pretending to be causes.
Louis' "rules" were obviously not binding. If they were, the French Rococo and English Palladianism would not have been possible. But what matters is the idea that there is a special activity called "architecture", understood theoretically or discursively, that carries a degree of artistic prestige (however defined) and conforms to general principles.
What was needed was for the French blend of political and theoretical absolutism to become universally recognized.
This brings us back around to the Enlightenment, the birthplace of many Postmodern presumptions and inflection point where the national authoritarianism of Academic theory became universal. Our entry vector is architectural history, but it is immediately apparent that the ideas are far vaster in scope. The Band has already looked at this epistemologically incoherent faith in human reason in an earlier post (click for the background), but this time around, we are focusing on the more narrow perspective of culture and theory. This graphic outlines the process by which the historical materials of theory become a self-sustaining art world:
"Reason" replaces the objects of ancien regime faith, but the art world kept rolling along.
Actual principles can change, but the idea
of the arts and theory as self-contained, self-supporting cultural spaces does not.
of the arts and theory as self-contained, self-supporting cultural spaces does not.
It is more accurate to visualize an autocrat like Louis entering into a symbiotic relation of his own with what is already a symbiotic structure. Here, the theoretical art world gets royal authority, while royal absolutism is supported with "rational" visual rhetoric.
But the "reason" of the humanist theorists only aligned with royal absolutism oppositionally - by being different than the idiosyncrasy and/or mysticism of medieval, Mannerist, and Baroque styles.
Workshop of Charles Le Brun, Apotheosis of Louis XIV, late 17th century, oil on canvas, 70 x 102 cm, Musée Ingres
Bernard Baron, after John Vanderbank, The Apotheosis, or, Death of the King' ('The Beheading of King Charles I'), 1728, line engraving, 41.3 x 45.4 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London
Objectively, there is nothing inherently more reasonable about one divinely ordained king at the top of a preset social hierarchy than any other. Rationalist Classicism only connotes French absolutism because it was the language the French king chose to identify his architectural grandeur as distinct from that of the Church.
The Enlightenment concept of authority is fundamentally different because it is based on faith in a particular concept of reason that resembles an amplified version of the "rational" aspects of Renaissance theory. This actually proved terminal to many aspects of humanist belief, but the "purity" of geometric idealism deftly sidled from the sinking hulk of Neoplatonism to the ascending vanity of Rationalism. Art world rationalism and central authority were no longer symbiotic allies but expressions of the same rationalistic faith that human intellects can perceive universal truth by their own reasoning. This is an appealing self-contradiction that the Band refers to as secular transcendence, and it is important here because it means theory no longer needed royal (or anybody's) sanction to claim universality. By sharing the same foundation Enlightenment epistemology (ordered rationalism) theory was self-evidently universal. It's principles were "correct" anywhere faith in the Enlightenment version of reason held sway. It was enough to be an Academician; "in the French model" was no longer necessary as a qualifier.
This is a better visualization of the symbiosis. Reason, the ultimate basis for Enlightenment authority in general, is also the legitimating theoretical authority for the arts. "Art" becomes self-evidently rational.
To an empiricist, the fact that Enlightenment reason was highly rhetorical would be amusingly ironic, had it not proven so toxic. One need only consider the enduring respect paid an intellectual flyweight like Rousseau to see how successful this rhetoric actually was. There is something very seductive about the power of pure knowledge; there is a reason why is features so prominently in the account of Original Sin, and why the worst oppressors can perfume their crimes with "reasoned" propaganda.
Michel-François Dandré-Bardon, Salon Scene, first half of 18th century, pen, sepia ink and wash, Louvre Museum, Paris
Speaking of irony, it is illustrative that the radical empowerment of human knowledge that reached a bloody apotheosis in the French Revolution was preached in the salons of fashionable aristocrats.
James Gillray, The Blood of the Murdered Crying for Vengeance, 1793, hand-coloured etching and engraving, 34.8 x 25.7 cm, British Museum, London
That is, the same aristocratic class that was marched to the guillotine by the "egalitarian" revolutionaries.
The lesson is that the privileged have always been drawn to bijoux dalliances with "edgy" radicals - BLM t-shirts on undergrads at $40 k/yr colleges come to mind - and that these have the potential to end badly.
Check that. It did end badly.
If there were a "Roots of Globalism" Hall of Fame, the Enlightenment would be in the Ninth Circle; Taproots of Globalism, if you will. Note the now familiar bait and switch of claiming universal truth for targeted moves in an eighteenth-century French political conflict. This was logically absurd, but rhetorically powerful, combining the old seduction of human knowledge with the thrilling promise of a new age dawning. But the specific terms of a French political debate are not universally applicable, and pretending they are is the fatal flaw in Enlightenment rationalism. Put bluntly, the first principles from which the reasoning begins are false assumptions.
Benoît-Louis Prévost after Charles-Nicolas Cochin, Frontispiece to Diderot's Encyclopédie, designed 1765, engraved 1772, Bibliothèque des arts décoratifs, Paris
One of the best ways to understand the absurd conclusions of Enlightenment thought is to step past the "reasoned" rhetoric of its champions and look at the larger epistemological structure. Claiming finite, historically-constrained human intellects could reach transcendent, universal truths is a category error, in that is falsely claims things knowable to humans only on faith are as accessible to us by the same means as our immediate physical environment. The frontispiece to l'Encyclopédie, a monument of Enlightenment faith in human reason, depicts "Truth" in the manner of a Baroque religious vision, but the revelation here is acquired by purely human means. It is literally secular transcendence.
For a post on the epistemology of faith, click here.
The rationalist epistemology of the Enlightenment reveals its dishonest nature with a common liars' tell: using slippery semantics to mask deception (click for a good video on detecting intellectual charlatans). The word "reason" hints at the truth value of logic without actually claiming to be logic, then elevates this to the absolutism of religion. As an epistemological foundation, logic is only as good as the quality of the inputs; the internal truths of logic are disconnected from the world outside.
Taxonomically, mathematics is a branch of symbolic logic, and is by far the most familiar today, so a simple equation makes a good demonstration of the strengths and limits of logic.
Given the assigned values of the symbols, the top statement is absolutely true as written, no matter where, when, or by whom it is read. But it tells us nothing about the world around us without empirical factual inputs. Add facts, and you have actionable knowledge: the dollar amount of a payment or the poundage of two boxes.
Logic describes ligitimate relationships, but the quality of the facts determines the validity of the knowledge, since it is these that are subject to verification or falsification. Even Renaissance humanists understood that logic in itself is not a source of knowledge, and attacked Scholasticism for its factual errors and impracticality rather than its logic.
Enlightenment thinking pretends that the specific truth-value of logic is transferable to domains where there either are no empirically knowable facts, or where the facts contradict the desired logical conclusion. This is itself illogical, which is why no one ever spoke about "Enlightenment logic". Probably for the best, as it would be a pretty short pamphlet. Instead, we get "Reason", a term connotative of logical accuracy but without the precision or rigor. It is a great term rhetorically as well, with undertones of agreeableness and intelligence - who doesn't like reasonable people?
What made this particular faith morally abhorrent was the fact that its hypocritical practitioners actually rejected the epistemological validity of faith as an act of faith. Consider one of the most destructive and logically incoherent Enlightenment positions: its radical atheism, or the insistence that there is no God or spiritual reality of any sort beyond the material world. Of course, this is unverifiable. There are no empirically demonstrable ways to determine the existence of the supernatural. Any opinion is by nature and definition an article of faith.
Claiming authority over spiritual matters literally places human agents in the place of God.
Raphael, detail from The Disputa, fresco, 1508-11, Vatican Museums
Frontispiece to Voltaire's Elémens de la philosophie de Newton, mis à la portée de tout le monde, Paris: Etienne Ledet et Compagnie, 1738
Ercole Ferrata, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, after 1682, Wrocław Cathedral, Poland
Voltaire was a great popularizer of "Newtonian" thought, though Newton as the proof that human reason can unlock the rational basis of the universe. Notice how Newton is presented as a Christ-like figure dispensing pure Truth through the mirror of Voltaire's muse, who floats between heaven and earth on a cloud of angels like some Baroque saint. This is a visualization of the Enlightenment transformation of reason into an article of faith.
Consider the term "Enlightenment". This was not a new concept; the idea of enlightened human minds had been around for a long time. But the assumption was that the enlightenment, the ability to see beyond the illusions and entanglements of the material world, came from an external, higher source.
Buddha Maitreya, 524, Northern Wei dynasty, gilt bronze, 76.8 x 40.6 x 24.8 cm, Metropolitan Museum, New York
Pompeo Batoni, The Ecstasy of St Catherine of Siena, 1743, oil on canvas, Museo di Villa Guinigi, Lucca
In Buddhist terms, this came from a gradual awareness of ultimate reality behind appearances through meditation, devotion, and discipline. This Chinese statue surrounds the Buddha with symbolic elements that indicate transcendental consciousness.
In the Christian mystical tradition, the devotee undergoes similar preparations, but the connection with the infinite is a willed act of God. In Batoni's painting, St. Catherine is literally illuminated by the experience of the divine represented in the other elements of the picture.
The theology is appropriately different, but in either case, enlightenment is knowledge of transcendent reality that comes from contact with transcendence.
For human reason to bring enlightenment, human reason must open a portal to transcendence. The Band is still trying to figure out how that is possible in a radically atheist epistemology.
But if we pretend human reason alone is the key to universal truth, then why does enlightenment need transcendental realities like God or Nirvana?
Simon Vouet, Saint Jerome and the Angel, circa 1622-1625, oil on canva, 144.8 x 179.8 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington
Joseph Wright of Derby, A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery, circa 1766, oil on canvas, 47.2 x 203.2 cm, Derby Museum and Art Gallery
Vouet depicts spiritual enlightenment in the manner of Caravaggio, with a suggestive light illuminating a figure in the darkness. Here, an angel shows the divine nature of the Jerome's inspired wisdom.
Wright uses the exact same technique of bringing light into the darkness, but here, the source of wisdom is a philosopher, and his truth an erroneous, if reasonable, map of the Enlightenment cosmos.
It seems we are back to the old Satanic paradigm where the illusion of "true" knowledge lets humans play God for a time. The naive are predictably shocked that those preaching pure reason could be so unreasonable - the hypocrisy 😱 !!! - but the reality is simple. Reason had nothing to do with it. It was merely an appealing fig leaf to cover the reason: naked lust for power. The appeal is apparent in the way otherwise intelligent people still reflexively pedestalize the Enlightenment today without consideration of the implications.
Hubert Robert, Temple of Philosophy at Ermenonville, circa 1798, oil on canvas, 93 x 115.8 cm, Private collection
Implications matter. Radical atheism set up a false dichotomy between reason and faith, when historically, they coexisted seamlessly. The former got undue reverence while the latter was dismissed as "superstition.
The Cathedral of Strasbourg Transformed into a Temple of Reason, (November 1793), engraving in l’Almanach de la Révolution française, 1795.
Enlightenment reason didn't look to dispel religion, it looked to replace it.
Once the authority of "human reason" is elevated to dogma, anything an authority calls for is sold as reasonable. One such bill of goods is radical egalitarianism, a concept so self-evidently inane that it requires collective faith not to get laughed out of the room. If atheism is an example of pretending reason can deliver certain knowledge when the "facts" lie beyond human cognition, egalitarianism is a case of reason contradicting observable, empirical fact. The kernel of this idea is the Christian notion that the soul makes each person uniquely important in the eyes of God, regardless of station.
Luis Ricardo Falero, The Human Soul, 1894, oil on canvas, 152 x 91 cm, Private collection
In and of itself, the idea has positive potential - there is a reason why Christian nations developed notions of human rights and were the first to oppose slavery on moral grounds - but the idea possesses inescapably metaphysical roots. Without the materially-transcendent value of the soul, what moral basis is there to oppose hierarchical distinctions in well-ordered societies? The notion that Christian virtue extends to all Christendom provides an ethical counterweight to class and caste based systems.
Consider closely the famous words excerpted here from the Declaration of Independence, a document flavored with Enlightenment egalitarianism.
 |
| How much of the history of constitutional wrangling can be traced to its foundation on a self-evident absurdity? |
Taken literally, the first two phrases are absurd; what is objectively self-evident is the difference, the inequality, between people. The mention of the Creator, or what affected Deists preciously called God, in the same sentence indicates that we are in the realm of the metaphysical. The equality is a consequence of creation, the common birthright of any ensouled being. This has no bearing on one's personal outcomes; even the subsequent text goes on to reference systems of government and distinguish people as citizens or foreigners. And the American Enlightenment was more overtly deist and actually Christian than atheistic. None of the post-Enlightenment atheist materialisms - not Rationalism, Marxism, Modernism, Occultism, Futurism, Postmodernism, etc. - can answer this simple question:
If humans are self-evidently unequal, and
there are no souls or Creators, what possible
argument for egalitarianism is there?
there are no souls or Creators, what possible
argument for egalitarianism is there?
This is worth following. Look more closely at what it actually means to assert human equality despite all evidence to the contrary and without belief in a supernatural quality to compensate for obvious human difference. In effect, this is an argument that the things that make us individuals, the full splendor of human biodiversity and range of experience is inconsequential. And there is nothing spiritual to distinguish us either. This is less equality than fungibility; humanity as infinitely interchangeable cogs in some "rational" globalist superstructure. If this is equality, it is the equality of the commodities market, since even slave dealers classified their merchandise by market value.
Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Slave Market, oil on canvas, 59.7 x 74.9 cm, Cincinnati Art Museum
Market value is the precise opposite of top-down egalitarianism, because absent unseen thumbs on the scale, it assigns relative values based on personal preferences. It is inductive, in that the things that are valuable are those with proven value.
Insisting on radical equality is an overt rejection of the value of the individual.
We can also see how easily this false faith is manipulated. Consider Lyndon Johnson's quote on the Civil Rights act of 1964:
He references the Declaration by mentioning creation, a term that implies willed action, and openly declares it to be a statement of belief, or faith. This is exactly the same metaphysical notion of ensouled equality that is meaningless from a materialist perspective. But notice the shift in the next sentence, where he slides from a transcendental principle - the Christian notion of metaphysical equality - to a globalist political agenda - that the government be given the power to pursue equality of outcome. And since equality of outcome is an objective impossibility, given human difference, the lofty rhetoric was no more than a pretty fig leaf for the violation of individual freedom of association, which is the soul of American liberty. This sort of nakedly dishonest power grab was only possible because an empirical falsehood like equality had been given the aura of intellectual credibility in Enlightenment rhetoric.
Nineteenth-century engraving of the Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne, nuns murdered for refusing to renounce their faith.
The reality is that radical atheism and egalitarianism formed in specific historical circumstances: a power struggle between revolutionaries and the monarchy and Church. And what is it about Utopians and mass slaughter anyway? It's almost like their ideals are just a cover for monstrous evil...
The philosophical bait and switch occurred when the polemic of the revolutionaries was magically raised to articles of faith on no empirical grounds whatsoever. This is why Enlightenment epistemology is so incoherent. There is nothing "logical" about it. It has the structure of faith, but unlike Christianity, its catechism is the denial of empirical reality. The tell that it is just another expression of the the Satanic, solipsistic, power-seeking archetype of human vanity is the way it tries to supplant Christianity AND empiricism with a centralized absolutist totalitarianism beyond Louis' dreams. But because it is built on falsehoods all it can deliver are inversions, or more accurately, perversions of a natural human desire for transcendence and freedom from oppression and hardship.
William Blake, The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun (Rev. 12: 1-4), circa 1803-1805, black ink and watercolor over traces of graphite and incised lines, 43.7 x 34.8 cm, Brooklyn Museum
Enlightenment "reason" claims universal Truth by material means, despite this being self-evidently, materially, impossible. This core article of faith literally requires that you lie about the evidence of your own two eyes. The one world diversity gibberish that the left uses to assault the West is an extension of this. It is equally incoherent as well: celebrate diversity because we are all interchangeable. Except those who insist they aren't interchangeable. They're evil.
Shintaro Kago visualizes the reality of the enforced "equality".
If the Enlightenment faith in transcendent reason is groundless, its conclusions are doomed to fail without external control. Brute force oppression is the fate of all secular transcendences as their promised fruits invariably fail to materialize. People aren't actually fungible monads, and different cultures are inherently incompatible. The only way to compel people to suppress their true natures and conform to endless monotony is with rigid structures of central control. One might even say rational structures.
Because it's wanting
to oppose this
that's evil...
At this point, it makes sense to come back around to architecture, since there was such a good fit between humanistic theory and Enlightenment epistemology. In fact, the ability of the French Academies to roll with the philosophical tides is a practical illustration of how fake truth can legitimate any position. Remember this, the next time you are surprised at the ease with which a globalist or SJW can self-contradict or change allegiances on a dime. The fundamental ideology of any collectivist is falsehood wrapped in rhetoric, which means that there are no principles to betray or contradict other than the pursuit of power. Principled opponents have difficulty with dishonesty of this magnitude, but it is easier to grasp when you understand that they actually are behaving consistently with their principles if the lies advance their station in some way.
Ange-Jacques Gabriel, Petit Trianon, 1762-68, Palace of Versailles
This small palace was built for Louis XV's mistresses, before his son Louis XVI gave it to Marie Antoinette, and is considered to signal the turn from the ornate Rococo to a rational, restrained Neoclassicism. Notice the simple double cube geometry of the design.
"Enlightenment" Neoclassicism for the king's mistress?
François Boucher, Portrait of Madame de Pompadour, 1756, oil on canvas, 212 x 164 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich
The king's mistress. Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, chief mistress of Louis XV and the intended recipient of the Petit Trianon, in her Rococo finery. Though a sharp conversationalist and significant patron of the arts. this creature of aristocratic refinement seems an unlikely champion of Enlightenment Neoclassicism.
There are a couple of reasons for this strange marriage of aristocracy and Neoclassicism. The first is that the return to Classical architecture from the Rococo was not an overtly political move in relation to what would become the new ideals of the Enlightenment. It was a stylistic move within the theoretical world of the French academy. Early Neoclassism was "rational" in the way French theory had always been rational, and on first glance can be seen as an aesthetic reaction to Baroque and Rococo excessiveness by way of tried and true humanistic theory.
Jacques-Germain Soufflot, The Pantheon, 1764-90, Paris
This landmark church marks the same return to Vitruvian principles that we saw at the Petit Trianon.
Gradually, Neoclassicism became associated with the rational new thinking that was sweeping the salons of Europe, but this appealed to aristocratic patrons that wanted to appear intellectually up to date.
Adolph von Menzel, King Frederick II Round Table in Sanssouci (1750), 1850, oil on canvas, destroyed, 1945
Frederick II the Great, King of Prussia, cultivated a reputation as an aristocrat and a tawdry infatuation with Voltaire, who he invited to his palace of Sanssouci in 1750. In this painting, the king is in the middle, with Voltaire the second chair to his left. Champagne socialists have always fawned over intellectual hucksters, and "egalitarians" like Voltaire have always been happy to take their money.
Carl Gotthard Langhans, Brandenburg Gate, 1788-91, Berlin
Frederick's successor, Frederick William II, commissioned the austere, Doric Brandenburg Gate as a sign of taste and awareness of current trends, despite personally opposing the main ideas of the Enlightenment.
The appearance of the oldest order connects to a different aspect of Enlightenment thought: more technical, "rational" approaches to the study of history. Improved access to the Ottoman world greatly broadened knowledge of antiquity, raising interest in archaeological accuracy.
Ivan Starov, Tauride Palace, 1783-89, St. Petersburg
The stylish, intellectually up to date Russian court developed a colorful version of the Neoclassical, like they had with the Baroque before it.
The Doric order again. These Doric facades are early hints of the Greek Revival to come. Their sameness fits the universality of Enlightenment rationalism, and the monotony of globalist "equality" in all its forms.
It is in the French Academy where this "tasteful" rationalist Neoclassicism becomes linked directly to the to the irrational utopianism of Enlightenment rationalism, the inevitable failure of which is the necessary precursor for the inevitable slaughter. Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1736-1806) was an influential Parisian architect who grew rich on royal commissions before spending some time in a Revolutionary prison, captures this theoretical convergence.
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Rotonde de la Villette, 1785-89, Paris
Note the simple geometry of Ledoux' centrally planned building with; the circle over the square with four temple fronts is reminiscent of Palladio, but the details are sparser. The only Doric entablature rings the top of the building, which is classically incorrect, and the simple square columns on the facade are his invention.
The strictness of the geometry and the reduced complexity of the ornament makes this building a forerunner of the formal "purity" of Modernism.
The totalitarian nature of the ideological alliance between architectural theory and Enlightenment rationalism comes into view with Ledoux's Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, a factory-residential complex near Chaux.
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Royal Saltworks, 1775-79, Arc-et-Senans, near Chaux, France
The style is also "rational": an austere Neoclassicism with rough lines in heavy stone that suits the laborious process of making salt in a pre-industrial age. In fact, Ledoux's reasoning actually takes precedence over Classical authority. Note how the geometric symmetry is absolute and while the rugged appearance of buildings matches their purpose in a foreshadowing of form following function, his version of Doric only loosely follows the ancient models.
This is a direct precursor to the Modernist elevation of pure theory over all other considerations and the globalist belief that universalist myths are more important that organic historical cultural forms. What is the point of using an order like the Doric to distort it, other than to assert power, to dominate age-old tradition with your genius and/or higher theoretical authority?
The Enlightenment was the template for Modernism's universalized faith that fake reason could improve humanity by expressing animistic essences with simple geometry. Modernists abandoned historical reference altogether to reach the essential, geometric apotheosis of the concrete lump. Enlightenment theorists were still too conditioned historically to accept Classical models, and tried to accommodate Classically-inspired design to the rules of reason.
Charles Eisen, "Primitive Hut", engraved frontispiece of Marc-Antoine Laugier's Essai sur l'Architecture, 2nd ed. 1755
This engraving captures both the early enlightenment faith in an idealized nature and the theoretical commitment to ancient models. The notion of the "primitive hut" as the origin of architecture is Vitruvian, but it resonated with that Enlightenment absurdity, most often associated with Rousseau, that the natural state of humanity was blissful.
Here, "natural" man produces a building reminiscent of a classical temple from the simplest of materials, while the genius of Inspiration and the personification of Architecture look on. Architecture rests on Corinthian fragments and holds the geometric tools of the trade, indicating that the Classicizing, harmonious aesthetic of the Academies was founded on natural principles.
Historically, this is too inane to consider, but it is revealing if we thing of it in terms of epistemological structure. A Utopian state of nature is generally compatible with the idea of the primal Golden Age found in both Christian and Classical sources, as an unattainable ideal of uncorrupted humanity. The Academy had been founded on humanistic principles, so the idea of looking back for authority was familiar, and imitation of nature had been as aspect of classical art theory from the beginning. The shift to an Enlightenment-friendly "natural" historical foundation was not a huge structural leap. Here, however, the path to restoration is not found through the metaphysics of faith, but in the clever opinions of one "enlightened" seer who can lead humanity away from recurring error into a perfect future. Why does this sound familiar?
Eric Armusik, The Temptation of Christ, 2011, oil on birch, 121.9 x 152.4 cm, Private collection
The Classical orders may or may not have derived from tree trunks, but whether or not a group of people systematized their wooden building conventions has nothing to do with the inherent "naturalness" of Classical architecture. Sadly, mere logic is no match for Enlightenment reasoning.
Laugier reveals the totalitarian soul in centralized
theoretical built environments.
Ledoux made it obvious that his heavy, rugged variation on the Doric was meant to express the essence of salt production by the few sculptural elements, which depict saline slurry pouring from drums.
This natural architecture was then subordinated to rigid geometric control to express the absolute value of equality and the guiding hand of reason. This is the Enlightenment vision of architecture; nature shaped by transcendent reason into a harmonious ideal.
The reality is somewhat different.
There is less supporting evidence for the idiocy that the "essences" of buildings or tasks can be expressed architecturally than there is for witchcraft, so that aspect of the vision can be summarily dismissed as misrepresentation of artistic choice. The fake egalitarianism is more insidious. Ignore the rhetoric, and it is easy to see that the plan doesn't stress equality, it stresses centralized control, and with that, authoritarian social distinction.
The central point is occupied by the much larger and more impressive manager's house, which naturalizes his power and position by making it a physical fact of life. From here, every door of every building is visible, creating a potential for surveillance-based social control that has been compared to Bentham's Panopticon prison.
There is no room for organic expression, no incentive to improve your station, just enforced mindless conformity. Centralized control through anonymous surveillance, equality imposed on the masses, but an unbridgable chasm between them and the ruling cloud people... see why the Band considers the Enlightenment a taproot of globalism?
Ledoux' intended plan foreshadows the unholy globalist alliance of fake reason and authoritarianism more clearly.He imagined his geometric prison as the center of an "Ideal" City with vectors of control draping the landscape like a net. The dehumanizing monotony of enforced equality stretched as far as the controlling eye can see. In an internet age, that's pretty far.
The inherent authoritarianism of this "rationalist" planning is also apparent when we ignore the rhetorical content and look at the expressive form. Louis XIV had imposed a vast, geometric pattern on the landscape of Versailles to symbolize the primacy of human reason over chaotic nature, then centered it on his bedroom as a metaphor for the rationality of absolute royal power.
In Laugier's plan, the geometry is different, but the pattern of rational control remains the same. The only substantive change is the replacement of the central power. In theoretical terms, this means royal authority gives way to a spirit of human reason, but in reality it goes to whoever gets to live in the metaphorical manager's house. Enforced equality inevitably leads to ruthless conflict for places in the hierarchy.
The Future is Modern
The conflict and chaos of the Revolutionary period meant there wasn't much in the way of building, but the weird mix of false faith and totalitarian oppression are clearest in the unbuilt experimental projects that appeared in the later eighteenth century such as Ledoux's Ideal City. Freed from external demands or restrictions, theoretical ideals could be asserted with maximum clarity.
Claude Nicolas Ledoux, House of the Agricultural Guards of Maupertuis, circa 1785
Geometric simplicity to an extreme. The only ornament, the Serlian shape of the doorway, is a faint allusion to the Classical past, but otherwise, everything is featureless. The jarring clash between the alien structure and the landscape is foreshadows Le Corbusier.
Jean-Jacques Lequeu, Temple de la Terre, drawing from his Architecure Civile, 1794.
Apparently the sphere is also perfect for secular temples...
Étienne-Louis Boullée, Newton's Cenotaph, 1784, black ink, wash tint, in color, National Library of France, Paris
... and cenotaphs. Enlightenment deity Newton was to be memoralized with an impossibly vast, geometrically perfect sphere. The rings of ceder trees on the outside are a watered-down Classical allusion to an ancient funerary symbol.
This project is worth a second look for its sheer audacity.
More "rational" secular transcendence?
Étienne-Louis Boullée, Monument to the Supreme Being, 1794, ink, wash, National Library of France, Paris
How about a reaction to the Revolutionary Cult of the Supreme Being, a fake religion that went no where. Could we find a more pretentious and ridiculous usurpation of the epistemology of faith? Pay attention to the visual rhetoric. Boullée needs to make up a spectacular, non-existent mountain and dramatic atmosphere to give his polyheda any sense of the sublime.
What about a Palace of Justice?
Étienne-Louis Boullée, Palace of Justice, 1792, ink, wash, National Library of France, Paris
Boullée offered this quote describing his design: "...I could not only be able to ennoble architecture by means of the oppositions that resulted, but further present in a metaphorical way the imposing picture of vice crushed beneath the feet of justice." The implicit violence becomes obvious the moment you ask who's feet decide on the crushing.
So Enlightenment rationalism took thethe next step towards the Modernisms of the twentieth century and beyond - an absolutist, self-defining theory based on reasonable geometry and material essences. But this wasn't the only path to Enlightenment. In the next post, we will look at the British alternative, the American hybrid, and the internationalization of theoretical architecture.
Until then, consider this resemblance:
Wow, you've put quite the time into this. It caught my eye, because of some posts you wrote for a neon article. I don't know how to save it to come back and read more, Just wanted to take a moment to thank you for your efforts. Looking forward to finishing reading.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. There is a big historical picture that I'm trying to trace out, and I'm realizing more and more that it is all connected.
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