Socrates' Ancestor is a rich and poetic exploration of architectural beginnings and the dawn of Western philosophy in preclassical Greece. Architecture precedes philosophy, McEwen argues, and it was here, in the archaic Greek polis, that Western architecture became the cradle of Western thought. McEwen's appreciation of the early Greek understanding of the indissolubility of craft and community yields new insight into such issues as orthogonal planning and the appearance of the encompassing colonnade - the ptera or "wings" - that made Greek temples Greek.Who was Socrates' ancestor? Socrates claims it was Daedalus, the mythical first architect. Socrates' ancestors were also the first Western philosophers: the preSocratic thinkers of archaic Greece where the Greek city-state with its monumental temples first came to light. McEwen brilliantly draws out the connections between Daedalus and the earliest Greek thinkers, between architecture and the advent of speculative thought. She argues that Greek thought and Greek architecture share a common ground in the amazing fabrications of the legendary Daedalus: statues so animated with divine life that they had to be bound in chains, the Labyrinth where Theseus slew the Minotaur, Ariadne's dancing floor in Knossos.Socrates' Ancestor is an exploration as remarkable for its clarity as for its avoidance of reductionism. Drawing as much on the power of myth and metaphor as on philosophical, philological, and historical considerations, McEwen first reaches backward: from Socrates to the earliest written record of Western philosophy in the Anaximander B1 fragment, and its physical expression in Anaximander's built work - a "cosmic model" that consisted of a celestial sphere, a map of the world, and the first Greek sun clock. From daedalean artifacts she draws out the centrality of early Greek craftsmanship and its role in the making of the Greek city-state. The investigation then moves James forward to a discussion of the polis and the first great peripteral temples that anchored for the meaning of "city."Indra Kagis McEwen teaches architecture at the National Theatre School of Canada and at I'Université duQuébec à Montréal.
FREE Two-Day Shipping for students on millions of items. Learn more |
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Indra Kagis McEwen is a postdoctoral fellow at the Canadian Centre for Architecture and lecturer at the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A brilliant and thought provoking essay,
By A Customer
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Socrates' Ancestor: An Essay on Architectural Beginnings (Paperback)
This is a tour-de-force of interpretation, which asks us to rethink the meaning of architecture. McEwen, with grace, simplicity, and style, seeks to disclose another way of knowing "kosmos" than through fixed ideas and concepts. Unraveling the Anaximander fragment, he argues for the "well-made" as a "making visible" of divine order, shedding new light on what "theory" really meant. This book nourishes the soul and reminds us why we should not give up learning how to look carefully. A splendidly "well made" piece of thinking and writing in itself.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Inside This Book
(learn more)
First Sentence:
In Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, where Socrates questions Euthyphro, who is prosecuting his own father for murder, on the nature of holiness and unholiness, of piety and impiety, justice and injustice, Socrates succeeds, as he so often does, in completely confusing his interlocutor. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
In Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, where Socrates questions Euthyphro, who is prosecuting his own father for murder, on the nature of holiness and unholiness, of piety and impiety, justice and injustice, Socrates succeeds, as he so often does, in completely confusing his interlocutor. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
20
books
cite this book:
See all 20 books citing this book
- The City Cultures Reader (Routledge Urban Reader Series) by Iain Borden in Front Matter, page 14, and page 18
- Art, Space and the City by Malcolm Miles in Front Matter, page 30, and Back Matter
- Art, Space and the City by Malcolm Miles in Front Matter, and page 30
- Practicing Mortality: Art, Philosophy, and Contemplative Seeing by Christopher A. Dustin on page 141, and Back Matter
- Built upon Love: Architectural Longing after Ethics and Aesthetics by Alberto Perez-Gomez in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
See all 20 books citing this book
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
