This is a video of a paper I gave to the The Research Unit of Architecture Theory and Philosophy of Technics, part of the Institute for Architectural Sciences in the Department for Architecture Theory and Philosophy of Technics ATTP at Vienna University of Technology, at the invitation of Prof. Vera Bühlmann.
In the talk I bring together some ideas I have been working on in different contexts for some time. In the talk I aim to develop a general theory of meaning and existence around the central motif of the “figure” that is:
• COMPREHENSIVE: It must be able to account for both material things and the immaterial, without reducing either of them to the other one
• DYNAMIC: It must be able to account for social and cultural change over time
• NON-REDUCTIVE: It mustn’t take one aspect of reality and make it the gateway to understanding all of reality
I begin with Michel Serres’s “figures of thought” and then develop and extend his idea through engagements with Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur and Jakob von Uexküll.
