Reviews

(Mitterand library, Paris )

Containing Boredom
A Review of Peter Sloterdijk’s Lecture on Architecture and Time

Mark Coeckelbergh

As Wouter Kusters rightly remarked in Filosofie magazine[1], the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk is a master story teller of grand narratives. His recent lecture at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht was exemplary in this respect[2]. Starting from naked apes and ending with metabolism maximizing animals without conviction, Sloterdijk presented once again a grand narrative of human history. Previous attempts to do this include his well-known Sphären trilogy and his recent work Im Weltinneraum des Kapitals[3]. In this lecture Sloterdijk focus was the relation between building and time, in particular the concept of boredom and its implications for architecture. Below I present my summary of the lecture and some critical comments.

Pascal and Heidegger

What makes people design buildings? The French philosopher Blaise Pascal famously remarked in his Pensées (1670) that much trouble results from people not being able to stay quietly in their own room. Linking one person with one room, monasteries have been breeding places of individualism. Obedience to God meant allowing God to bore you. One individual, one room, no message. The architecture for this monastic anthropology is based on the biological metaphor of the cell, or rather, the biological term cell is borrowed from monasticism.

But these times are gone. In 1929-1930 Martin Heidegger endorsed the view that the continuity of history is broken. Today we hide a deep feeling of boredom. To be bored means looking into yourself and finding the absence of convictions. We find in ourselves a game of convictionless inclinations. Existence is joblessness. Modernity is the (re)discovery of joblessness. To rediscover we have to reconnect with earlier times.

The savannah experience

We used to be savannah apes. Existence began with hanging around, the right way to be in the world. Only at times of alarm (sex, strangers, food) this state of divine laziness is broken. Contemporary tourism and holiday can be understood as the generalisation of the savannah experience.

Architecture, then, is the interpretation of this boredom experience. The architect’s task is to create containers for boredom and bored people. A bad building is misplaced boredom. Existence means standing-out (ek-sistence) in the savannah with an open horizon. To avoid loss of self you have to draw a small circle. The first, invisible architecture is the fireplace. Then comes the invention, the principle of the wall. With the possibility to change sides emerges the invention of the door. As soon as there is a wall, the question of the other side can be asked. The door is the answer to the question.

We still cannot very well cope with moving horizons. If your train is waiting in a train station and the other train moves, your brain is programmed to say that you move. A moving horizon is a horror. To re-program your brain is an almost impossible task. It’s a human right to live in a world without moving horizons.

Note also that savannah people were standing, not sitting. And if they were sitting on the earth, they did so elegantly. Their art of sitting was an interpretation of boredom, effortless, letting the earth do all the work of supporting nothingness. Nowadays, such an art requires education and training.

The architect as a gardener

With the rise of agriculture, positive forms of architecture emerged. Houses were to contain boredom, now the boredom of the peasant waiting for the harvest. Houses were waiting rooms and clocks. Later, houses for stocking goods made possible the emancipation from the time horizon, and the race towards power. Temples, cathedrals, and fortresses are constructed. This gave rise to a new kind of boredom: the boredom of the king who sits unmoved in the centre, and needs to send out soldiers to bring him news. This was the beginning of telecommunication. The castle was a special boredom container, since the king required much training and cultivation. This trained boredom is very different from the savannah boredom. Wisdom, then, is the virtue of men and women trained in this kind of suffering.

Therefore, in metaphysical times we are trained to imitate organisms that are best designed to suffer boredom: plants. Plants are very good in patience. In these times, architects are gardeners. And people train to be ready for the moment when someone comes to harvest them. Death is represented as the great harvest. God organises the harvest, and separates the good plants from the bad plants.

Building for people without convictions

In modern times, by contrast, people have unlearned the ability to be plants. The want to be animals. Modernity is the programme of the bestialisation of humans. We have to become consumers, performant metabolic machines. The purpose of human beings is to become metabolism maximisers. Having unlearned the art of boredom, then, we suffer a loss of metaphysical orientation, as Martin Heidegger clearly saw in the early 30s of the previous century. Catholicism and cathedrals used to be the peak of eventlessness. Nothing happens when you enter a cathedral, it is useless to breath.

In modernity, rural forms of life disappear and are replaced with urban life forms. Architects are challenged to build for people without convictions. There is an unlimited demand for entertainment. Heidegger’s phenomenology of boredom is useful here. Entertainment is the opposite of the Augustinian turn inwards – going back to yourself in the inner man where truth lives. After entertainment, you find nothing to direct yourself, nothing that is able to exercise any kind of authority. There is nothing that holds you back if you want to change religion or wife.

If you feel bored, time becomes long, as is indicated by the German word Langeweile, a philosophical concept. You are not being pulled by the string of time, when your life feels oriented, that would be the utopia of the motivated life. Now time gets loose and you feel bored, nothing pulls, meaning is missing.

Containers of boredom

Architecture, then, has to produce containers of boredom. One form is the apartment, which is the idea to manage your own completeness. The individual tries to marry himself or herself. This is apartment existentialism. Apartments are isolators, or rather, connected isolators. Connected isolation is an important concept for contemporary architecture. Another modern form of architecture is the collector. From all ancient Greek form of architecture, it is the only one that did not return until the 20th century. It is the stadium, a definitive form that cannot be improved. Modernity has only Romanised the form: instead of a U-form, suited to religious purposes, it chose the arena principle. The arena is closed and is the temple of fatalism, which is the true religion of late antiquity and post-modern times. It is the cult of success. People give the gods a chance to show what and who they prefer. This distinction drama (difference) is a game. There are only winners and losers.

Within the context of the transformation of human beings into consuming animals, entertainment is the most successful form to contain boredom. The Crystal Palace[4] is generalised: our lives are all contained in this ultimate container of boredom. Today, we have elaborated this perfect equation between boredom and entertainment, it is pushed to a very high peak. For example, politics has become part of the arena game. The distinction between yes and no is a play distinction, whereas a serious distinction is that between inside and outside. Baudrillard is the game philosopher par excellence: if there is no meaning, the best advice to people without convictions is to vote ‘no’ just for the fun of it[5].

Comments

Sloterdijk’s tale is entertaining. He uses his wit to deal effectively with our boredom. He is an excellent gamer, a magician who always offers new white rabbits in the form of sparkling one-liners and thought-provoking connections between things. Magic is a way of trying to get a grip on the world, to exercise power, and Sloterdijk’s grand narrative is ready food for the many people in this world hungry for meaning, people without convictions. But is it true? Is it indeed meaningful? And what can we do with it, or what does Sloterdijk wants us to do with it?

One way of commenting on this lecture would be to criticise Sloterdijk’s interpretation of Heidegger, or to ask for evidence for his views on the evolution of humanity. Furthermore, we could criticise his ambition to present a history of mankind, to tell a grand narrative, as being hopelessly arrogant and perhaps potentially violent. But to deal with these issues in the abstract, apart from the story itself, is perhaps not the most interesting kind of criticism that can be voiced here. This is neither an essay on Heidegger, nor on the relation between philosophy and science. Moreover, my agenda does not include a discussion of grand narrative or postmodernism as such. Therefore, I would like to ask questions that focus on the problems evoked by the story itself: (1) Is boredom the central problem?, (2) Are we people without convictions?, (3) Is this condition of boredom and being-without-conviction deplorable, undesirable?, and (4) If so, how can we do something about it? I believe that discussing these questions will touch on the methodological questions anyway, but will be more helpful in answering the general questions asked in the beginning of my commentary.

1. Even if we grant Sloterdijk’s description of the origin of mankind as beginning with the savannah apes, his selection of boredom as the most characteristic feature of that condition seems entirely arbitrary. If the main hypotheses of evolutionary biology since Darwin are true, it appears more accurate to say that ‘struggle for existence’ was of key importance to the condition of these human-like apes (or ape-like humans), and that therefore periods of intensive activity with a view of securing individual or species survival have been a key part in the behaviour of these beings as well as periods of less intensive activity. Furthermore, to speak of ‘divine laziness’ is an anachronism, projecting later cultural concepts, divinity and laziness, onto an earlier stage. In terms of Sloterdijk’s story, for example, these concepts belong to the agricultural phase, when people are taken to be plants. Finally, it equally seems arbitrary to choose boredom as the dominant feature of the other phases Sloterdijk proposes. For example, it is no coincidence that, apart from being stocks, castles are famous for their role in battle. Thus, the idea immobility of the king needs at least to be supplementation by that of the mobility of armed soldiers, who are not just educated and employed as communicators for the throne, but, as in our days, trained and used as warrior machines. Boredom has always been the luxury of the rich. This is also true for the (post)modern period. Some of us may be consuming animals, or may exhibit such behaviour at times, but the large majority of humans living on this earth are well tied to the strings of time.

2. But if most of us are not bored, what about convictions? Are we agriculture-age plants, or modern animals without convictions? It is highly questionable whether today we are ‘people without convictions’. Apart from Europe and some other places on this planet, most humans hold very strong religious beliefs, and in Europe people who do not consider themselves as religious usually hold other strong convictions. Sloterdijk is not only ethnocentric, but also fails to get a clear view of the situation in his own country and its neighbours. And if he wants to hold on to his story, he would have to say that most of us are still in an earlier stage of history, ignorant plants instead of playful consuming animals without convictions. And in fact it seems to me that this is what he means. This brings me to the third question.

3. Is boredom a good thing? And are there ways of dealing with boredom that are better than others? If you tell a story about the different stages in human history, it is only one little step further to attach a normative view to it. (Many philosophers would argue that you don’t even have to do this step.) Given this ‘slippery slope’, how does Sloterdijk value the current stage? I believe there are at least two normative slopes. One (positive) is a Romantic longing for the savannah experience, which here would take on board the existentialist and Heideggerian of authenticity. Another (negative) slope is to see in Sloterdijk’s story a criticism of contemporary consumerism. In his lecture there is enough evidence that Sloterdijk takes both routes, endorses both views. But it remains unclear why we need his story to accept or reject either of them. No-one has waited for a concept of boredom to criticise consumerism, or to dream about phantastic stages of nature, and if Sloterdijk introduces it, he needs to show why his story is better or a welcome addition to existing literature.

Is having convictions a bad thing? In one of his answers to questions Sloterdijk interprets contemporary global violence as being the result of people having convictions. But that misses the mark, I think. First, what Sloterdijk probably wants to say is that fundamentalism, defined as not being open to question your own views, is a bad thing. And that may be so. It seems to me at first sight always good to have this ability, to subject your views to critical scrutiny by yourself and by others. Secondly, there is a gap between having a conviction and acting upon it. Some post-modern writers typically ignore this gap. Everything is violence, beliefs are violent, thinking is violent. But this is wrong, and Sloterdijk does not do any effort to avoid this error. Thirdly, the important question to be asked of convictions, then, is not only whether someone has or has not convictions, but also which convictions that person has and whether it is right (for that person) to act upon them, and for us to encourage or prevent that person to act upon them. Sloterdijk’s story, as do all stories, avoid such moral questions. Politics and morality become a game where categories of right and wrong do no longer matter.

4. Let us grant that at least for some people in Europe it is the case that they are in a condition of ‘boredom’ and ‘being without conviction’. But then we have to qualify this and say that they are sometimes in such a condition, not always, and that they still have convictions, but perhaps they miss those convictions about that what is most important to them (or to us as humans). Absolute boredom and absolute convictionlessness seems to me either inconceivable or the qualifications of a momentary state rather than a ‘condition’ which is supposed to last and to pervade our lives. Existentialists, then, have been good at describing such states and ‘condition’. But, we should ask, so what? If we are ready to swallow Heidegger en Sloterdijk, what is the implication of it for individual and collective action? Let’s again take Sloterdijk own story. Imagine you are an architect. Do you now come to understand yourself as a designer of boredom containers, rather than a gardener or a designer of fire-places? Or do you like to be gardener? Perhaps you want to quit architecture altogether, since you want people to be standing out authentically in the savannah, experience a divine boredom rather than a consumerist one? Asking these questions makes at least clear that in Sloterdijk’s view the architect is a kind of god, or a demiurg, who designs a world. Thus in this story the real, ordinary architect, with his relations, his organisational and social context disappears has no place. Sloterdijk’s view of the self is that of the atomised individual who is either more than human (the super-architect, the god, the designer), or less than human (the ape, the plant, the animal), but certainly not human. Finally, by telling a story about the history of mankind, Sloterdijk himself puts on the robes of the immobile king, the master-plant, the god who sees all, who knows the truth about history, architecture, and mankind.

Conclusion

In my comments I did not reject Sloterdijk’s story as a whole – for this I would have to take such a god-eye view myself, a view from nowhere (Nagel); I tried to take the story seriously in its own terms and discussed some issues that emerge from it. Now Sloterdijk could reply that his story is mere play (perhaps that all philosophical story-telling is mere play), and that by taking it seriously I missed his point. According to him, seriousness is making the difference between inside and outside. And Sloterdijk’s story indeed dissolves this difference by drawing everything inside. Everything can be explained by reference to boredom, including architecture and politics. There is no longer an outside. This is typical for all myths. It is Sloterdijk’s own response to meaninglessness. But it need not be ours, especially since meaningless may be not the problem for most of us. There are enough stories around, so we want to know what is true and false, right or wrong.

Surely some ‘playfulness’ may be needed to take some distance from our beliefs. But this is only the beginning, not the end. When we are faced with personal, societal, and global problems, we do not have much space for boredom, play, or irony. Then we cannot avoid to evaluate our own actions and those of others, and concepts of ‘boredom’ and ‘convictionlessness’ might help in this process. But it remains unclear how; as it stands nothing conclusive can be extracted from Sloterdijk’s story. If it is a criticism of conviction and a celebration of boredom, it lacks good arguments to support such a view. If it is a criticism of contemporary consumerism, it offers us an interesting vocabulary. That is probably Sloterdijk’s most significant contribution. But Sloterdijk is re-decorating, not rebuilding. Convictions and action, and philosophical reflection about these, are needed to cope with problems that emerge in the current ‘condition of mankind’, if there is any such thing. Telling myths and stories helps us to interpret the world, but that is not enough. The beauty of stories needs supplementation with questions about truth and good. To take up Sloterdijk’s reference to Baudrillard’s view of political election: to think that voting is a game seems to me very dangerous, and it is up to politicians to make that clear to people.

Too serious? To dissolve the difference between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ is not only the end of truth, it is also the end of architecture. We need walls and doors to explore what the other side. Perhaps windows too. Transparency, fine. But if there is no longer any distinction, there is no space, at least no human space. Then there is only a horizon, but no home for us, vulnerable humans. The end of architecture, then, means then the end of humanity. Homelessness is the loss of humanity, and Sloterdijk’s lecture on architecture has offered us some stimulating metaphors to think about this problem. I just think that it is not our problem. We live within the architectures of today, we do not have the position of god or ape. And looking at the spaces and distinctions we encounter, we may be in a position to make changes. We have good reasons to be very critical of contemporary consumerist gaming culture, and of religious fundamentalism, but we do not need Sloterdijk’s story to do that. After all, to say that someone is an animal, or a plant, is to say: I think your way of life is wrong. And in the best case this is only the beginning of moral reasoning and public discussion, not the end. Stories cannot replace morality and politics.

About the author

Mark Coeckelbergh studied philosophy and political science. He received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Birmingham. He currently teaches philosophy at Maastricht University. His publications include Liberation and Passion (DenkMal Verlag 2002) and The Metaphysics of Autonomy (Palgrave Macmillan 2004). His present research is about the relation between morality and imagination.

Endnotes

[1] Kusters, Wouter. ‘Een Atlas van deze tijd’ in: Filosofie Magazine Jaargang 14 nr 4, 2005.
[2] Lecture at the Jan van Eyck Academy, Maastricht 31 May 2005. The lecture was part of a lecture series Breath-taking: Air, Art, Architecture.
[3] Sloterdijk, Peter. Im Weltinneraum des Kapitals: Für eine philosophische Theorie der Globalisierung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005.
[4] Sloterdijk refers to this 19th century building in Im Weltinneraum des Kapitals.
[5] I take the context of this claim to be the French referendum about the EU constitution.

© Mark Coeckelbergh 2005