From Inertia to the Absolute: On Visuality and Religion in Jean Labatut

Abstract

This article offers an analysis of the ideas of the French architect Jean Labatut, who was the director of graduate studies at Princeton’s Department of Architecture in the post-Second World War years (1949–67). Throughout his career at Princeton (1928–67) he developed a pedagogical system centred on a visual engagement with the built environment. As a progressive Catholic, Labatut integrated spiritual concerns within his educational programme at Princeton. Labatut’s spiritual ideas were given a sharper focus following his intellectual exchanges with the French Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain, when they were colleagues at Princeton during Second World War. The aim of this article is therefore twofold. The first part situates and unpacks the core components of Labatut’s intellectual universe, under the rubrics of phenomenology, visuality, and history. The second part examines the idea of resonance between religious and architectural ideas by analysing the way Labatut drew upon Maritain’s existential Thomism of the late 1940s.