METAPHYSICS OF THE OBJECT-IMAGE DICHOTOMY IN ARCHITECTURE

Abstract

The physical and mental development of the phenomena of the world presupposes the distinction between the ob-ject of knowledge and the concept of it. The discovery of the difference between a thing and the idea of a thing became an unprecedented triumph of sci-ence in ancient Greece, noted Soviet art critic A. F. Losev [1]. The «stratification» of the object of study marked the beginning of a centuries-old confrontation between ideal-ism and materialism. The thesis «the idea of a thing exists by itself» has been overcome by progressive science for a long time, but recently it has risen from the ashes by the efforts of philosophers of the XX century, who declared the priority of thinking as a creative tool for replacing reality with hyperreality, the triumph of imagination over reality – and quite reasonably. The concept of metaphysics («that which is after – or outside–physics») is addressed precisely to the idea of a thing that precedes and closes the process of perception of the object of cognition with a conditional shell of a meta-physical cloud that provides functional and aesthetic persuasiveness in this case of architectural work in the role of a synharmonic superstructure, artistic comprehension superimposed on a physical medium – a conceived or realized object. Vitruvius also considered the content of architecture as a unity of thought and practice [2]. Not to the detriment of the sacred triad «benefit–strength–beauty», the article proposes to consider the dichotomy «architectural object–its semantic image», the dynamics of its historical unfolding.