Philosophy of the City: Hymn to thePolis.On the Right to the City

Abstract

Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses. (Wittgenstein, 1953, para. 18) I want to reverse Wittgenstein's (1953) comment in the Philosophical Investigations and use it as a hymn to the polis, to the city as a place for philosophy. What better spatial metaphor for language than the ancient city? Yet the city as a language also has its tropic attraction: as the collection of tongues, of street talk, of noises that are part of the cultural hubbub, of the language of the growth of urban form and architecture, and of the city map. (Reading the city: How do I get around? It presupposes local knowledge as opposed to universal knowledge.) Place is that which holds meaning for us. Place precedes space that is the bounded and abstractly defined territory. Place is wedded to concepts of 'situatedness', 'embeddedness', 'context' giving rise to 'situated cognition', 'embedded rationality' and 'local knowledge'. Place is the counterpoint to a philosophy of the body based on walking, talking, observing. In 'Of the Humanities and the Philosophical Discipline. The Right to Philosophy from the Cosmopolitical Point of View (the Example of an International Institution)' (3) Derrida (1999) says: I will begin with the question, 'where?' Not directly with the question, 'where are we?' or 'where have we come to?' but 'where does the question of the right to philosophy take place?,' which can be immediately translated by 'where ought it take place?'