Virgil/Beatrice: Remarks on Discursive Thought and Rational Order in Architecture

Abstract

Critical doubt is a hallmark of modern thought. This condition has profoundly affected the discipline and practices of architecture. In its most extreme forms, it has led to complete inertia, on the one hand, and a sense of unbounded relativism, begotten through unbridled activity, on the other. Yet there is little or no possibility of reasserting a set of canonical ideas or principles that might establish a secure ground for either architectural pedagogy or production. In response to similar theoretical debates in numerous disciplines, a “way out” has been suggested, somewhere between critical transcendentalism and deconstructive antimetaphysicism. Through a close reading of the architectural issues inherent in Dante's Divine Comedy—the last and perhaps greatest cathedral of the Middle Ages, according to Georges Duby—this article explores the potential of this path.