otl aicher analogous and digital

Otl Aicher (1922–1991) was an outstanding personality in modern design, he was a co-founder of the legen-dary Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG), the Ulm School of Design, Germany. His works since the fifties of the last century in the field of corporate design and his pictograms for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich are major achievements in the visual communication of our times.

An integral component of Aicher‘s work is that it is anchored in a „philosophy of making“ inspired by such thinkers as Ockham, Kant or Wittgenstein, a philosophy concerned with the prerequisites and aims, the objects and claims, of design. Aicher‘s complete theoretical and practical writings on design (which include all other aspects of visual creativity, such as architecture) are available with this new edition of the classic work.

If Aicher prefers the analogous and concrete to the digital and abstract he does it with a philosophical intention. He relativizes the role of pure reason. He criticizes the rationality of Modernism as a result of the dominance of purely abstract thinking. Anyone who prefers the abstract to the concrete does not only misunderstand the mutual dependence of concept and view. In Aicher’s judgement he is also creating a false hierarchy, a rank order that is culturally fatal. Things that are digital and abstract are not greater, higher and more important than things that are analogous and concrete.

Wilhelm Vossenkuhl

otl aicheranalogous anddigital

www.ernst-und-sohn.de

9783433031193_otl aicher_analogous and digital_final.indd 1 29.01.15 13:55

contents

9 preface by sir norman foster10 introduction22 grasping with the hand and mind28 extensions of the ego36 the eye, visual thinking47 analogous and digital55 universals and capitals60 buridan and peirce63 reading scores65 honourable burial for descartes75 design and philosophy93 architecture and epistemology

109 use as philosophy133 planning and control146 development, a concept150 an apple154 something quite ordinary170 life form and ideology178 cultures of thinking188 afterword190 sources

Otl Aicher was a good friend, mentor and workingcolleague. There was never a division between conver-sations on our work or any other subject - the topicsranged far and wide. Often as he was talking, Otlwould pick up a piece of paper and illustrate his pointwith careful strokes of a ball-point. The combinationwas uniquely personal – witty, incisive and oftenthought-provoking.During his summer retreats in August at Rotis, Otl

would commit his thoughts to paper and these laterbecame the subject of two books. Before then some ofthem had appeared randomly as articles in magazinesor in editions. I remember being frustrated because Icould not read German, even though I might guess attheir content from the many hours spent with Otlhearing their story lines. I was also upset because I somuch wanted to share Otl’s insights with othersaround me; he seemed to be able to say with clarityand eloquence many of the things I felt needed to besaid – as well as some of the things which we did notagree about. In his last years Otl was, I felt, at theheight of his creativity in many fields, which rangedfrom visual communication and new typefaces topolitical and philosophical comment.Following the tragedy of Otl’s death I felt compelled

to help make it possible for all of his writings to betranslated and published in English. Otl saw throughthe stupidities of fashion and vanity. His opinionswere so relevant to the issues of today that I believedit was important for them to be shared with a widerEnglish-speaking audience – relevant to my own gen-eration as well as students, professionals and the laypublic.Otl wrote rather in the way that he spoke and after

some debate with those who were closer to him andwho were also German speakers it was decided toleave the translation in its conversational form. Wealso felt that it was important to respect Otl’spassionate objection to capital letters for startingsentences of marking traditionally important words.Perhaps it underlined his scorn for the pompous.There was an integrity about the way that Otl lived,

practised and preached. He would probably have beenuncomfortable with the word preach, but I use it herein its most honourable and inspiring sense.

Norman FosterLondon, January 1994

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Introduction

by Wilhelm Vossenkuhl

Authenticity and a questionable analogy

“How is it”, asks Edward Young, “that we are born asoriginals and die as copies?” The 18th-century Englishpoet is concerned that as individuals in society welose our distinctive qualities. We conform to otherpeople, the taste of the times, but also to law andpolitical order. Ultimately we do not know who we areand what makes us different from all the rest.This concern about our authenticity has not got any

less today. Authenticity is one of the great themes ofModernism. Young’s contemporary Rousseau believesthat it is only meaningful for us to exist in “unity oflife with itself”, in unity with nature. He suggests anew legal system to rescue authenticity, intended tocreate a community of life instead of abstract legalconditions.It is hard for us to imagine today how we can do

justice to the ideal of unity with nature in a bourgeoislife community. And yet this ideal still seems fasci-nating. We have not stopped striving for it. But in ourecological epoch it means something different fromwhat it did at the time of Rousseau.Today we want to achieve unity with ourselves by

the shortest possible route, and find our authenticselves without a detour via society. We strive for adirect, concrete relationship with our own nature andour natural environment. Society and its order seem todepend on the right relationship of the individual withnature, and not vice versa. A wareness of ecologicaldangers puts the natural before the social environ-ment. The long-accepted precedence of society overthe individual, at least from a political and legal pointof view, has been questioned for quite some time. Anew individualism with many pros and cons has pre-vailed for quite a while, at least in Western society.Rousseau’s suggestion appeared to be highly

abstract to Lionel Trilling half a century ago. Trillingthought that our feeling for authenticity had becomerougher, more concrete and more extreme (Das Endeder Aufrichtigkeit, Frankfurt/Main 1983, S. 92). WhenTrilling put forward this thesis in his lectures at

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Harvard University it was easy to understand. How-ever, his scepticism towards Rousseau at the time isnow difficult to comprehend. On the other hand, thejoy that Rousseau described as philosophical life in his“Rêveries” is accessible again (Heinrich Meier, Überdas Glück des philosophischen Lebens. Reflexionen zuRousseaus Rêveries, Munich 2011).Striving to achieve unity with nature and an

authentic self that is happy at the same time has comeunder pressure of time because of ecological dangers.It is no wonder that this pressure of time is making usincreasingly impatient. This impatience increases ourintolerance of the actual or presumed - agents ofthese dangers. But this impatience is a symptom initself, not just a crisis of understanding ourselves andour unity with nature.This crisis is not merely older than the ecological

one. People like Rousseau, who were asking about ourauthenticity at the time of the Enlightenment, werealready aware of it. But the attempt to solve this crisisleads in the wrong direction. In the late 18th century-after a long period of preparation through anatomyand early biological research - the thought that whatwas organic was natural became accepted.It is not obvious at first how erroneous this thought

is in terms of our self-perception and our relationshipwith nature. This is perhaps why it has lost none of itsinfluence, even today. We come across it in criticismof modern technology and of literature. What makesthis thought so plausible?An organ is a complete entity, even if it is part of a

greater whole, along with other organs; it plays a dis-tinctive and irreplaceable role. It is difficult to find amore vivid image of authenticity than that of the organ.It conveys the thought that something authentic musthave grown, it cannot be manufactured artificially.The first critics of the age of the machine in the

early 19th century, Carlyle and Ruskin, draw an anal-ogy between the authentic and the organic. They seeman’s authenticity endangered by the mechanicalprinciple of the machine. In their eyes everything thatman creates for himself with technical aids is manu-factured artificially, and therefore not authentic. Art,they think, along with 19th and 20th century Roman-tics, must also look to the organic if it wants to createsomething authentic. By the way, anyone who thinksthat Carlyles and Riskins scepticism about themachine world was a long time ago and is long since

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obsolete is mistaken. Just recently we witnessed criti-cism of the machine and science era that was no lessvehement in Michael Oakeshotts diaries (MichaelOakeshott, Notebooks 1922–1986, ed. by Luke O’Sul-livan, Exeter 2014). Oakeshott also indirectly dealtwith the analogy between the authentic and theorganic in the form of what constitutes our integralnature as people, which is concealed from nothingand nobody. He spoke of the “terrorism of science”and turned against the superficial progress thinkingthat changes our nature. Like Ruskin, he believed thatthe commercialisation of life, industrialisation andmoney is the curse of our age. He claimed that this alldeflects us from our actual selves. The question aboutthe analogy between the authentic and the organichas obviously not gone away. But what is question-able about this analogy?The thing that is questionable about the analogy is

that it leads us astray due to a little metamorphosis.Because the organic inadvertently loses its meaning.The analogy, the image of the authentic, suddenlybecomes a model, a kind of ideal. It appears asabstract as Rousseau’s ideal of unity with nature inTrillings eyes. However, Rousseau’s ideal is anythingbut abstract, because it is associated with the idea offreedom. Rousseau’s message is that man can deter-mine himself. Freedom is an active principle thatguides the search for unity with nature in society.Man shapes his own identity.The organic is not a model for active self-determi-

nation. It is more likely to condemn people to passiv-ity and determination from outside. We do not evenknow what we are supposed to do when we orientateourselves towards that which is organic, apart fromshopping in health food shops, of course. The analogybetween authentic and organic is questionable becauseit suggests that we can discover our own authenticityin the organic structure of the natural environment.However, our nature and our unity with the naturalenvironment are determined and designed by our-selves, if at all. For this reason we are also responsiblefor our own nature and the environment.

Knowing and making

Self-determination and shaping nature remain abstractgoals for as long as we do not know how we can

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realize them. What kind of knowledge do we need todetermine ourselves? There are two kinds of knowl-edge to be dealt with here. One is knowledge of a planthat prescribes how the goal of self-determination canbe reached. The other is knowledge that only developsin the course of concrete self-determination. We callthe former theoretical and the latter practical knowl-edge. In one case the goal is fixed, in the other thegoal only becomes concrete on the way to it.Aristotle was already aware of both these kinds of

knowledge. But two things were alien to him, the ideaof self-determination and the idea that man can man-ufacture, can make himself. For this reason it does notmake sense to transfer his views of theoretical andpractical knowledge to the specifically modern idea ofself-determination. We have to see how theoreticaland practical knowledge were understood at the timeof early Modernism, when the idea of self-determina-tion came into being.Modern understanding of theoretical knowledge

was forged by Descartes in particular, and that ofpractical knowledge by Vico. For Descartes, determi-nation of one’s own self needed no experience. Forhim the ego has no history. It is a substance outsidetime and space, that we cannot doubt. Whenever I amin doubt about something I know that it is I who amin doubt. Descartes argues that this ego must bebeyond doubt. Its theoretical features, like mathemati-cal laws, simply have to be recognized, not newly dis-covered. For this reason there can be no problem ofself-determination for Descartes. The ego is always theindubitable basis of all knowledge.Vico, the counterpart of Descartes, believes that self-

knowledge is historical. He sees in the “modificationsof our own human mind” the principles by which wemake history. Knowledge of history, and this is hisfundamental thought, is formed in and through themaking of history. We acquire practical knowledge byour own making, the manufacture of history.Descartes’ view of theoretical knowledge shaped the

development of modern science, whose knowledgerequires mathematics. With the aid of mathematics ithas been able to and still can successfully formulatenatural laws on the basis of experiment and hypothe-sis. Descartes formulated modern criteria of truth andthe certainty of knowledge.Vico’s view of practical knowledge acquired

through human making was denied this kind of

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success. This is partly because his view of making isinconsistent. It is true that we make history, but we,as God’s creatures, follow the natural laws that helays down. The idea of human self-determination isstill alien to Vico.Now which view of knowledge tells us that we are

capable of selfdetermination? Apparently neither. Des-cartes sees no problem in self-determination, becausein his understanding it is the basis of theoreticalknowledge. Vico certainly introduces the thought ofhistorical making, but he does not apply it to humanself-determination because it was not yet a problemfor him.It is hardly surprising that these early modern con-

cepts of knowing and making do not show which kindof knowledge we require to determine ourselves. Theidea of self-determination, which is the basis of thesearch for authenticity and unity with nature, isunknown to early Modernism. And yet the two con-cepts identify the alternative types of knowledge thatcome into question as far as self-determination isconcerned.But a characteristic feature of Modernism is the fact

that theoretical knowledge is considered superior topractical knowledge. The practical knowledge that islearned in historical making attracts little attention.Marx certainly takes up Vico’s idea in Das Kapital,but does not apply it to man’s relationship withnature. He believes in the emancipating power oftechnology. Marx, as Habermas critically points out, isthus involved in an ideology, that of belief in tech-nology. This ideology is no better than its counterpart,hostility to technology.However, in his early writings, the Pariser Manu-

skripte dating from 1844, Marx does develop a newconcept of practical knowledge, that of self-manufac-ture through work. He sees work as a process of natu-ralization for man and humanization of nature. Butthis process founders if man sells his work for anabstract financial value. In doing this he alienateshimself from his products, from work, and finallyfrom himself.Marx recognizes the mutual dependence between

self-determination and making, between self-manu-facture and work. He does not pursue this insight anymore deeply than to provide a sketch of the stages ofalienation. But his concept of alienation draws to ourattention that we cannot determine ourselves if we

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disregard that mutual dependence. We can eitherdetermine ourselves, or fail in the manufacture ofthings, in making.Alienation is the opposite of authenticity. We can

either determine ourselves in making, or we fail, andput ourselves in danger. Making is clearly ambiguous,just as ambiguous as technology. Today we no longerspeak of alienation, but of the way we are endanger-ing and destroying ourselves, the natural environmentand our culture. What kind of making would not putus in danger, but allow us to determine ourselves?

Thinking and making

In this collection of essays, Otl Aicher attempts toanswer this question. He develops a philosophy ofmaking that works from the basic thought that think-ing and making are so interdependent that one can beunderstood only in terms of the other. Aicher demon-strates that up to now we have misunderstood themaking and therefore have a one-sided opinion ofthinking.He reproaches us to neglect the practical side of

things compared to their theoretical side. For this rea-son we overestimate the importance of what OtlAicher calls “digital”: abstract conceptuality and logi-cal precision. But we underestimate the visual, thingsthat are learned from practical experience and sensualperception, which Aicher calls “analogous”. But Aicheris convinced that the abstract and digital can no morebe separated from the concrete and analogous thanconceptual thinking from our sensuality. Mental andphysical making are related to each other and depen-dent upon each other. If we disregard this mutualrelationship we endanger ourselves and our world.Without any obligation towards philosophical tradi-

tion and without taking any particular model, Aicheradopts the concept of practical knowledge that istouched upon by Vico and Marx. He gives a newmeaning to this concept. It is intended to overcomethe split in modern consciousness, the divisionbetween abstract and concrete thinking, between digi-tal and analogous. He does not try to find a counter-concept to theoretical knowledge, but criticizes itsone-sidedness. He wants to show that this one-sided-ness is partially responsible for the crisis of rationalityand our self-perception in Modernism.

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Aicher is convinced that the concrete comes beforethe abstract, anschauung before reason, truth beforeknowledge. He finds sufficient justification for this inOckham, Kant and Wittgenstein. He does not use dia-logue with these philosophers for superficial confir-mation of his own convictions. Aicher does notexploit his interlocutors. But he does not want merelyto interpret them. Each of his dialogues opens up anew view of the philosopher addressed.Aicher is not bound by historical exposition in his

interpretation of philosophers like Ockham, Buridan,Descartes, Kant and Wittgenstein. But he does notdisregard hermeneutic obligations. He is not con-cerned to imply that Ockham, Kant or Wittgensteinhad intentions identical with his own. He simply takesup thoughts that convince him, independently of theirhistorical context. This is particularly legitimate whenwe learn to understand something better, or for thefirst time.Aicher and Wittgenstein share a common interest in

architecture. Aicher sees the house that Wittgensteinbuilt for his sister Gretl as a “school of making”. Hesays that Wittgenstein, who built the house on thebasis of the digital, logical severity of the tractatus,detected the flaws in this early philosophy as a result.Aicher sees the philosphy of use, of language gamesand life forms as being derived from Wittgenstein’sexperience as an architect.There is no better example as this for Aicher’s con-

viction that knowledge is the “reverse of making” andthat making is “work on oneself”. In Aicher’s eyesWittgenstein learned from his work as an architectthat analogous thinking is superior to digital thinking.Aicher’s philosophical reflections are an introduc-

tion to design, creativity and developing. For himthere is nothing that should not be designed, createdand developed. This is true of one’s own self, of lifewith others and with nature, the objects of everydaylife, living and thinking. We acquire the ability todesign and create by doing it. What we do and inwhat profession is secondary. We should simply notallow ourselves to be guided by pre-formed designsand previously devised plans.Of course freedom to move free from prescriptions

requires independence of judgement. Aicher sees his“visual thinking” as an element of the power ofjudgement, as Kant did imagination. We acquire theability to judge correctly by learning to see and

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perceive correctly. This is not just true of designers, itis true of all of us.In this context Aicher turns critically to designers

and architects, and recommends that what they designshould not be directed simply at function, but atmaterials and their organization. Form should do jus-tice first of all to material and then to function. If thisimperative is disregarded, then design degenerates intosales promotion and architecture becomes ornamental.Creation and design lose their autonomy and aredetermined and abused by economic and politicalpurposes. Aicher does not see this kind of “aestheticconsumption” as an isolated phenomenon. It is anexpression of the crisis in our self-perception that hasparallel phenomena in all spheres of life.Design, architecture and philosophy hardly relate to

each other at all as academic disciplines. This isappropriate to their different tasks. But as Aichershows, they have in common the problem of howthinking and making relate to each other. This is theproblem of all kinds of design and creation. Aicherdoes not leave it at that insight. He recognizes thatdesigning and creation have to satisfy a fundamentaldemand, that of human self-determination.

Critique of rationalism

Aicher’s thinking is not limited to a philosophy ofmaking. He does not only confront philosophicalproblems of cognition, sensual perception, languageand thinking from a different point of view. If he pre-fers the analogous and concrete to the digital andabstract he does it with a philosophical intention. Herelativizes the role of pure reason. He criticizes therationality of Modernism as a result of the dominanceof purely abstract thinking.This critique has a political slant. Aicher sees the

cultural and political consequences of the absoluteclaim of abstract reason. They have an effect on theinstitutions of our culture and the state. In his viewthe dominance of abstract thinking has been copied inthe cultural and political circumstances of our age.In criticizing rationalism, Aicher intends to criticize

the claims of the institutions which consider them-selves to be the agents of absolute values and truths.He considers the very claim that there are such valuesand truths to be absurd. Like Ockham’s critique of

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universals, Aicher’s critique of abstract thought ispolitically coherent.Anyone who prefers the abstract to the concrete

does not only misunderstand the mutual dependenceof concept and view. In Aicher’s judgement he is alsocreating a false hierarchy, a rank order that is cultur-ally fatal. Things that are digital and abstract are notgreater, higher and more important than things thatare analogous and concrete.Aicher is opposed to false hierarchies. His thinking

is republican. He is concerned about the correct rela-tionship between analogous and digital, the correctdistribution of weight, priority in the right place, andin the right context. What is ordinary is not ordinaryfor him in a derogatory sense.But the ordinary is also not extraordinary. It is the

thing that is appropriate to the purposes of our dailylives. Ordinary things are determined by our use ofthings and not by aesthetic ideals. Design should takeaccount of the ordinary, of the purposes of our lives.Design should serve practice, human life forms, andnot dominate the use of things aesthetically.For Aicher aestheticization of life appears particu-

larly clearly in design that is directed not at use but atfine art. He compares this disregard of use and con-crete practice with disregard of what is particular andempirical in certain traditions of metaphysics. Ifdesign takes fine art as a model it puts itself in theservice of “aesthetic metaphysics”. Aicher uses thisname like a curse, similarly to the way in which Witt-genstein and the Vienna circle spoke about “meta-physics” and its apparent problems.For Aicher the beautiful appearance of artistic

design is not just an irritation. Design of this kindignores human purposes and use, and thus also thedemands of human life. It is a bürden on our lives inthe same way that the rubbish we create is a burdenon nature. Artistic design frivolously gives away theopportunity to shape the living world humanely.Aicher’s imperative is that we should redesign the

world. In his thinking the world as design is the themethat connects design and philosophy directly. Designrequires concrete developments, not abstract planning.We should not just be designing material objects suchas houses and cities for living and working in, butdeveloping and changing ourselves.The changes in thinking and making demanded by

Aicher have philosophical precedents. These are to be

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found above all in Ockham, Kant and Wittgenstein.Some of their basic insights have become centralthemes for Aicher. Ockham anchored true perceptionin the sensually concrete particular and not in thegeneral. Kant identified the significance of imagina-tion for our understanding of natural things. Andfinally Wittgenstein saw the meaning of what we sayin the use of words and sentences.All three philosophers in their particular ways rede-

signed the world and altered thinking. Aicher repeat-edly takes up their basic insights, varies them andcombines them with his own reflections on the reasonof the concrete when doing things.

Aicher today

Otl Aicher died after an accident in the late summer of1991, much too soon, as they say. In the same year,two volumes containing many of his essays werepublished (analog und digital, die welt als entwurf).Another volume containing essays about currentpolitical topics was published posthumously (schreibenund widersprechen, Berlin 1993). If you take the threevolumes that have been mentioned together with thebooks that he wrote and designed (e.g. with regard totypography, the subject of “light” and the many exhi-bitions and exhibition catalogues), the large band-width and tremendous variety of Aichers workbecomes evident, ultimately that which he meant by“designing”“ and “doing”. He was also a designer inhis work as an author, photographer and philosopher.Much of his work is well documented and easy tounderstand in a readworthy biography (Eva Moser: OtlAicher: Gestalter. Eine Biografie, Ostfildern 2011).Aicher‘s actions and thoughts have left traces

behind which are evident in the work of manydesigners and architects in many countries, not just inGermany. The history of his influence cannot be por-trayed in individual examples here, but one exampleof his influence that I remember was his collaborationwith Norman Foster, which is documented in threelarge volumes and exemplary to a certain degree. Thespecial nature of the work and design of the threevolumes is described in a separate small volume (OtlAicher an der Arbeit für Norman Foster, Ernst undSohn 1989). On the one hand, the three volumes are amonograph of Fosters architecture (Vol. 1: 1964–1973,

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Vol.2: 1971–1978, Vol.3: 1978–1985) which was orig-inally intended to encompass five volumes, butremained incomplete due to Aicher‘s early demise. Onthe other hand, these volumes are a perfect exampleof how Aicher designed books, and the manifestationof that which the books were intended to show. Theyshow what they say in the best way possible. Ofcourse, this is expected from any well-designed book.In the case of architecture it is about something thatappears easy to show, because architecture has to beseen, depends on pictures and can be brought to lifewith illustrations. Many illustrated books about archi-tecture visualise that which appears to be easy toshow but in a superficial way, as though they wereadvertising brochures. They show pictures of buildingprojects and buildings and also name them, but other-wise they say very little. They do not end up in theawkward situation of also showing what they are say-ing. The three volumes about Fosters architecture arequite different. The projects and buildings aredescribed in detail by many authors, many of whomwho collaborated on the projects. We are not talkingabout superficiality, instead the genealogies andstructures of Foster‘s architecture are shown, describedand explained. You can see and read how drawingsare turned into structures, how they blend into land-scapes and ensembles and turn them into somethingremarkable.Aicher explained his approach of the three volumes

as follows: “It was not the structures that I saw first,but the way in which they were created. Here youcould see what architecture is in which thinking is notjust allowed ( . . . ), but is created by thinking . . . ”(Otl Aicher on the work for Norman Foster, 8). Aicherscritical but also architectural spirit is between thelines. In the monograph about Foster’s architecture heobjects to portrayals in which the architecture comesalong “as though it came off a catwalk” (loc. cit.). Hecriticises architecture that follows fashions and ideas.Instead he demands buildings that are justified andcan be justified, like those of Foster.There is another reason for remembering the design

of the Foster monograph. It shows how Aicherdesigned books. He defines an exact line break matrix,an organisation principle of design. The typographyand layout are precisely organised. All of this togethermakes that which Aicher called the syntax of design.Like the use of a language, the syntax must not be in

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the spotlight, and must not stand out. And it does notstand out. It is merely noticeable how clear andunderstandable the process descriptions of the con-struction projects are, and how clear the connectionsbetween the pictures and the texts are. The principlesof design upon which the three-volume monographare based are unsurpassed in the design that was usedby Aicher.

Wilhelm VossenkuhlMunich 1991/2014

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design and philosophy

1design, like advertising, is a 20th century invention,and came into being in parallel with industrial pro-duction. today it is a central component of the phe-nomenon known as “lifestyle”, a colour- and shape-happy behavioural manifestation of post-industrialleisure society. people live in brands and models. themodern manufacturer knows that the modern subjectdoes not only identify with brands and shapes, butpresents himself in them as a second body.design, before it became a predominantly economic

quantity, was a cultural movement aiming to overcomeclassical bourgeois style fixated on historical styles. itstill has a cultural as well as an economic dimensiontoday. if the question posed by culture once was howman can set himself up as a human being in a realityprescribed by nature and in a prescribed world, then thequestion was asked of the world of industrially pro-duced goods of how man can establish himself in anewly-made world of technical artefacts, and perhapssurvive and defend himself as well.design is understood as the manufacture of beautiful

things, as aesthetic creation. “good form” is a broadspectrum, both as far as the products are concerned andalso in terms of the motivation of what can be calledaesthetic. in english design was originally the equivalentof the german “entwurf”, suggesting a draft, the develop-ment of a new object or a new thing. german also hadthe concept of “gestaltung”, shaping, moulding, fashion-ing, referring less to the technical aspects of a thing thanto its form. for a time we used the word “formgebung”,literally formgiving, but this fell into disrepute because itlooked as though a new, external form was simply beingfoisted upon objects. in fact this completely fits mostcontemporary processes concerned with form: a “gestalt”,a shape or form is foisted upon things. they are made toconform to a style, stylized. recently the term styling hasalso been introduced for this, in german as well.the fact that object and form are separated when

considering something, in other words the form isseen as variable, alterable at will according to thespirit of the times and media taste, corresponds to abourgeois view of culture according to which theworld is divided into mind and matter, form and

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technology, style and purpose, appearance and sub-stance. design has somewhat declined to a modishattitude along these lines recently, something thatchanges like hairstyle and the length of skirts. design-ers are cultural hairdressers who apply the styles ofart, the tastes of the time to everyday products aswell, thus enhancing their marketability, but also pro-moting the desired aesthetic consumption that is thedream of everyone who thinks in turnover figures. itis only design that can create the throw-away productthat is a prerequisite of the modern economy.the division of form and technology, of design and

construction is naturally only an image of a deepercrisis in our civilization, and that is the division ofcapital and work. it is not the manufacturers whodetermine the purpose and appearance of a product,but the people who earn money from it.in this way design degenerates to be a modish scrap

of a profit-maximizing society, a fashionable cheapdress for stoking consumption, for children as well,and as a style façade for a post-modern consumersociety. there is probably no remedy for this, particu-larly after governments have discovered that design isan outstanding means for improving the sales oppor-tunites of their economy and increasing the nationalincome. and governments also control the teachersand directors, the curriculum and aims of their designschools. an army of design cretins is brought in whoall want to have a share in the blessings that designbrings. it is a colour-happy, a form-rich blessing.but why should the new world be better than the

old? the alliance of culture and industry, of cultureand power, is as old as the need not only to cover upthe greatest crimes of rapacious economics, but tomake people forget about them. sometimes they areeven successfully reversed, and crime is restyled as ablessing. anyone who promotes culture, science andart is an honourable man, even if his name is carnegieor rockefeller.the alliance of culture and industry was taken out

of service for a time because it was so embarrassing.today it is coming back with a vengeance. the lackeyis called design. and both art historians and culturalsociologists, all trained at state colleges, give thewhole thing the blessing of objectivity.but that is only one side. official or officious culture

was always wide of the mark. culture develops byaddressing the world, not money.

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despite all this, design has remained a cultural activ-ity, and its space for reflection is filled with funda-mental questions of human existence under theconditions not only of industrial reproduction but ofindustrial production, in other words of life in a new,largely artificial world.if the distinction between mind and matter, body

and soul, form and content, appearance and thingcannot be sustained for much longer, then the ques-tion arises of how all the technical products, tools,appliances, machines, flats, means of transport andinstruments of communication have to be made sothat man can perceive them as his own.this is where things start to get exciting. for how

can this be contrived?the story of design in this century is a story of var-

ious approaches. this story has not yet been written,but between werkbund and bauhaus, between con-structivism and rationalism, between olivetti andbraun, between art deco and post-modernism a cul-tural landscape has emerged in which the real actionsare more dramatic than theatre, however well invented.culture is being experienced as a process at a timewhen culture is being sold.in this field of confrontation there are confronta-

tions as hard as those between people who questiontechnology about its forms in order to formulate anaesthetic of technology and those who found a ratio-nal aesthetic as a primeval geometry of aestheticappearance intended to form the basis of every shape.should we build houses more according to their struc-tural principles or more according to the codes ofcrystalline elementary geometry? should we build carsas mobile seating in modern traffic conditions, or assymbols of speed? this is material for a broad andfundamental cultural debate.a crucial area of this debate is the question: can

design restrict itself to products, appliances, plants,machines, houses, cities, or is design a decision abouta form of life? is only the product part of design, orwhat we do with it, how we handle it?germany was one of the most important scenes of

the workers’ movement, but the workers were fightingonly for more wages and shorter hours. a later addi-tion are the alternative and green parties who do notask first what our society generates but why it does it.this inevitably leads to conflict with design that onlyperceives itself as beautiful packaging. the packaging

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of our food becomes more beautiful the more ques-tionable it is. the one is dependent upon the other.what is design today? what does designing mean?

the discussion about design extends even further. it allcomes down to the question of whether we can stillallow ourselves the luxury of simply recognizing theworld, rather than designing it. is our rationalisticculture of knowledge and our scientific morality ofneutral objectivity not at an end, a point where anni-hilation of life is within the realms of the possible andcan only be averted by a creative design intervention,a design in the dimension of what is feasible, of man-ufactured reality, not just of the insight in principle?design is no longer a shaping concept, it moves intothe realms of philosophy, of explanations of the worldand understanding of the times.at the moment when an honest design intelligence

asks these new questions of design, the discovery ismade that philosophy has also broken out of the bas-tions of rational insight into the world and is askingitself how we create access to a world that is not justan object of cognition.we must understand our civilization as a self-designed

new world. where we do not give in to conformity. wemust see modern life as a design. we have to ask aboutmeaning and purpose, function and use in an all-embracing sense, not one that is related to individualproducts. it is no longer abstract, conceptual truth that isour problem, but correctness, the manufactured correctfacts of the matter, living space that has been built. wemust move over from thinking to making and learn tothink again by making.

2philosophy has in some cases moved along the pathfrom thinking to making, from speculative thinking tothinking in use, in my opinion some of its rare highspots, in the work of kant and wittgenstein, for exam-ple. kant is generally known as the philosopher ofpure reason. this false interpretation was fosteredabove all by the title of his principal work, the cri-tique of pure resaon. here kant was concerned to stakeout the bounds of reason, to show critically where itslimits lie.he turned against the philosophies of men like des-

cartes, spinoza or leibniz, who thought they hadfound truth in purely speculative thinking, by analogy

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with algebra, in the development of pure thinkingmethods. truth lies in general principles that lie behindthings. deducing them is philosophy.kant contradicts this energetically, but does not fol-

low the english authors of his period, who wanted tosee cognition merely as experience of the real, asempirical perception. for kant cognition comes fromthings, but not from themselves, but from anschauung,view, the pictures we have of them. the mind processesthese views with its categories. this also sets the limita-tions of the mind. it can only process what can beviewed, and then again only within the limits of itscategories.kant becomes a victim of his own formulation. the

title critique of pure reason can be understood in twoways. critique can mean a limiting reprimand, but alsoappreciation.looking at it closely, kant is not at all the philoso-

pher of reason, but of anschauung, of view. he raisesanschauung to the plane of philosophical business andonly permits reason to operate on this plane inaccordance with its categories and principles. kantwithdraws the verdict of being inimical to the mindfrom anschauung, and therefore from the senses. kantwas by no means the prussian pietist with a highlydeveloped sense of moral responsibility that peoplelike to paint him. he was by no means offering theworld to something higher by belittling worldly, sen-sual, physical things as opposed to the power of themind. on the contrary, the mind had to be told that itcannot go beyond what the senses bring in. it isdependent on anschauung.this is more than a concern with technical problems

of possible cognition. this evaluation is one way inwhich life is endowed with meaning. how can weunderstand ourselves and how do we treat ourselves?this is not just a painful question of culture, of reli-gion and the exercise of power, it is also a painfulquestion of our own intellectual, moral and psycho-logical balance and content or discontent withourselves.this rescue of the honour of anschauung, of the

picture, the ability to project and imagine certainlydoes not remove the requirement for precise thinking,but destroys reason’s claim to total dominance. it canno longer appear with the claim to have a share in thesubstance of the world with its precise methods. thegeneral insights of the mind can no longer be the

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mirror of general laws, necessities and truths accord-ing to which the world is made. reason cannot beworld reason, it is craft in one’s own little room and itwould be deaf and blind without the harvests ofanschauung, principally introduced by the eye of man.kant took over his reservations about arrogant rea-

son from hume. his republican way of thinking comesfrom rousseau. republicans are concerned to questionany authority and to feed the suspicion that a highestprinciple of reason was only introduced to justifyauthority as such. the republican uses the individualas his starting point in philosophy as well, makes himpart of its laws and exchanges divine reason for a liv-ing human being, thinking with body and soul.but now something peculiar happens. kant had

already completed his critique of pure reason and hiscritique of practical reason. at the age of 66 he wasovertaken by the question of whether anschauung andimagination do not come before the judgement ofreason, and not just as the process evolves, but also inmeaning. what determines our thinking, reason orsensory perception, rational, systematic judgement oraesthetic judgement?he is guided by an important and new insight in

this. kant sees the world as made. it is not somethingthat is, but it is manufactured, both in nature, whichis in a state of constant development, and also intechnology or culture.once philosophy was the search for the truth, for a

plan behind the world, for its order as the order of acosmos, an existence. now the question arises: whatdetermines its development, how should it bedesigned?in doing this people who manufacture things, tech-

nicians, architects, men of letters can work less on abasis of knowledge, as knowledge describes whatexists. it works on target notions and teleologicaljudgements. these target notions are predominantlyevaluations. they are based on projections that areaccompanied by requests, concerns and expectations.and these notions are oriented towards concrete cases,not general knowledge. they relate to what is feasible,and this is always concrete and always individual. pur-pose comes before general knowledge. and it is alwaysthe concrete that is suited to a purpose. it is projectedat a meaning, a general insight, but an insight intowhat has to be made, what has to be designed. thatrequires constructive imagination that does not stop at the

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object as such, but relates it in imagination to goals,evaluations, constellations. the mind is decisivelyinvolved in this “figurative synthesis”, but it is carriedby evaluating sensory perception.at the age of forty kant had paid marginal attention

to aesthetics. a summer stay in the country inducedhim to “observations on the feeling of the beautifuland sublime”. but aesthetics seemed unsusceptible toscientific-rational intervention. even at the age ofsixty kant did not believe that aesthetic judgementcould have anything to do with philosophy.kant then discovered that the world is not only rea-

sonable, but functional, that it is not only its objectivetruth that is of importance, but also its meaning. atthe age of almost seventy he wrote the critique ofjudgement.if our life forms are determined by functionality, if

the mind is not sufficient for correct doing, then anew kind of thinking and judging is necessary. theword “urteilskraft” (power of judgement) remains closeto mind and reason. here judgement takes place pri-marily, while in reality we are dealing with sensoryperception. “sensory perception as a principle ofexplanation” would have been a title to signal a turn-ing back. imagination is mentioned in the text itself,the title retains the discipline of rationality.in this matter kant remains open, rigorous and bold.

anschauung, sensual judgement, aesthetic harmonyare no longer the other, excluded area of thinking, asclassical rationalism asserted until the present day.they are much more the actual organ of a weltan-schauung. truth becomes sensory truth. meaning isrevealed via sensory perception. the world becomesone of perspectives. the criterion is functionality thatwithdraws from generalization and is produced in act-ing and doing, in manufacture.kant arrives at the unusual insight that sensory

perception is also a form of cognition, not just think-ing in the categories of reason. he is guided by anew view of nature. her creatures do not just movethemselves, but organize themselves. nature is self-organization. but self-organization also requiresinsight, cognition.and so there is a broad field of cognition that is

not, unlike the case of man, determined by the abilityto form concepts and combine these to draw conclu-sions. there is a cognition without concepts, withoutthe organs of understanding and reason, which

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guarantees that animals behave in their own interest,reproduce themselves, and enter into a balance ofconservation with their environment, form themselvesinto communities and maintain the equilibrium ofnature. their insight is concrete, relates to individualfacts and situations, they do not generalize, but it isnevertheless a cognition that makes life possible, pre-cisely as sensory perception.with their sensory perception - kant calls it reflec-

tion - animals fit into the constellation of their worldand do from case to case what is expedient and sensi-ble for them.but precisely that is true of human beings as well,

who certainly also make thinking, reason and under-standing part of their sensory perception.according to kant we experience the world not in

the first place through reason, but through our sen-sory perception, and man’s freedom is not to find thetruth, but to fit into a world of functionality, autono-mously, as a individual, but empathizing into mean-ingful perspectives. to this end we develop perspectivedesigns of the world that are weighed up by sensoryperception and thus become experience-judgements.the world as design, life as design, directed by sen-

sory perception of the concrete, that is a newphilosophy.when the first steam engine was invented by james

watt in 1765, kant took up his first professionalappointment at the university of königsberg. he wasin the middle of the industrial revolution, thinking thefirst thoughts of a world that is not given by nature,but made.

319th century design philosophy was that “form fol-lows function”. this formulation comes from louishenry sullivan, an architect of the chicago school,who built the first building complexes without histori-cal styles and used steel as a material in his structuresin the same way as stone had been used before. themachine age is the application of newtonian celestialmechanics to technology and economics. thought wasconducted in physical models. the success of powermachines and motors gave wings to a mechanistickind of thinking in which functionality shrinks to thenotion of mere function. when sullivan used this for-mulation in 1896 he understood function in another

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sense. the circling eagle or the open apple blossom, inshort behaviour in nature was part of this concept.everything in nature is functional. but under the influ-ence of the age, function was very quickly understoodas a mechanistic linear connection between effort andpurpose in the sense of mere exploitability.the concept gained in strength, because it saw form

and shape as a derivation, a relation, as the result of amethodological principle. for a long time the first build-ings of modern architecture were labelled rationalist.but rationality is a characteristic, not a methodologicalprinciple. functionalist architecture on the other handindicated a method. form was a result, a derivationfrom purpose and structure, not an outward appearance.modern building could be represented as a method, notas aesthetic appearance, as rationalist arrangement.the new style was not only a different style replac-

ing historical styles, it turned out to be a programme,a process.in 1932 the italian architect alberto sartoris pub-

lished a book on the architecture of his period. it wasoriginally to be called architettura razionale. however,because of an intervention by le corbusier it wasfinally given the title gli elementi dell’architetturafunzionale. here two different design principles areclear, design as a procedure and design as preparationof outward appearance. in the one case form is pro-duced, as in craft work, from the material, the han-dling, the purpose, the use. in the other case anaesthetic entity, a style is introduced. these are twoopposing positions like those of philosophy the onephilosophy develops truth through a thought processfree of contradictions, through a methodologicalapproach, the other seeks out the truth as a givensubstance and introduces it.rationalism in modern architecture is a style like

gothic or baroque. it bears the stamp of an aesthetics ofreduction and order in outward architectural appear-ance. it is classicism without cornices and comes fromitaly; it still continued to make its presence felt undermussolini because of the monumental gesture that is acharacteristic of all classicism. rationalist architecture isundecorated neo-classicism with predominantly aes-thetic qualities like symmetry or sequences.functionalism on the other hand attempted to man-

age without stylistic principles and to solve architec-tural problems from the nature of the task and themeans available.

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even in the 19th century these opposing fronts werestarting to emerge. viollet-le-duc took gothic as anexample of architecture whose outward appearanceemerged from the building method. at first this wasdifficult to understand, as gothic was seen as thestyle, as the symbolic form for all religious buildings.but viollet-le-duc showed that a cathedral looks as itdoes because the principles of building and structuremade it essential. the pointed arch is not in the firstplace an aesthetic form, but the result of a vaultingprinciple, that of the ribbed vault.gottfried semper represented the counter-position

that was manifested in neo-classicism and the neo-renaissance. architecture is the manufacture of form.his major work was called der stil and identifiedarchitecture as based on the manufacture of forms ofa spatial kind, forms of a structural kind and forms ofa decorative kind. his model was roman architecture,which did not present itself as a building principle,but as a state-supporting manifestation, as an aes-thetic gesture of power, as prestige.certainly the notion of functionalism abbreviated

the purpose-orientation of design to a more physicaland mechanistic approach. building should bring morelight, air and sun. in contrast with this the concept of“functionality” is broader. kant orientates it towards akind of common sense. “functionality” stretchesbeyond “function”. it also embraces psychological,social or economic dimensions, but not the principaltask of style, which is to be a prestigious symbol.functionalism is opposed to symbolic form and

looking for a shape developed from the task in hand.this intention lent it a kind of provocative asceticism.functionalism turned a blind eye to all conditions thatwere not physical or physiological. the business ofcreating an expression of the times it left to expres-sionism and the business of creating an aestheticpresence to rationalism. it was also sceptical about theglorification of craft in so-called arts and crafts,which dedicated itself to the old methods with aes-thetic enthusiasm. functionalism was the purpose-spirit of the machine age, of physical mechanics.kant’s concept of functionality was certainly

directed at craft, not aesthetic arts and crafts, but theproduction culture that since the celtic iron age, par-ticularly in combination with the working of wood,dominated material culture until the industrial revolu-tion. kant was a saddler’s son.

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he lived all his life in a town the characteristic featuresof which were trade, but principally craft work. for acraftsman functionality is an all-embracing principle.it is true that the governing courts successfullydemanded lack of functionality, decoration, ornament,adornment to express their higher claims and higherstatus, but correct craft work is distinguished by thehighest possible level of correspondence between pur-pose and economy of effort. first and foremost thecraft tool, but also farmers’ equipment, tradesman’scarts are the product of a culture of practical thought,in which a minimum of material and effort combine toproduce an optimal performance with sovereign intelli-gence and love of the matter in hand. it is still a plea-sure to hold a good craft item in one’s hand. it radiatesformal functionality, and this certainly also derivesfrom the fact that the producer, the craftsman, fol-lowed the effects of his work by personal inspection.he was himself in the sphere in which his work wasused, and in direct critical exchange with its users. thissuggests that kant related functionality to commonsense. it developed in production and in use by a com-munity of manageable size.industrial production exploded these direct spheres

of experience. the up-and-coming railways led some-where else, raw material came from somewhere else,and the goods were there to be sold anywhere andeverywhere. common sense fled, and kant as well, as arepublican, devoted himself to a world constitutionand no longer only to people’s rights in his own townand country.craftsmen were replaced by engineers. design

became a procedure in its own right as a specific pro-fession. the designer was neither a maker nor a con-sumer. the criteria of his design work now came fromabstract knowledge, from science, physics, mechanicsabove all, from chemistry, from physiology. appraisalwas no longer the criterion of his work, not findingand intuiting but measuring and counting. he was notguided by anschauung, but by knowledge andcalculation.consequently functionalism as a design philosophy

had to lead to a final reduction, dominated by calcu-lation, guided by mathematical formulae and tables.le corbusier proclaimed that his buildings were

machines for living. he was aware that this was provoc-ative. he consciously used sullivan’s concept of func-tion, to avoid the breadth of the concept “functionality”

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with its blurred boundaries. he wanted to reduce man toa biological being. he wanted to avoid subtlety andreduce sense questions to physiological behaviour. forhim man’s life was made up of eight hours of sleep,eight hours of work and eight hours of rest. man wasneither a social nor a communicative being.similarly the car was not a means of transport at

that time but a technical end in itself, measured byspeed and horsepower. it was not tailored to man andhis needs but the converse, man was allowed to beinvolved in technological intoxication, in a technicalartefact that took him somewhere, anywhere.functionalism as a scientific interpretation and a

mechanistic exposition of design was controversialfrom the beginning. architects like hugo häring,design theorists like kükelhaus missed the organic,formulation according to principles of life and the liv-ing. logical calculation without empathy was too tightfor them, man as a biological being, living only onlight, air and sun, too little.admittedly functionalism cannot be reduced to a

purely mechanistic interpretation, even if it likes topresent itself as such as an ideology of the twenties,consciously and with a provocative stance. but with-out this rigorous approach it would not have beenpossible to develop a design practice that hannesmeyer, for a time teacher and director at the bauhausand close to the russian constructivists, described likethis: “this building is not beautiful and not ugly. it isto be evaluated as a structural invention.”and indeed technology has given us a a world of

products, from the bicycle to the umbrella, from therailway engine to the typewriter, from the paperclip tothe posidrive screw, that aesthetically could neither beforeseen nor derived. technology relased a wealth ofnew aesthetics. hannes meyer also ran counter to for-malism, which postulated an elementary aestheticusing circles, squares and triangles, which to a certainextent had to be imposed upon all industrial produc-tion as aesthetic transcendentals. he even came intoconflict with the bauhaus, which saw itself as anartistic institution. he attempted to detach himselffrom all aesthetic obligations, in order to release theaesthetic of the thing itself. van doesburg or moholy-nagy stood by the primacy of form, which means thesame thing as the hegemony of art. in their eyes thecriterion for all design was pictures or the picture. artreigned supreme in the bauhaus.

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they remained rationalists, and postulated an aestheticexistence above the concrete product. with persistentidealism they raised basic aesthetic forms to a super-ordinated principle and relegated the product itself toa mere case of application.hannes meyer and the constructivists were certainly

also prisoners of a style that today is being pro-claimed a new fashion, but they sensed that without aprovocatively formulated renunciation of any aes-thetics they would not be able to achieve true outwardappearance for the technical product.here their thinking was scarcely different from that

of a saddler’s son from königsberg. form lies withinthe thing. but how can it be released?

4ludwig wittgenstein began to train as an engineer. heworked on flying machines and aeroplane engineseven before the wright brothers flew for the first timein 1908. his work on mathematics led him to philoso-phy. he was interested in the question of how thinkingcould be made more precise by a kind of mathemati-cal logic. formalization of the steps taken in thinkingwas intended to bring more clarity and eradicatemeaningless statements.wittgenstein thought very highly of kant. They were

both concerned with mathematics. kant kept to geom-etry, which is brought to life by pictures. wittgensteinremained attached to algebra, and raised the algorithmto the status of model for logical operations. thinkingshould follow a system of thought-steps, running likethought mechanics.this made it necessary to have clear concepts, a

language with precise expressions and statements.wittgenstein was convinced that “everything that canbe thought at all can be thought clearly. everythingthat can be said, can be said clearly.” at the end of thetractatus he said: “whereof one cannot speak, thereofone must be silent.”this last sentence was seen as a kind of philosophi-

cal fundamentalism. but for wittgenstein it was atechnical-methodological problem. something canonly be expressed clearly in language if it is precise.he could just as well have said: language-logicaloperations can only be carried out with clear conceptsand statements. and so we forget everything that can-not be expressed clearly.

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but precise language cannot capture everything in theworld. what cannot be captured shows. and whatshows cannot be said. with logic we cut out falsestatements and isolate everything that does not makesense. this includes everything that is beyond whatcan be said. it either has no meaning or it is wrong.wittgenstein says that language disguises thought.

the structure of thought is shown in logical-analyticaloperation. a logical operation of this kind is a kind ofmathematical calculation of an algebraic nature. forthis wittgenstein proposed an algebraic notation of hisown with signs for logical steps. he thought he hadcreated a complete system for finding truth, by meansof which meaningless sentences can be separated fromtrue ones, a kind of logical cosmology. he thoughtthat this had solved the problems of philosophy.later wittgenstein reversed his view. he then dis-

covered that our concepts are not unambiguous, buthave many dimensions. “what we teach is the differentnature of concepts.” it is not a language with exactconcepts that is precise, but a language that can adaptto states of affairs. in language games language movestowards its objects and as it were opens up new dimen-sions of the concept. we do not come closer to thingsthrough logic as a system of exact statements, butthrough study, the description of language in use.there is no longer a truth function. functionalism as

a system of exact elemental statements, as a system ofexact scientific operations, is superseded. a new crite-rion of truth appears: use.listening and looking become an act of philosophy,

and not a thinking operation within a complete sys-tem any more. wittgenstein is now saying to hispupils: “don’t think, look!”wittgenstein saw this transformation as painful. he

now had to turn away from the attempt to establish alogical ideal language and agree that everyday lan-guage reveals the meaning of language, everyday use.it is in use that we see what language can capture andhow it captures it.this is a fundamental reversal, and wittgenstein was

plagued by doubts about the world and about himselfbecause of the collapse of a system-orientated view ofthe world. he thinks it is possible: “that mankind isrunning into a trap, that it is the end of mankind if itlooks for a final systematic truth.” there is nothinggood or desirable about scientific cognition, he said.he was taking the error of the age upon himself.

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what now emerges as a new philosophy is a revaluationof all values. its rule is: “we are taking words awayfrom their metaphysical application and back to aneveryday one.” in metaphorical terms this means thatthe mind is not above, in the heights, there is nothinghigher, the mind is in the thing.logic collapses, we have to return to the things of

everyday life.today it is good to accept that there is an everyday

culture alongside the great culture of the mind, and toturn to the lowly spheres of the common people, tomore lowly work and trivial applications. everydayculture is a new catch-phrase that takes the upwardsurge of sociology into account and understands soci-ety not just as an élite, but also in its basics. peopletalk of a complete view of culture, taking ordinarythings seriously as well as high art and sublimescience.things are different in the case of wittgenstein. he

does not see a not-only-but-also, which would make aturn to the everyday a kind of alms-giving favour. hethinks the world out from the bottom, bases truth onuse, everyday use.here he is as bold as marx, who explains con-

sciousness from the material culture of work, or thedesigner, who sees art as aesthetic mataphysics, andin designing does not turn to higher things, but toeveryday use. the everyday is not a lower thing. “themost important aspects of things for us are concealedby their simplicty and everyday quality.” we have toreveal them.everyday language is not the materialization of the

logical structure of language. spoken language is notapplication. and philosophical depth is not found withnew words, it appears in revealing, describing andexplaining the everyday. greatness is to be found inthe ordinary.in parallel with this, design is not application of a

higher, artistic aesthetic to the everyday. concern withdesign at the point where it appears, in everyday use,opens up real aesthetic spaces. form becomes percep-tible by approaching use, in following its operation,its variety, not in the esoteric gesticulation of art. theway an object is used, the way it is made, shows formand design. form cannot be imposed, not even, orprecisely not, when it appears with the claims of art,just as little as language can be handled with logicalsystems.

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“the more precisely we consider actual language, thestronger is the conflict between it and our requirement(for crystal clarity of logic). the conflict becomesintolerable. we have got on to slippery ice, where theconditions are ideal in a certain sense, but we alsocan’t walk for that reason. back to rough ground!”super-ordination of logic with its super-concepts is ina vacuum.super-aesthetics of pure form, which claims to make

the spiritual manifest, whether it is the depths of thesoul, the zeitgeist or the aesthetic as such, is in a sim-ilar vacuum. there is no aesthetic as such, even if itappears in mathematical considerations. the aestheticlies in the thing.wittgenstein is aware that he has left everything in

ruins behind him. a pure arrangement of languagewas intended to appear, and everywhere there arefragments. he has to think again.use reveals the correctness of things that fit

together. use reveals fact. the constellation of what iscorrect is established by use.with this a last purpose of the world disappears into

the speculative distance. things are justified in thebalance of assignment, in use itself, in proving them-selves immanently, and in their own demonstration ofthe correct. there is no longer any heteronomy.the prophet of rational clarity and calculation

returns to the penance of describing use. just no moretheory please. don’t think, look! explanations must beswept away, to be replaced by description.visual thinking, that kant understood as anschauung

and aesthetic judgement, is applied by wittgenstein tothe consideration of use. functionalism orientatedtowards science now leads to a description and not areason. seeing how things behave, seeing how wordsare used, seeing how something is done. “it is not pos-sible to guess how a word functions. one must look atits application and learn from it.”this is not intended to lead to behaviourism. man is

not in direct contact with the world. we do not graspthe world as world, but in its copy as language. butwe experience what language achieves by handling it.and philosophers should no longer talk about beingsand their speech, but about table, chair and door. theyshould look at the language that is spoken.in a similar way design is concerned with instru-

ments, tools, artefacts, not with the world. but theway they are to look should no longer be determined

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by form, the aesthetic principle, but by use. form doesnot result from a code, however clear, not from art,but from application. just as the most precise logicalcalculation possible cannot approach the message oflanguage, in the same way concern with pure form isan obstacle to understanding the appearance of anobject or determining its shape.without an attitude of this kind, without this kind

of life-form, we are trapped in the cage of a self-created claim for purity, clarity, calculation. to approachlanguage we should contrive language games, examinelanguage models and set up algorithms of its modalities.it should be tested.this kind of philosophy is an activity, is work. yes,

it is an attitude, a point of view. wittgenstein uses theword “lebensform”, “life-form” for it. languagebecomes accessible through language games from aparticular life-form, from a particular way of handlingwords.the affinity with design becomes increasingly clear.

design is handling things before it can be knowledge.design renounces the aesthetic absolutism of art andlooks for the aesthetic of use. not because the twothings are different. just as the absolute calculation ofsystematic logic distorts the world, art as a message inprinciple distorts access to things. it adheres rigidly toits principles, repeats its methods, instead of findingclose contact with facts and artefacts. the life-form ofclose contact with things and investigation of shapein models and experimental games is only possible byrenouncing “higher things”. what one gains is open-ness, an open sea. reality opens up.otherwise it will not be possible to understand the

language of technology in design, the language ofminimal effort, the language of replacing force byintelligent structure, the language of networks ofmeaning, the language of the least extravagant struc-ture, the language of structural variety and the lan-guage of handling.in wittgenstein reflection about philosophy comes

together with reflection about design. there are goodreasons for this. wittgenstein was at home in the ar-chitectural debate of his period. he learned to under-stand architecture as work on oneself, similar to phi-losophy. thus he brought thinking and designing intoline and used philosophy as an aid in design argu-ment, and also design understood as an explanation-contribution to philosophy. there are no writings on

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the interconnection indicated here. wittgenstein workedwith furniture, designed window furniture and doorhandles, but he never said anything about it. his phi-losophy itself is design philosophy, first one of func-tionalistic calculation, narrowing down a solution bycalculation, then of phenomenal use.functionality as kant understood it is organization

directed at the senses.functionalism is orientation towards knowledge and

science.use is the renunciation of everything that wants to

explain, the thing itself expresses itself in its use.striving for a final, definitive, fixable truth, for sci-

entifically precise cognition is possibly the end ofhumanity. kant gave priority to aesthetic cognition ofthe rational conclusion. with wittgenstein and kantphilosophy went off in a fundamentally differentdirection. this direction intersects with design. notonly because wittgenstein did practical work in thisfield, but because design is concerned with the ques-tion: what can be manufactured, what should onemanufacture?, and also moves towards philosophy’squestion: how should a world look that can shelterhuman beings, and how should the human being lookwho can prevent his world from calling him intoquestion, even calling him physically into question?philosophy and design do not just have concepts incommon. they follow a common path as well. theyfind out what should be from use.philosophy and design are heading for the same

point, philosophy in thinking, design in making. thispoint is that our world is in a condition of manu-facturing itself. it is designed, it is made, we must seefrom use how good, how bad we are.

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Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn Verlag für Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH & Co. KG Rotherstraße 21, 10245 Berlin Deutschland www.ernst-und-sohn.de