THE SOUL OF IT
Chuck Swartz
2/5/03
We live in a time of great material wealth. With the integration of third world countries into a world economy through cheap labor; things, objects, are becoming ever more available for less and less money. We are truly awash in stuff. American culture is widely commented on by critics, both here and abroad, as overly materialistic. Materialism, a word with nearly universal negative connotations, may be one of the only points that both religious conservatives and liberal intellectuals can agree on. Indeed, material things, like clothes, cars, buildings, houses, and watches are generally thought of as the polar opposite of the ideas we ascribe to the spiritual, the things that matter, and, certainly to our concept of soul.
In my work as an architect, I commonly refer to objects, buildings, rooms, and houses as having "soul". My clients across the table generally nod in the affirmative, which means one of three things: that they kind of understand what I mean; they are just trying to get the meeting over, and don't want to invite yet another digression; or, they are just hoping that even though I am talking nonsense, their building will still turn out alright.
But I think we all know objects are not just objects. People intuitively know which buildings to keep and what to tear down; there seems to be a consensus on what constitutes a tourist destination. A country church is not just a room that seats seventy- five people. The Vietnam Veterans' Memorial in Washington, D.C., designed by Maya Lin, is not just another commemoration to heroism. The fact that the Volkswagen Beetle is the most popular car model of all time is not an accident, and the translucent, candy- colored, Apple iMac is not to be confused with the plethora of beige computers that marked the personal computer revolution.
In order to better understand man's relationships to objects, I would like to look at the concept of art. German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in distinguishing art from nature, defines art as that which would not have come into being without human intervention. Kant states the manmade object is produced by man, not in any way, but specifically by his intelligence, by the reason that makes him free.1 Man's humanity, creativity, his intelligence, is expressed and affirmed in, and by, the objects he makes. Objects made by man, art, as Thomas Aquinas, or his fellow traveler, Karl Marx, would understand it, pre-exist in the mind of the designer, architect, or builder in the form of ideas.2 Objects contain, in their very form, their generating idea.
But what does this have to do with soul?
Let's look at the definitions of the word "soul":
According to Webster's Dictionary of the English Language, soul can be defined as the following: (1) "The principle of life, feeling, thought, and action in humans, regarded as a distinct entity separate from the body, and commonly held to be separable in existence from the body; the spiritual part of the humans as distinct from the physical part." (2) "The spiritual part of humans regarded in its moral aspect, or as believed to survive death and be subject to happiness or misery in a life to come." (3) "The disembodied spirit of a deceased person." (4) "The emotional part of human nature." (5) "A human being, person." (6) "High- mindedness: noble warmth of feeling, spirit, or courage, etc..." These ideas are usually discussed in the realm of religion and ethics, and are not relevant to the discussion of objects, although the disembodied spirit of a junked Chrysler K- Car offers some comic possibilities.
Another set of Webster's definitions for soul has to do with African American culture. This set of definitions includes the following: (12) "Deeply felt emotion, as conveyed or expressed by a performer or artist." (13) "Soul music." (14) "of, characteristic of, or for, Black Americans or their culture."
I'm not going to assert that cars, houses, and chairs have soul, in the same sense as Aretha Franklin, James Brown, or Langston Hughes, but there are aspects of this understanding of soul that will be helpful later in this discussion.
The definition of soul, which can apply to objects, and not make me appear to be a crackpot, is (7) "the animating principle; the essential element or part of something" (8) "the inspirer or moving spirit of some action, movement, etc..." and (9) "the embodiment of some quality."
So, can an object have an animating principle? Inspire or move? Can it embody a quality? Of course.
Architecture can provide the easiest examples, because you can perceive a structure both as an object within the landscape, and you can also walk inside that object. Chartres Cathedral, a telephone booth, Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water, the Louisiana Super Dome, a greenhouse, and the viewing platform of the Empire State Building bring up strong and predictable reactions and associations. Physiological responses to light, dark, narrow, enclosed, and open spaces are all very powerful.
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