Journal of History and Culture Journal of History and Culture

j o u r n a l o f h i s t o r y a n d c u l t u r e
following words: “I had access to all the writings of the prophets; there was nothing which I did not know of that
had happened since the beginning.” 6 Senmut’s dramatic personification is typical in much of the pre-modern world
because “the execution of sacred and prestigious public works elevated the office of the architect.” 7
At this point it might be useful to ask why architects until today are unable to resist the Cartesian maxim
cogito ergo sum? Perhaps it is because the relationship between knowledge and existence remains connected to the
maxim ‘I think therefore I am’, which Descartes adapted to describe temporal reality. In his own words Descartes
explains what he meant by cogito ergo sum.
I knew that I was substance, the whole essence or nature is to think, and that for its existence there
is no need of any place, nor does it depend on any material thing; so that this ‘me,’ that is to say,
the soul by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from body, and is even more easy to know
that is the latter; and even if body were not, the soul would not cease to be what it is. 8
The statement cogito ergo sum is perhaps the most famous in the history of philosophy, it illustrates precisely
the opposite of what many world cultures believe to be true. Furthermore, cogito ergo sum suggests that thinking and
consciousness are the essence of being but it separates the mind from the body and the soul. The separation cripples
any sense of reality connected to the unity of all existence thus it has rendered architecture and culture divorced
from the knowledge of being.
To illustrate the point, cogito ergo sum is opposite to what the Aborigines tell us about ‘dreamtime’ which
points to the belief in the unity of all existence; in other words time and being are one and the same. Dreamtime
connects the physical world with the sacred world and the human world, dreamtime is the beginning of knowledge
which is antithetical to cogito ergo sum. In another example Claude Levi-Strauss defines the time-space relationship
in one expression: ‘reversible space and linear time’. His proclamation comes from the observation of so called
‘Primitive’ societies, where being, body, spirit and mind, are connected, broadly speaking, it could be argued that
in such societies no sacred edifice is separate from cosmological meaning.
Similarly, Le Corbusier’s words ‘taking possession of space’ is a metaphor of being, which carries over into
the matter of dwelling. Although his observation seems valid, it is no accident that his discursive archetype remains
decidedly Euro-centric and is not shared with all world cultures. For example the term ‘fana’ in Arabic is the denial
of self by endorsing God as the only inconceivable reality. It mirrors the term nirvana in Buddhism. In general we
43