In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

96 ARRAYS
claiming maximal distance from the heroic subject-roles of the genius
and the creative artist, he embodies, at the same time, a variation within
the tradition of individuality. Homo faber is the old name for a new type
of identity that maintains the core element of an "inspired mind" but
that, in place of the self-reflexive inspiration of the genius, substitutes
inspiration that comes from contact with technical systems. In a program
for the Bauhaus School, which inaugurates its new buildings at Dessau
on Saturday, December 4 (Chronik, 198-199), the architect Walter
Gropius explains this change: "Only by constant contact with advanced
technology, with the diversity of new materials, and with new methods
of construction is the creative individual able to bring objects into a vital
relationship with the past, and to develop from that a new attitude to
design-namely, 'Determined acceptance of the living environment of
machines and vehicles'" (Galison, 717). Better than any other products
of the engineer's work, large buildings concretize the complexity of his
achievement, the social responsibility which it involves, and the paradoxicalloop
that ends up making the engineer an element of the "engine"
which he constructs. This is why the architect emerges as the most
paradigmatic incarnation of homo faber: "The architect? He was an
artist and is becoming a specialist in organization ... Building is only
organization: social, technical, economic, mental organization" (Galison,
717).
After resigning, on April 28, from his post as an elementary school
teacher in the village of Ottertal, where he has used corporal punishment
as an instrument in his role as a social engineer (Nedo and Ranchetti,
198ff.; Wuensche, 274f£.), Ludwig Wittgenstein decides to participate in
the construction of a private house for his wealthy sister, Margarete
Stonborough. What he seeks is a "legitimate challenge to his own individual
clear-headedness and sense of function" (Janik and Toulmin,
207). Both the shape of this house and the manifestos of Adolf Loos, the
architect with whom Wittgenstein collaborates, make it clear that such
a "sense of function," for him, implies the same stern-and even aggressive-ideas
about normative social behavior which have made Wittgenstein
a dramatic failure as a teacher. Loos writes: "Not every worker has
the right to possess a house and a garden, but only those who have the
yearning to develop a garden. Perhaps you would object that there is no
reason for being so strict, and why should workers not possess a little
luxury garden, with grassy lawns and roses? As I see it, I would sin