Socrates' Ancestor: An Essay on Architectural Beginnings

Socrates' Ancestoris a rich and poetic exploration of architectural beginnings and the dawn of Western philosophyin preclassical Greece. Architecture precedes philosophy, McEwen argues, and it was here, in the archaic Greekpolis, that Western architecture became the cradle of Western thought. McEwen's appreciation of the early Greekunderstanding of the indissolubility of craft and community yields new insight into such issues as orthogonal planning and the appearance of the encompassing colonnade- the ptera or "wings" - that made Greektemples Greek.Who was Socrates' ancestor? Socratesclaims it was Daedalus, the mythical first architect. Socrates' ancestorswere also the first Western philosophers: the preSocratic thinkers of archaic Greece where the Greekcity-state with its monumental temples first came to light. McEwen brilliantly draws out the connections between Daedalus and the earliest Greekthinkers, between architecture and the advent of speculative thought. She argues that Greekthought and Greekarchitecture share a common ground in the amazing fabrications of the legendary Daedalus: statues so animated with divine life that they had to be bound in chains, the Labyrinth where Theseus slew the Minotaur, Ariadne's dancing floor in Knossos.Socrates' Ancestoris an exploration as remarkable for its clarity as for its avoidance of reductionism. Drawing as much on the power of myth and metaphor as on philosophical, philological, and historical considerations, McEwen first reaches backward: from Socratesto the earliest written record of Western philosophyin the Anaximander B1 fragment, and its physical expression in Anaximander's built work - a "cosmic model" that consisted of a celestial sphere, a map of the world, and the first Greeksun clock. From daedalean artifacts she draws out the centrality of early Greekcraftsmanship and its role in the making of the Greekcity-state. The investigation then moves James forward to a discussion of the polis and the first great peripteral temples that anchored for the meaning of "city." Indra Kagis McEwen teaches architecture at the National Theatre School of Canada and at I'Universite duQuebec a Montreal.