--You're a philosopher; what are you doing writing about suburbs and theme parks?
--The text isn't just about those concrete issues; it also is offering an approach to thinking about places in general, and also about the mode of existence of cultural and social codes. Doesn't that sound philosophical?
--But you intellectuals are supposed to take the long view, and make grand general pronouncements about Being and Life and Society. Not make suggestions about architectural ornaments on suburban houses.
--That's a mode that was popular in the twentieth century, with all the alienated intellectuals, but if you take the longer view on philosophers you see they kept trying to do both. Plato wrote The Laws in excruciating detail; Aristotle talks about how to deliver political speeches, and the kind of agora the best society should have.
--But both of them are talking about ideals, not about their contemporary society, except to criticize it.
--That's not quite true of Aristotle, but let the point pass. Look instead at Epictetus talking about how to live the everyday, or Lucretius discussing scientific issues, or Aquinas on then current Church-State issues, or Leibniz on contemporary science, or Hegel on the English Reform Bill. . . .
--OK, but that's still not down to details of ornament.
--You are harping on some provisional suggestions meant to stimulate those who would be better than I at such creativity. But I would claim that even the very abstract discussions in this text are trying to offer a way of looking at -- being with -- being in -- current codes and social grammars, aware of them as they are, and as we are, joined in process, so that no current set of alternatives is seen as final, or unavailable for imaginative variation and supplementation.
(c) David Kolb, 1 August 2001