#31

Egypt <--> America

Emergence of "world style":

"To-day we no longer see 'Europe' but 'the World.' And we see also what is called 'world style'; and begin to suspect that neither to-day nor in ancient times is a world style possible which does not contain a large share of what we with our limited European outlook have hitherto in our superior manner dismissed as Americanism." (x)

Egypt as oasis

Kultur vs. Zivilisation -- Egyptians had no Kultur, only hyper-refined Zivilisation: Kunstformung des Daseins (trans as "artificiality of existence")

No warrior spirit; no Eros, only sexuality (perversity)

Technicity required to channel destructive force of Nile floods: "The Egyptian converts the catastrophic phenomenon of the inundations into an element of the highest fertility in just the same manner as a modern motor-engineer utilizes his explosions so as to convert them by clever calculation into highly advantageous power-producers. In both instances the decisive fact is the control of natural forces which are in their origin destructive. [...] Hydrometers, canals, dykes, and dams had to be devised by an ant-like intelligence in order to transform the destructive power of the elements into a utilitarian process of civilization. Egyptian fertility is unthinkable apart from a high degree of technical development." (5)

Egyptians may have overseen great advances in technology, but they did not use machines technologically in the strict sense of the term since the purpose of mechanical experimentation was spelled out in advance. Interesting, then, that in the 20s the Esprit Nouveau group, Corbusier in particular, advocated for a return to problems-based technicity (the problem must be stated in advance), as opposed to the non-teleological mode of scientific experimentation characteristic of technē in the Heideggerian sense of the term.

timelessness, fatelessness, no internal history (no personalities), only exterior (history of events) -- Erman-Ranke, Ägypten

infinite time -- but what about Egyptian space? (Cassirer?)

unsynthesized heterogeneity of religious cults: "The spectator of the Egyptian pantheon finds himself set down in a religious museum in which numerous but heterogeneous religious treasures have been gathered together and are kept under the charge of priestly officials. The impression grows ever stronger that these officials are absolutely unwilling to take upon themselves the task of bringing these treasures into intelligent association with one another. They are satisfied with putting them in superficial proximity to one another, and find in this nothing whatever to take offence at..." (13)

American architecture: "Here again we may cite for comparison America, where, for example, in architecture (in so far as it has grown out of American actualities, as in industrial buildings, factories, and grain-elevators, and does not appear in the dress of imitation European styles as a cosmopolitan cultured language devoid of character), a greatness and decisiveness of practical construction has been developed which is artistically of the highest value, and has rightly become the standard for the architecture of the new Europe, that is, of Europe under limitations which are no longer historical but technical." (23)
Who does Worringer have in mind? Which architects -- FLW? Plate 10, Model for the Central Aerodrome in Berlin by H. Koshina