culture.the concept of ruin and the ruin of concepts

The Concept of Ruin and the Ruin of Concepts

Marius SIDORIUC Faculty of Philosophy, University “Al.I.Cuza” Iassy,

B-dul Carol I, 11 Iassy, 700506, Romania. [email protected].

Abstract. In the following pages I attempted to elaborate, in situ, on the conceptual reshapings realized by the concept of ruin and the ruin of concept starting from the question of the legitimacy of their construction. Ruins have an aesthetic, moral, political and religious power supervened on account of what historical, archaeological, epistemological, philosophical and other types of interpretation reorientate which is not conferred by their simple “objectality” but by the concept that includes them which shows a mutual inversion of the conceptual and causative connection of the forming process of ruins. I limited myself to searching how the concept of ruin is formed and the ruin of concepts shows structures which fall into topos (textual sources) and objects from which ruins are taken, without analyzing the multitude of concepts about ruins which require, methodically, separate analyses. Keywords: ruin, history, topos, topical connection, conceptual history, concept.

The interest for the concept of ruin and ruin of concepts, I think, has a very high stake if we follow the history of the concept from the perspective of that which justifies the speech on something as a ruin and the way in which marking the past, of anciens is delimited in texts (toposes), speeches. From a political point of view, ruins have a relational steak of power-language-legitimacy and, for example, the doctrine of political elites. Here is an example: the communist powers initiated a struggle to erase a past that was not convenient and that which was a trace, in ruin, was recontextualized, thus offering a “different vision” on the past.

In other contexts and with other intentions, the ruins of buildings such as castles, princely palaces, temples but especially those of ancient Egypt, Rome and Greece, were a great force for the opening of a historic corridor. Adolf Hitler's architect, Albert Speer, made not only the architectural model for the Zeppelin Field in Nuremberg but also how it would appear in ruin, over centuries. Speer was inspired by the ruins of the building site for the Zeppelin Field to devise a „theory of ruin value” (Ruinenwerttheorie). „This distressing sight made me think of an idea, which I

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later presented to Hitler pretentiously calling it: <<the theory on ruin value>>. Buildings made in the modern spirit were, without doubt, less able to throw to future generations that certain <<bridge to tradition>> that Hitler demanded. It was inconceivable that some stacks of rusty iron could inspire the same heroic enthusiasm as the monuments of the past which Hitler admired. My <<theory>> was searching for a way to get past this dilemma.”1

This Nazi ideology indicates the strenght that ruins have to show to generations „after hundreds or (by our reckoning) even after thousands of years.”2 Certainly, the induction that worked here is caused by history which spoke of those worlds that could not have disappeared but from which only ruins remain. Just as Mussolini could select from the history of the Roman Empire only those discursive forms that spoke of power, domination, happiness, so did Hitler exercise his authority through the monumentality of buildings. But these are not just simple whims of megalomania. The change of the history of the concept of ruin from which the only thing that remained was the grandeur and its projection on the new buildings changed not only the type of narration of the history already written but also the form of the future which will have to appeal to „the theory of ruin value” (Ruinenwettheorie) not only critically but also by the comprehension of the pressure exercised on the past and the future through the ideological selections used. This situation, somewhat paradoxical, has to be understood as the perpetuation of past concepts, as indestructibility: force instead of decadence, justice instead of injustice. These concepts connected to ruins thus unilaterally modified the past. After this mystification of the past, the rullers of the new empire also used the ideology of the future regarding the ruins of the future to make it long lasting, so that they would be unambiguously understood. In other words, the empire imposes its mark on the future only in the spirit of the grandeur that the founders of the empire predicted.

In what follows, I do not intend to describe a topos of ruins by a classification because neither the space, nor the motivation of this essay does not allow it and on the other hand, a classification of ruins based on a particular feature is equivocal, the same ruin can be interpreted and reclassified according to other interests.

Recent history attempts a change on the perception of ruin as in the case of artificial ruins. The American architect James Wines has

1 Albert Speer, In umbra lui Hitler. Memorii, Editura Nemira, Bucureşti, 1997, vol. I., p. 76. 2 Idem.

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designed an Indeterminate Façade Showroom located between Texas and Houston, inaugurated in 1975. The building in deconstruction style was, in fact, a reconsideration of the conceptual links regarding ruins.

Also, we can conceptually retrieve, in different ways, the ruins of armed confrontations ("a ghost town") like Agdam city in Azerbaijan (ruined and parasite as a result of the war in the Nagorno-Karabakh region), Kayaköy town in Turkey, near the city of Fethiye which was left by the Greeks after the Greek-Turkish war of 1919-1922, as another example, the town of Oradour-sur-Glane (in occitan of Oradea Glane), another „object-ruin” as a result of confrontation between Germany and France (10th June 1944 the Nazis killed nearly all the inhabitants). This latter city ruin is now closed and has the status of a memorial. Indicating these former populated towns as ruins is not a simple conceptualization.

Like so many other examples that can be given (the ruins of Kosovo, Serbia, Iraq-as places of recent ruins as a result of conflicts), these ruins are interpreted, at a conceptual level, from a succession of views, moral, political, religious, cultural, etc., an aspect which proves that by ruin we do not only understand past, it was but what makes them say something as ruins. The memorial status already changes a part of the semantic area of the ruins from Oradour-sur-Glane. In a particular way, the Nazi gas chambers are now tourist ruins and the reference to them is, therefore, sometimes exaggerated, being epecially denied of the conceptual history of the horrible branch of nazi crimes.

The ruin as reality, in a speech delivered on it, is not only an object with a simple causality but its meanings become so varied that it becomes hard to define what a ruin is. To argue this statement, we have the cases of the towns or villages which, after the fall of communism, have become traces of a ruined power. Promyshlennyy town in Vokuta region of Komi Republic (former USSR), is today a strange alignment of ruins but no less a history of Soviet communism. Similarly we can point out Kombinat (industrial ruins), the factories, built under communism which in the period that followed the 90’s imposed an excessive literature of assumptions, criticisms, nostalgia, etc. This aspect writes and rewrites history starting exactly from ruins through which, inevitably, the spirit gives them values which are in contrast with the current ones. Although contradictory, this type of reference produces an interesting duplicity, ruins bring an interpretation which is moral, religious, etc. depending on which side it is viewed from: the past or the present of the building-ruin link.


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Totalitarian politics have also imposed a certain conceptual rectification to the historical past in what concerns ruins: using them in objectives that got them lost or, for technological reasons, moving them, as in the case of the ruins of the castle-fortress on the Ada-Kaleh island near Orsova town (Romania) built by the Austrians in the XVIII century, then taken over by the Turks and in the second half of the twentieth century "moved" the Simian island, downstream, due to work at the Iron Gate I hydro power plant. The dam raised water level in the Danube area approximately 40 feet, which required the evacuation of the island. The moving on Simian island was in the end partial but the concept of the recovery of the ruins is open to debate.3

The ruins of recent history are not only those due to the two World Wars, armed conflicts which cover the twentieth century and the beginning of this one with blood or to nuclear accidents (Chernobyl) but also to nature (hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.). Using the term ruin in various situations, from the above to that which describes the state of a man, a social system or even nature itself, manifests not only different meanings but also different comprehension on the same concept, the concept of ruins.

In historical sciences the semantic field of the terms „mythologization”, „demythologization” and the „demythologization of demythologization” (Vattimo) involves reorientation in conceptual geography in reference to ruins, in archeology we meet that type of retrievement of ruins as vestiges depending on the cultural value which they are given. In the aesthetic, moral and religious domains ruins are not only passive concepts but also form the substratum of specific references to the purpose of life, values, social practices, etc.

When Edward Gibbon was finishing‚ The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, after approximately 20 years of feverish work, he gazed one more time on Rome and could not resist writing about its ruins. The history which he was just ending, this book which also was to come alive through its lecturers, had to talk about the ruins which form his most lively subject. Gibbon cites a fragment from Poggius: „This spectacle of the world,

3 Watch the documentary made by the Cinematography Studio “Alexandru Sahia”, Bucharest, 1968, made at “the request of Historical Monuments Directorate, ... with the contest of the Portile de Fier Turnu Severin Museum.” A documentary which certified the subversively entwined propaganda with a form of nostalgia of that which won’t happen – moving the ruins of the stronghold. Also, the debate on finalizig the moving was reopened in the year 2005, this time for the purpose of tourism.


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how is it fallen! how chanced! how defaced! the path of victory is obliterated by vines, and the benches of the senators are concealed by a dunghill.”4 Although it seems to be a human discouragement, Poggius’ cry (he was one of the officials of Pope Eugene IV) holds a moralizing sense which reaches, through ruins, the decaying/decadent classicism. Thus, the concept of ruin marks an approximation between periods with other values and without any logical justification, putting misshaping on account of decadence, on the ignorance of the contemporaries of the Enlightenment. But Gibbon’s metaphor connects the moral values to the ruin in contrast with those before the XVIII century, which shows a reversal of the reference to ruin.

In the imaginary‚ A dialogue between Marcus Aurelius and a recollet friar, written in 1751 by Voltaire we see a harsh critisism regarding religion practised by Franciscans. The imaginary Marcus Aurelius talks to a Franciscan monk and finds out that Jupiter’s place was taken by the Pope, the column with the statue of Antonius, his father, was changed with another (of St. Paul). After the reproach of the monk regarding the Christians’ persecutions Marcus Aurelius finds that now it is about the inquisition. In one word, everything decayed, was ruined or, if we look through the eyes of the monk, another being was born. „The ancient masters of the world are now become music-masters (…) We have, it is true, none of your Scipios now, those drestroyers of Carthage; but then we have none of your proscriptions neither. We have bartered glory for tranquillity.”5 At the end of the dialogue, Marcus Aurelius is excomunicated because he dared to think and was ruining Christianity. “I admire the vicissitude of human affairs; but since everything is so liable to change, and since the Roman Empire has experienced this wonderful mutability, let me hope the recollets may also experience it in their turn.” At this remark, the monk harshly says: „I declare you anathematized: but hold, now I think on’t, it is time to go to matins.”6 Ruins cannot be contextualised here as simple accessories or extensions of the concept of ruin but in the way in which the orientation of the Enlightenment in history involves reshaping the values of Christianity in parallel with the resignifying already done by Christianity.

4 Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Printed by J. F. Dove, St. John’s Square, London, 1825, vol. VIII, p. 368. 5 Voltaire, Dialoguri şi Anecdote filozofice în volumul Candid sau optimismul, Editura Hyperion, Chişinău, 1993, p. 296. 6 Ibidem, p. 297.


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The urbanistic conception is another way of changing ruins and, therefore, history. Not less important are the fields of ruins prophesied and "proven" in the socio-human sciences. Here is how Otto Liebmann, in 1912, was trying to prove „Die Hauptlehre und der Hauptfehler Kants” (Kant’s Main Error and Main Doctrine): "Our task is to separate the true kantian doctrine content from what is just full of slag foreign substances.”7 Examples in this regard are of an overwhelming recurrence.

Through this incomplete list, we followed only a small part of the topical connections which refer to the concept of ruin.8 Through topical connection I understand the approach which forms the history of a concept, encountered in different authors and in different ages in a wider textual field without distinguishing through this a larger polysemy but sighting something which can be called topos related to the concerned concept. I will clarify what I understand by connected topos below with reference to the conference held by Michel Foucault in 1969, What is an author? In the following, I am concerned with analysing the forming of the concept of ruin and what it implies if we consider the concept of "fusion of horizons" in H.G. Gadamer. To do this I will first show the causal link between the building and the ruin and the significance of the topical connection between these two. This is supported by two types of causal links, one from object and the other from the histories meaning toposes which make the enunciations about something as building or ruin possible. I see the building as something material on which the human spirit has left its mark in a certain way. But in the last part of the essay, I will not use the term building in this material way in which it can be seen as a human creation but as those toposes on which interpretation indicated systems on which the critical method overflows by using syntagms which contain the meanings of ruining and ruins.

The conceptual forming of ruin

7 Otto Liebman, Doctrina principala si principala eroare a lui Kant (fragment din volumul Kant

und die Epigonen, Berlin, reuthber & Richard, 1912, p. 18-19) în Filosofie neokantiană în texte, Editura ŞtiinŃifică, Bucureşti, 1993, p. 49. 8 A more than generous bibliography was written on the topic of ruin. I will only specify three titles; Roland Mortier, La poétique des ruines en France. Ses origins, ses variations de la renaissance à Victor Hugo, Droz, Geneva, 1974; Murielle Hladik, Traces et fragments dans l’esthétique japonaise, Editions Mardaga, Wavre (Belgique) 2008; Didier Maleuvre, Museum Memories: History, Technology, Art, Stanford University Press, California, 1999, etc.


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How are ruins formed? What do we call ruins? When is it just to inquire if something is a ruin? I think it is impossible to speak of a type of ruin as object-ruin als ob this would be an unquestionable reality. We should not count on habits. Spongia solis9. I think that for Blaise Pascal spongia solis is not finding out that there is an end and that nature predicts it but the way in which it shows the hint the one who reads nature only by „number, space, movement and believes all this and nothing but this.”10 On the other hand, if „our nature is habit”, as Pascal says, it means that the Christian that got used to believing, „believes and can’t stop fearing hell nor can he believe otherwise.”11 But, as Pascal says, the nobleman’s habit of thinking that he naturally deserves everything is useless. To bring arguments for his statement, Pascal offers the metaphor of the castaway and the island’s inhabitants which were looking for their king. The castaway arrives on the island and is taken as their king. For these two situations, one which refers to social habits, to governance and laws and the other which refers to faith, we observe that Pascal uses the expression spongia solis with double meaning. Why is it that in one way, such as social, spongia solis torments us and in another way, such as religious, it should not burden us with problems because we know certain fundamentals of the latter? But what gives it certitude if we see spongia solis?

In the case of ruins, in a certain way, out of habit, it is concluded that experience shows us ruins. It is not important that we give a definition to ruin because it is only useful for its etymology. I think that it is better to point out differences rather than give definitions. In a fascinating book dedicated to the aesthetics of ruins, Robert Ginsberg notes: "Since something is missing in a ruin, then something appears to be amiss with ruins. By definition, a ruin is the irreparable remains of a human construction, by a destructive act or process, no longer dwells in the unity of the original, but may have its own unitis that we can enjoy. This is a working definition. It work for this book.”12 But, in the chapter about ruins as form, the link between ruin and building becomes ambiguous. "The death of function in the ruin spells the life of form. Forms, when freed, spring forth in attention. (...) Sky and free space are the new context for the form that won its way free from building. The fresh form may not have

9 Spots on the sun (lat.). 10 Blaise Pascal, Cugetări, Editura StiinŃifică, Bucureşti, 1992, p. 198. 11 Idem. 12 Robert Ginsberg, The aesthetics of ruins, Edition Rodopi, B.V., Amsterdam-New York, 2004, p. XVII.


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had a noticeable existence in its previous inarcation as a function or as part of pattern in facade. Then, it was a use or an element, not truly a form.”13 How can we understand Ginsberg’s beautiful expression as "liberated from the arhitectural, the form is purely formal" without changing the concept of ruin, the very definition of ruin.

We have two problems here. The first: at a factual level we cannot have the experience of a ruin in an a priori way. We know we’re standing in front of a ruin because a month ago it was something with a certain performance. From here, if we follow the inductive method, we will not be certain that something will become a ruin. In the frontispiece of work Aedes Barberinae ad Quirinalem a Comite Hieronymo Tetio Descriptae (by G Girolamo Teti, 1647), Guido Ubaldo Abbatini shows the muse of History, Clio, which writes the name of Barberini Palace in her book. If we read this work from left to right, the imposing Barberini Palace looks like a victory over the ruins portrayed on the left side of the muse. But through her presence, Clio is already writing this palace’s name in the book of history since it will have a similar fate as that of the remaining pillar of what was once a maybe even more imposing building. Thus, we owe the causality between ruin and building to the muse of history who wrote about these two moments. The second problem: something’s ruins tell us nothing as long as we do not know anything about that something. The „Maison Carree” ruins in Nimes are named so because we know from certain sources that „Maison Carree” used to be there (the name itself does not have a story). Moreover, we know something about ruins, if we think of the work „Maison Carree” signed by Hubert Robert in 1783, in a descriptive way. As I will show, the way in which we interpret these situations, changes, at a conceptual level, the geography of the ideas about ruins, thing which makes the concept of ruin manifest an impressive force on the past and the future (conceptually but also in our relation with history).

The ruin as an object is the effect of that building’s ruining. The building does not exist anymore. Now, there is only the ruin. We cannot deny in any way the causal link between building and ruin (as objects). But this does not show anything about the characteristics of the ruin even if technically, and not just conceptually, historically, we would find forms of that which used to be a building. First of all, let’s see what it means that not even technically can we bring evidence diferent from that of interpretation although we cannot deny any of the two. By using archaeological methods and by the scientific presentation, in situ, of that which was, for example,

13 Ibidem, p. 15.


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„the guest hall”, „the warehouse”, etc., I understand the things which make it possible and not the things that show that this was the guest hall, etc. In other words, before we can say „this was the king’s room” archaeological language states something like „this is the king’s room” because, according to our measurements and to stories and documents we know this should be „the king’s room”. What does this mean?

Measurements and maps of the ruins are mathematical and geographical statements which show certain links between parts of the ruins but they are not capable of saying‚ this was „the king’s room”, „this was the cellar in which wine barrels were kept”. Only if we have certain historical sources, if we know certain texts which talk about such things or if we have written testimonies about the types of constructions in that period or if we can find certain similarities and the usual mathematic and geographic sentences tell us something.

This situation is less obvious with recent ruins because of oral stories being more than texts, analyses, conceptualizations. In front of a ruined church, we already know that it is a ruined church, just as well we recognize a ruined castle, a ruined palace. But we do not know this a priori. We make correlations between the two objects because we know that it was a palace and now they are the ruins of a palace (certainly, we can find particular elements of the church in the ruin but these, as simbols, mean nothing without a prior knowledge of their meaning). Why is this distinction important?

The ruins of something is a powerful source of conceptual remodeling of the past exactly through that something. And this reorganization of the past, of history has the power over the future. The ruins of a „bourgeois” castle, in class struggle language, continues to show „bourgeois” characteristics and because of this they try to change its functions first of all materially then conceptually by classifying them as outdated. But the proposed neologism, in fact, shows the conceptual change is also made on the building’s history which, after becoming a ruin, took other functions. A bigger evidence is the conversion of the St. Sophia church in Constantinople into a mosque. Edward Gibbon admirably described the moment in which the „symbol” of Orthodox Christianity was resignified. This resignifying started with the ruins of the church because, as a ruin it would have continued to transcend in time with all the conceptualizations about Christianity, which would’ve been against the intentions of Mahomed the second. The sultan, in order to encourage his soldiers, entitled them to everything in the city, except the buildings. These


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have a capital steak for the remodeling of the past of the newly conquered town. Otherwise, its conquering would not have counted in its architectural geometry and thus would not have been so powerfull in historical texts.

”At the principal door of St. Sophia, he alighted from his horse, and entered the dome; and such was his jealous regard for that monument of his glory, that on observing a zealous Mussulman in the act of breaking the marble pavement, he admonished him with his scimitar, that, if the spoils and captives were granted to the soldiers, the public and private buildings had been reserved for the prince. By his command the metropolis of the eastern church was transformed into a mosch: the rich and portable instruments of superstition had been removed; the crosses were thrown down; and the walls which were covered with images and mosaics, were washed and purified, restored to a state of naked simplicity. On the same day, or on the ensuing Friday, the muezin, or crier ascended the most lofty turret, and proclaimed the ezan, or public invitation in the name of God and his prophet.” 14

Thus, the ruin is not just a former building with certain functionalities. The ruin, temporally speaking, is diferent, it was not part of the geography of the „world long gone”. But it obtains the attribute of ruin by the information on the world, the functions which animated the buildings. Certainly, from the point of view of conceptual history, if I understood Koselleck, it is necesary to make a distinction between history in eventu and ex eventu because language cannot contain the whole process of the event.

If we take for example the history of Christianity, as it was present in Cappadocia in the light of the ruins which are accesible to us, these can only describe their history in a way that implies a certain orientation of the values (concepts) of Christianity. As Koselleck concludes, „from a linguistic point of view, we cannot say, at a given time, less or more than the historical reality which we want to describe.”15 But, on the other hand, ruins have the status of ruin in accordance to something so they already interpret something from the concepts of history.

14 Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Printed by J. F. Dove, St. John’s Square, London, 1825, vol. VIII, p. 253. 15 Reinhart Koselleck, Conceptele şi istoriile lor, trad. rom. Gabriel H. Decuble şi Mariana Oruz, Editura Art, Bucureşti, 2009, p. 65.


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For conceptual history, the link between concepts and reality is indeed essential and, according to Heiner Schultz, 4 situations can be distinguished: the concept and the concerned reality maintain their synchronic and diachronic correspondence, the concept changes it’s meaning but the designated reality keeps it’s consistence, the meaning of a word stays the same but reality is reshaped and the last case of disjuction. For Koselleck, "in this case (the fourth - no), only the method of conceptual history can identify what reality was designated once by a particular concept.”16 In our case, the concept of ruin changed its meanings in conformity with historical reality but historical reality has resignified its meanings too (artificial ruins, ruins from nuclear experiments, etc.). Also, if we agree with the conceptual history systematized by Koselleck, we "decide by using language if the facts from the past were linguistically conditioned or not.”17 It is obvious that only through texts (toposes) or through oral tradition can we find out what happened in the past. Relics (monuments, coins, ruins, etc..) do not say anything about the past if they were not historically recorded. But, Koselleck adds, „that which certainly could’ve happened is established with certainty, starting from hypotheses, only on the basis of what was transmitted in writting and verbally, or on the basis of linguistic evidence. But only with linguistic sources can the distinction be made between <<what is said>> and what can be recorded as being‚ <<what really happened>> in the past.”18

As we can see, this is an answer of the type regressus ad infinitum. Following the Kantian maxim, „thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind”19, Reinhart Koselleck eliminated this supposed circularity. But, the Kantian maxim is a solution to the link between cause and effect, or, as it is called, the induction method. For David Hume the cause-effect relation is disprovable. But something else intervenes. It is the conclusion deduced from experience. It is probable. This situation poses real difficulties when it comes to the use of methods the conceptual history works with, even if it “tries to find an answer to questions such as <when>>, <<where>>, <<by whom>>, <<to whose benefit>> and <<how>> some realities or intentions are interpreted.”20

16 Ibidem, p. 58. 17 Ibidem, p. 16. 18 Ibidem, p. 17. 19 Immanuel Kant, Critica raŃiunii pure, trad. rom. Nicolae Bagdasar şi Elena Moisuc, Editura Iri, Bucureşti, 1998, p. 96. 20 Reinhart Koselleck, op. cit., p. 87.


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The Cappadocia ruins, as well as those of Ajanta or Cordoba, were the object of special meditation. For the creator of “the writing of stones”, these ruins are the sign of “a new order”, a world in which the earth and the sky switched places in the eyes of he who contemplates the ruins, trying to identify or follow orientation laws. The broken columns of the Cappadocia ruins have their basis placed upside down, as if sustained by the sky. “If the windows are large, they have one or two columns. I found myself in front of such a column which was broken. The middle part, about a third of the entire column, was missing. The void between the upper and the lower parts, now part of that which is an indispensable support in any other case, that interruption of the necessary support had not been an impediment for centuries in a row.”21 What could be the meaning of this? “What was the final goal of those artists who carved in stone? To win over hardships? This looks like a profane performance (…) above all, their desire not to break the navel string between the earth and the gods.”22 This answer that Caillois offers might sound too poetical. But is it so? What exactly does he have in mind when he refers to such words as "profane" and “navel string”, the latter used as the element which establishes a connection between the earth and the stone? Does this reflect the first Christians' beliefs? We can obviously come up with answers to questions such as “when”, “where”, “by whom”, to whose benefit” and “how” but these answers will not include the connections which would have been made in the historical past by re-organising the future of the ruin (in connection with the edifice). In my opinion, Roger Caillois' ideas are a conceptual reorganisation of the topical connections of the past. “The new order” which he mentions, the reversal of the columns' basis does not influence the way the Christians are perceived, but it changes the way they themselves perceive the world. The alteration of “the new order” is a false demarcation, if we were to use Gadamer's words, as by the simple presence of the ruins, the conceptual history has undergone mutations as far as both the future and the past are concerned. I consider these mutations conceptual re-organisations and topical connections. But let's try and find out why the induction method plays such an important role when discussing about ruins and the objectives of the conceptual history. As Hume noted in An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding:

21 Roger Caillois, Fluviul Alfeu, trad. rom. Adrian Istrate, Editura Nemira, Bucureşti, 1997, pp. 24- 25. 22Ibidem, p. 26.


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"all arguments brought to the very idea of existence are based on the connection between cause and effect, on the fact that everything we know about this relationship is entirely the result of experience and that all our conclusions related to the experience itself have the idea of a concordance between the past and the future as a starting point. Therefore, trying to demonstrate the validity of this last supposition by using probable arguments or certain views on the idea of existence would definitely mean moving in circles and taking for granted what should actually be subject to examination.”23

If I understood correctly, the inferences on the future, in our case – what we call a ruin – are inversed towards the past, i. e. the edifice. Thus, the past, the topos, will witness a reconfiguration of its conceptual geography. In other words, the topical connections will change their conceptual networks, but a connection also presupposes a discontinuity, up to a certain extent.

As I have already pointed out, the linguistic arguments have the written sources as a starting point and the geometric statements cannot conceptualise the past unless the latter can be included in a topos. The concept of the ruin "takes its power" from the relationship between cause and effect (edifice - ruin) on the one hand and from the topical connection between ruin and edifice on the other hand. How else could we identify the significance of the journey Kazantzakis takes in native Greece and the observations he makes and which are related to the ruins if not by taking first into consideration the changes he brought in the history of the Hellenic people that he was so much preoccupied with? The answer of that woman who guarded the Temple of Apollo Epicurius from the Bassae area (the Bassai meaning "little vale in the rocks"), in the Peloponnese region, made a strong impression on the writer. The temple is currently being restored and the image of Bassae is depressing. But during the fall of 1955, when Kazantzakis started working on his novel Report to Greco those ruins looked differently, just the way they were in his youth. The old woman he meets at the Temple of Apollo Epicurius tells him that those ruins are nothing more than stones. Did she say this because of her lack of knowledge? No. “What are all these around us? I asked. Stones, what else? And why do people come from all corners of the world to see them? She

23 David Hume, Cercetare asupra intelectului omenesc, trad. rom. Mircea Flonta, Adrian-Paul Iliescu şi ConstanŃa NiŃă, Editura ŞtiinŃifică şi Enciclopedică, Bucureşti, 1987, p. 114.


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hesitated for a moment, then she lowered her voice and asked: Are you a foreigner? No, I am a Greek. She took my answer as a sort of encouragement and shrugged her shoulders: "Those fools!" she exclaimed, bursting into laughter. (…) It was not the first time when I saw one of those old women, a sort of guardians of the old temples and famous churches with miraculous icons, sinfully laughing at the marble-made old saints or demons on which they were keeping an eye.”24

This comparison between the Temple of Apollo Epicurius and simple stones does not mock history itself. The whole Report is dominated by the laudative tone used when invoking the ancient Greeks. Just as he perceived the geometry of the Place of Minos at Knossos and the bloody fights with the bulls, Kazantzakis tries to find the harmony of the past in contemporary Greece. These reinterpretations are the world the Report depicts. This is how he achieved his purpose by fulfilling his moral duties to Greco. “The trifles” that the old woman mentions do not only suggest the distance she takes from history, but they imply a conceptual reinterpretation of the topical connections (the myths, the deities etc). How is the topical connection between the edifice and the ruin achieved?

I will try and answer this question by analyzing the dialectical concept of the “fusion of the horizons” introduced by H.G. Gadamer in his book, Truth and Method. The concept of ruin - a topical connection The concept of the ruin entails a topical (or oral) connection which makes the distinction between two temporal objectualities (the edifice – the ruin) through their conceptual delimitations. Their cause-effect and conceptual succession are conversed and "the reality" of the object is rendered not only by their presence/absence, but also by the way they are disposed in the conceptual geography.

In other words, this is how my thesis can be summed up: the concept of the ruin is derived from the connections made between various texts or oral traditions which alters one by one the causal relationship between edifice and ruin as well as the conceptual one. But what must be really taken into account is the differentiation it presupposes and which legitimizes the reference to something which is considered a ruin.

24 Nikos Kazantzakis, Raport către El Greco, trad. rom. Alexandra Medrea-Danciu, Editura Univers, Bucureşti, 1986, pp. 176 – 177.


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As a concept, the ruin is a specific "remembrance" of the past. In fact, it is a re-location, a re-orientation which can comprise the fictionality, idealization, criticism etc., of the concepts which are already present in works. The archaeological research, after the discovery of the ruins from Hamoukar in Syria for instance, have an impressive force of re-orienting the concepts we have about the past. However, special attention must be paid not only to the object of Clemens Reichel's research, but also to the way his interpretation will reshape local history having the archaeological research at Hamoukar as a starting point. "Clemens Reichel's excavations at Hamoukar in Syria are reshaping our ideas about the roles of warfare, trade, and geography in the origins of ancient Near Estern cities.”25

The conceptual history which has captured my attention does not take into consideration the temporality related to the concept of the ruin, but if referring to the above-mentioned causal relationship, my objective is to identify the differences which, if considered topical connections, say something about the concept of the ruin.

For this reason, even if "all concepts have an internal temporal structure" according to Reinhart Koselleck, and "depending on how many precursory contents were accumulated within a concept and how many expectations with innovating effect are connected with its use, it has different temporal values”26, these aspects are not any indication of the reasoning through which we can conclude that we are dealing with the concept of a ruin. Not everything that is history is also conceptualized, nor does the ruin cause a turn in history. The topical connections between the ruin and the edifice are not thus just a matter of continuity but also of discontinuity (only that these are thus conceptualized and modified when taking interpretative and comprehensive steps).

I believe that this is how we could better understand the way the same ruin has such an enormous power of touristic or aesthetical attraction and how it constitutes the object of moral, teleological or theological discourse, as well as the way it stirs mixed feelings of melancholy, sublime, horror, etc. The concept of the ruin does not accumulate a series of interpretations in connection with the ruin as object from a historical point of view. In the same manner in which Collingwood demonstrated that the

25 The Oriental Institute 2006 – 2007 Annual Repport, The University of Chicago, 2007, in Gil J. Stein’s Introduction, p. 8. (also avaible at http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/pubs/ar/06-07/). 26 Reinhart Koselleck, Conceptele şi istoriile lor, trad. rom. Gabriel H. Decuble şi Mariana Oruz, Editura Art, Bucureşti, 2009, p. 87.


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history of a problem is constantly changing, as well as its solutions, the concept of the ruin can be analyzed in the topical connections which were identified at a certain moment and in a certain author's work.27

In his Autobiography, the criticism Collingwood brings to the “Realists at Oxford” brings the question of a concept's durability into discussion. For Collingwood, it has become obvious the way the Realists have conceived the history of the philosophy as being useless. They believed that the philosophical answers on a certain topic could be indexed through filter options such as author, period. For Collingwood, this was only an illusion because the answers offered by various philosophers to the concept of the state for example, did not only refer to one and the same state, while their very questions are based on such a difference. The “<<Realists>> believed that the identity includes the identity of something “universal” and the distinction which had to be made was to draw the line between these two instances of the “universal”. But things look a little different. The identity refers to the identity of a historical process, while the difference directs the attention towards the difference between something which throughout this process has turned into something else and another thing, that in which the first transformed itself.”28

Rousseau is fascinated by the ruins because while reading Jean Chardin's book, the inscriptions at Tchelminar (Persepolis) which were described by the author have caught his attention. “I do not know why so little is being said about these amazing ruins; whenever I read about Chardin's description, I find myself in a totally different world. I believe that all these things could be the object of deep meditation.”29 He believed that the inscriptions were capable of showing him the ”almost frightening age” of the language and he felt the presence of the primary language.

The ruins have also been the object of meditation on vanity, memento mori, the fall of the state, or on the contrary, on the greatness of ancient civilizations. Nature itself of even human nature have also been associated with the ruin. For Thomas Burnet, nature-ruin, was an unchallenged theory, as presented in his book The theory of the Earth (Telluris theoria sacra). But how did Burnet conceive the earth as ruin? I think that

27 R.G. Collingwood, O autobiografie filosofică, trad. rom. Florin LobonŃ şi Claudiu Mesaroş, Editura Trei, Bucureşti, 1998, p. 89. 28 Ibidem, p. 84. 29 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Eseu despre originea limbilor, unde se vorbeşte despre melodie şi despre imitaŃia muzicală, trad. rom. Eugen Munteanu, Editura Polirom, Iaşi, 1999, p. 32.


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the only explanation is the fact that for him, the earth has really turned into a ruin, otherwise Burnet does not tell us anything at all. The divinity, the paradise were real, but Burnet realizes that this is no longer true. Here, it is not necessary to invoke the correspondence theory of truth, but only to believe, just like Burnet did, that Heaven was real, in order to understand the arguments he had in order to sustain the idea of the earth seen as ruin.

However, these mutations the meanings of the concept of ruin have undergone follow the principle of the causality between the edifice and the ruin, to which historical, aesthetical or moral interpretations will be added. But each of these cases does not speak only about the actual ruin-object, but also about the histories reflected in the ruin, which suggest a certain manner of reorganizing the world. Nevertheless, since the ruin does not carry a meaning in itself, except for the correlations with the edifice, it is not enough to understand the contexts in which one can speak about a ruin and associate certain causes to it: the forces of nature or spiritual (cultural) ones have been subject to moral and aesthetic interpretation. One must also take into consideration the probable affirmations the latter infer. "The fusion of horizons" and the ruins of concepts

As Gadamer indicates with reference to his hermeneutic method, comprehending tradition should not be an “inadequate adaptation” to the requirements of the present. In short, the fusion of the horizons of the one who conducts research and of the transmitted tradition, presupposes a transposition of the self in the other's situation. The horizon, Gadamer reveals, is not extracted by a transposition in a historical situation, we must have it if we want to achieve that transposition. Thus, “the concept of the <<horizon>> is not far fetched in this case, as it expresses the superior clear-sightedness.”30

As I have already pointed out, the “ruin-object” does not presuppose the abolition of the edifice world and its reinterpretation. Only by the existence of the concept of the ruin, this position is sustained in the same manner in which one can admit (as Simmel does) that the ruins are a reconciliation between spirit and nature and it “can be fully integrated in

30 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Adevăr şi metodă, trad. rom. Gabriel Cercel şi Larisa Dumitru, Gabriel Kohn, Călin Petcana, Editura Teora, Bucureşti, 2001, p. 233.


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the landscape, by placing itself in the latter as a tree or as a rock (…).”31 But the induction issue does not offer any certainty regarding the conclusions which can be drawn (the tradition which is transmitted includes more or less the historical facts).

In Hume's view, the principle “similar causes have similar effects” does not have any reasonable grounds. This is possible because if we think better, for what reasons can we sustain “a conclusion which is so different from the one derived from a hundred cases, which are not different in any way from a single one?”32 The a priorism which Kant proposes is not a solution to the problems which lead to conclusions which are drawn inductively or deductively (as far as experience is concerned).33 Popper tried to overcome this difficult situation by bringing forth his theory on falsifiability. Since the certainty cannot be found, the concept of a ruin entails a reversal of the conceptual causality. Furthermore, as a result of reinterpretation from a conceptual point of view, it reflects ideas which - if we were to refer to the “history” of the concept in question - "speak of" very different meanings.

According to Gadamer's concept of “fusion of horizons”, these horizons should be considered „supposedly”. In spite of this, if we refer to the “Panharmonios”34 case, we can see that it is impossible to consider the suggestion the author of Truth and Method makes as being helpful. As stated by Buffiere, the physical, mystical and moral interpretations are the “three big movements” through which the Homeric epic poems have aroused fascination in those who have studied them. Also, Homer's works are a starting point when it comes to the history, geography, astrology, philosophy etc. of the ancient people on the one hand, and myth, fabulation on the other. “The fact that Homer encrypted in his poems everything the ancient people claimed they discovered in them would be an aberrant assertion to make. It would be not less aberrant to consider this efflorescence of symbols pure non-sense.”35 This is why I believe that it is

31 Georg Simmel, Cultura filozofică. Despre aventură, sexe şi criza modernului, trad. rom. Nicolae Stoian şi Magdalena Popescu Marin, Editura Humanitas, Bucureşti, 1998, p. 125. 32 David Hume, Cercetare asupra intelectului omenesc, Editura ŞtiinŃifică şi Enciclopedică, Bucureşti, 1987, p. 115. 33 See Karl R. Popper, Logica cercetării, trad. rom. Mircea Flonta, Alexandru Surdu şi Eewin Tivig, Editura ŞtiinŃifică şi Enciclopedică, Bucureşti, 1981, pp. 73 - 76 34 Félix Buffiere, Miturile lui Homer şi gândirea greacă, trad. rom. Gh. Ceauşescu, Editura Univers, Bucureşti, 1987, p. 1. (the word “Panharmonios” was initially used by Olympiodoros with reference to Homer) 35 Ibidem, p. 4.


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this non-sense that we must take into account and understand, because the ruins themselves could be interpreted in ways that some might consider them futile or signs of melancholy, nostalgia, implicitly irrational accessories.

As far as Homer's work is concerned, “the fusion of horizons” can be summed up in a few sentences. But by linking these sentences with other ones which belong to numerous fusions of horizons that have already been recorded by the literary history, astrology, philosophy, mythology, we find ourselves in a difficult situation. In this case, we choose to either interpret in a certain manner the sentences which belong to other fusions (which have already been recorded by tradition) or apply ”the fusion of horizons” to the latter as well. But in both cases, comprehending the meaning will ruin the old texts, the ancient mentality (of the Alterity, in short), since we do not take into consideration the fact that only inductively we have the possibility of reconstructing the questions which try to unveil the meaning of the text. In other words, Gadamer considers that in spite of a plurality of meanings, the text will remain the same36 but this also indicates that the “fusion of horizons” is a reevaluation of all the interpretations which have been registered so far. In my point of view, it is this type of comprehension which brings the plurality of meanings to ruin.

In conclusion, without further details, my opinion is that we can speak about a ruin of concepts as long as the concept of ruin must provide an answer which will be considered efficient for a “long time”. The fact that a certain comprehension of a topos must be acknowledged for a“long time” is a requirement for the conceptual stability, forgetting that, as Gadamer suggests, the horizons are not enclosed, but are subject to mobility.

The criticism of this type of realism, as Collingwood points out, indicates how “unscientific” it is to comprehend the solutions of a problem as answers to a question which is considered eternal. This situation presupposes to establish a certain degree of stability related to the concept, the problem. “Is it true", Collingwood asks himself, "that the problems philosophy poses are eternal, even in the soft sense of the word? Is it true that different philosophies are only different attempts to formulate the answer to one and the same question?”37 The answer is negative. The conceptual history, as Koselleck puts it, is aimed at a double mutation, of both the concept and the reality it refers to. On the other hand, the fact

36 H.G. Gadamer, op. cit., p. 282. 37 R.G. Collingwood, O autobiografie filosofică, trad. rom. Florin LobonŃ şi Claudiu Mesaroş, Editura Trei, Bucureşti, 1998, p. 83.


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that the horizons have not a “rigid boundary” is a modern requirement. This is why I believe that in order to understand the way the ruins can redefine the past and the future, the topical connection is also related to what can be defined as topos. As Foucault points out, a text, a book are more than just a reference to their author. Just as the author finds himself in a transdiscursive position because he is the one who imposes a discursive instauration, the discourse on the concept of ruin is conditioned by its authors. A characteristic of the author-function is the initiation of a discursivity. At the same time, the founders of discursivity make "possible not only a certain number of analogies but also (and equally important) a certain number of differences.”38 For instance, Foucault continues, founders of discursivity such as Freud or Marx "have created a possibility for something other than their discourse, yet something belonging to what they founded.”39

From my point of view, this practice generates a topos (which reflects more or less a reality). But most importantly, in my opinion, the topos which is generated is not a definite one, but mobile. Unlike the scientific founding which Foucault mentions to make the distiction between the former and the discursive initiation, “reexamining Freud's texts modifies psychoanalysis itself, just as a reexamination of Marx's would modify Marxism.”40 In this context, one can understand why an author like Foucault does not hesitate to confess “do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order”41 in his Archaeology of Knowledge. But this situation is not specific to science, but, eventually, only to their history. To conclude, the topical connection initiates a re-configuration of the past and of the future and by stating this, I do not want to suggest that the topos is useless, (and implicitly only a sort of palimpsest). The connection paves the way towards other distinctions in toposes which can resemble Claude Levi-Strauss' Tristes tropiques because those conections have changed their reference points. This is why it is no surprise that the ruins mark an open interrogation on the past and future (as facts and connections). Not only the cultural investment in discovering and

38 Michel Foucault, Ce este un autor? Studii şi conferinŃe, trad. rom. Bogdan Ghiu şi Ciprian Mihali, Editura Idea Design & Print, Cluj, 2004, p. 48. 39.Ibidem, p. 49. 40 Ibidem, p. 51. 41 Michel Foucault, Arheologia cunoasterii, trad. rom. Bogdan Ghiu, Editura Univers, Bucuresti, 1999, p.24


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preserving the ruins can offer us a clue as far as a certain period is concerned, but also the attempt to erase their original configurations from a certain type of topical connection.

The concepts of topos and the topical connection, which I have used when writing this paper, carry a large, extended meaning, in order to analyze the concept of ruin which maintains neither its “object” nor its concept (except when used as a title) in the reconfiguration of the conceptual geography. The ruin of concepts can be a reverse of the concept of ruin and, without fear of being wrong, one can see the text, the topos-ul as a death camp where some are mourning, while others prefer to claim that death does not even exist and nobody can prove them wrong. If reversing the concept of ruin presupposes the demarcation of a system, a “Panharmonios” theory etc., which gives rise to prophesies containing solutions to a problem which is considered eternal, then we can undoubtedly say that what we are dealing with is a large landscape of ruins. Acknowledgements. The study was funded by the CNCSIS project IDEI 932 / 2008.