Die Kehre: Bauhaus Ontology or Utilitarian Recreation of the World in Being and Time

Abstract

«Form follows function» or «The ultimate goal of all (artistic) activity is construction» are principles of design declared by the Staatliches Bauhaus in its founding manifesto of 1919, syncretic theses to basal proposals in Being and Time (1927): «Being-ready-to-hand», utilitarian disposition of the intramundane entity that Dasein faces in the Care as an occupying projection (Besorge) is a pre-formal ontological dimension placed before the condition of «Being-present-at-hand» and the work in its integral magnitude encompasses the plexus of functional references in which aforementioned entity originally appears as useful (also the «comprehensive artwork» advocated by the School is a synthetic unity of references). Being emerges in its use, and use translates a peculiar form of pre-theoretical gaze that is decisive in the praxis of Dasein: minimalism in geometric layouts (Heidegger's notion of Quadrature: a bundle of presences and absences in the historical horizon of the inchoative truth for the analysis of the static-horizontal unity prior to any projection of Existenz) versus curvilinear plots, Nature contracted to potential materials of use that reveal the true essence of objects in constant development. The creational scenario of onto-theology becomes a functional domain in a utilitarian ontology in which «Being-in-itself» is sustained in the mundane void by a radical depragmatization that conceals the drift toward a destiny originating from Being.