Animal Architecture in Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling’s Philosophy of Art

In this chapter, I will analyse the role of architecture in Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling’s Philosophy of Art lectures (1802-1805). After briefly introducing the system of art proposed there, I will focus on the role played by the animal instinct in the conception of architecture. Schelling, in fact, states that the formative instinct (Bildungstrieb) finds in animals a specific modification in the artistic impulse (Kunsttrieb). This, unlike other traditional conceptions, is not seen as a means to mating, but as an alternative to the sexual instinct, thus sketching out a theory of sublimation at the beginning of the 18th century. Art is therefore not what distinguishes humans from other animals, but rather what they have in common. Their difference is not to be seen as specific, but as a tension between two contradictory poles. The human is in fact only that animal with the greatest imagination (Bildungskraft), namely the greatest capacity to produce images of its own products: the greater this capacity, the greater the distance between one’s animal body and its own architecture. This is why, descending the degrees of the living to the inorganic, we start from the birds, that gather materials for their nests at great distances, to the crabs, whose architecture is an exoflexed bone structure. In conclusion, Schelling’s philosophy of nature has an echo in his philosophy of art, in which the capacity to produce art is extended to every being, including stones. All animals are unconscious artists. The human is only that animal that can be more aware of this.