Francesca Rigotti

17. The House as Metaphor

The Tradition of the House

Man needs a fixed reference point, without which he cannot

venture away on unknown paths. Even after the loss of cen-
tralitity brought about by the Copernican revolution, our
"need for a centre" has remained strong. And the simplest and
most immediate centre sought by all is the house, the reference
place which offers each one of us the minimum of stability and
roots to enable him to leave it whenever he likes, whether he
chooses or has to.
Living in a house is a central experience, a basic statute, a
primary condition of human life, and its importance can be
seen in its full significance in many, varying aspects. As the
house and living in it are central human experiences, so the
metaphor of the house is central to man's rhetorical apparatus,
and is present in religious, psychological, cultural, sexual and
political contexts. In the political field especially this metaphor
is frequently used, as is borne out by different political expres-
sions which highlight the close relationship between "making"
politics and the "making" of homo faber in his domestic activ-
ity. The constructive technique of politics is a knowledge
which turns into practice just as the architect's knowledge
does. The same way of denoting places and objects in politics
reveals the latter's deep alliance with the dimension of habita-
tion. We find the courts of justice and government house or
even just the House, as in parliamentary reports, alongside the
chambers and cabinets, the ruling houses and the houses of
leading families (the Atrids, the Levites, Stuarts, Bonapartes),
420 Francesca Rigotti

the Houses of Parliament, court houses and prison houses, to

say nothing of the homes of political parties, the minister (from
"minister", a servant below the rank of magister), the council
(from "sala"), the state, constitution, institutions and statute
(from "stare", in its turn derived from the Indo-European
"sta" or "ste", linked in its turn in a thousand ways to similar
words such as stall, stasis, static, stable... which can all be re-
traced to the setting of domestic life).
We must not look however for precise correspondences in
the world of analogies and metaphors, or in that of architec-
tural metaphors. There is no direct relationship between the
symbolism of architecture and architecture itself any more
than there is between the poetic evocation of nature and the
formulation of the laws which attempt to illustrate the func-
tioning of nature. Nor should we think it easy to lay down
boundaries or set up barriers between different kinds of meta-
phorical constructions. In reality, buildings which are destined
for different functions, whether they be lived in or not, such as
houses, temples, churches or groups of buildings such as
towns and villages, mostly come together in a single undiffer-
entiated metaphorical field and in a single, shaded connotative
ground.
There is however one building par excellence in western
classical and Hebrew-Christian tradition whose fascination
even politics cannot help succumbing to. It is an ancient, ven-
erable sacred building which had no equal, an example of the
best possible architecture, which our eyes unfortunately have
not been able to see: the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, the Tem-
ple of Solomon with the Ark of the Covenant in its innermost
sanctuary, built according to the rules and standards laid down
in Kings 5-9, destroyed to its very material foundations but
not in its mythical and symbolic one, as its ideal was handed
from the Jews to the Greeks, from them to the Romans, and
from the Romans to the provinces [...J 1 . And if ever a concrete

1 Cfr. R. W. McHenry, Jr., "Dryden's Architectural Metaphors and Restora-

tion Architecture", in: Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture.
17. The House as Metaphor 421

building entered metaphorical use, it was this building which

inspired the idea of architecture as the expression of a political
order 2 .
In this context the reference to religious tradition is in-
evitable: the great metaphors of political thought, which are
few in number but immeasurably long-lived, in fact derive
from religious language and imagery integrated with that of
Graeco-Roman classical culture. As we have "the ship of the
church", we have also "the ship of state", the "body of the
state" corresponds to the "body of the church", the "edifice of
the church" is echoed in the "edifice of the state".
But the community of God in Hebrew tradition is made
present in the house of Yahweh, the Temple of Jerusalem,
whose architect and inmate God is3. The following paper will
show the transformation of the community of the believers as
they enter the political context, into the community of sub-
jects and citizens, while the image of the House of God and
the Temple of God 4 re-emerge, for example, in Gorbachev's
"common house of Europe" or in the "shining house on the
hill" of American political propaganda in the '80s.

1660-1700, 1985, 9/2: 61-74, here p. 63, and H. Erskine-Hill, "Heirs of

Vitruvius: Pope and the Idea of Architecture", in: H. Erskine-Hill and A.
Smith (eds.), The Art of Alexander Pope, London: Vision Press, 1979, 144-
168, here p. 146.
2 A suggestive example of this may be read in an English writer of the second
half of the 17th century, Thomas Fuller, who wrote of the "bloodless revo-
lution": "So Solomon most wisely did contrive,/His Temple should be
still-born though Alive./That stately Structure started from the ground/
Unto the Roof, not gulity of the sound/Of Iron Tool, all noise therein
debarr'd [...]"; Th. Fuller, A Panegyric to His Majesty on His Happy Re-
turn, London, 1660, p. 4.
3 On the Temple as God's dwelling-place, cf. B. A. Levine, "On the Pres-
ence of God in Biblical Religion", in: J. Neusner (ed.), Religions in Antiq-
uity. Essays in memory of Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough, Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1968, 72-87.
4 For example, but not exclusively, in the Augustinian version, where God is
alternately architect and foundation (Augustine, (De Civ. Dei, XVIII 48
and XV 19).
422 Francesca Rigotti

The image of the house certainly played an important role in

early Christianity especially through the Pauline obsession
with the concept of edifice and edification. Paul was governed
by the use the Old Testament already made of the edifice con-
cept to denote a construction formed by the chosen commu-
nity and dwelt in by God. Early Christianity was moreover
strongly influenced by passages in the Old Testament where
the two ideas of edification and creation were linked. In Gene-
sis (2.22), God forms a woman to lead her to the man. The
word used corresponds exactly to our edify. In Amos 9.6,
God's actual creative gesture is denoted by the same verb: the
linking of the creation of the world and the edification of the
chosen people could not be more significant5.

The Characteristics of the Metaphor of the House

What are the characteristics evoked by the metaphor of the

house? We may start by distinguishing a static-functional as-
pect from a dynamic-historical one; the first includes the visu-
alization of an ordered, well-made relationship of the parts
with the whole, of the structural elements to the whole, of the
"premises" to the "consequences".
The metaphor of the edifice however has a wide range of
dynamic aspects, which can be verified above all when the his-
torical moment is grafted onto the functional structure, em-
phasizing the phases of destruction and construction, demoli-
tion and edification, with all the possible ideological variants.
We shall come back to these and similar cases in our subse-
quent examination of the repertory of the house metaphor in
classical political thought. For the moment we shall just em-
phasize, within the two interpretative moments, the static-
functional and the dynamic-historical, the character of the edi-

5 P. Bonnard, "Jésus-Christ édifiant son Eglise. Le concept d'édification

dans le Nouveau Testament", in: Cahiers théologiques de l'actualité
protestante, 21, 1948: 5-14.
17. T h e H o u s e as M e t a p h o r 423

fying activity as an activity carried out by a directing mind on

the basis of a pre-established plan.
We here clearly find ourselves at the source of idealistic
thinking, in the works of Plato, whose examples unfailingly
derive from artisan and artistic creative activity. The carpenter
who constructs the frame, the master mason who builds a
house, any artisan forging a tool, operate in Plato according to
a plan, an idea. They have their unworked materials in front of
them and contemplate in their minds the ideal image to be
transformed into the finished product. The Platonic demi-urge
itself in the Timaeus is to be seen, in the act of creating the
world, as an artisan constructing a tool or as a master mason
building a house by dividing up the spaces and distributing
materials6, or as a farmer transforming uncultivated into culti-
vated land.
The last comparison, which is typical of Plato but not exclu-
sive to him, between the demi-urge, the architect/mason and
the farmer, helps to clarify the meaning of the metaphor of the
house as a centre where to take root, which as such makes
leaving it possible.
The classical world disapproves of dispersion while it be-
stows positive values on concentration. It is an often-observed
peculiarity of the Greek language that from the verb ballein, to
throw, it coined diabolos, with all its negative implications of
throwing in jumbled confusion, and the neuter symbolon for
throwing together in the same point7, bringing about with this
gesture a centred and ordered structure. The idea of the house
belongs to this second context, that of the compact, concen-
trated and regular structure; the house must have a precise or-
der in which one can and must take a place, the house must
have rules, discipline for those who live in it; the house is a

6 E. Topitsch, Vom Ursprung und Ende, p. 122.

7 Cf. J. Hempel, " D e r Symbolismus von Reich, H a u s u. Stadt in der biblis-
chen Sprache", in: Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Ernst Moritz Arndt-
Universität Greifswald. Gesellschafts und sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe,
2-3, V, 1955-56, 123-130, here p. 123.
424 Francesca Rigotti

place of peace and the obligation to keep peace within it cre-

ates order.

The House of Body and Soul

Other metaphorical fields connected to the edifice have greatly

contributed to the development of the political metaphor of
the house. The tendency to connotate a phenomenon by plac-
ing it in a building structure can be found in particular in im-
ages relating to the human body, the soul, knowledge.
Within the first set of notions, body and soul, examined in
this paragraph, the first is sometimes tended to be seen as a
house - in extreme cases as a prison - of the second. When
Jesus said that he could destroy the Temple and build another
one in three days8, according to exegesis, he was referring to
the temple of his body, which was not "the work of hands". In
Paul, edifice and body, oikodome and soma, are interchange-
able, even identical concepts as symbolic terms for the same
sacred reality: the Church which is the edifice and body where
Paul is the architect entrusted by divine authority to work on
its edification9. From Paul's words there transpires the image
of the community of believers as a building laid on solid foun-
dations or as a body whose life-giving soul is the divine
spirit10.
Body and soul or body and mind often tend to overlap and
merge together: the house represents the human body but it
may also, in extension, represent the soul or the mind.
The soul in Augustine: "Narrow is the mansion of my soul;
enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest enter in. It is ruinous; Re-
pair Thou it'" 1 . In the "most secret room" of his inner man-
sion, in the "dwelling of thought" the voice of God rings out

8 Mark, XIV, 58.

9 A s in Psalm C X X V I I : "Except the Lord build the house [...]".
10 Especially in Ephesians 2, 19-22, but also Ephesians IV, 12-16.
11 Augustine, Confessions, 1,4.6.
17. The H o u s e as M e t a p h o r 425

for Augustine, confirming the truth of his intuitions12. Yet in

Augustine the metaphor of the house is much vaster, since it
embraces the theme of the house of the soul together with that
of the house of God, that "luminous and beautiful" house
which "is steady forever", whose magnificence and glory he
has loved13; and where the wandering soul only asks to dwell
("in my Father's house are many mansions"14) all the days of
its life ("Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house: they will
still be praising Thee"15).
The connotation of the soul in architectural terms was, and
still is, much used: we find it for example in the English Re-
naissance tradition, in the representation of the mind as a tur-
reted castle in Spencer16, but above all we see it at work in the
words of the father founder of modern psychology, John
Locke. The general atmosphere of An Essay Concerning Hu-
man Understanding is equally significantly permeated with ar-
chitectural metaphors.
Locke of course refers to the divinity as an architect, thus
suggesting that the whole universe is a static product put to-
gether with separable, inorganic materials. But he also refers to
the human person assuming that it be made up like a small
building. Locke describes the human mind in terms of a room,
or rather of a dark room with windows through which enter
the gleams of light of knowledge17.
This representation is taken up and borne out by psycho-
analysis with its tendency to describe the human psyche in the
language of architecture by means of the image of an apart-
ment evoking its various parts: the unconscious, preconscious
and conscious, as in Freud's famous description18. Jung also

12 Ibid., VIII, 8.19 and XI, 3.5.

13 Ibid., XII, 15.19 and 21.
14 John, XIV, 2.
15 Psalm LXXXIV.
16 Faerie Queene, I, IX, 54.
17 John Locke, Essays, II, XI, XVII.
18 "Ich möchte Ihnen versichern, daß diese rohen Annahmen von zwei
Räumlichkeiten, dem Wächter an der Schwelle zwischen beiden (der dar-
426 Francesca Rigotti

describes mental structure in building terms, showing it as an

edifice whose upper part was erected in the 19th century, the
ground floor dates back to 1600 (but a more careful analysis
would prove it reconstructed on a tower inhabited in the 11th
century), whereas the basement reveals traces of Roman foun-
dations, and even deeper excavations show the presence of
Stone Age tools and remains of the Ice Age 19 .
To say nothing of Bachelard and his theory of the "happi-
ness of dwelling" contrasted with Heidegger's existential anxi-
ety about being "thrown out" 20 .
Bachelard's house is also divided into three: it has an attic/-
granary, a place for day-dreaming and elevation; a ground
floor which is where activity, and thus reality, occurs; and a
basement which is the dark being of the house, taking part in
the irrationality of subterranean powers. Bachelard's house is
an imago mundi, an accepted visual metaphor which contains
essential structures of a wider cosmos. It is a house, I might
say, which is also a man, in the turning upside-down of the
metaphor into its reciprocal, which suggests new approaches
and stimuli.
It is no longer the house as metaphor of the human body,
but the human body which is the metaphor of the house: in
this anthropomorphic structure, the upper floor, the attics and
granaries, are the mind, the ground floor the heart, the centre
of domestic activity, and the cellar is the belly, specifically the
precious, mysterious belly of the woman. The spatial triparti-
tion may also be interpreted as a temporal tripartition: the

über entscheidet, ob die 'Regungen im Vorraum des Unbewußten', die sich

'zur Schwelle vorgedrängt haben', über die Schwelle in den 'Salon' des Vor-
bewußten eintreten dürfen oder nicht) und dem Bewußtsein als Zuschauer
am Ende des zweiten Saales doch sehr weitgehende Annährung an den
wirklichen Sachverhalt bedeuten müssen". Sigmund Freud, Gesammelte
Werke in Einzelbänden, Bd. XI, Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psy-
choanalyse, p. 306.
19 Carl Gustav Jung, 'Mind and the Earth'. Contributions to Analytical Psy-
chology, New York: 1928, pp. 1 1 8 - 1 1 9 .
20 Gaston Bachelard, La poétique de l'espace (1957), Paris: P.U.F., 1974,
p. 29.
17. The H o u s e as Metaphor 427

basement, deep and dark like a well, represents the past; roofs
and attics, which their height and luminosity shading into in-
determinateness, are the image of the future.
The metaphor of the house as body and human face can be
perceived even in the anthropomorphic representation, typical
of childhood, of the house as a face, where the mouth is the
door and the windows are the eyes (but, to confirm the over-
lapping of metaphorical fields, are not the eyes also "the win-
dows of the soul" in poetic language?). It should be further
noted that architectural language itself is born and remains an-
thropomorphic: the names given to the upper and lower parts
of building structures are in fact linked to their resemblances
with the positions and functions of the human body, as in foot
and head (capital) of the column, the front, pediment, façade,
wing (arm) of a building21.
In the house which is body (and soul) and in the body and
soul which are a house, we have the birthplace of the simile;
where else can lie the affinity between these phenomena, if not
in their sharing of the moment of contrast between interior
and exterior, when the skin of the body becomes the wall of
the edifice, and the walls of the house become the walls of the
soul?

The Edifice of Knowledge

Another metaphorical field, apart from that of the house of the

soul, which tends to influence and direct the metaphor of the
political house is that of the edifice of knowledge or, in an-
other perspective, the edifice of science.
Our everyday language reveals that knowledge, or à knowl-
edge (philosophy or biology or any other discipline), or a the-

21 Antonie Kejvanova, "Der Einfluss sozialökonomischer Beziehungen und

die Bildung einiger Benennungen im Bauwesen", in: ITL: a Review of Ap-
plied Linguistics, 44, 1979: 51-66 and Maria Brzosta, Anthropomorphe Auf-
fassung des Gebäudes und seiner Teile. Sprachlich untersucht an Quellen
aus der Zeit von 1525-1770, Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1931.
428 F r a n c e s c a Rigotti

ory or even a philosophical or scientific question are edifices,

or at least it is extremely natural for us to tend to see them as
such. A theory is based on a foundation, it needs support, it is
fragile or well-founded, it may collapse, be solid, bear the
weight of confutation, have a more or less sturdy framework,
or even a structure, be constructed on different levels of argu-
ment. We search for a key to solve a problem, and when we
have solved it, the issue is closed?2.
It is only on the basis of this premise that we may under-
stand the emphasis our culture lays on the edifice of knowl-
edge. One of the most striking examples of the metaphor of
the knowledge-edifice is that formulated by Cornelius Casto-
riadis about the writing of one of his texts, contained in the
preface to a volume of 1975. The first part of the book, the
author explains, had originally been written for Socialisme ou
barbarie-, having had to write under pressure to meet the re-
view's deadline had meant that the text seemed, not like a fin-
ished work, but one in its early stages:
Contrairement à toutes les règles de la composition, les murs du bâtiment
sont exibés les uns après les autres au fur et à mesure de leur édification,
entourés par ce qui reste des échafaudages, des tas de sable et de pierre, des
bouts de poutres et de truelles sales [...] dans le cas d u travail de réflexion,
enlever les échafaudages et nettoyer les abords du bâtiment non seulement
n'aporte rien au lecteur, mais lui enlève quelche chose d'essentiel. Contraire-
ment à l'oeuvre d'art, il n'y a pas ici d'édifice terminé et à terminer. 23

"Behind" the idea of the building of knowledge we find the

idea, which I have already alluded to, that knowledge can be
constructable, that theory can be moulded to an appropriate
form and with suitable scientific instruments, that a single
artistic or scientific discipline may need the intervention of
someone, whether it be a craftsman or architect, to process
material according to a model.

22 S o m e of these examples are taken from G e o r g e Lakoff and M a r k Johnson,

Metaphors we Live by, Chicago and L o n d o n : The University of Chicago
Press, 1980, pp. 47- 105.
23 Cornelius Castoriadis, L'institution imaginaire de la société, Paris: Seuil,
1975, pp. 5-6.
17. The House as Metaphor 429

Only thus may we understand Descartes' insistence on the

image of the edifice of knowledge. And in fact the "construc-
tivist" mental schema - on a parallel with Locke's psychology
of the "edifice of the mind" - has become well-known in con-
nection with the name of Descartes and with certain clear
statements made in A Discourse on Method.
The rhetorical figure of the edifice of knowledge was how-
ever to occur constantly throughout the 18th century, inter-
woven with that of the edifice of government and state.
In the 18th century, to go back to our historical analysis, the
custom of speaking of a scientific or artistic discipline in archi-
tectural terms affected the most disparate fields, from that of
poetry to that of literature. It is true that the use of architec-
tural analogy to suggest the compact, organized nature of a
poem goes back as far as Quintillian24. In the Enlightenment,
however, the analogy between the human and architecture
tends to shift onto moral themes and to become a fixed schema
to express the relationship between the ephimeral and the last-
ing, between the fragile and the resistent, the humble and the
majestic, between the living but mortal material crawling on
the Earth and the cold lifeless material of stone constructions
which triumph over time and gravity. Architectural imagery
and moral imperatives thus join in a tradition, which will lead
to Eliot and Pound, aimed at underscoring the persistence of
stone against the lability of human things and human passions.
Against the background of the link between moral ideals and
artistic ideas stands out that architectural analogy which Ro-
manticism was to rebel against by opposing its own literary
analogy, that of vegetal nature with all its traditionalist culture
of values of the experience stemming from history, from the
power of facts over abstractions, of spontaneity, creativity, as-
similation, themes which are more likely to find their place in
the metaphor of the tree and the forest.

24 Paul Fussel, The Rhetorical World of Augustan Humanism. Ethics and Im-
agery from Swift to Burke, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965, p. 190.
430 Francesca Rigotti

It is however significant that we re-encounter the metaphor

of the house of knowledge in Heidegger, a writer who is
hardly "constructivist" or systematic. In Heidegger's ontol-
ogy, the metaphor of the house merges with the concepts of
speaking and being: Heidegger's idea of language is like an ac-
tual "house of being" wherein man dwells; language is the
host, in line with the etymon of logos, legein = to welcome, in a
dimension which is not static as we might expect, but dy-
namic 25 .
The pregnancy of this philosophical imagination overflow-
ing with dwellers, dwellings, and foundations clashes, to my
mind, with the Rortian interpretation of an "edifying" Hei-
degger only in the moral sense and not in the architectural
sense of the term (we shall return later to the importance of the
latter). As Rorty's critical use of the adjective "edifying" to
define Heidegger's asystematic, therapeutic thinking clashes if
we take into account the essential meaning that etymology has
in all Heidegger's philosophy. If it is the loss of the sense of
being that, from Plato onwards, has brought about the alien-
ation of Western society, then the etymological interpretation
has brought us nearer than any other to the sense of that lan-
guage which lives close to the sense of being. In Heideggerian
terms, aedificare in the architectural meaning would thus be
nearer to the sense of being than aedificare in its moral inter-
pretation.

Ut architectura politica

The house-metaphor, which spreads into many fields of hu-

man thought, including psychology, has literally invaded and

25 "Das Denken baut am Haus des Seins; aus dem sachgemäß gedachten We-
sen des Seins werden wir eines Tages eher denken können, was 'Haus' und
'Wohnen' sind". Martin Heidegger, Piatons Lehre von der Wahrheit, Bern:
1947. Cf. Rolf Bachen & Kathleen Battke, "Unser gemeinsamens Haus Eu-
ropa", in: Muttersprache, 1989, 99/2: 110-126, here p. 112.
17. The House as Metaphor 431

taken over the political field, becoming one of its basic meta-
phors if not the primary one.
Politics is "performance" knowledge, planning and deter-
mining action. The house metaphor therefore already concerns
the moment of the "definition" of the discipline. And it is the
basic metaphor of politics because it represents the formal as-
pect apart from that of content, as we shall see. Politics is an
edifice in that it is a subset, or a partial construction which is
part of the whole building of science.
But politics as a science is not the only field to receive the
architectural metaphor; the objects of its competence and re-
search also do so, for example the modern form of politics par
excellence, which is the state; as do the figures of the politi-
cians, especially those of the legislator and the governor which,
either taken singly or as a whole, merge into the metaphor of
the architect; as do, in a way, the citizens, who are seen as the
bricks arranged in an orderly fashion to form the whole state,
in the same way that the believers in Christ constituted the
living stones of the edifice of the Church, in the eloquent im-
agery of Paul.
The co-existence of these cases suffices to point out the fact
that building metaphors are rarely consistent or systematic.
But before dealing with them, we must show what "the point"
of the architectural metaphor is. In other words, if it is true
that the metaphor focuses on a conceptual content to display it
on any occasion, the house metaphor in its political aspect fo-
cuses particularly on certain groups of content.
We may single out a first group made up of the characters of
planning, building, demolition and knocking down, and a sec-
ond which groups together the characters of permanence, sta-
bility, strength and immutability; consensus, participation,
solidarity, willingness to cooperate, pacification, harmony and
agreement would characterize the third group. A different
"mode" of looking at the house corresponds to each group.
The first is the surveyor's eye imagining the erection of a com-
pletely new building on the ground, or planning to reconstruct
it or raze it to the ground. The second is the eye of perspective
432 Francesca Rigotti

contemplating the architectural construction as a whole from

the outside, as it stands out against the sky and the landscape.
The third is the eye of the house-dweller, looking from the
inside at the rooms and the other inhabitants, at their move-
ments and interactions. The first group has a mainly historic-
dynamic valency which emphasizes the moment of change and
transformation; the second has an essentially static value, both
in the positive acceptation of stability and in the negative one
of immobility, whereas the third is polyvalent from the static-
dynamic dialectical viewpoint, although it accentuates both as-
pects at different times.
As a rhetorical figure, the topos of the house is simple and
comprehensible to all, since everyone knows what a house is,
they see and use it every day. For its inmates, the house pro-
vides an inexhaustible wealth of connotations; for the "inmates
of politics", the governed and governors, the house metaphor
firstly signifies a willingness to understand, to take part jointly
and responsibly in constructive behaviour. I shall thus begin
with the last category, that of the "outward glance", which is
also the most topical, considering the revival of the house
metaphor, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev, and taken up
over and over again by politicians and commentators, in his
remarks on the "common European house".
The metaphor of the common house first appeared in the
thoughts of Mikhail Gorbachev, according to his own words,
in one of his discussions. According to his autobiographical
notes, he had been searching for some time for an appropriate
formula in which to condense his thinking when, after long
reflection and frequent meetings with European leaders, the
metaphor of the "common European house" came sponta-
neously to his lips. It was a pregnant, felicitous image to re-
place the by then obsolete and irredeemably worn out image
of the "iron curtain" (coined by Churchill, again as a result of
an incursion into the field of household imagery 26 ).

26 M. Gorbachev, Perestrojka. Il nuovo pensiero per il nostro paese e per il

mondo, Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1987, p. 260.
17. The H o u s e as Metaphor 433

According to the previous classification, the metaphor of the

common European house corresponds to the third type. The
perspective is inward, and belongs to the inmates: "every fam-
ily has its own apartment and there are various entrances" 27 .
But the real explicit and implicit terms evinced by this lan-
guage are those of community, collectivity and cooperative. In
this specific context the house takes on in transit the positive
qualities and values of the human community which lives
within it, the family. And since the metaphoric image of the
family has the curious but constant prerogative of evoking ex-
clusively the positive sides of community living, the house-
family evokes in its turn images of harmony and family love,
intimity and comfort, unanimity and consensus, in short, of
agreement which is not neutral in affective terms28. In this way
a somewhat commonplace rhetorical trap is set, which gives
rise to the condemnation of the adversary: anyone opposing
the process of European integration rejects this mass of values,
all of this emotional potential, thus proving to be ruthless and
anti-humanitarian.
From this inner perspective, from this inside glance, which
rests on the inside walls, on the furniture and the inmates
rather than on the façade and on the main walls, stem both the
insistence on relationships of a family nature, and the double
valency of the metaphor in the above mentioned meaning. It in
fact evokes both the "being at home" where static factors of
stability, permanence and comfort prevail, and at the same
time, a movement of coming in and going out for reciprocal
visiting between different houses, going out to come in again,
going out to settle elsewhere, with dynamic activity clearly
predominating.
If we move from the inner perspective, of the intimist glance
of the house inmate resting on furniture and ornaments, to the
external viewpoint, that is if we open the door to go out to

27 M. Gorbachev, op. cit., p. 261.

28 F. Rigotti, Il potere e le sue metafore, Milano: Feltrinelli, 1992.
434 Francesca Rigotti

contemplate the building from the outside, the images and

their connotations change radically.
Proceeding without claiming to complete the analysis of the
dynamic moment, we will note the frequency of the metaphor
of the "ruin" or the collapse of the state, which is for example
recurrent in the Latin literature of the late republic. In this
context we can find the comparison of personal or general po-
litical catastrophe with the collapse of the edifice, including the
associations of an ethical nature which we are already ac-
quainted with.
Going back to the comparison of political construction with
architectural construction, in its late Roman origins, we must
wait till the end of the 18th century for the last application of
the usual coupling of political ruin with achitectural ruin,
when a revival of architectural themes related to the building
of state edifices took place.
It was not until the French Revolution then that the state
was expected to take on the task of the demolisher of ancient
structures and the builder of the new. The most outstanding
example comes from Sieyes, and is that of his "social architec-
ture". A good crop of metaphors may be reaped from his fa-
mous pamphlet Qu'est-ce que le Tiers Etat of 1789, from the
metaphors of light which were so dear to the Age of Enlight-
enment 29 , to military images and lastly those of political patho-
logy 30 . But it is the field of building metaphors which domi-
nates Sieyes' prose, in particular in the accepted dynamic
meaning which we have several times emphasized 31 .
It must not be forgotten, however, that in the same period
when Sieyes was expressing his socio-architectural metaphor,

29 "L'esprit s'attache à la vérité comme des yeux sains se tournent naturelle-

ment vers la lumière", Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, Qu'est-ce que le Tiers
Etat, Edition critique avec une introduction et des notes par Roberto Zap-
peri, Genève: Droz, 1970, p. 194.
30 " O n est forcé de considérer la classe privilégiare dans une nation, comme
on regareroit sur le corp d ' u n malheureux une maladie affreuse qui lui dé-
vorerait la chair vive". E. J. Sieyès, op. cit., p. 211.
31 Ibid., p. 155, 169, 176 and 199.
17. T h e H o u s e as M e t a p h o r 435

in Europe and especially in France, a particular type of reli-

gion, that of free-masonry, was being codified, on the basis of
the semantic field of construction. The masons had in fact
elaborated their own consistent structure according to the re-
ality of the construction of an edifice, or rather of the edifice
by antonomasia, the Temple of Jerusalem, on an analogy with
the ritual followed by Solomon for the building of the original.
Masonic ritual makes it clear that the construction is not a
finished structure but an on-going process: the mason {maçon,
from the same root of to make, whose implications we shall be
examining) places his symbolic tools, the set square and the
compass, on the cubic stone; the apprentice cuts the stone with
mallet and chisel, after which his companion places it, squared
and polished, in position with a lever [.. .]32. The works of the
lodge are open to the glory of the Great Architect of the uni-
verse, who is the keystone of this symbolic house, a house par
excellence, a universal house. The Brothers and the Sisters in
masonry symbolize the call to edify the inner temple with the
aim of raising together the temple of mankind. It is easy here
to recognize also something like the "Pauline obsession" with
the building of a temple of spirit and flesh, formed by the bod-
ies and the souls of the believers. And also to hear an echo of
Augustine, for whom the whole sacred story is only the edifi-
cation of the community of God, where the believers are the
stones laid in the ground of faith and held together by love,
where Christ is at times the architect, at other times the foun-
dation of the church33.
It is impossible not to wonder to what extent these themes,
which were so influential in the period immediately preceed-
ing the birth of Marx, were able to mould the metaphorical
substratum. Since the Marxist metaphorical field par excellence
is precisely that of architecture: production relations form the

32 A n even more accurate description may be found in A d o l p h e Nysenholc,

"La métaphore initiatique", in: Jean-Pierre van Noppen (ed.), Metaphor
and Religion (Theolinguistic 2), Brussels: 1983, 1 8 1 - 1 9 4 .
33 Augustine, De civ. Dei, X V I I I 48 and X V 19.
436 Francesca Rigotti

economic structure {Bau in German), on the basis of which

rises the judicial and political superstructure {Überbau). And
moreover men, in Marxist metaphors, are not inmates of the
house, but its stones and beams34; beams and stones, or rather
foundation stones which seem to be reproposed as just that in
the Marxist term "Basis" and which confirm the idea that the
other Marxist term of Uberbau is only the translated revival of
the New Testament epoikodomein, superstruere, superaedifi-
care35.
Gorbachev makes use of this line of interpetation again in
his metaphor of the building in a perspective which is, this
time, very far from that of the common European house. Gor-
bachev has in mind the building seen from the outside, seen
through the eyes of the surveyor or the architect, when he
writes that
revolution means construction; but it also always implies demolition. Revolu-
tion requires the demolition of everything that is obsolete and stagnant and
hinders rapid progress. Without demolition, we cannot clear the area for new
building; 36

or when he defines Perestroika as a process of building "archi-

tectural elements of the public edifice" 37 , or again when he
abandons himself to moments of Reagan-like lyricism, defin-
ing the process of Perestroika as aimed at the construction of a
"temple rising on a green hill" 38 .
Let us go back to the second moment of the outside view of
the politico-state building; that is to the moment of observa-
tion, I mean of contemplation. The edifice contemplated from
the outside arouses feelings of permanence, of something
solidly established on deep foundations. The message it trans-
mits is simple and instructive, and combines ideals of order,
strength and beauty. Especially if the building is old, form and

34 As in Arnos 9, 11 or in Isaiah 28, 16.

35 C f. A. Demandt, Metaphern für Geschichte, München: Beck, 1978, p. 296.
36 M. Gorbachev, op. cit., p. 61.
37 Ibid., p. 39.
38 Ibid., p. 30.
17. The House as Metaphor 437

order, grace, beauty and solidity seem to constitute the pivots

on which political symbolism concentrates and hinges.
It is not surprising to find the presence of the architectural
metaphor to express the global idea of the political structure in
an English writer of the 17th century, Dryden, who is particu-
larly famous for the authorship of Absolem and Achitophel of
1681.
Architectural analogies are the main figures of speech used
to reveal Dryden's political feelings39. Government is here rep-
resented as an imposing edifice whose strength derives from
the authority of the sovereign; by extension, the nature of the
constitution is illustrated by Dryden with the features of the
edifice40, while it is linked at the same time with the image of
the ark containing the covenant given by God to the Jews,
their law. The building par excellence which Dryden draws on
to evoke the political edifice is, this time explicitly, the Temple
of Jerusalem. Since the ark stands inside the temple walls, the
constitution thus rests within the law and the soul, as the soul
informs the body about itself.
When Dryden speaks of the poet as an architect, he does so
to emphasize the importance of judgement and planning in the
instant of artistic creation. We seem here to find confirmation
of Fussel's statement that for the English writers of the 17th
and 18th centuries at least, the premise ut architectura poesis
was much more influential than Horace's familiar words ut
pictura poesis.
The premise ut architectura politica was even more relevant,
if we think of the importance of architectural imagery in the
definition of politics of English 18th century writers such as
Burke and Gibbon.

39 Cf. R. W. McHenry jr., "Dryden's Architectural Metaphors and Restora-

tion Architecture", op. cit, p. 62.
40 "[...] the building will not simply illustrate it by reference to the constitu-
tion, it will be interchangeable with the constitution; metaphorically it will
be the constitution". Allan Roper, Dryden's Poetic Kingdoms, London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965, p. 17.
438 Francesca Rigotti

The Architect and the Politician

Let us think back to the moment when the house has not yet
taken shape; the architect's function in fact emerges and stands
out distinctly during the drawing up of the project and during
the carrying out of the works. Once again we shall find it prof-
itable to start from an examination of Plato's metaphors to
rediscover the theme of the architect. In fact the principle on
which a constitution rests is called krepis (base) by Plato in the
Politikos and in the Laws*1. On this foundation, chosen for its
solidity, the legislator builds social order, amassing and
putting together the materials collected. The Athenian in the
Laws is happy not to be forced to build immediately, but to
possess a reserve of materials which he can lay aside while he
proceeds to the arrangement of the rest42. The state, according
to Plato, is comparable to a building whose legislator is the
architect or even the mason. There are two points to be noted
here: firstly, the fact that Plato compares the architect to the
legislator and not to the governor (for whom he is reserving
other metaphors, such as the coxswain of a ship, the weaver or
the doctor); secondly, the fact that he applies the metaphor
exclusively to the legislator of an ideal city. Both these tradi-
tions will be echoed in the development of the Platonic meta-
phor, and confirmed in the existence of the same issue in
philosophical speculations untouched by Platonic idealism.
The two characteristic instances of the Platonic comparison
(legislator = architect of the ideal city), are both taken up al-
most literally by Rousseau.
In the Jugement sur la Polisynodie, which we have already
mentioned, Rousseau was already using the metaphor of the
palace and the political architect, characterizing the latter with
his acting according to a "plan général". The comparision be-
comes more explicit and evident in the Contract social, where
Rousseau introduces, immediately after the comparision be-

41 Plato, Politikos 301 and Laws 736e.

42 Plato, Politikos, 858b; Cf. Republic 403b and 427b.
17. The House as Metaphor 439

tween the legislator and God, that between the legislator and
the architect43.
But is not the Platonic image of God the creator, once again,
that of the demiurge/architect? And is not the mason {maçon/
to make) by synecdoche a sort of "maker" par excellence? And
what better "maker" or more precisely "artifex" than the
politician? Here things become very complicated and prob-
lematic, since the metaphor, once again, does not tend to sepa-
rate the fields and trace boundaries, but works enthusiastically
to tangle them up through overlappings of the images.
The problems arise from the following constatation: since
remote times the metaphors of the arteficer and the legislator,
those of homo faber and the ideator of norms, fashioned divine
attributes. In this accepted meaning the divine architect of
Galileo, Newton, and Leibniz is a variation of the Platonic
artificer44. But it is not only divine attributes, however, which
are traditionally formed from the blending of the virtues and
the functions of the arteficer with those of the legislator; polit-
ical attributes also derive from the same source, to further con-
firm the extent to which religion and politics share at least but
not only in the dawn phase.

43 "Comme avant d'élever un grand édifice l'architecte observe et sonde le

sol, pour voir s'il en peut soutenir le poids, le sage instituteur ne commence
pas par rédiger de bonnes loix en elles-mêmes, mais il examine auparavant
si le peuple auquel il les destine est propre à les supporter. J.-J. Rousseau,
Du contract social, Vili, II. Cf. Maurizio Viroli, La théorie de la société
bien ordonnée chez Jean Jacques Rousseau, Berlin/ New York: Walter de
Gruyter, 1988, p. 146.
44 Paolo Casini has noted and underlined this in "L'artefice e il legislatore.
Metafore a confronto", in: Nuova Civiltà delle Macchine, VIII, 2-3, 1990:
46-53, without however referring to the observations made on the question
by Dumézil and de Jouvenel, which are essential to the setting of the hy-
pothesis.
440 Francesca Rigotti

The Edifice of the State and Society

Before tackling the question of the state, we must clear the

field of the idea that under the cover of the metaphor of the
house of politics we intend to speak of the organization of the
state as the extension of political organization. This would in
fact be going over Aristotelian ground 45 - according to which,
though with qualitative and not only quantitative differences,
the political order is constructed on the (father-children and
master-servants) relationship between the inmates of the
house, which is a homological, but not analogical or even less
metaphorical, trace.
The path we are following here is not that which singles out
the historical development of human sociality from the ele-
mentary cell to complex structure, from the family to society,
from the house to the polis and from the polis to the state. It is
a far less linear and bumpier road which picks up the compari-
son between political structure and architectural structure by
virtue of the fact that the latter lends itself easily to the
metaphorization of the former.
It might be said that the comparison between the political
community and the edifice handed down by pagan-Christian
literature has acquired further credibility in modern times be-
cause of the background metaphor underlying the term state,
linked to the sense of permanence and standing still, fixed, im-
mobile and unchangeable. This metaphor accompanies and
supports the idea of a stable fixed structure, which does not
move, which stands there like a domed building with its key-
stone.
It comes as no surprise to find the building metaphor ap-
plied to the political context in a writer who uses it in a psy-
chological context, Locke.
His criticism of Filmer's patriarchalism for example is rigor-
ously developed on the line of the building metaphor. Filmer's
system is built up on the grounds of the statement that no man

45 Aristotle, Politics, 125a 7-18.

17. The House as Metaphor 441

is born free and that every government is an absolute monar-

chy 46 .
Locke's building metaphor is even more vivid when it is the
state and its legitimate? government which are represented in
terms of edifices. In his condemnation of the iniquitous use of
force, Locke argues that the latter is responsible for war47.
And in his thoughts on the dissolution of governments
(Chapter X I X of the second Treatise), Locke takes up the im-
age again to support the argument that when a society disinte-
grates, a government cannot be maintained, in the following
metaphor:
[...] that being is impossible, as for the Frame of an House to subsist when the
Materials of it are scattered, and dissipated by a whirl-wind, or jumbled into a
confused heap by an Earthquake.48

The grounds on which governments are erected are, in Locke's

words, the consensus of the people.
This very kind of formulation makes us wonder what role,
in the edifice-architectural metaphors, is played by concrete
men, who make up the state and society both as governors and
as governed subjects. Are they the stones and bricks of the
building, or are they the inmates of the house? Are they struc-
turally incorporated or only casually but not necessarily inte-
grated into the structure?

46 "This is the foundation on which his absolute Monarchy stands, and from
which it erects it self to an height, that its Power is above every Power,
Caput inter nubila... But if this Foundation fails, all his Fabric falls with
it". John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1690). A critical edition
with an introduction and apparatus criticus by Peter Laslett, Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1960, I, 6, 162. If the first principle of Filmer's
construction falls, according to which Adam was not an absolute monarch
and men are not naturally free, "the whole Fabric of this vast Engine of
Absolute Power and Tyranny drops down of it self, and there needs no
more to be said in answer to all that he builds upon so False and frail a
Foundation". Ibid., I, 67, 208.
47 "'tis the unjust use of force that makes the War. For he that breaks open
my House, and violently turns me out of Doors". Ibid. II, 181, 407.
48 Ibid. II, 181, 407.
442 Francesca Rigotti

It has been held, and certain examples confirm it, that where
the state is conceived as a building, men are seen as its inmates,
whereas if society is represented as a house, then men are the
building materials (bricks and stones) 49 .
An example which confirms the second aspect of the hy-
pothesis, that of the society-edifice with men-bricks, can be
found in a metaphor used by Gian Domenico Romagnosi:
La buona composizione di una società si può assomigliare a ben architettato
edificio. Perché se l'uno si regge colle leggi della gravità delle parti con ar-
monica proporzione equilibrate, l'altra si dirige con quelle dell'interesse delle
persone con equa subordinazione rinforzato.50

There is no doubt that in this passage men are so to speak the

stones of the social building, in that the law of gravity to which
the former are subordinate corresponds to the law of self-con-
servation which subjects the latter, and that the importance of
the former corresponds to the interests of the latter.
But this argument is no longer valid as far as a German au-
thor, contemporary with Romagnosi, is concerned. In his Ver-
such einer kleinen praktiscben Kinderlogik of 1 7 8 6 , t h e n e o -
classical pedagogue Karl Philipp Moritz 51 was searching for a
simple, clear rhetorical topos to explain and impress on the
minds of children the reason w h y men "get together". Moritz
speaks alternately of the social gathering in terms of Gesell-
schaft (society-association) and in terms of Staat, but always
keeping in mind the comparison with the house, and always

49 Cf. A. Demandt, op. cit., p. 75.

50 This passage by Romagnosi was pointed out to me by Piero Schiera, whom
I gratefully thank, and can be found in Della vita degli stati. Secondo Pro-
dromo. Manoscritto R 99-9, in: I tempi e le opere di Gian Domenico Ro-
magnosi, edited and introduced by Ettore A. Albertoni, bio-bibiliographic
part edited by Robertino Ghiringhelli. Gian Domenico Romagnosi, Scritti
politici. Alessandro De' Giorgi, Memorie della mia vita (1865), preface by
Renato Treves, Milano: Giuffré, 1990.
51 On whom a volume by Edoardo Costadura will soon be published, K. Ph.
Moritz, Genesi e crisi del neo- classico, Genova: Marietti, in preparation.
The author, whom I would like to thank here, kindly placed the mauscript
at my disposal and gave me valuable information.
17. The House as Metaphor 443

thinking of men as the inmates and not as its building mate-

rial52. In both cases it is men who construct the state and politi-
cal edifice where they will live, transporting the building mate-
rial themselves 53 .
In the case of the construction of a society men also thus
desire to "dwell within it". Let us imagine, says Moritz, delib-
erately and explicitly referring to the comparison with the
house, the construction of a state, in that it depends on the
action of a single member or of all its members. We will have
the difference between monarchy and republic. Moritz's pref-
erences lie clearly with the second model: everyone takes part
in the construction of the building they desire to live in (after
having been convinced by the "republican argument" upheld
by the thinking part of the republic to persuade the members
of the validity of their goals).
Let us now go back to Paul of Tarsus, who may be consid-
ered the greatest propagator if not the founder of the meta-
phoric imagery of the human edifice-aggregate. All his writ-
ings seem to offer a glimpse of the Christian community in the
form of a solidly constructed building, a temple where God
dwells through his holy spirit. God dwells: the believers all
together form the dwelling-place. The church is the edifice
composed of the whole of the believers and inhabited by the
spirit of God. When Paul urges the Thessalonians to edify one
another, he urges them to help each other to be part of the
construction of the church.
In the Old Testament, it is God who edifies using the cho-
sen people and their families or tribes as material. In the New
Testament it is Jesus who is presented explicitly as the edifier
of the edifice ("You are Peter..."). As God in the Old Testa-
ment does not form an integral part of the old Israel but is its

52 No. 2 of Castadura's manuscript. Cf. Karl Philip Moritz, Versuch einer

kleinen praktischen Kinderlogik welche auch zum Theil für Lehrer und
Denker geschrieben ist, Berlin: August Milius, 1786, pp. 138-139.
53 Ibid., pp. 138-139.
444 Francesca Rigotti

founder, so in the New Testament Jesus is not an integral part

of the edifice of the church, but is its constructor.
What about the role of men at this point within the political
and social edifice, if their role in the ecclesiastic building is to
be the bricks? Where is the dividing line, if there is one, be-
tween being construction material or being the inmates of a
building? The line passes not between being members of a
state and being members of a society, but between being, in
one and the other, consenting and so to speak "mobile" (=
free) members, or members who have found themselves part
of a structure independently of their own will and decision.
A statement by Adam Müller, a German conservative ro-
mantic writer active in the first decades of the 19th century,
seems to me most appropriate in elucidating this proposition.
Müller concedes that "The monuments of architecture are im-
mediately seen as terms of comparison" for the state and civi-
lized society. At a closer glance, however, Müller adds, we no-
tice that the comparison with "framework" or with "cold
masses of stones"54 is too static to express the history of civi-
lized society, its movement, its progress, the expansion of its
forces or the distribution of its wealth. But this is still not the
major point Müller wants to make. The inadequacy of the
comparison is revealed in his opinion in all its clarity when, in
interpreting the state or society as a construction made by men
and external to them, w e lose the dimension of the state as a
union of members in a living, organic whole, and this is what
Müller is eager to point out. In the first interpretation, broadly
speaking, the "contractualist" or artificialist one, against which
Müller's attacks are directed, the "politician would be outside
his state, as the carpenter stands outside the furniture he
makes" 55 . That the institution of the states be the work of hu-
man convention, as Hobbes and Rousseau had held, and as
Müller could not accept seeing it reproposed in Schlötzer's

54 A. Müller, Gli elementi dell'arte politica, Milano: Guerini e associati, 1989,

p. 27.
55 Ibid., p. 44.
17. The House as Metaphor 445

"contractualism", is in his view an execrable thesis contained

in the "unhappy doctrine according to which man may enter
and leave the state at will, like a house where the door is al-
ways open" 56 .
In the organicist conception of the state, on the other hand,
which the German romantics broadly speaking contrasted to
the political principles of the Enlightenment, the state is not a
framework or a skin to shed, a house to enter and leave at will.
The state is a temple, Müller says, but - 1 add - a temple in the
traditional ecclesiastic sense, in which its members are the
stones, material incorporated into the construction.
Going back to the division between the governed-stones
and the governed-inmates according to the part they play, in a
state seen in the first case as an organic structure and in the
second case as an artificial, conventional aggregate, it will be
noted that the metaphor carries out an incomparable and
unique grid function to filter these contents. The organicist
conception, seen in the metaphor where the members of the
state and society are the stonework of the building, draws its
sacred nature from being in syntony with the Old and New
Testament biblical tradition. The mechanist conception, based
on the metaphor of the "open" house which one may freely
enter or leave, on the other hand, calls for an overcoming of
the traditional religious conception, a far-reaching and em-
blematic logical step forward in illuminist and neo-illuminist
thinking.

56 Ibid., p. 50.