Space for Thought

In The Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant described space as an apriori, aesthetic form of thought. However, space is more than a transcendental form; it is above all the realization and unfolding of thought in itself. With that, it is the existential condition of each presence. After all, space presents itself as remoteness and proximity, as distance and closeness, as alienation and familiarity. Moreover, space manifests itself as individuality: each human individual moves in an idiosyncratic space and possesses at the same time a proper space as well.

Because of the movement of the body, space becomes depth, none more than the eye, which realizes space while examining, assessing and centering it. In the Amsterdam University Library, the organization of the bookshelves similarly creates space by putting Anne Lydiat's book lost for words… at a distance i.e. by removing it from the reader/spectator. The space between book and imagination creates a waking dream in establishing a world of foregrounds and backgrounds. In this waking dream, a space for thought evolves where thought can move, unfold, concentrate, and expand.

The faculty of thought is closely connected with boundary and horizon. Therefore, the space for thought is the most fundamental one: it is the space from where all other spaces can be comprised and understood, similar to how a line of thought can be thought through all other lines. However, as soon as thought presents a boundary, as soon as it starts to have a limiting effect, the object of thought is transformed into a particular space, where it can be thought and conceived in itself.

How does one relate oneself to that limited space in the organization of the bookshelves? A first characteristic is that space is there as something which is indicated. A simply being there for itself, though, can never be understood in general, classifying terms. It necessitates words demarcating the experience of the specific observation. Those words refer at the same time to the poetry of the object: the book speaks to us and tells about the boundary which is not the demarcation between the books on the shelves. The boundary is precisely the space the book occupies which turns it into this book rather than into the other. That boundary does not close off, it does not separate: it is the book and precisely this book in its idiosyncracy. In other words, the book has an inner self, an interior which refers to its uniqueness, a uniqueness which is unspeakable; it is ineffable or "lost for words" and as soon as one tries to understand it in general terms, it presses on in an overwhelming form of control. All that is left then is a language which does not extrapolate in general formulas but in an exploration of the inner force, the interior, of the book. In that situation, a language does not define its reality, but simply characterizes it in a process of delineation.

Henk Slager

Library of Aesthetics, University of Amsterdam. Subject: Kant. Nieuwe Doelenstraat 10, Amsterdam.