EAN: 9783319266992

PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WINTER-CITY - ABRAHAM AKKE...

This book explores how the weather and city-form impact the mind  and how city-form and mind
interact. It builds on Merleau-Ponty's contention that mind  the human body and the environment
are intertwined in a singular composite  and on Walter Benjamin's suggestion that mind and
city-form  in mutual interaction  through history  have set the course of civilization.
Bringing together the fields of philosophy  urbanism  geography  history  and architecture  the
book shows the association of existentialism with prevalence of mood disorder in Northern
Europe at the close of Little Ice Age. It explains the implications of city-form and traces the
role of the myths and allegories of urban design as well as the history of gender projection
onto city-form. It shows how urbanization in Northern Europe provided easier access to shelter
yet resulted in sunlight deprivation  and yielded increasing incidence of depression and other
mental disorder among the European middle-class. The book uses the examples of Kierkegaard 
Nietzsche  Dostoevsky and Kafka  to show how walking through the streets  squares and other
urban voids became the informal remedy to mood disorder  a prominent trait among founders of
modern Existentialism. It concludes by describing how the connection of anguish and violence is
relevant to winter depression in cities  in North America in particular.

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