ABSTRACT
In this final chapter I examine the idea of Universality in building and advance the notion of the Ethical. To this end, I explore the relevant categories in reading Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Based on this reading, I advance a final claim in the sequence of emancipatory hypotheses that I laid down throughout this Manifesto, a claim for the universality of building. This claim is based on a conception of ‘building’ grounded in the notions of ‘Civil Society’ and ‘Ethical Life’, both constitutive terms in Hegel’s ‘political philosophy’ as expounded in his Philosophy of Right. My final intention is to transpose the considerations and analysis above to ‘building’ thought as ‘Concrete Universal’ linked to an ethical life. I assert that Building is inherently an egalitarian Idea. By the standards of the Ethical Life in the Civil Society that are constitutive of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, everyone must have an inalienable right to building, or to build. In this sense, the essence of building is Universal. In its dialectical relation to the particular, and in an analogy with the universal concept of ‘man’ as man-ness, the universality of building may be called building-ness , or builtness. There is building-ness (builtness) in every building as the particular expression of its universality.
