The paper argued for the obligation of architects to make buildings buildings that people will find 'beautiful'. Whilst an obligation to accessible beauty is universal to humanity, its satsfaction can be local for a ny culture. Four objections to the thesis are discussed, but the conclusion is that, amongst the several moral obligations architects are faced with, that to provide accessible beauty is a fundamental obligation.

The practice of architecture, a discipline that is inescapably contingent on the particular, but that is also required by society in some way to represent an ideal, raises a number of specific ethical issues. Following an essay by the philosopher Thomas Nagel, this paper argues that it is intrinsic to professional judgement that this involves the prioritizing of unquantifiable ‘goods’. A twentieth-century case study is examined, which exhibits the choices made by a well-known architect. The changed nature of architectural practice (...) in the United Kingdom in the twenty-first century is then described, whereby the privilege of making such judgements has been severely limited by the substitution of managerial values for professional values. In the face of different ethical imperatives – most obviously to design responsibly within pressing ecological concerns – it is argued that the task for architects now is to re-establish a context within which sound judgements can be made, which of course implies a degree of professional trust. Their ability to balance managerial values (technical competence for example) with ethical decision-making is what may prove to be most valuable. There are implications for architectural education, which in the past has either pretended to be a science or has retreated into aesthetic speculation, providing training in the skills of persuasion rather than relationship-building. The conclusion is that ethical thinking is inescapable for the profession of architecture in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

«De la Dénotation» est l’un des articles les plus importants de la tradition analytique, pourtant il n’existe pas d’interprétation canonique pour l’un de ses argument-clés. Certains croient que le passage en question démontre que les concepts dénotants en eux-mêmes sont contradictoires; d’autres que la théorie qui les sous-tend est incohérente. Les deux interprétations sont trop fortes et sont contredites par le texte du passage. Nous l’interprétons plutôt comme un ensemble de considérations qui conservent à l’ancienne théorie, bien qu’elle soit encombrante (...) et prolixe, la possibilité de concurrencer la nouvelle presentation sémantique de Russell. (shrink)