Cosa vediamo quando pensiamo "tempio"?

This essay develops the theme of the temple from the perspective of a phenomenology of the image. In doing so, it intends to problematize the very concept of the temple and its correspondence with images, and to avoid the setting up of “eidetic” hierarchies or paradigmatic models of religious experience. Authors such as Heidegger and Olivetti, who engage in a sort of reductio ad unum (in particular as far as the functions of the temple are concerned), are therefore critiqued. Rather than merely being a delimited portion of (sacred) space, the temple is held to be the space of the sacred, with an orienting, sense-conferring, function, which actually organises relations within the space.