Heidegger’s “Building, Dwelling, Thinking”

A very rough Summary of Sorts:

Denken is traditionally, a subject asserting propositions of representations of an object on an object.  However, the Heideggerian thinking of the relation between being, building, and dwelling is going to encourage us to think without this subject/object representing framework.  Recall from the essay “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking” how we talked about the path to thinking set aside the metaphysical subject/object dichotomy.  Recall also how in thinking we avoided relying upon causal relations, or means and ends—likewise, in this essay, building and dwelling are not necessarily or exclusively to be means and end (i.e., we will not deny the means-end schema, but we are going to think OTHERWISE.  Sounds similar to the epoché).

This essay may be taken less literally, and more for a road map as to how to go about thinking the unthought, instead of doing philosophy/technology.

Heidegger’s Questions:

1—What is it to dwell?

2—How does building belong to dwelling?

1—What is it to dwell?

1. (A)It seems like we can only have dwelling through a building, yet not all buildings are dwellings.  Dwelling seems to be the end of all building (the means), even if such do not ultimately achieve dwelling.  However, this means-end schema obscures the real question of the relation of dwelling and building (compare to the obscuring of the questions of being and nothing, etc).  So how do we get to the real relation? 
   

2. (B)By language:
   

1. It is language that tells us about the essence of a thing, provided that we respect language’s own essence.  In the meantime, to be sure, there rages round the earth an unbridled yet clever talking, writing, and broadcasting of spoken words.  Man acts as though he were the shaper of language, while in fact language remains the master of man (“B, D, T,” BW, 348)
   

1. Consider the first sentence in the quote as concerning how we are going to investigate the relation.  Consider the last two sentences in relation to the essay we previously read, “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking:” how information (i.e. a main aspect of cybernetics, technology) conceals the original perplexity inherent in the main questions of the meaning of being/nothing.  Heidegger offers us that perhaps it is because we think we control language (we structure it, it does not structure us or reveal “reality”) that we are alienated today.
   

3. (C) Then he moves to an etymological review—the main points here are: originally, “building” meant “dwelling;” “building” even has a connection to “being;” and there are two types of building, “cultivation” and “raising edifices.”  Also, note here the unexplained entrance of ethical words, “cherish,” “protect,” “preserve,” “care for.”
   

Sein  (To Be)Bauen (to build)

Denken(To Think)Bheu (Indo-German);

Ich bin(I am)Fui (Latin, I’ve been);

Ich denke (I think)Wohnen (to dwell, reside, stay)

phuo / phuein (Greek, I come to light, grow, engender/coming to light of things that grow in time from the earth skyward).  Tikto (Greek, to bring forth or produce);  Techne (Greek, technique, to make something appear, producing as a letting appear).

4. (D) Building as dwelling is habitual, this is why it “recedes” from us into the multiplicity of meanings, like how we dwell, build, etc.  [[Compare this to how we think of modes of being instead of Being—the self-evident nature of the question]]. 
   

The real relation is lost—this meaning is retracted by the way we use language today—but there is a “primal call” of the essential meaning.  This call is not incapable of speech, merely silent today.

If we listen to the call we hear:

1—Building is really dwelling

2—Dwelling is the manner in which mortals are on earth

3—Building as dwelling unfolds into building that cultivates and raises edifices. 

This is the three-fold nature of building/dwelling [and being]. 

5. (E) Thus, what does dwelling mean; what does its essence consist in?
   

6. Via etymology, Heidegger concludes it means to remain, to stay in a place, particularly, in peace.  Peace means to be freed from harm, spared.  “The fundamental character of dwelling is this sparing.”  “… human being consists in dwelling …” (351).
   

6. (F) Then we have the introduction of the mystico-religious “Four-Fold:”  discussed below
   

Remaining on earth in our dwelling we are also remaining under the sky, before the divinities, and implies a belonging together with humans.  So, the four-fold consists of: earth, sky, divinities, and mortals.  There is a unity amongst these by the fact of dwelling.  We are morals because we can die, capable of death as death; we save the earth, receive the sky, await the divinities, and initiate our own essential Being.  We maintain the four-fold by this simple unity [[relate to Lao Tzu, not in the naming of a four-fold, but in the preservation by unity aspect of the Tao]].

2—How does building belong to dwelling?

(A) (Limited to building as constructing).  Bridge example: the banks of a river are banks only when we see them as such, specifically, when there is a bridge that spatially connects one side to another.  The bridge “Gathers” things near-by together (i.e. orientation).  Bridges initiate, lead to the other side, and concept of last bridge—connotations of death.  “Gathering” is called “thing,” we can think of a bridge in itself (merely a bridge) or as a symbol, however, it is never first a thing than a symbol nor as an expression.  A bridge is just a thing that gathers the four-fold. 

(B) Site; Locale; Boundary; Space; Place (355+).  Heidegger then differentiates these terms, perhaps this is an example of getting the unthought in language out…? 

Site: a bridge is a thing in itself because it (gathers) allows a site for the four-fold unity.

Locale: only something that is a locale can make space for a site.  A locale is there only when the thing is, thus the locale is because the bridge is there.

Space: spaces are allowed for only because of things that are locales.  Raum means a place FREED for settlement and lodging.  It is freed within a boundary (LIMIT), not a stopping point, but that from which something begins its unfolding—space let into its bounds (horizons).  Spaces receive their being from locales, not from “space.”  [[disintegration of Space as an a priori structure of sensibility]]. 

Things that are locales allow a site we call buildings.  What requires buildings are locales which allow a site for the four-fold, which, in turn, allow for a space. 

Relations between locale and space & locale and dweller (s/he who lives there) rest in things as locales.

(C) So what is the essence of these things we call buildings?

1. --1--Locale’s relation to space (357-8):
   

2. --2--Human’s relation to space (358-9):
   

--1--Locale’s relation to space (357-8):

The bridge, as a locale, allows a space for the four-fold unity.  This space contains many places, but these are mere measurements—stadion, spatium, intervals.  But—this is not what we are getting at for the essence, instead, we need to see the relation between things as more than distances, as the possibility for abstract measurements, for purely mathematical constructions of manifold, to take place.  [[Recall from B&T how “historicity” makes “history” possible]].  So, space as the ground of possibility of making places.  As a possibility, this space has no spaces, no places, no locales, no extension—it is sheer possibility, potentiality.  The pure mathematical cannot be the ground of the essence of space and locales. 

The spaces we actually, physically go through daily are given by locales.  The essence of these spaces is grounded in things (like buildings). 

--2--Human’s relation to space (358-9):

This is not a schema of human here, space there, nor is it a model where space faces the person.  Space is not an external object nor an inner experience.  [[Recall the dissolution of subject-object relations in End/Task; also see spatiality in B&T]].  Versus space and external object:  to name someone, I do not imagine him/her as an object in space, I imagine a person, one who dwells, in the unity of the fourfold (in interwoven connections, not space and time).  Versus space and inner experience:  to imagine a distance is not to have a mental representation in our minds of something that represents “far,” “near,” etc.  Instead, our thinking is of the thing in itself, our thinking persists through distances.  We think of the real thing, ourselves there, or rather, it right here, not a symbol of its distance.

“To say that mortals are is to say that in dwelling they persist through spaces by virtue of their stay among things and locales.  And only because mortals pervade, persist through, spaces by their very essence are they able to go through spaces” (359).

When we go through spaces, we do not just use them up, we go through and sustain spaces by remaining constant with relations to things.  [[Think of Husserlian protention and retention]]  I can go to the door because I am already there, by my being, I pervade this space, thus can go through it. 

Even when we look inward, we do not lose the outside world, we come back to looking outward, pausing reflection on ourselves, we see nothing abandoned us while we were not looking.  We are always “staying with things” and only because of this can these things fail us, fail to speak to us or concern us any longer.

So, the human’s relations to locales (and through such to spaces) inheres in his dwelling.  The relation between the human and space is dwelling thought essentially. 

(D) When we think essentially about these relations (locale and space, human and space) a “light” falls on “buildings” as those things that are locales.

The locale admits and installs the four-fold.  Admittance and installation belong together, a “double space-making,” which means the locale is a shelter for the four-fold and a house.  Thus, housings. 

To make such is building.  Building founds and joins spaces.  Building produces locales, it does not shape pure-space.  Building is thus closer to the essence of spaces then pure geometrical or mathematic operations. 

(E) The simple essence of dwelling is the preserving of the fourfold.  Thus, building is a letting-dwell.  This is a new way of thinking, a non-ends-to-means schema. 

“For building brings the fourfold hither, into a thing, the bridge, and brings forth the thing as a locale, out into what is already present, room for which is only now made by this locale” (361).  [[Note his playing with temporality—protention, retention—and how this is like the concealing revealing in that it is what is always already there as a ground for which its appearing relies on.  This is the presencing of what is always already present, yet concealed]].

The essence of building is letting dwell.

Only if we are capable of dwelling can we build. 

(F) (Peasant farm house example).

Dwelling is the basic character of Being. 

It is enough if this essay has made the question of dwelling / building worthy of questioning and thinking.

Building and thinking are inescapable for dwelling.  But they fail if they are too busy to listen to their connection.  Both building and thinking belong to dwelling.

(G) The next step one should take from here is to look at the state of dwelling in our precarious age. 

Housing shortages…but this is not the proper plight of dwelling.  The proper plight is that humans search for the essence of dwelling, that we have to always again learn the essence of dwelling.  This is the mortal’s homelessness—that we don’t think of dwelling as THE plight.  Thus, build out of dwelling and think for the sake of dwelling.

The end.