Building Dwelling Thinking Martin Heidegger Pdf To Word
Banda Philpot
Heidegger proposes a different view of building, not as tectonic, construction, or technique, but traces its origins to which he claims everything belongs. His beginning questions of what it means to dwell and how does building belong to dwelling. Within this evolves a few key themes and definitions to attribute to his theory.
The goal of building is dwelling. Dwelling contains a certain emotional state of being attached to it, therefore it is generally attached to the emotional or psychological state of the user in question; to dwell as previously stated is an action that is done so at peace or contentment. The domain of dwelling is not restricted to a physical specific space associated with home, nor is it necessarily stationary. Heidegger refers to a truck driver at home on the road. It is this mental state of being that defines what it means to dwell; only, this state has often been associated with a place of upbringing, households or spaces of comfort- broader cultural ideologies of space linked to this positive emotion, signs or symbols of dwelling in culture that often restrict the notion of building and dwelling. Dwelling and building are related as an end and means. This is not to be misconstrued as a linear process (to build leads to dwelling); in fact, the act of building in itself is the act of dwelling simultaneously.
The measure by which Heidegger establishes as the rule from which to guide what it means to dwell is language. It is through his tracings of the changing meaning of building and dwelling he establishes as a temporal change in the fundamental meaning and understanding of the terms building and dwelling. This change reflects a change in association of the term. He claims that language is in fact the master of man, not the other way around. Here the evolution of a few key terms will be covered to demonstrate the importance of language in the articulation of his theory:
It is important to consider though that not all building is as dwelling. Moving on to the meaning of Friede, the free, das Frye means preservation from harm and danger. To free actually means to spare in its natural state and is a positive notion: into a preserve of peace. To dwell is to be at peace and thus the fundamental character of dwelling is the act of sparing- to remain at peace within the free. These notions contain much influence and significance today as the topic and discussion of ecological preservation become forefront in our culture. Heidegger seems to allude to the same premise. We as mortals on Earth are striving for this state- to dwell is a natural state of preservation of nature and natural states, building in the form of preserving, caring for, or growth. This then demonstrates how building is dwelling, however building when strictly referencing physical construction does not necessarily encapsulate this notion. One can build without dwelling.
Heidegger's involvement with Nazism casts a shadow over hislife. Whether, and if so to what extent, it casts a more concentratedshadow over at least some of his philosophical work is a more difficultissue. It would be irresponsible to ignore the relationship betweenHeidegger's philosophy and his politics. But it is surelypossible to be critically engaged in a deep and intellectuallystimulating way with his sustained investigation into Being, to findmuch of value in his capacity to think deeply about human life, tostruggle fruitfully with what he says about our loss of dwelling, andto appreciate his massive and still unfolding contribution to thoughtand to thinking, without looking for evidence of Nazism in every twistand turn of the philosophical path he lays down.
In what follows we shall try to think about dwelling and building. Thisthinking about building does not presume to discover architectural ideas, letalone to give rules for building. This venture in thought does not viewbuilding as an art or as a technique of construction; rather it traces buildingback into that domain to which everything that is belongs. We ask:
1. What is it to dwell?
2. How does building belong to dwelling?
We attain to dwelling, so it seems, only by means of building. The latter,building, has the former, dwelling, as its goal. Still, not every building is adwelling. Bridges and hangars, stadiums and power stations are buildings butnot dwellings; railway stations and highways, dams and market halls are built,but they are not dwelling places. Even so, these buildings are in the domain ofour dwelling. That domain extends over these buildings and yet is not limitedto the dwelling place. The truck driver is at home on the highway, but he doesnot have his shelter there; the working woman is at home in the spinning mill, butdoes not have her dwelling place there; the chief engineer is at home in thepower station, but he does not dwell there. These buildings house man. Heinhabits them and yet does not dwell in them, when to dwell means merely thatwe take shelter in them. In today's housing shortage even this much isreassuring and to the good; residential buildings do indeed provide shelter;today's houses may even be well planned, easy to keep, attractively cheap, opento air, light, and sun, but-do the houses in themselves hold any guarantee thatdwelling occurs in them? Yet those buildings that are not dwellingplaces remain in turn determined by dwelling insofar as they serve man'sdwelling. Thus dwelling would in any case be the end that presides over allbuilding. Dwelling and building are related as end and means. However, as longas this is all we have in mind, we take dwelling and building as two separateactivities, an idea that has something correct in it. Yet at the same time bythe means-end schema we block our view of the essential relations. For buildingis not merely a means and a way toward dwelling -to build is in itself alreadyto dwell. Who tells us this? Who gives us a standard at all by which we cantake the measure of the nature of dwelling and building?
That language in a way retracts the real meaning of the word bauen, whichis dwelling, is evidence of the primal nature of these meanings; for with theessential words of language, their true meaning easily falls into oblivion infavor of foreground meanings. Man has hardly yet pondered the mystery of thisprocess. Language withdraws from man its simple and high speech. But its primalcall does not thereby become incapable of speech; it merely falls silent. Man,though, fails to heed this silence.
But if we listen to what language says in the word bauen we hear threethings:
1. Building is really dwelling.
2. Dwelling is the manner in which mortals are on the earth.
3. Building as dwelling unfolds into the buildingthat cultivates growing thingsand the building that erects buildings.
If we give thought to this threefold fact, we obtain a clue and note thefollowing: as long as we do not bear in mind that all building is in itself adwelling, we cannot even adequately ask, let alone properly decide, whatthe building of buildings might be in its nature. We do not dwell because wehave built, but we build and have built because we dwell, that is, because weare dwellers. But in what does the nature of dwelling consist? Let uslisten once more to what language says to us. The Old Saxon wuon, theGothic wunian like the old word bauen, mean to remain, to stay ina place. But the Gothic wunian says more distinctly how this remainingis experienced. Wunian means: to be at peace, to be brought to peace, toremain in peace. The word for peace, Friede, means the free, dasFrye, and fry means: preserved from harm and danger, preserved fromsomething, safeguarded. To free really means to spare. The sparing itselfconsists not only in the fact that we do not harm the one whom we spare. Realsparing is something positive and takes place when we leave somethingbeforehand in its own nature, when we return it specifically to its being, whenwe "free" it in the real sense of the word into a preserve of peace.To dwell, to be set at peace, means to remain at peace within the free spherethat safeguards each thing in its nature. The fundamental character ofdwelling is this sparing and preserving. It pervades dwelling in its wholerange. That range reveals itself to us as soon as we reflect that human beingconsists in dwelling and, indeed, dwelling in the sense of the stay of mortalson the earth.
The answer to this question will clarify for us what building, understood byway of the nature of dwelling, really is. We limit ourselves to building in thesense of constructing things and inquire: what is a built thing? A bridge mayserve as an example for our reflections.
The spaces through which we go daily are provided for by locations; theirnature is grounded in things of the type of buildings. If we pay heed to theserelations between locations and spaces, between spaces and space, we get a dueto help us in thinking of the relation of man and space.
When we speak of man and space, it sounds as though man stood on one side,space on the other. Yet space is not something that faces man. It is neither anexternal object nor an inner experience. It is not that there are men, and overand above them space; for when I say "a man," and in sayingthis word think of a being who exists in a human manner-that is, whodwells-then by the name "man" I already name the stay within thefourfold among things. Even when we relate ourselves to those things that arenot in our immediate reach, we are staying with the things themselves. We donot represent distant things merely in our mind-as the textbooks have it-sothat only mental representations of distant things run through our minds andheads as substitutes for the things. If all of us now think, from where we areright here, of the old bridge in Heidelberg, this thinking toward that locationis not a mere experience inside the persons present here; rather, it belongs tothe nature of our thinking of that bridge that in itself thinkinggets through, persists through, the distance to that location. From this spotright here, we are there at the bridge-we are by no means at some representationalcontent in our consciousness. From right here we may even be much nearer tothat bridge and to what it makes room for than someone who uses it daily as anindifferent river crossing. Spaces, and with them space assuch-"space"-are always provided for already within the stay ofmortals. Spaces open up by the fact that they are let into the dwelling of man.To say that mortals are is to say that in dwelling they persistthrough spaces by virtue of their stay among things and locations. And onlybecause mortals pervade, persist through, spaces by their very nature are theyable to go through spaces. But in going through spaces we do not give up ourstanding in them. Rather, we always go through spaces in such a way that wealready experience them by staying constantly with near and remote locationsand things. When I go toward the door of the lecture hall, I am already there,and I could not go to it at all if I were not such that I am there. I am neverhere only, as this encapsulated body; rather, I am there, that is, I alreadypervade the room, and only thus can I go through it.
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