From: Assefaw, Yonatan (yassefaw@tcfbank.com)
Date: Thu Jan 22 2009 - 13:04:16 EST
Let's apply our own symbol in Eritrea when we design architectural ideas.
Building Dwelling Thinking
by Martin Heidegger <http://mysite.pratt.edu/~arch543p/help/Heidegger.html>
from Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter, Harper
Colophon Books, New York,
In what follows we shall try to think about dwelling and building. This
thinking about building does not presume to discover architectural ideas, let
alone to give rules for building. This venture in thought does not view
building as an art or as a technique of construction; rather it traces
building back into that domain to which everything that is belongs. We ask:
1. What is it to dwell?
2. How does building belong to dwelling?
I
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
a dwelling. Bridges and hangars, stadiums and power stations are buildings
but not 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 of our dwelling. That domain extends over these buildings and yet is
not limited to the dwelling place. The truck driver is at home on the
highway, but he does not have his shelter there; the working woman is at home
in the spinning mill, but does not have her dwelling place there; the chief
engineer is at home in the power station, but he does not dwell there. These
buildings house man. He inhabits them and yet does not dwell in them, when to
dwell means merely that we take shelter in them. In today's housing shortage
even this much is reassuring and to the good; residential buildings do indeed
provide shelter; today's houses may even be well planned, easy to keep,
attractively cheap, open to air, light, and sun, but-do the houses in
themselves hold any guarantee that dwelling occurs in them? Yet those
buildings that are not dwelling places remain in turn determined by dwelling
insofar as they serve man's dwelling. Thus dwelling would in any case be the
end that presides over all building. Dwelling and building are related as end
and means. However, as long as this is all we have in mind, we take dwelling
and building as two separate activities, an idea that has something correct
in it. Yet at the same time by the means-end schema we block our view of the
essential relations. For building is not merely a means and a way toward
dwelling -to build is in itself already to dwell. Who tells us this? Who
gives us a standard at all by which we can take the measure of the nature of
dwelling and building?
It is language that tells us about the nature of a thing, provided that we
respect language's own nature. 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 and master of language,
while in fact language remains the master of man. Perhaps it is before all
else man's subversion of this relation of dominance that drives his nature
into alienation. That we retain a concern for care in speaking is all to the
good, but it is of no help to us as long as language still serves us even
then only as a means of expression. Among all the appeals that we human
beings, on our part, can help to be voiced, language is the highest and
everywhere the first.
What, then, does Bauen, building, mean? The Old English and High German word
for building, buan, means to dwell. This signifies: to remain, to stay in a
place. The real meaning of the verb bauen, namely, to dwell, has been lost to
us. But a covert trace of it has been preserved in the German word Nachbar,
neighbor. The neighbor is in Old English the neahgehur; neah, near, and
gebur, dweller. The Nachbar is the Nachgebur, the Nachgebauer, the
near-dweller, he who dwells nearby. The verbs buri, büren, beuren, beuron,
all signify dwelling, the abode, the place of dwelling. Now to be sure the
old word buan not only tells us that bauen, to build, is really to dwell; it
also gives us a clue as to how we have to think about the dwelling it
signifies. When we speak of dwelling we usually think of an activity that man
performs alongside many other activities. We work here and dwell there. We do
not merely dwell-that would be virtual inactivity-we practice a profession,
we do business, we travel and lodge on the way, now here, now there. Bauen
originally means to dwell. Where the word bauen still speaks in its original
sense it also says how far the nature of dwelling reaches. That is, bauen,
buan. bhu, beo are our word bin in the versions: ich bin, I am, du bist, you
are, the imperative form bis, be. What then does ich bin mean? The old word
bauen, to which the bin belongs, answers: ich bin, du bist mean: I dwell, you
dwell. The way in which you are and I am, the manner in which we humans are
on the earth, is Buan, dwelling. To be a human being means to be on the earth
as a mortal. it means to dwell. The old word bauen, which says that man is
insofar as he dwells, this word barren however also means at the same time to
cherish and protect, to preserve and care for, specifically to till the soil,
to cultivate the vine. Such building only takes care-it tends the growth that
ripens into its fruit of its own accord. Building in the sense of preserving
and nurturing is not making anything. Shipbuilding and temple-building, on
the other hand, do in a certain way make their own works. Here building, in
contrast with cultivating, is a constructing. Both modes of building-building
as cultivating, Latin colere, cultura, and building as the raising up of
edifices, aedificare -are comprised within genuine building, that is,
dwelling. Building as dwelling, that is, as being on the earth, however,
remains for man's everyday experience that which is from the outset
"habitual"-we inhabit it, as our language says so beautifully: it is the
Gewohnte. For this reason it recedes behind the manifold ways in which
dwelling is accomplished, the activities of cultivation and construction.
These activities later claim the name of bauen, building, and with it the
fact of building, exclusively for themselves. The real sense of bauen, namely
dwelling, falls into oblivion.
At first sight this event looks as though it were no more than a change of
meaning of mere terms. In truth, however, something decisive is concealed in
it, namely, dwelling is not experienced as man's being; dwelling is never
thought of as the basic character of human being.
That language in a way retracts the real meaning of the word bauen, which is
dwelling, is evidence of the primal nature of these meanings; for with the
essential words of language, their true meaning easily falls into oblivion in
favor of foreground meanings. Man has hardly yet pondered the mystery of this
process. Language withdraws from man its simple and high speech. But its
primal call 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 three
things:
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
things and the building that erects buildings.
If we give thought to this threefold fact, we obtain a clue and note the
following: as long as we do not bear in mind that all building is in itself a
dwelling, we cannot even adequately ask, let alone properly decide, what the
building of buildings might be in its nature. We do not dwell because we have
built, but we build and have built because we dwell, that is, because we are
dwellers. But in what does the nature of dwelling consist? Let us listen once
more to what language says to us. The Old Saxon wuon, the Gothic wunian like
the old word bauen, mean to remain, to stay in a place. But the Gothic wunian
says more distinctly how this remaining is experienced. Wunian means: to be
at peace, to be brought to peace, to remain in peace. The word for peace,
Friede, means the free, das Frye, and fry means: preserved from harm and
danger, preserved from something, safeguarded. To free really means to spare.
The sparing itself consists not only in the fact that we do not harm the one
whom we spare. Real sparing is something positive and takes place when we
leave something beforehand in its own nature, when we return it specifically
to its being, when we "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 sphere that safeguards each thing in its nature. The fundamental
character of dwelling is this sparing and preserving. It pervades dwelling in
its whole range. That range reveals itself to us as soon as we reflect that
human being consists in dwelling and, indeed, dwelling in the sense of the
stay of mortals on the earth.
But "on the earth" already means "under the sky." Both of these also mean
"remaining before the divinities" and include a "belonging to men's being
with one another." By a primal oneness the four-earth and sky, divinities and
mortals-belong together in one.
Earth is the serving bearer, blossoming and fruiting, spreading out in rock
and water, rising up into plant and animal. When we say earth, we are already
thinking of the other three along with it, but we give no thought to the
simple oneness of the four.
The sky is the vaulting path of the sun, the course of the changing, moon,
the wandering glitter of the stars, the year's seasons and their changes, the
light and dusk of day, the gloom and glow of night, the clemency and
inclemency of the weather, the drifting clouds and blue depth of the ether.
When we say sky, we are already thinking of the other three along with it,
but we give no thought to the simple oneness of the four.
The divinities are the beckoning messengers of the godhead. 0ut of the holy
sway of the godhead, the god appears in his presence or withdraws into his
concealment. When we speak of the divinities, we are already thinking of the
other three along with them, but we give no thought to the simple oneness of
the four.
The mortals are the human beings. They are called mortals because they can
die. To die means to be capable of death as death. Only man dies, and indeed
continually, as long as remains on earth, under the sky, before the
divinities. When we speak of mortals, we are already thinking of the other
three along with them, but we give no thought to the simple oneness of the
four.
This simple oneness of the four we call the fourfold. Mortals are in the
fourfold by dwelling. But the basic character of dwelling is to spare, to
preserve. Mortals dwell in the way they preserve the fourfold in its
essential being, its presencing. Accordingly, the preserving that dwells is
fourfold.
Mortals dwell in that they save the earth-taking the word in the old sense
still known to Lessing. Saving does not only snatch something from a danger.
To save really means to set something free into its own presencing. To save
the earth is more than to exploit it or even wear it out. Saving the earth
does not master the earth and does not subjugate it, which is merely one step
from spoliation.
Mortals dwell in that they receive the sky as sky. They leave to the sun and
the moon their journey, to the stars their courses, to the seasons their
blessing and their inclemency; they do not turn night into day nor day into a
harassed unrest.
Mortals dwell in that they await the divinities as divinities. In hope they
hold up to the divinities what is unhoped for. They wait for intimations of
their coming and do not mistake the signs of their absence. They do not make
their gods for themselves and do not worship idols. In the very depth of
misfortune they wait for the weal that has been withdrawn.
Mortals dwell in that they initiate their own nature-their being capable of
death as death-into the use and practice of this capacity, so that there may
be a good death. To initiate mortals into the nature of death in no way means
to make death, as empty Nothing, the goal. Nor does it mean to darken
dwelling by blindly staring toward the end.
In saving the earth, in receiving the sky, in awaiting the divinities, in
initiating mortals, dwelling occurs as the fourfold preservation of the
fourfold. To spare and preserve means: to take under our care, to look after
the fourfold in its presencing. What we take under our care must be kept
safe. But if dwelling preserves the fourfold, where does it keep the
fourfold's nature? How do mortals make their dwelling such a preserving?
Mortals would never be capable of it if dwelling were merely a staying on
earth under the sky, before the divinities, among mortals. Rather, dwelling
itself is always a staying with things. Dwelling, as preserving, keeps the
fourfold in that with which mortals stay: in things.
Staying with things, however, is not merely something attached to this
fourfold preserving as a fifth something. On the contrary: staying with
things is the only way in which the fourfold stay within the fourfold is
accomplished at any time in simple unity. Dwelling preserves the fourfold by
bringing the presencing of the fourfold into things. But things themselves
secure the fourfold only when they themselves as things are let be in their
presencing. How is this done? In this way, that mortals nurse and nurture the
things that grow, and specially construct things that do not grow.
Cultivating and construction are building in the narrower sense. Dwelling,
insofar as it keeps or secures the fourfold in things, is, as this keeping, a
building. With this, we are on our way to the second question.
II
In what way does building belong to dwelling?
The answer to this question will clarify for us what building, understood by
way of the nature of dwelling, really is. We limit ourselves to building in
the sense of constructing things and inquire: what is a built thing? A bridge
may serve as an example for our reflections.
The bridge swings over the stream "with case and power. It does not just
connect banks that are already there. The banks emerge as banks only as the
bridge crosses the stream. The bridge designedly causes them to lie across
from each other. One side is set off against the other by the bridge. Nor do
the banks stretch along the stream as indifferent border strips of the dry
land. With the banks, the bridge brings to the stream the one and the other
expanse of the landscape lying behind them. It brings stream and bank and
land into each other's neighborhood. The bridge gathers the earth as
landscape around the stream. Thus it guides and attends the stream through
the meadows. Resting upright in the stream's bed, the bridge-piers bear the
swing of the arches that leave the stream's waters to run their course. The
waters may wander on quiet and gay, the sky's floods from storm or thaw may
shoot past the piers in torrential waves-the bridge is ready for the sky's
weather and its fickle nature. Even where the bridge covers the stream, it
holds its flow up to the sky by taking it for a moment under the vaulted
gateway and then setting it free once more.
The bridge lets the stream run its course and at the same time grants their
way to mortals so that they may come and go from shore to shore. Bridges lead
in many ways. The city bridge leads from the precincts of the castle to the
cathedral square; the river bridge near the country town brings wagons and
horse teams to the surrounding villages. The old stone bridge's humble brook
crossing gives to the harvest wagon its passage from the fields into the
village and carries the lumber cart from the field path to the road. The
highway bridge is tied into the network of long-distance traffic, paced as
calculated for maximum yield. Always and ever differently the bridge escorts
the lingering and hastening ways of men to and from, so that they may get to
other banks and in the end, as mortals, to the other side. Now in a high
arch, now in a low, the bridge vaults over glen and stream-whether mortals
keep in mind this vaulting of the bridge's course or forget that they, always
themselves on their way to the last bridge, are actually striving to surmount
all that is common and unsound in them in order to bring themselves before
the haleness of the divinities. The bridge gathers, as a passage that
crosses, before the divinities-whether we explicitly think of, and visibly
give thanks for, their presence, as in the figure of the saint of the bridge,
or whether that divine presence is obstructed or even pushed wholly aside.
The bridge gathers to itself in its own way earth and sky, divinities and
mortals.
Gathering or assembly, by an ancient word of our language, is called "thing."
The bridge is a thing-and, indeed, it is such as the gathering of the
fourfold which we have described. To be sure, people think of the bridge as
primarily and really merely a bridge; after that, and occasionally, it might
possibly express much else besides; and as such an expression it would then
become a symbol, for instance ,t symbol of those things we mentioned before.
But the bridge, if it is a true bridge, is never first of all a mere bridge
and then afterward a symbol. And just as little is the bridge in the first
place exclusively a symbol, in the sense that it expresses something that
strictly speaking does not belong to it. If we take the bridge strictly as
such, it never appears as an expression. The bridge is a thing and only that.
Only? As this thing it gathers the fourfold.
Our thinking has of course long been accustomed to understate the nature of
the thing. The consequence, in the course of Western thought, has been that
the thing is represented as an unknown X to which perceptible properties are
attached. From this point of view, everything that already belongs to the
gathering nature of this thing does, of course, appear as something that is
afterward read into it. Yet the bridge would never be a mere bridge if it
were not a thing.
To be sure, the bridge is a thing of its own kind; for it gathers the
fourfold in such a way that it allows a site for it. But only something that
is itself a location can make space for a site. The location is not already
there before the bridge is. Before the bridge stands, there are of course
many spots along the stream that can be occupied by something. One of them
proves to be a location, and does so because of the bridge. Thus the bridge
does not first come to a location to stand in it; rather, a location comes
into existence only by virtue of the bridge. The bridge is a thing; it
gathers the fourfold, but in such a way that it allows a site for the
fourfold. By this site are determined the localities and ways by which a
space is provided for.
Only things that are locations in this manner allow for spaces. What the word
for space, Raum, Rum, designates is said by its ancient meaning. Raum means a
place cleared or freed for settlement and lodging. A space is something that
has been made room for, something that- namely within a boundary, Greek
peras. A boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks
recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing.
That is why the concept is that of horismos, that is, the horizon, the
boundary. Space is in essence that for which room has been made, that which
is let into its bounds. That for which room is made is always granted and
hence is joined, that is, gathered, by virtue of a location, that is, by such
a thing as the bridge. Accordingly, spaces receive their being from locations
and not from "space."
Things which, as locations, allow a site we now in anticipation call
buildings. They are so called because they are made by a process of building
construction. Of what sort this making-building-must be, however, we find out
only after we have first given thought to the nature of those things which of
themselves require building as the process by which they are made. These
things are locations that allow a site for the fourfold, a site that in each
case provides for a space. The relation between location and space lies in
the nature of these things qua locations, but so does the relation of the
location to the man who lives at that location. Therefore we shall now try to
clarify the nature of these things that we call buildings by the following
brief consideration.
For one thing, what is the relation between location and space? For another,
what is the relation between man and space? The bridge is a location. As such
a thing, it allows a space into which earth and heaven, divinities and
mortals are admitted. The space allowed by the bridge contains many places
variously near or far from the bridge. These places, however, may be treated
as mere positions between which there lies a measurable distance; a distance,
in Greek stadion, always has room made for it, and indeed by bare positions.
The space that is thus made by positions is space of a peculiar sort. As
distance or "stadion" it is what the same word, stadion, means in Latin, a
spatium, an intervening space or interval. Thus nearness and remoteness
between men and things can become mere intervals of intervening space. In a
space that is represented purely as spatium, the bridge now appears as a mere
something at some position, which can be occupied at any time by something
else or replaced by a mere marker. What is more, the mere dimensions of
height, breadth, and depth can be abstracted from space as intervals. What is
so abstracted we represent as the pure manifold of the three dimensions. Yet
the room made by this manifold is also no longer determined by distances; it
is no longer a spatium, but now no more than extensio- extension. But from a
space as extensio a further abstraction can be made, to analytic-algebraic
relations. What these relations make room for is the possibility of the
construction of manifolds with an arbitrary number of dimensions. The space
provided for in this mathematical manner may be called "space," the "one"
space as such. But in this sense "the" space , "space," contains no spaces
and no places. We never find in it any locations, that is, things of the kind
the bridge is. As against that, however, in the spaces provided for by
locations there is always space as interval, and in this interval in turn
there is space as pure extension. Spatium and extensio afford at any time the
possibility of measuring things and what they make room for, according to
distances, spans, and directions, and of computing these magnitudes. But the
fact that they are universally applicable to everything that has extension
can in no case make numerical magnitudes the ground of the nature of space
and locations that are measurable with the aid of mathematics. How even
modern physics was compelled by the facts themselves to represent the spatial
medium of cosmic space as a field-unity determined by body as dynamic center,
cannot be discussed here.
The spaces through which we go daily are provided for by locations; their
nature is grounded in things of the type of buildings. If we pay heed to
these relations between locations and spaces, between spaces and space, we
get a due to 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
an external object nor an inner experience. It is not that there are men, and
over and above them space; for when I say "a man," and in saying this word
think of a being who exists in a human manner-that is, who dwells-then by the
name "man" I already name the stay within the fourfold among things. Even
when we relate ourselves to those things that are not in our immediate reach,
we are staying with the things themselves. We do not represent distant things
merely in our mind-as the textbooks have it-so that only mental
representations of distant things run through our minds and heads as
substitutes for the things. If all of us now think, from where we are right
here, of the old bridge in Heidelberg, this thinking toward that location is
not a mere experience inside the persons present here; rather, it belongs to
the nature of our thinking of that bridge that in itself thinking gets
through, persists through, the distance to that location. From this spot
right here, we are there at the bridge-we are by no means at some
representational content in our consciousness. From right here we may even be
much nearer to that bridge and to what it makes room for than someone who
uses it daily as an indifferent river crossing. Spaces, and with them space
as such-"space"-are always provided for already within the stay of mortals.
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 persist through spaces by
virtue of their stay among things and locations. And only because mortals
pervade, persist through, spaces by their very nature are they able to go
through spaces. But in going through spaces we do not give up our standing in
them. Rather, we always go through spaces in such a way that we already
experience them by staying constantly with near and remote locations and
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
never here only, as this encapsulated body; rather, I am there, that is, I
already pervade the room, and only thus can I go through it.
Even when mortals turn "inward," taking stock of themselves, they do not
leave behind their belonging to the fourfold. When, as we say, we come to our
senses and reflect on ourselves, we come back to ourselves from things
without ever abandoning our stay among things. Indeed, the loss of rapport
with things that occurs in states of depression would be wholly impossible if
even such a state were not still what it is as a human state: that is, a
staying with things. Only if this stay already characterizes human being can
the things among which we are also fail to speak to us, fail to concern us
any longer.
Man's relation to locations, and through locations to spaces, inheres in bis
dwelling. The relationship between man and space is none other than dwelling,
strictly thought and spoken.
When we think, in the manner just attempted, about the relation between
location and space, but also about the relation of man and space, a light
falls on the nature of the things that are locations and that we call
buildings.
The bridge is a thing of this sort. The location allows the simple onefold of
earth and sky, of divinities and mortals, to enter into a site by arranging
the site into spaces. The location makes room for the fourfold in a double
sense. The location admits the fourfold and it installs the fourfold. The two
making room in the sense of admitting and in the sense of installing-belong
together. As a double space-making, the location is a shelter for the
fourfold or, by the same token, a house. Things like such locations shelter
or house men's lives. Things of this sort are housings, though not
necessarily dwelling-houses in the narrower sense.
The making of such things is building. Its nature consists in this, that it
corresponds to the character of these things. They are locations that allow
spaces. This is why building, by virtue of constructing locations, is a
founding and joining of spaces. Because building produces locations, the
joining of the spaces of these locations necessarily brings with it space, as
spatium and as extension into the thingly structure of buildings. But
building never shapes pure "space" as a single entity. Neither directly nor
indirectly. Nevertheless, because it produces things as locations, building
is closer to the nature of spaces and to the origin of the nature of "space"
than any geometry and mathematics. Building puts up locations that mane space
and a site for the fourfold. From the simple oneness in which earth and sky,
divinities and mortals belong together, building receives the directive for
its erecting of locations. Building takes over from the fourfold the standard
for all the traversing and measuring of the spaces that in each case are
provided for by the locations that have been founded. The edifices guard the
fourfold. They are things that in their own way preserve the fourfold. To
preserve the fourfold, to save the earth, to receive the sky, to await the
divinities, to escort mortals-this fourfold preserving is the simple nature,
the presencing, of dwelling. In this way, then, do genuine buildings give
form to dwelling in its presencing and house this presence.
Building thus characterized is a distinctive letting-dwell. Whenever it is
such in fact, building already has responded to the summons of the fourfold.
All planning remains grounded on this responding, and planning in turn opens
up to the designer the precincts suitable for his designs.
As soon as we try to think of the nature of constructive building in terms of
a letting-dwell, we come to know more clearly what that process of making
consists in by which building is accomplished. Usually we take production to
be an activity whose performance has a result, the finished structure, as its
consequence. It is possible to conceive of making in that way; we thereby
grasp something that is correct, and yet never touch its nature, which is a
producing that brings something forth. For building brings the fourfold
hither into a thing, the bridge, and brings forth the thing as a location,
out into what is already there, room for which is only now made by this
location.
The Greek for "to bring forth or to produce" is tikto. The word techne,
technique, belongs to the-verb's root tec. To the Greeks techne means neither
art nor handicraft but rather: to make something appear, within what is
present, as this or that, in this way or that way. The Greeks conceive of
techne, producing, in terms of letting appear. Techne thus conceived has been
concealed in the tectonics of architecture since ancient times. Of late it
still remains concealed, and more resolutely, in the technology of power
machinery. But the nature of the erecting buildings cannot be understood
adequately in terms either of architecture or of engineering construction,
nor in terms of a mere combination of the two. The erecting of buildings
would not be suitably defined even if we were to think of it in the sense of
the original Greek techne as solely a letting-appear, which brings something
made, as something present, among the things that are already present.
The nature of building is letting dwell. Building accomplishes its nature in
the raising of locations by the joining of their spaces. Only if we are
capable of dwelling, only then can we build. Let us think for a while of a
farmhouse in the Black Forest, which was built some two hundred years ago by
the dwelling of peasants. Here the self-sufficiency of the power to let earth
and heaven, divinities and mortals enter in simple oneness into things,
ordered the house. It placed the farm on the wind-sheltered mountain slope
looking south, among the meadows close to the spring. It gave it the wide
overhanging shingle roof whose proper slope bears up under the burden of
snow, and which, reaching deep down, shields the chambers against the storms
of the long winter nights. It did not forget the altar corner behind the
community table; it made room in its chamber for the hallowed places of
childbed and the "tree of the dead"-for that is what they call a coffin
there: the Totenbaum-and in this way it designed for the different
generations under one roof the character of their journey through time. A
craft which, itself sprung from dwelling, still uses its tools and frames as
things, built the farmhouse.
Only if we are capable of dwelling, only then can we build. Our reference to
the Black Forest farm in no way means that we should or could go back to
building such houses; rather, it illustrates by a dwelling that has been how
it was able to build.
Dwelling, however, is the basic character of Being in keeping with which
mortals exist. Perhaps this attempt to think about dwelling and building will
bring out somewhat more clearly that building belongs to dwelling and how it
receives its nature from dwelling. Enough will have been gained if dwelling
and building have become worthy of questioning and thus have remained worthy
of thought.
But that thinking itself belongs to dwelling in the same sense as building,
although in a different way, may perhaps be attested to by the course of
thought here attempted.
Building and thinking are, each in its own way, inescapable for dwelling. The
two, however, are also insufficient for dwelling so long as each busies
itself with its own affairs in separation instead of listening to one
another. They are able to listen if both-building and thinking-belong to
dwelling, if they remain within their limits and realize that the one as much
as the other comes from the workshop of long experience and incessant
practice.
We are attempting to trace in thought the nature of dwelling. The next step
on this path would be the question: what is the state of dwelling in our
precarious age? On all sides we hear talk about the housing shortage, and
with good reason. Nor is there just talk; there is action too. We try to fill
the need by providing houses, by promoting the building of houses, planning
the whole architectural enterprise. However hard and bitter, however
hampering and threatening the lack of houses remains, the real plight of
dwelling does not lie merely in a lack of houses. The real plight of dwelling
is indeed older than the world wars with their destruction, older also than
the increase of the earth's population and the condition of the industrial
workers. The real dwelling plight lies in this, that mortals ever search anew
for the nature of dwelling, that they must ever learn to dwell. What if man's
homelessness consisted in this, that man still does not even think of the
real plight of dwelling as the plight? Yet as soon as man gives thought to
his homelessness, it is a misery no longer. Rightly considered and kept well
in mind, it is the sole summons that calls mortals into their dwelling.
But how else can mortals answer this summons than by trying on their part, on
their own, to bring dwelling to the fullness of its nature? This they
accomplish when they build out of dwelling, and think for the sake of
dwelling.
Thank you
Yonatan
Minnesota