Thoughts on Dwelling [Heidegger] :
PART II
[More conclusive thoughts to come soon, these are notes I typed while reading]
The banks emerge as banks only as the bridge crosses the stream… It brings stream and bank and land into each other's neighborhood.
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.
A boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing. [Horizon is the boundry at which space starts]
[So Heidegger is arguing that because to dwell is to preserve and to free, to be in ones own presenceing, and because as mortals we are meant to die, to be on the earth and under the sky, we are also before the divinities. That is the conection? So to dwell is to be in ones own natural space… and as a mortal ours is the fourfold. So dwelling is the fourfold. The fourfold is harmony.]
I don’t know if I agree…? How?: The bridge is a location. As such a thing, it allows a space into which earth and heaven, divinities and mortals are admitted.
Basically he is arguing that a location does not exist until a ‘thing’ allows it to come into existence. You must have a location in order to gather the fourfold.. but wouldn’t the fourfold exist anyways? This is like arguing that a if a tree falls and no one is there to experience it, then it doesn’t make a sound. But sound is not subjective. . . sound is an existing reaction. . . can a location not be determined by a tree that is enjoyed for its shade? Or a raspberry bush that can be enjoyed for its berries? Or a large rock that can be sat on? Do these not give virtue to a location? It is not a location until it is experienced, acknowledged, and therefore man would have to make note of that location for it to exist.. a rock can be under the sky, before the divinities, and of the earth, but without man it is not a dwelling. Can it not be called a location because it is of the earth and therefore can not be third party to the fourfold? Is that the issue? But we build with materials from the earth… so is it the process of making it our own that makes it a thing? That virtues a location? That gathers the fourfold?
Space V.S Location:
What these relations make room for is the possibility of the construction of manifolds with an arbitrary number of dimensions. [Totally lost on this entire thought process]
Spaces are determined by location.
By thinking of a space you are actually experiencing the space itself. Not merely a representation within your conscious but persisting to the location itself. Not an experience in the present, here, but an experience that belongs to the nature of thinking of the thing/location.
What does “belong to the nature of thinking of the thing” mean? How is it different that a representational experience within the mind. I am thinking of a place, I am not in that place.. I owe those thoughts to that place? Maybe. I am somehow existentially connected to that place? Is that the argument? He says that “The thinking gets though to the distance of that location”. So, my mind travels to the location I am thinking of? In essence. I suppose without the location existing you could have no thought of that location but I don’t know if I quite understand his full argument or not..
“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.”
[I suppose you could argue that is what is true in your mind is as true as anything can be. When he is talking about the lecture hall he says that he could not go to it if he were not there. Mentally, if you did not see or understand the nature of the door you would not experience it or be able to go to it. So by thinking of it you are experiencing it and therefore there. . . I think it is a battle of semantics more than anything but I am not sure.]
"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."
"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 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.
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
Need both thinking and building to belong to dwelling. Both limited. Singularly they are insufficient.
[More conclusive thoughts to come soon, these are notes I typed while reading]
I have come to the conclusion that I am working way, way, too much. I was hired at Easy Street on July 1st, started July 2nd, and have worked at least eight hours (and up to sixteen hours) a day since. My first day off will be Friday, July 17th. For these reasons I am not where I want to be, but that is ok. This week I am only working single shifts each day [which is how it should be from now on] so I will have three to four hours a day to work on this project. Right now I am about halfway through Martine Heidegger's Building Dwelling Thinking but no where close to 1,000 words on dwelling. For now I am just going to take excerpts from my notes on the essay regarding part one on What it is to dwell. Tomorrow I will post on part two, and hopefully by the end of Friday I will have something to reflect on in a more holistic way [including images, drawings, ect]. We will see where it goes I guess though.
Thoughts on Dwelling [Heidegger] :
First, I think it is important to take notice of Heidegger's introduction where he states, "This thinking about building does not presume to discover architectural ideas, let alone to give rules for building". I think understanding that this project, wherever it leads between now and September, or whenever, can not definitely tell me anything at all about architectural ideas. I am not sure what outcome or consequence this exploration will have on my perspective, but I can not expect anything at all. It is simply an exploration, an exploration which is meant to simply observe as much as possible.
In part one Heidegger breaks down the history of the word 'dwell'. The intension of this is to resurrect the true meaning behind the word in its more essential state. He says that:
Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man… 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.
This begins a long explanation of the word Bauen, the Old English and High German work for building, which means to dwell. [I remember a lecture Denis Mann gave Fall quarter of our freshman year that started to get into the meaning of words, including the word Bauen and this paper by Heidegger, it was one of my favorite lectures.] It will do no good to retrace the steps Heidegger took, but in the end he concluded that the word dwell has many facets, and a true identity that has been lost to us. What he did establish is that to be a human being means to be on the earth as a mortal, which means to dwell. That it is our nature, in fact, to dwell. At the same time it means to cherish and protect, to preserve and care for, to cultivate. More importantly, in my experience of this essay, was that to dwell also means to be set at peace, to free. This is based from the Gothic wunjan which says more distinctly how this remaining is experienced. To free really means to spare, and that “the sparing itself consists not only in the fact that we do not harm the on whom we spare. Real sparing is something positive and takes place when we leave something beforehand in its own nature. Heidegger says that “the fundamental character of dwelling is this paring and preserving.
Once he breaks down the meaning of the word he speaks of a primal oneness, the four : earth and sky, mortals and divinities, and how they belong together. The connections he makes between the four are quite beautiful but he concludes by saying that :
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.
The next section will discuss how building belongs to dwelling.
This is all sort of hard to absorb, but most of it, I believe, I understood. I reiterated only bits and pieces and I am sure it makes no sense, but that is ok, for now, as these are really only notes…
There are two things that I really enjoyed about the first section, well three I suppose. The first is that he says “We do not dwell because we have built, but we build and have build because we dwell, that is, because we are dwellers”. This, to some extent, reinforces my own assumption that these ‘ad-hoc structures’ may have some character of the desire to dwell. I also found his definition of ‘to set free’ very important. The idea of freedom creates a sense of severing control over something… I think it is much more appropriate that to be free is to preserve the true nature of something. To free is to return it specifically to its being. The third aspect of this section was his rather poetic thoughts on the four-fold. I am still not sure how I feel about it… the unity and connection is something beautiful but… well I am not sure. What I did take from it is a sense of what it is to be mortal. Not that this was something I previously misunderstood, but Heidegger phrases the connections of four essential things in a very specific manner. As I read the remainder of this essay I think I will have more to say on this.
Reading this has been a very slow process. I have taken the time to look up words to find their appropriate and distinct meaning and inserted them within the essay for my own benefit and reread many parts various times.
More tomorrow. I have to be at work in eight hours… Ugh.
nahh i snoop on ur blog, not ur FB
lol, curious to see what u post
yeah about my blog. . lol i need to post something soon
yeahh
i am working on going through heidegger's paper 'building dwelling thinking' now
ur 5 days over due
what is that about?
like what to consider when building?
which will be the starting point for my understanding/definition of dwell
understanding what a dwelling is, how it is created, where it originates from.. our need for it
ect
ahh ok
i always just considered it natural.. since if u look at most animals, they all do dwellings of some sort
i have just been busy.. and lazy.. lol
haha that's normal
right. it is a very natural thing..
but if you are going to make decisions on something you have to have some sort of basis for how it is defined
yeahh
u can talk about time, how went from nomadic, to semi nomadic, to permanent settlements
dunno if that relates at all
well it does
completely
cuz when i imagine tent camps, i would imagine more of a semi nomadic style
exactly
and then you have to define nomadic
which isn't nearly as simple as you would presume
yeahh
because if you think about it a nomad is considered to move from place to place, typically with seasons. . where the food is, where the weather is good ect
right? that is the conventional idea?
right
but on the other hand someone who stays in one location endures various seasons
well i would put that with the semi nomadic if you say by seasons
their environment is constantly changing because they are stationary
right
while the environment of the 'nomad' is constant because they are moving with the environment
so, then, who is the true nomad?
i think they both are, just that one may be further advanced than the other
how so?
cuz one has to be more advanced to deal with the constant changes in envrironment
so then everyone is a nomad?
and food shortages and such
umm no
who is not?
because we have established settlements
right
but those settlements endure a constantly changing environment
i would say he who used to be a nomad and settles down in one area permanently is like in between
in between the nomad, and the settler
cuz it's when he can settle and sustain himself, that societies form around him
can there be an in between? aren't you either one or the other. ? settled or nomadic?
