Building Dwelling Thinking by Martin Heidegger (Translation and Commentary by Adam Bobeck) PDF

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Building, Dwelling, Thinking By Martin Heidegger1 Translation and Commentary by Adam Bobeck2 In what follows we shall try to think about dwelling and building.3 This thinking about building does not presume to discover architectural ideas or to give rules for building. This thought experiment does n...

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Building Dwelling Thinking by Martin Heidegger (Translation and Commentary by Adam Bobeck) Adam Bobeck

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Building, Dwelling, Thinking By Martin Heidegger1 Translation and Commentary by Adam Bobeck2

In what follows we shall try to think about dwelling and building.3 This thinking about building does not presume to discover architectural ideas or to give rules for building. This thought experiment does not represent building from the point of view of architecture or technology, rather it traces building back into the realm to which everything that is belongs. We ask: Part I. What is dwelling?
 Part II. In what way does building belong to dwelling? Part I In order to dwell, it seems, we must frst build. Dwelling is the goal of building. Still, not every building is a dwelling place. Bridges and hangars, stadiums and power stations are buildings, but not places of dwelling; railway stations and highways, dams and market halls are buildings, but they too are not places of dwelling. These buildings are, however, in our realm of dwelling. It extends over these buildings and does not limit itself to the place of dwelling. The truck driver is at home on the highway, but does not have a shelter there; the worker is at home in the spinning mill, but does not have a dwelling place there either; the chief engineer is at home in the power station, but also does not dwell there. These buildings house people. We inhabit them and yet do not dwell in them, if by dwelling, we simply mean that we take shelter in them. 1 “Bauen, Wohnen, Denken” was originally published from a lecture Heidegger presented in 1951. 2 The goal of this translation is to overcome some of the issues found in other English translations of Heidegger's lectures from this period. Occasionally, I have re-worded sentences in order to use non-gendered language, however, overall I have attempted render the English as close to the original German as possible, while also aiming to make the text readable and clear. To that end, I have also changed much of the formatting. For an alternative translation (and the most popularly cited), see the translation by Alfred Hofstadter in Poetry, Language, Thought (New York, 1971). 3 Jeff Malpas, in his essay Heidegger, Aalto, and the Limits of Design, contends that dwelling is not the ideal translation of wohnen, because dwelling is an unusual word in English, whereas wohnen is an everyday term. Malpas argues that a better translation would be living or residing. For the purposes of uniformity and clarity, I have chosen to keep Hofstadter's translation of wohnen as dwelling. 1

With today's housing shortage,4 this much is already reassuring: residential buildings do indeed provide shelter. Today's houses can even be well-planned, easy to maintain, attractively cheap, and with good ventilation and lighting. But does a place of dwelling ensure that dwelling occurs? Those buildings that are not dwelling places still remain determined by dwelling, inasmuch as they serve human dwelling. Thus, dwelling would in any case be the goal of all building. Dwelling and building are related as ends and means. Nevertheless, as long as we are only thinking about this, we take dwelling and building as two separate activities and we imagine that we are doing something right. However, at the same time, we obscure our view of the essential relations when we use this schema of ends and means. Building is not just a means and a way to dwelling - building is in itself already dwelling. What tells us this? What gives us a standard with which we can measure the essence of dwelling and building? The essence of something comes to us from language, provided that we respect language's own essence. In the meantime, of course, endless and clever speaking, writing, and broadcasting of spoken words rages around the globe. Humans act as though we were the creators and masters of language, while in fact language remains the master of us. Perhaps it is, before all else, humankind's distortion of this relation of dominance that drives our nature into alienation. It is good that we still have a concern for language, but it does not help as long as we treat language merely as a means of expression. Among all the summons that we as humans can bring about to be voiced, language is the highest and the frst everywhere.5 What, then, does bauen – to build - mean? The Old High German word for bauen – buan - means to dwell. This means “to remain” or “to stay in a place”. The actual meaning of the verb 4 This lecture was given after France lifted the teaching ban on Heidegger after World War II. In Germany, there was a significant housing crisis in late 40s and early 50s, due to the effects of the war. 5 We can bring Jacques Derrida into conversation with Heidegger here. Derrida discusses supplementarity, which sees language as a supplement of reality. Derrida's supplementarity (Things are as they are, regardless of how they are described by language). For Heidegger, language is omnipresent and things exist in relationality with language. See Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri Spivak (Baltimore and London, 1997). 2

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 Nachbar is the Nachgebur, the Nachgebauer, the neardweller. The verbs buri, büren, beuren, beuron, indicate dwelling. The old word buan not only tells us that to build is really to dwell, but there is also a clue as to how we must think about what it means to dwell. We usually imagine, when we talk about dwelling, an activity that humans perform along with many other activities. We work here and dwell there. We do not only dwell – that would be almost inactivity – we work, we do business, we travel and dwell in the process. Building originally means dwelling. Where the word bauen still speaks in its original sense, it says how far the essence of dwelling extends. Bauen, buan. bhu, beo exist today in the German word bin. In the forms ich bin, du bist, and the imperative form bis.6 What does ich bin mean then? Through the old word bauen, we fnd the answer: ich bin really means I dwell. The way in which I am, the manner in which we humans are on the earth, is buan, dwelling. To be a human means to be on the earth as a mortal. It means to dwell. The old word bauen, which says that humans are insofar as we dwell, also means “to preserve” and “to take care of”, specifcally to build the felds, to build vines.7 Building means only to guard the growth that produces fruit. To build in this sense does not produce anything. Building ships and temples, however, does in a certain way produce something. To build (unlike to cultivate) here means to produce something. Both modes of building – building as cultivating (the Latin colere, cultura) and building as the erecting of edifces (the Latin aedifcare ) – are included within building (and, therefore, dwelling). Building as dwelling, that is, as being on the earth, however, escapes our everyday experience. Our experience, as language says so beautifully, is that which we do “habitually”.8 For this reason, it recedes behind the obvious modes in which dwelling is accomplished, the activities of cultivating and erecting. These activities later claim the name of to build, and with it the fact of building, exclusively for themselves. The actual sense of to build, specifcally to

6 ich bin = I am, du bist = you are, bis! = be! 7 Here, the reference is agricultural: to cultivate (fields) and to harvest (vines). Heidegger uses the words hegen and pflegen, which add a nice rhyme in the original German. 8 The German word here is Gewohnte. In German, there is a clear relationship between wohnen and Gewohnte. In English, there is a similar relationship between the words habit and inhabit. 3

dwell, is completely forgotten.9 This event looks as if it is simply a change of meaning of the words. However, something decisive is concealed in it. Specifcally, dwelling is not experienced as being; dwelling is never thought of as the basic feature of human existence. The evidence of the original meanings is shown in the fact that language retracts the actual meaning of the word bauen,10 which is to dwell. Because with the essential words of language, foreground meanings take the place of their true meanings, which are easily forgotten. Humans have hardly thought about the secret of this process. Language obscures its simple and high speech from us. Through this, however, the basis of language does not become incapable of speech; it just becomes silent. Humans, though, do not pay close attention to this silence. But if we listen closely 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 in two ways: the building that cultivates and the building that erects structures.

If we think about these three things, then we notice the following: we must remember that to build means, fundamentally, to dwell, in order to think about what it means to build. 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 word wunon and the Gothic word wunian, like the old word bauen, mean “to remain”, “to stay in a place”. But the Gothic word 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 Friede, means the Freie, das Frye, and fry means protected from harm and threats.11 It means to be spared. To be free actually means to spare. This process of sparing, 9 Here, Heidegger establishes bauen as having two constituent meanings - pflegen (to cultivate), and errichten (to erect). Ultimately, Heidegger is making the argument that bauen, wohnen, and sein point to the same act, because they share their etymologies in German. 10 Again, bauen in modern German means to build. 11 We can thus see the relationship between the German words Frieden (peace) and Freiheit (freedom). 4

however, does not mean simply that we do not harm the one we spare. True sparing is something positive and occurs when we leave something in its own nature, when we return it specifcally to its essence, when we free it according to the true meaning of the word. To dwell, to be brought to peace, means “to remain at peace in das Frye”, which means in the freedom that spares everything in its essence. The basic feature of dwelling is this sparing. It runs through the whole length of dwelling,12 which reveals itself to us as soon as we refect on the fact that human existence is based on dwelling and, indeed, in the sense that the mortals reside on the earth. But "on the earth" already means "under the sky." Both of these also mean "remaining before the divinities" and includes "belonging to human coexistence." From a primal unity, the four belong in one - earth and sky, the divinities and the mortals.13 The earth is the serving bearer, the fourishing fruit, spread out into rocks and water, growing into plants and animals. When we say earth, we are already thinking of the other three (sky, divinities, and mortals), yet we do not consider the unity of the four. The sky is the arching path of the sun, the path of the changing moon, the wandering luster of the stars, the year's seasons and their turns, the light and twilight of the day, the darkness and brightness of the 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 (earth, divinities, and mortals), yet we do not consider the unity of the four. The divinities are the waving messengers of the Godhead. Out of the holy power of this Godhead, God appears in his presence or withdraws into his veil. When we speak of the divinities, we are already thinking of the other three (earth, sky, and mortals), yet we do not consider the unity of the four. 12 Heidegger has here used the term schonen (to spare). So, his argument follows that bauen = pflegen and bauen = errichten. Also, wohnen = schonen. On top of this, bauen = wohnen = sein. However, the distinction between pflegen/errichten and schonen is not presented. 13 The Fourfold was developed after a course on Friedrich Hölderin that Heidegger presented in 1934-1935. Hölderin was a German poet who lived from 1770-1843. Heidegger was influenced by his poetry about nature and beauty, which in turn led to the way Heidegger characterized the Fourfold. For more information on the development of the Fourfold, see Jussi Backman, Complicated Presence: Heidegger and the Post-Metaphysical Unity of Being, (Albany, 2015) – specifically pp. 135-153. 5

The mortals are people. They are called mortals because they can die. To die means to be capable of death as death. Only humans die, and indeed continually, as long as they remain on earth, under the sky, before the divinities. When we speak of mortals, we are already thinking of the other three (earth, sky, and divinities), yet we do not consider the unity of the four. We call this unity of the four the Fourfold.14 The mortals are in the Fourfold, in that they dwell. But the basic feature of dwelling is sparing. The mortals dwell in the way that they spare the Fourfold in its nature. Accordingly, the preserving that dwells is four-folded. The mortals dwell in so far as they save the earth – Lessing still knew the word (in the old sense). To save does not mean only to protect something from danger. To save really means to leave something free in its own nature. Saving the earth is more than exploiting it or even using it. Saving the earth is not equivalent to mastering the earth or subduing it, which is merely one step from limitless exploitation. 15

The mortals dwell in that they experience the sky as the sky. They leave the sun and the moon to their paths, the stars to their courses, the times of the year to their blessing and their inclemency. They do not turn the night into day nor the day into a hurried restlessness. The mortals dwell in that they await the divinities as divinities. They keep hope in the divinities that which is unhoped for. They wait for signs of their arrival and do not mistake the signs of their absence. They do not make their gods for themselves and they do not worship idols. In the very depth of misfortune, they wait for the withdrawn salvation. The mortals dwell in so far as they direct their own being, that they are capable of death as death, and they are able to use this capacity in order to have a good death. Leading the mortals to the nature of death in no way means to make death, as the empty Nothing, the goal; it also does it mean to darken dwelling by blindly staring at the end. In saving the earth, in experiencing the sky, in awaiting the divinities, in directing mortals, dwelling occurs as the four-folded sparing of the Fourfold. Sparing means guarding the Fourfold in its essence. What is guarded must be kept safe. But where then does dwelling, if it preserves the Fourfold, keep this nature? 14 The sentence is “Diese ihre Einfalt nennen wir das Geviert.” Heidegger's terms, das Geviert and Vierfalt, are usually translated as the “the Fourfold”. He also uses the adjectival form vierfältig, which I have translated as four-folded. Elsewhere in the lecture, he used the adjective einfältig, which I have translated as one-folded. 15 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing lived from 1729-1781 and was a German critic and dramatist. 6

How do mortals accomplish dwelling as preserving? The mortals would never be capable of it if dwelling was only an inhabitance on earth under the sky, before the divinities, among mortals. Rather, dwelling itself is always an inhabitance among things. Dwelling, as preserving, keeps the Fourfold in things, among which mortals reside. The inhabitance among things, however, is not some ffth something just attached to the so-called Fourfold of sparing. On the contrary, the inhabitance among things is the only way in which the four-folded inhabitance in the Fourfold is accomplished at any time in unity. Dwelling spares the Fourfold by bringing the nature of the Fourfold into things. Alone, the things themselves secure the Fourfold only when they themselves as things are left to be in their essence. How is this done? In the way that the mortals nurse and nurture the things that grow, and construct the things that do not grow. Cultivation and construction is building in the narrower sense. Dwelling, insofar as it keeps the Fourfold in things, as this keeping is building. And with this, we are on our way to answering the second question. Part II In what way does building belong to dwelling? The answer to this question will illuminate for us what building, conceived of as the nature of dwelling, actually is. We restrict ourselves to building in the sense of the construction of things and ask: what is a built thing? An useful example of this is a bridge. The bridge swings lightly and powerfully over the stream. It does not merely connect the already-existing banks. In the crossing of the bridge, the banks frst emerge as banks. The bridge sets them in place, one against the other. The banks appear 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. The banks also do not stretch along the stream as indifferent border strips of 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 a mutual neighborhood. The bridge gathers the earth as a landscape around the stream. It thus guides and attends the stream through the meadows. Resting on the stream's bed, the bridge's pillars carry the swing

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of the arches, which lets the waters of the stream run their course. The waters may wander quietly and gaily, the sky's foods from storms or the melting snow may shoot past the pillars in torrential waves, the bridge is ready for the weather of the sky and its erratic nature. Also where the bridge covers the stream, it holds its fow closed, by momentarily taking it through the arched gateway and then again setting it free. The bridge lets the stream run its course and at the same time grants to the mortals their way, so that they may come and go from land to land. Bridges lead in multiple ways. The city bridge leads from the castle districts to the cathedral square, the river bridge before the country town brings carriages and horses and carts to the surrounding villages. The old stone bridge's passage over the simple stream gives the harvest wagon its path from the felds to the village, carrying the lumber cart from the feld path to the country road. The highway bridge is tied into the network, calculated for the quickest possible long-distance traffc. Always and ever differently, the bridge leads the hesitating and hastening ways of humans to and fro, so that they may get to other banks and in the end, as the mortals, to the other side. The bridge swings over river and stream, in high arches and in shallow arches – whether the mortals keep this arching of the bridge's course in mind or forget that they, always underway to the last bridge, are basically striving to overcome the ordinary and unholy in themselves in order to bring themselves before the holiness of the divinities. The bridge gathers, as the arching passage before the divinities, whether their presence is especially recognized and...