Heideggers Denken und sein Ort | Heidegger’s Thinking and its locale
Many Europeans have asked me why I was interested in Heidegger’s philosophy. I answered that I liked its atmosphere. This answer satisfied neither the questioners nor me, because I had not explained what kind of atmosphere that is. A more precise answer was found when I have read a small text of Heidegger, namely Creative Landscape: Why Do We Remain in the Provinces? As the title suggests, this text is about the creative place where he lived, worked, and thought.
My essay aims to show the relation of Heidegger’s thinking to his place. At first, I take a look at his place, namely the hut in the Black Forest, in the light of the above mentioned text. Subsequently, I consider two other texts of Heidegger, in order to discuss the thoughts which were nourished by and came to fruition at this place: Building Dwelling Thinking and Art and Space. These texts contain the concept of locale. Therefore, the question of my paper is: What is the connection between Heidegger’s concept of locale and his place?
The text Creative Landscape does not form the concepts of place, thing, and the fourfold, which act as basic concepts in Heidegger’s later philosophy. However, if we read this text more carefully, the word “thing” actually appears once. Heidegger compares the rural life with the urban life in view of the difference between solitude (Einsamkeit) and loneliness (Alleinsein): “In big cities, one can indeed easily be lonely (allein) […], but he can never be solitary (einsam); because solitude has the very own power which does not isolate us, rather sets our whole life free in the wide nearness of the essence of all things”. Heidegger describes how earth and sky surround his hut, he characterizes the farmers who need the “restrained sensitivity in dealing with [their] own nature” and know the “simple and hard life”; Heidegger does not talk about gods, but the creative landscape already indicates them.
In the texts Building Dwelling Thinking and Art and Space, Heidegger defines the essence of thing as a gathering of the fourfold; such a thing is a locale. In the former text, Heidegger thinks that a locale arises only from a thing. In the latter text, the concept of thing is equated with the concept of locale: “We would have to learn to recognize that things themselves are locales”. For the illustration of the thing-locale, Heidegger cites two examples, namely, the bridge in Heidelberg and a farm in the Black Forest. “The bridge is a locale. As such a thing, it allows a space into which earth and sky, divinities and mortals are admitted”. Heidegger defines the human essence as dwelling, namely “the stay within the fourfold among things”. Such a dwelling is not different from the life of Heidegger and the farmers in the Black Forest.
Finally, I reflect on the atmosphere of Heidegger’s philosophy. When I visited Todtnauberg, his hut and its surroundings were not foreign to me at all, rather they were very familiar to me like the farming villages in Korea. According to Heidegger’s description, the farmers are not unlike my grandparents in their friendliness. In the meanwhile, the farming villages in Korea as well as my grandparents have disappeared. Therefore, the atmosphere of Heidegger’s place and his philosophy evoked a feeling of nostalgia in me. Perhaps in this sense, also Heidegger talks about “a dwelling that has been“.
Choong-Su HAN, Master in Philosophie und das zweijährige Promotionsstudium in Seoul National University; promoviert derzeit zum Erfahrungsbegriff bei Martin Heidegger an der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (Betreuung: Prof. Dr. Hans-Helmuth Gander)