I found Heidegger's process of thought complex and convoluted, and hard to follow at time. It explores through a series of 'spontaneous suggestions' a chain of meanings the words suggest, including their associate linguistic content. For example: He raises the question of what is to dwell? and concludes that to dwell refers to take shelter in a building. He then determines that not all buildings are dwellings, but rather only residential buildings are dwellings, but then again dwelling does not necessarily take place in every house. He adds that the act of "to build" implies in itself the act of "to dwell."
The question that comes to mind and that Heidegger himself raises is of course...When do we know when something is a dwelling then? Heidegger's answer is that "language" tells us about the nature of a thing, or an action. Therefore, words contain roots related to actions, to things, and to the nature of being. For example, he said the Germanic and English world meaning to dwell: Wohneh means to reside or stay. The word to dwell also relates to words that mean to grow accustomed and to feel at home. And it also refers to the essential fact that human being are on earth, to man's being, and to the capacity to cultivate and safeguard the hearth. The German word for building on the other hand: Bauen also means to dwell, and so on...Overall, according to Heidegger to "be" means to dwell, and to "be a human being" (to be on hearth as a mortal) also means to dwell ( e.g. ic bin represents all things out of itself, built off the earth which in turn means to dwell).
Heidegger goes on exploring the whole range and tread of linguistic associated to the word "dwell," and to the action of "to dwell," including all its potential sub-products.
He finally exemplifies that the the whole range of perceptions derived from words, things, and places we came across are interrelated and through them and their location we come to understand our being in the environment. Place, things, and elements located in the environment take up meaning as a result of the mental association we make of all elements that we perceive, and in the way we understand them.
For example he explains that the chain of meaning associated to the word to build, to dwell, to construct etc..leads to the fundamental elements of earth, sky and divinities and of course to their opposite (such as of divinities-mortals). Heidegger refers to these essential elements as the "fourfold of earth, sky, mortals, and divinities." In terms of the "fourfold" he also explains other elements related to the essentiality of "being" and suggested by the act of "to build" and "to dwell," such as bridges and houses. And essentially concluding that the basic character of dwelling is to spare and to preserve, and mortals dwell in the way they preserve the fourfold in its essential being, its presence.
Heidegger goes further deep into the analysis of space and in the way its essential and constructed elements are perceived: he poses an additional question in regard to the way we know a building belongs to dwelling.
He brings the example of the bridge to illustrate how we can understate the nature of things. The bridge, which is also a symbol, a thing of its own kind. The bridge gathers the fourfold in such a way to generate a "site for it." And that particular spot is a location because of the presence of the bridge, which comes into existence only by its virtue and presence. Therefore the bridge is a things that gathers the "fourfold" and allows it to exist in a particular location.
Heidegger concludes that sites are determined by the environment and by the way space is allocated. Things within the site allows space to be perceived, because of their presence (their being there).
Heidegger wrote that although we usually speak of "man" and "space" as two separate things, these are in reality inseparable from the "fourfold" because space itself is generated through our mind (the way we think). (space exists because we are, and everything else with it)
Man relation to location and to spaces, therefore, inheres to his dwelling. The relationship between man and space is none other than the act of "to dwell."
In reading Heidegger beyond the assigned article and learning about his association to the German politics of his time lead to certain conclusions, which should be lightly externalized here. However, it is probably important to take into consideration where the question over the essence of being resides for Heidegger. He suggested that to understand the problem of being "we should start not by identifying entities as entities but tracing them back in their origins to some other entity, as if being had the character of some possible entity." He wrote on Being and Time that an essential element is that the "Being" exists in a world, and the act of being there, in that world is related to the act of existing and it is not a matter of choice. The "World" here is not intended as the physical world of objects, but in the sense as we would speak of the political world. It appears that for Heidegger the essence of being is best express in the feeling of joy, fear, and anxiety. Anxiety. especially allows the "Being" to exist in a "true" moment, in his state of Being towards death which allows it to live authentically-an idea referring to the state of existentially. I am stopping here in order to avoid misinterpreting and misapplying a philosophy deserving much more attention, but with the objective in mind of taking up the study of this topic in the near future.
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