Towards a Philosophy of Dwelling
It seems obvious enough that there has been a philosophy of dwelling, that philosophy has, historically, concerned itself with the matter of dwelling. Heidegger viewed dwelling as a fundamental human activity, and some would say that dwelling is the most important concept in Hegel’s writing, once you get right down to it (the subject coming home to itself viz the world, and so forth).
And yet there is not, today, any sort of developed field or community of scholarship associated with the philosophy of dwelling.
It is common in architectural circles, the theory of architecture, that one finds references to Heideggerrian dwelling. Architecture has become a place for sophisticated reflection on what it means to dwell, the conditions for dwelling, etc.
The Marxists have somewhat abandoned it. Lefebvre in the ’sixties pursued the examination of space to great ends. He ignited a discourse about ’space and place’ that is still active today. In the ‘eighties and ‘nineties a number of people making observations about postmodernism wrote at length about architecture and urban planning from a somewhat philosophical perspective. Marc Auge’s book about non-places is still within that tradition.
I am currently identifying and elaborating what I call a philosophy of dwelling in the work of another author from the Marxist tradition, Theodor Adorno. In many ways, Adorno responded critically to Heidegger, and specifically, I believe, to Heidegger’s philosophy of dwelling.
But, not wanting to restrict myself to Adorno studies alone, I find myself having some trouble placing my own point of entry into existing conversations about habitat, space, and architecture. I don’t think the point of entry that was characterized by the approach of a Heidegger or an Adorno really exists today.
It is towards the elaboration of just such an entry point into the discussion of what it means to dwell today that this blog is dedicated.
There. That can serve as something like a statement of purpose.
Matt,
How closely is this philosophy of dwelling related to issues of community and/or presence? I’m interested to learn more about dwelling from a sociological perspective.
It’s intimately related to community, obviously, if you take one of the important elements of dwelling to be the question of how we are brought into relation with others, how we live or dwell with others. Your term presence seems theological, and I’m not opposed to that (I think Heidegger’s essay on dwelling invokes something almost theological). But I would want to be persuaded that I should be thinking about dwelling in terms of presence. I think the term dwelling is a good one to pose a question that implicates community, city planning, architecture, design, public space, social geography, even perhaps virtual habitats, which is something I’m exploring. Dwelling is for me a broader concept that includes these things, and which refers us to the question of how we exist in relation to things, to put it rather abstractly. So to dwell is to be in relation, it is to relate, which is an activity, and to dwell is something that has to catch us up in the various endeavors that establish our positions with respect to space and shelter and neighbors and so forth. I like ‘dwelling’ because it lets me think about a lot of different social practices under one heading, as attempts to be or live a certain way, and it lets me sort of evaluate how we dwell, understand the unstated principles of our dwelling and scrutinize them. Community, absolutely; presence, I need to hear more from you about that.
Presence sounds Zen Buddhist to me, but he may be referring to a specific form of leadership training. See here: http://www.presence.net/
I’m working my way backwards through your posts Shane, from Adorno to the Jameson excerpt and here to your “statement of purpose”. The transition from Modernism to Post-Modernism and perhaps past post-modernism, is something I think about a lot as an artist, looking for an “entry point” to the conversation as you put it. Art critic John Perreault has invented something he calls the “braid theory” of art history, which is quite useful in thinking about these historical categories and narratives and about how artists can use them. Blog on.