Homesickness and Homecoming: Heidegger and Our Uncanny Dwelling (Winner of the NMTX Award)

Homesickness and Homecoming: Heidegger and Our Uncanny Dwelling (Winner of the NMTX Award)

Thomas Rule

1. INTRODUCTION

Heidegger’s thought is dominated by the idea that modern humanity is “homeless.” Our modern lives are characterized by our steady entrapment in a self reinforcing technological nihilism which finds us increasingly likely to be alienated from ourselves, our world, one another, and being as a whole.1 But, if this is so, then what is the remedy? What is necessary for one to become “at home” in being, and what might such an existence look like?

In what follows, I argue that, for Heidegger, concretely understanding ourselves as existentially free, creative, and, perhaps most importantly, existentially responsible beings—as realized through what he calls our “dwelling poetically” —is the proper way to “be at home” in our existence and hence the path to overcoming the shadow of nihilism which threatens modern humanity. Embodying this poetical way of being involves adopting an authentic orientation toward the essential “uncanniness” [Unheimlichkeit—literally “Un-home-like ness”] of our nature. The result should find us reinterpreting what initially presents itself as existential dread [Angst] and in turn rediscovering a wonderous, “enchanted” world imbued with significance.

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