Heidegger's way to poetic dwelling via Being and Time
Heidegger's way to poetic dwelling via Being and Time

Summary/Abstract: Although Heidegger’s explicit account of “poetic dwelling” belongs to his later philosophy, there areimportant indications that he was already engaging with the core matter of the notion in his earlythought. Contrary to the idea that in Being and Time, “dwelling” amounts to mere practical copingwith the environment, we would like to demonstrate that the notion is already a poetic issue in his earlythought, as it requires the appropriation of our relation to the world via an authentic experience of finitude. Following a topological mode of thinking, the paper thematizes the connections between Heidegger’s early and later thought, and elucidates the following three points: First, “freeing” and “letting”appears as the appropriate ethos of a poetic experience of finitude, one that maintains the “clearing” ofmeaningfulness. Second, a topological reading of Being and Time can explicate the notions of authenticity and inauthenticity as different disclosures of the clearing where human being-world correlationoccurs. Third, the notion of “keeping-still” (Schweigen) can be interpreted as an authentic dispositionthat frees space for the disclosure of existence. The paper concludes that an authentic experience offinitude through “stillness” appears to reorient human ethos by releasing “discourse” from absorptionin “idle-talk” and that such an act of existential re-orientation of one’s disposition towards the world isthe essence of “authenticity,” and Heidegger’s early “poetic dwelling”.

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