On Home (das Heim) and the Uncanny (das Unheimliche) in Heidegger

Abstract

The paper aims to argue that the question of home (das Heim) is one of the crucial elements of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, which has been tackled by the German philosopher throughout his lifework in close connection to its opposition, namely the uncanny (das Unheimliche). The paper discusses the different understandings of home in Heidegger’s philosophy starting from the seminal works, such as Being and Time (1927) and Introduction to Metaphysics (1935), as well as Hölderlin’s Hymn “The Ister” (1942) and “Letter on Humanism” (1946) including “Building Dwelling Thinking” (1951). In his argumentation on the topic from 1935 onwards, Heidegger developed the question of home within the hermeneutical analysis of Sophocles’s Antigone, specifically the first verse of the famous choral song and the term δεινόν. In the conclusion, the standpoints of Jacques Derrida and David Farrell Krell on the subject are confronted, in order to discuss the paradoxical structure of the topic of home in Heidegger’s philosophy and, more generally, within philosophy of architecture.

Keywords

• home
• martin heidegger
• das unheimliche
• uncanny
• antigone