Environmental & Architectural
Phenomenology Newsletter
Thinking and Building in a More Originary Way
Christopher Chamberlin
Chamberlin is a fifth-year master’s student in Architecture at Kansas State University. Originally written for David Seamon’s “Theories of Place” seminar, this essay is partly a meditation on two books by philosopher Robert Mugerauer: Heidegger’s Language and Thinking (1988); and Interpretations on Behalf of Place (1994). ctc@ksu.edu. © 2009 Christopher Chamberlin.
The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.
—Martin Heidegger
Philosopher Martin Heidegger writes that we “can learn only if we always unlearn at the same time. Applied to the matter before us, we can learn thinking only if we radically unlearn what thinking has been traditionally” (quoted in Mugerauer 1988, p. 76).
This idea of “unlearning” can be applied to the entire process of understanding phenomenologically. To see things clearly, we must strip away everything that has built up over time to understand the subject of our thought from a clearer and fuller perspective. We attempt to suspend taken-for-granted approaches, traditions, and degraded understandings and symbols so we can locate the real or original meaning lying behind. We then formulate an appropriate and truly thoughtful response. Most important to architecture and environmental design is replacing thinking with building. Such deconstruction is really preparation for rebuilding.
Every tangible thing was once in another form as some other thing. Somehow, the most minute building blocks of things get rearranged with each of these iterations. The components of the cells in my body have not always been here, in this particular arrangement, and they will never be again. Even as I type these words, I scatter innumerable skin cells into the air. I am not the same person I was when I started this sentence.
We must ask ourselves whether it is satisfactory, as thinking beings, to accept the present state of things constantly in a state of flux. If we are to take these things at present value, without examining what it is that composes them or what lies hidden beneath their surfaces, we essentially have learned and thought nothing. We have simply seen a thing. So, too, with ideas.
The most commonplace existence swarms with images and symbols. Let us repeat… that symbols never disappear from the reality of the psyche. The aspect of them may change, but their function remains the same; one has only to look behind the latest masks… The life of modern man is swarming with half-forgotten myths, decaying hierophanies, and secularized symbols…(Mircea Eliade, quoted in Mugerauer 1994, p. 101).
We must understand that virtually every idea we encounter was once in another form. These ideas are not new creations, static or dead. These ideas that we hold so tightly, that we aspire to freeze in time, are living things as much as our own bodies but simply in a different sense. They grow with time and die with time. Certain aspects of one idea may nourish others or spotlight the original intent of yet some other ideas, which were once in yet some other form, perhaps arising originally near a tree in bloom. The tree is there too. What we must learn is not to struggle to freeze an idea but to hold it lightly near us—to let it be in its truest form and to understand where it came from and where it may take us if we might only step beyond the everyday.
In many ways, phenomenology can transcend time. Nietzsche’s work—a common focus in Heidegger’s essays on thinking and language—illustrates what Nietzsche called “revenge against time.” This notion refers to how our will is unable to affect the past. It can affect things in the present and thus can also affect the future, but it cannot change what has already been. In this way, we experience anxiety and frustration about a facet of time that we cannot touch: “[W]illing suffers from what is revolting to it” (Mugerauer 1988, p. 71).
If, however, one could suspend all ideas and meanings and understand what the masks and symbols once meant, then he or she would have a power to defeat the past. Through this understanding, things of the past might remain alive in the present. Only when we remain inertial to degraded symbols and think no further, does the past truly defeat us. Both Nietzsche and Heidegger prescribe a way of thinking that goes far to free us from this anxiety for revenge against a past we cannot change.
And so we see that to struggle to exist at one time as one thing or to imprison an idea as it was when first encountered is to cause our own discomfort with time. In this way of being and understanding, we misunderstand reality itself and lose the greatest value of ideas or things—namely, that they never remain what they first were.
It is likely that the surge we see in placelessness today (Relph 1976) has much to do with our own understanding of making and building, which is similar to a static approach to thinking. Instead of understanding the needs that the built environment must fulfill and thereby foster the appropriate experience, we have become accustomed to creating environmental structures—tract housing, big-box stores, parking garages, multi-lane highways, and all the rest—that are produced efficiently and quickly. By holding money and time too tightly, we let ourselves misthink and misbuild. If we accept placelessness, we let ourselves forget even more deeply what the masks we wear and symbols we use once meant, and what they might mean again if we could think and build in a more originary way.
To Think and Thank Again
Next, we must ask what it means to actually think about these
matters. We cannot interpret the present or past meanings of our
ideas and degraded symbols unless we first understand what it means
to think. We can employ Heidegger’s approach to locate a deeper
understanding of thinking. He writes:
When we think through what this is, that a tree in bloom presents itself to us so that we can come and stand face to face with it, the thing that matters first and foremost, and finally, is not to drop the tree in bloom, but for once let it stand where it stands. Why do we say “finally”? Because to this day, thought has never let the tree stand where it stands (quoted in Mugerauer 1988, p. 79)
Philosopher Robert Mugerauer (ibid.) clarifies Heidegger’s understanding by arguing that his focus is one key question: What is thinking? Heidegger works to describe what it means for human beings to think; he considers how ways of thinking, including about this question, have evolved over time. Starting with this key question, Heidegger asks four more focused questions derived from the linguistic implications contained in the primary question:
▪ What is called Thinking?
▪ What names Thinking?
▪ What does Thinking call for?
▪ What calls for Thinking?
These questions are hidden in the primary question and help to elucidate what the thing known as thinking might be, what has come to call the thing thinking, what responsibilities or possible skills the thing of thinking might require, and what specific situations or things require us to think (ibid., p. 63).
Before we answer the primary question, we must tackle these four, which are all part of the same concern and all equally relevant. We strip away any traditional understandings, using these questions to deepen meaning. Heidegger argues that in traditional understanding:
Thinking names the forming of representational ideas, understood according to the doctrine of logic, and what thinking calls for is our learning how to think the Being of beings. It must think that to which [human beings are] ultimately related: that which calls for thinking is the Being of beings (ibid., p. 75).
Thinking and Building
As a student of architecture,
I find it important to consider Heidegger’s questions by
substituting “building” for “thinking.” If we wish to know what it
is to build and to strive for a restored sense of place in the
designed world, then we must consider what it means to build. Our
four questions become:
▪ What is called Building?
▪ What names Building?
▪ What does Building call for?
▪ What calls for Building?
Building may be understood as the necessary act of creating shelter for surviving comfortably. We might argue that at one time Logic, as with thinking, also named building. Here, we use logic and reason to stack, lean, mortar, weave, and otherwise arrange various materials in new ways such that we may find the shelter and comfort that we desire.
The act of building in an originary way calls us to think the Being of beings. In turn, the Being of beings calls for building itself. At one time, these four answers sufficed to create the act and art of primal building and designing of environments and places. Eventually, things became more complex, and superfluous additions were added. We lost sight of the original, important reasons for doing this thing of building that we must do.
But what does thinking mean beyond the traditionally accepted “formation of representational ideas.” Heidegger explains that the the root of the word “thinking” is in the Old English thanc, which meant “thank” in the modern sense and not the “think” we assume. Heidegger aims for the archaic meaning of thought, revealing something more akin to thanking or memory (ibid., p. 78). He writes:
We stand before a tree in bloom, for example—and the tree stands before us. The tree faces us. The tree and we meet one another, as the tree stands there and we stand face to face with it. As we are in this relation of one to the other and before the other, the tree and we are. This face-to-face meeting is not, then, one of these ‘ideas’ buzzing about in our heads…. But… while science records the brain currents, what becomes of the tree in bloom? What becomes of the meadow? What becomes of the man— not of the brain, but of the man, who may die under our hands tomorrow and be lost to us, and who at one time came to our encounter? (ibid., p. 79).
Heidegger argues that the representational thought we claim to be so rational does not hold the capability of “[bringing] forth the blossoming tree in its radiance and fragrance nor [leaving] it where it belongs” (ibid., p. 79). There is, in other words, more to thought than we ascribe to it today. Degraded symbols and meanings should be rediscovered before we concretize positions grounded in premises that we may fail to fully understand.
Things Forgotten
Heidegger claims that “[O]riginary things are understood as the
sites or occasions where the four fundamental dimensions of
reality—earth, heavens, mortals, and the divine—concretely gather
into a world” (Mugerauer 1994, p. 68). Today, it is no wonder that
we experience a loss of place and originary dwelling. It is
difficult to find places where these four dimensions of reality
congregate to instill a world with some meaning or experience for
those human beings present in and to that world.
Of the earth
We begin by considering
the most concrete of these four dimensions—the earth on which we
reside. Some 50 years ago, urban planner E. A. Gutkind pointed out
that the predominant environmental attitude of modern Western people
is over-confidence and exploitation in regard to nature and the
earth (Gutkind 1956). Too many people assume they have complete
power to shape and change the face of the planet at whim—to control,
rebuild, or destroy any natural ecosystem or human landmark that has
no utilitarian value as human beings define that value.
Even though we recognize major environmental problems like pollution, species extinction, and climate change, many Western people still hold the attitude that, when we decide to build, we simply scrape the earth “clean” and construct the new object we prefer. Even in these times of sustainability and green architecture, it is rare within our Western system of design and construction to find a building that reacts directly to the earth itself and to the existing site. As Mugerauer explains:
Heidegger describes our age as homeless even though we are entering the era of our greatest power and technological mastery over everything, including ourselves, and seem to be able to be at home anywhere on our planet… [T]hough we more and more are able to do what we will, to most fully control whatever comes within our reach, and to live anywhere as we wish, we also find ourselves alienated from the world and from our own human nature (Mugerauer 1994, p. 67).
The designable, material reality of our lives has been relegated to the background, even though we live directly upon the earth. We occupy air-conditioned homes and automobiles, sealed from the outside world, enjoying our consumer goods and mass media.
We also separate ourselves mentally from the earth, which becomes little more than a picturesque backdrop in which to recreate. The result is that we become physically and existentially severed from the pleasures and dangers of earth. We mostly ignore the thing on which we live, simply because we assume as a society that it has no power over us that cannot be shackled by one form or the other of scientific and technological infrastructure.
Of the
heavens
We have also
largely left behind the heavens—the wind and rain, the sun and moon,
the stars in their cycles. All these things can have a profound
effect on human beings but, in our homes and other buildings, we
mostly ignore these things as we construct our own energies and
gauges of time—human-produced light, heat, coolness, humidity,
thermostats, clocks, Blackberries, and all the rest.
But burning fossil fuels can never bear clean air or bathe our skin in the sun or light our spaces warmly and without waste, while also always reminding us of how our own circadian rhythms dovetail with the much vaster cosmos. The smell of flowers, freshly-cut grass, or impending rain does not often drift through our windows. Cities generate light pollution and smudge out signs of the cosmos. At times, one forgets completely that we inhabit a living planet rather than some virtual world.
Of the
divine
For
thinkers like Nietzsche and Heidegger, our age is the “death of
God.” These thinkers refer not to deities but to that aspect of
reality through which the sacred might manifest (Mugerauer 1994, p.
75). In our time, the divine has become commercial, packaged, and
readily consumable for our society of instant gratification. God
himself must be made easy for the masses to swallow, for if he asked
people to change or to become seriously involved with the sacred,
they would banish him even from his current counterfeit
manifestation. Sermons become pep talks; masses are streamlined to
make people feel happy. Churches are reduced to horribly cheap,
meaningless buildings—light-gauge-steel warehouses with entry-façade
veneer.
When did people stop searching for a creator with their hearts? In times when we starved and struggled to survive, people prayed. Now that things are easy, we mostly cease to search for things and events that might give some fuller sense of our extraordinary cosmos, which we readily take for granted. We turn our backs on any real spiritual search, allowing material possessions and liquid assets to take its place.
I do not argue here for some nostalgic religious revival or for the existence of some Final Creator. My point is that human beings need a space for the divine—they need to discover and hold sacred places whereby the everyday expands and we move beyond our own personal situations to ponder things and possibilities greater and more meaningful.
Of mortals
In
Place and Placelessness, geographer Edward Relph (1976) sought
to uncover the dynamics of our modern world that feed the growing
sense of placelessness attached to much of our designed environment.
Relph highlights psychologist R. J. Lifton’s idea of “Protean Man,”
who:
changes his identity almost at will as he shifts from lifestyle to lifestyle, trying out new options and exploring alternatives… Lifton argues that protean man represents a major shift from the traditional view that each individual should present a consistent and stable identity throughout his life” (ibid., p. 133).
Relph points out that, today, human beings are becoming placeless even inside themselves. If we cease to enjoy a particular self, we dispose of it and apply a new persona. Just as we’ve become placeless outside, so on the inside we also shift, sprawl, and lose track of any inner core. We fail to see that this fast-paced, technological world that forces us to be fluid and changeable is our own creation. Exactly when did we allow it to reach inside to affect superficial change?
We have also lost touch with the relationship between life and death. Rarely do people awake to the sunrise, pondering the possibility that this sunrise may be their last. We hold ourselves higher than mortality because we live in a world where we no longer need to fight for survival. In such a situation, should we not give greater thanks for the protection and extension of life science and technology offer?
I would argue that we had more right to give mortality the cold shoulder when it taunted us daily. Instead, today, we physically push death away, hiding it behind institutions that include long-term care facilities, hospitals, and hospices. We hide death from ourselves, supposing that the “golden” years should be spent in seclusion.
A personal story might make my point. I don’t know what circumstances surrounded my great grandmother’s recent death, first discovered by a nurse who came to her room to give her morning pills and convince her that she should eat breakfast. But my great grandmother had died the previous night, and none of her family was present because “it was cleaner that way” and she “liked it there.”
Originary Dwelling
In the past, human
beings had no choice but to engage the four dimensions of reality,
working to survive and struggling toward stability while staving off
dissonance by powers beyond their own control (Mugerauer 1994, p.
155). In our time, things are not so hard. In many cases, the most
difficult part of daily living is coping with people and human
relationships. Our world is grounded in verbal interactions and
perceptions of other minds. In our narrow focus on people, we lose
sight of earth, heavens, mortality, and divinity.
I believe that, by designing with all four dimensions in mind, we might come closer to a revived sense of place: To live again with and on the earth as opposed to simply using it; to utilize the heavens and related environmental cycles for lighting and conditioning our spaces; to keep the search for the divine alive; and to understand our own mortal selves within the world and greater cosmos.
Originary dwelling happens when “we preserve the earth, heavens, divine, and our own nature as they are disclosed to us” (ibid., p. 72). Imagine, for example, the big-box retail venue. Within these walls, we do not find any hint of the earth itself. Everything around us has been processed, sanitized, and cleaned to a super-real sense. We are aware of no breezes, sunlight, or sky. We cannot tell whether it is day or night. There is nothing sacred about this store. Within these walls, we are essentially led to believe that we are immortal, presented with an endless supply of affordably priced goods that will keep us well fed, entertained, and looking young.
In our fast-paced postmodern era, we find ourselves comfortable. We let ourselves become lazy and lose sight of what it really means to create places. If as a society, we could realize what it means to move beyond the lifeworld as we know it and engage the four dimensions of reality in a more robust or real sense, we might begin to understand consciously what it means to create meaningful places in a new, self-actualizing way.
Self-Conscious Responsibility?
I
have argued here that, to better understand building and thereby to
make better places, we must, first, understand what thinking and
building are today and what they might become; second, draw on
Heidegger’s understanding of the four dimensions of world to create
places that respond directly to key dimensions of our human nature.
In 1956, Gutkind foresaw a transformative stage in the people-environment relationship: The need to replace environmental control and exploitation with a new era of self-conscious responsibility toward natural and human worlds. I believe that, once we explore the nature of thinking and building more thoughtfully, through the kinds of questions toward which Heidegger points, we might move toward Gutkind’s self-conscious responsibility and Heidegger’s originary dwelling.
Is this “humble reverence” and “dedicated attention to the simple” (Mugerauer 1994, p. 94) so easy without the innocence and ignorance presupposed in humankind’s earlier historical and cultural development? Only time will truly tell, but the first step is to peel back the layers—to think, to thank, and to try to rebuild even if the answers may be completely different from what we expect.
References
Gutkind, E.
A., 1956. Our World from the Air, pp. 1-44 in W. Thomas, ed.,
Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth (Chicago: Univ. of
Chicago Press).
Mugerauer, R., 1988. Heidegger's Language and Thinking (NY: Humanities Press).
Mugerauer, R., 1994. Interpretations on Behalf of Place: Environmental Displacements and Alternative Responses (Albany, NY: SUNY Press).
Relph, E., 1976. Place and Placelessness (London: Pion).