Dwelling Poetically in the House of Being: Heidegger, Language and Space

Abstract

Both space and metaphor share an ambiguous state in Martin Heidegger's thought. Human spatiality is believed to be derivative from 'care' which is in essence a temporal notion, and metaphor is considered responsible for the sensible and non-sensible dichotomy that constitutes western metaphysics. However, it is spatial metaphor that allows Heidegger to discuss human existence as a distinctive condition of being-in-a-world which is revealed through language. In this paper I will argue that these contradictions in Heidegger's thought can be resolved by revealing the silenced and marginalised presence of both space and body. His spatial metaphors, especially the one that presents language as the 'house of Being', comprise the gist of his later thought that tried to capture language as the unique emergence that takes place in and as the terrain of human experience.