On rootedness: Heidegger and the poetic dwelling

Abstract

For the Heideggerian critique, the evolution of traditional metaphysics has led to a «forgetting of being», which has been followed by a loss of man's rootedness in the earth. In the late writings of Martin Heidegger would appear the link between the advent of «calculating and technifying thinking», the hallmark of modernity, and the impossibility of being able to erect an original and properly human dwelling. From the Heidegger of Being and Time it is possible to begin to glimpse that the possibility of revitalizing a rootedness that is in keeping with the very essence of Dasein, and from there to raise an ethics for things and the world, is revealed in his own daily life, the space from where man can re-found his way of being-in-the-world. In a complementary way, contemporary thinkers such as Byung Chul-Han have claimed not only Heideggerian serenity, but also inactivity, the safeguarding of rituals and openness to the recognition of the other in the construction of such rootedness. The following article seeks to open the reflection towards the roots in which our «being-in» is rooted, recognizing in it the sacred dimension that underlies human existence.