Dwelling and Hospitality: Heidegger and Hölderlin

Abstract

In this article, I focus on Heidegger’s conception of hospitality in his first and final lectures on Hölderlin’s Germania (1934/5), Remembrance (1941/2), and The Ister (1942). I argue that the hospitality of the foreigner for Heidegger is the condition of possibility of dwelling understood as the happening of history. In the first section I analyze the notions of hospitality in Levinas and Derrida. The second section unpacks some of the senses of the earth in Heidegger as the site of man’s historical dwelling, whereas in the third section I focus on holy mourning as the disposition that reveals the earth as the uncanny ground of history. In the final section, I spell out Heidegger’s conception of hospitality, the greeting, and the foreign guest.

From Hosting Words to Hosting Civilizations: Towards a Theory of ‘Guardianship’ and ‘Deep Hospitality’

“…In twentieth-century thought, philosophers typically resort to epic literature and poetry to develop their ideas. Thus Martin Heidegger used Hölderlin's poems as a foil to distil his understanding of dwelling and hospitality (see Winkler, 2017), a device that became a source of inspiration for Derrida. Similarly, Emmanuel Lévinas developed some of his views on the subject as a reflection on biblical stories (see Hatley, 2005;Katz, 2005).…”

“…One finds this type of value-based model in Lévinas's call to recover the silent and withdrawn 'feminine welcome'; traces of this thought are reflected in Derrida. 24 His valorising of womanhood and maternity places the feminine, whether identified with concrete women or not, in a 'pre-24 See Winkler (2017). For a broader discussion of Lévinas's reflections on the feminine, see Levinas, Judaism, and the Feminine: The Silent Footsteps of Rebecca by Katz (2003).…”