Abstract

In this essay I argue that the question of what it means to dwell is primary because Western destiny has unfolded as an ever increasing rift between ecological health and spiritual desire. Central to my thesis is the claim that our present technological dwelling is, as Heidegger argues, the nihilistic culmination of Western metaphysics. However, I think this event in terms of a "container spatiality" which, by its disguised temporocentric basis, is the climax of a tradition that has become estranged from the natural places of its world. ;In Chapter One I explore the primal human act of bounding the sacred by analyzing the Minoan temple. I choose archaic Minoan civilization to highlight its radical transformation into Greek culture, which stands at the beginning of our own destiny. ;In Chapter Two I introduce the Need/Desire distinction as a way into the trans-cultural dimension of an inquiry into the meaning of dwelling. In part, what motivates this distinction is my conviction that the neglect of ecological health in Western philosophy goes hand in hand with a thinking unable to enter into dialogue with the cultural other. ;Chapter Three is an exploration of The Odyssey in relation to Homeric wandering and the Olympian gods, which I take to be decisive for the Platonic conception of Nature. ;In Chapter Four I analyze in the Platonic dialogues the conflict between ontological space and dramatic place. I focus on the Timaeus in relation to the "excess" of the Platonic Good to prepare for Heidegger's production metaphysics critique in the next chapter. ;In Chapter Five I look at Heidegger's critique of technological dwelling as the culmination of Platonism and his turn toward a new dwelling open to Being. The key issue that emerges is whether Heidegger ends up thinking excess as chaos. I focalize this issue in the ontological polarity in Heidegger's thought between Being as overpowering physis and Being as Stille