“Still, how can we find the special character of space? There is an emergency path which, to be sure, is a narrow and precarious one. Let us try to listen to language. Whereof does it speak in the word 'space' ? Clearing-away is uttered therein. This means: to clear out, to free from wilderness. Clearing-away brings forth the free,the openness for man's settling and dwelling. When thought in its own special character, clearing-away is the release of places toward which the fate of dwelling man turns in the preserve of the home or in the brokenness of homelessness or in complete indifference to the two. Clearing-away is release of the places at which a god appears, the places from which the gods have disappeared, the places at which the appearance of the godly tarries long. In each case, clearing-away brings forth locality preparing for dwelling. Secular spaces are always the privation of often very remote sacred spaces.”
About This Quote
An attempt at bringing to a more plan english: What is space? Space creates anxiety because within space is always movement. What, then, is space if space is a kind of precarious and slippery movement? Well, space implies not so much freedom, or openness, but the act of clearing out an area for freedom and openness. Consider when we think of space we don’t think of emptiness but rather our very human movement of clearing-away what was there and replacing it with our unique sense of how we wish to dwell there. So what makes space unique is how we fill it; how we use space as a conservative way to grip our own home and heritage; or how we use space to fill our voids with a sense of home; or our apathy to fill that space with nothing but constant movement. Space then is a clearing, an opening for us. In space then we are confronted with what we really are and want: the clinging to a new meaning, the disappearance of an old meaning, or a bridge of tarring were we cling to a previous meaning that is moving in space, dissipating. Whatever the case, the result is a curious position in the world for us to endure or perhaps appreciate. Although when these spaces are moved by large bureaucracies, they deprive of us a unique sense of movement that makes space shine.
More from Martin Heidegger
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“The special character of space must show forth space itself.”