Aufenthalt, séjour, demora, deter-se, dwelling

“Sojourn” connotes “the abode,” “residence,” or “stay” of the human being upon the earth. In Heidegger’s work of the 1940s–1950s it comes to function as the way to characterize human existence as such; that is, “the dwelling of the human being, its sojourn in the midst of entities as a whole” (GA55:214). As with so many of Heidegger’s word-plays, the German term for sojourn – Aufenthalt – belongs together with other words that share the common stem halten (to hold), such as “stance” (Haltung), “restraint” (Verhaltenheit), “withholding” (Vorenthalt), and “relation” (Verhältnis). Perhaps the locus classicus for such an analysis lies in Heidegger’s discussion of “originary ethics” in the “Letter on ‘Humanism,’” where he understands the Greek notion of ethos, not in terms of traditional ethics, but as the “sojourn (Aufenthalt), dwelling place . . . that names the open region in which the human being dwells” (GA9:354/269). In 1946 Heidegger attempts to deconstruct the metaphysical discourse of ethics as a code of conduct, a set of moral principles, a socially directed legislation of behavioral norms back to the way Dasein holds itself (hält sich) in a certain relation (Verhältnis) to the world. This, for Heidegger, remains the basis for any possible thinking of human dwelling as something other than mere ethics or a discipline rooted in anthropological subjectivity or “humanism.” Instead, Heidegger will think human dwelling as ethos or sojourn, a stance or comportment (Haltung) marked by restraint or reserve (Verhaltenheit), and an abstinence or forbearance (Sichenthalten). Here, Heidegger renames Dasein as sojourn, and thereby rethinks the image of the Cartesian subject as master and possessor of the world and instead points to the human capacity for letting go and releasement as ways of abandoning presence for an attunement to the absential. Within the later Heidegger’s work, this emphasis on “restraint” (Zurückhaltung), “holding back” (enthalten), “reticence” (Stille halten), and letting go becomes another way of finding the genuine and proper comportment for the human being as it attempts to think “the truth of being.” (CHL)

VIDE: (Aufenthalt->http://hyperlexikon.hyperlogos.info/modules/lexikon/search.php?option=1&term=enthalt)

Aufenthalte = sojourns
séjour (Être et temps)
demora, de-mora (GA7)
dwelling (BT)
estadia
aufenthalt = morar (GA7); de-morar (GA7)

Aufenthalt traduz o grego ethos, que deu ética. «to ethos é a sustentação da estadia do homem no seio do ente integralmente» (GA55). Esta sustentação exige que nós vigiemos, uns com e pelos outros, a manter sem cessar a integridade desta estadia onde nós temos a responder de maneira inesgotavelmente nova ao que nos está presente. Na Carta sobre o humanismo (CartaH), respondendo a uma questão de Jean Beaufret («o que busco fazer desde já muito tempo, escreve, é precisar a relação da ontologia com uma ética possível»), Heidegger convida a voltar de toda interrogação sobre a ética a uma meditação do «elemento inicial» onde se mantém o homem em sua ek-sistência (GA9): a verdade do ser, cuja guarda é a «ética tomada à fonte» (die ursprüngliche Ethik). Este convite segue o mesmo movimentos que as palavras de Heráclito relatadas por Aristóteles, aos visitantes encontrando-o diante de um forno de padeiro a se esquentar: «Aqui também os deuses estão presentes» (GA9). Estas palavras demandam reconhecer o traço mais essencial disto que buscamos compreender precisamente aí onde nós não esperamos encontrá-lo: neste caso, aí onde a palavra «ética» não é absolutamente pronunciada, onde com mais forte razão nada se assemelha a um princípio moral ou preceito de conduta; onde isso também está presente, mas de uma maneira que estamos em uma primeira abordagem incapazes de reconhecer. (Fédier)

As the pole around which all beings turn, the polis becomes the place of settlement, where “the historical dwelling (Aufenthalt) of Greek humanity” takes place. In this abode, Dasein abides the conflictual play of concealment and revelation that defines the nature of truth. In this sense the polis serves as the site where Dasein inhabits the habitudes of its native and indigenous habitat in such a way that it comes to confront its essential homelessness as its sole and proper “home”.

In his SS 1942 lectures Holderlin’s Hymn “The Ister”, Heidegger takes up again this Sophoclean-Holderlinian theme of “coming to be at home in not being at home” and claims it as “the highest thing that the poet must poetize” (GA 53: 147-51). As he deconstructs the meaning of the “political” back to its ontological ground in the polis as the site for the possibility for “poetic dwelling” (GA 53: 137-9, 171-3), Heidegger comes to think of dwelling as bound up with the question of our êthos/Aufenthalt. In these habitual haunts of our habitat and settlements – habits that come to be un-settling, uncanny and unheimlich precisely because they engage the fundamental homelessness of human being – Heidegger finds the measure for the possibility of poetic dwelling. (HKC)

NT: Dwelling (Aufenthalt, sich aufhalten), 54, 61-63, 69 (“busy with”), 75, 80, 88, 107, 119, 124, 164, 173, 188 (“at home”), 189 (“linger”), 261 (“dwell on death”), 347 (“stay”), 388 (“spends time with”), 422; as wohnen, 54, 188. See also at home; being-in; familiarity; surrounding world (BT)