The philosophy of homelessness, eternal emigration and house-home-building
Abstract
The essay examines the problem of catastrophic “homelessness” of human existence. The author begins with the statement that human is a being torn apart by the machines of consciousness – speech and language. Thus, Homo sapiens in its structure is claimed to be a linguistic and ecological catastrophe. The concept of a catastrophe is not used in the essay as loaded with any emotional associations; it is understood strictly, the way it is done in the mathematical theory of catastrophes, where a catastrophe is described as a discontinuity of a function, or a bifurcation. In this respect technique and art are an existential response to man’s exile, to his ontological emigration from a preconscious paradise, a reaction to the fundamental rupture, or human homelessness, his “anti-ecological existense” (from “oikos” – house, dwelling). The radical paradox can be seen in the fact that, when trying directly or indirectly “to return from his emigration”, or to restore the environmental ecological unity lost in anthropogenesis, a human being builds a new environment, his “second nature”. Therefore, the rupture that destroys any house, constructed by man, is rooted in the very essense of a human being. It is shown that any unity splits an internal reflexive discontinuity, an exile resulting from ordinary everyday human speech. Philosophy reveals, actualizes this fundamental homelessness of human existence, makes us remember who Hoimo sapiens really is. It is concluded that there is no sense to speak of truth as the House of Being: there is no “domestic” truth because truth is homeless. This inability of man to cope with his own homelessness, his eternal emigration can become the basis of a genuine human solidarity. Philosophy is not dealt with constructing or explaining the world, it is a way of making the eternal ontological emigration of man clearly understandable.
