The symbol of the house

The symbol of the house:
A synthetic hint (suggestion) from philosophy and human sciences:
Man’s living place as symbolic place

M. Heidegger, in the “Holzwege” comments the famous Holderlin’s aphorism –Poetically man lives on Earth- implying that man either lives poetically, or doesn’t live at all. We start from here to introduce our research on the meaning of the house; taking the liberty, we can say:
symbolically speaking, man lives (has his home) on Earth:

“Ethos antròpo dàimon”
Man’s home is God
Eraclito, VI century B.C

An anecdote to begin with: Eraclito and his visitors.
Aristotle, in “De partibus animalium” narrates: “Once… some men set off in order to meet Eraclito. When they arrived at his home, they found the philosopher sitting in the kitchen and getting warm by a stove. At this sight… they hesitated, perhaps they expected to find him absorbed in the contemplation of the sky or, enraptured in meditation, surely they didn’t expect to find him busy in such a banal activity. Seeing them puzzled and hesitating, Eraclito told the visitors: “Come in. Don’t be afraid. Gods are here as well”
Quotation from P. Terenzi, Hannah Arendt, The common sense and the beginning of philosophy, Ed. Leonardo da Vinci, 1999, page 11

In conceiving the house, in building it, in its use, in the metaphoric value of the word itself –home- in a variety of linguistic circles –from philosophy to sciences, from medicine to architecture- it becomes clear a dynamic that we can find in all the human attempt and acts: to read a fragment of one’s own present experience as a manifestation of totality . Aristotle’s tale is very suggestive: even in everyday life, and in the simple occupations a term of familiarity with God is fully implied.

The symbol
The symbol of knowledge- During the 20th century philosophy, philosophical and cultural anthropology, analytical psychology, history of religions and ethnology helped in clarifying the important role of images and symbols in knowledge and praxis from different disciplinary points of view, but separately convergent at the essential results. The rediscovery of the cognitive autonomous value of myths, images and symbols has opened interesting opportunities of research for a new humanism and of a new anthropology abreast of the challenges of the contemporary times, characterised by the rising of historical subjects; not only European and Western.
The imaginative-symbolic language has, in fact, a strong inter-cultural value both in an ethno-geographical and chronological sense, because it is universal: the need of the image and the symbol can be found deeply rooted in the man at any time and in any place and it is produced constantly to convey that peculiar meaning.

In our study we want to illustrate some elements of this universal symbolic code that can be found in the living experience peculiar to man and pre-industrial societies.
This research, however, does not have an archaeological intent. On the contrary it suggests a hypothesis of interpretation for the present. The complex transformations due to the scientific and industrial revolutions and to the secularisation of customs have not deleted this symbolic grammar because it reflects a permanent disposition of the human being.
The symbolical dynamics, present in the living experience of the ancient, medieval and pre-modern times, in fact, do not disappear even in the contemporary industrialised societies.
They can be perceived also in the present living experience, even though they are hidden or degraded, or expressed in forms not immediately recognizable. Their decoding, besides clarifying our own experience, could also greatly contribute to the intercultural dialogue. Cultural forms may seem archaic from an occidental point of view, instead they appear up to date in societies based on different models.

The symbolism of the house
House-Cosmos
The rediscovery of the existential and cognitive value of the symbolic language allowed a deeper comprehension of the living experience.
Taking possession of a place, founding and building a house (in the same way as a city), living in it, are all acts through which men have always tried to orientate themselves in the reality, to recognise and express a link between his condition, his “hic et nunc” and the totality of the living being.
In the building up and in the use of his home man has always tried to find a connection with the whole creation, by both giving the house a cosmic meaning and a domestic significant to the cosmos itself.

The symbolism of the house
House-cosmos.
The re-discovery of the existential and cognitive value of the symbolic language has made it possible a deeper understanding of the inhabiting experience. Taking possession of space, founding and constructing a house (as well as a city), inhabiting it are actions through which men have always tried to orient in the reality, to recognise and to express a nexus between their own condition, their hic et nunc and the totality of the existing being. Man, in fact, in the construction and in the use of its dwelling has always tried to relate himself to the totality of the creation, attributing a cosmic meaning to the house and a “domestic” meaning to the cosmos itself.

The symbolism of the house
The search of a centre and the foundation of a world.
The act of constructing, the techniques used, the forms of inhabiting reveal the fundamental question :”Who am I? What is the world? Which is my place in the reality? Which is the destiny of all things?” and the attempt to find an answer. They become more intelligible if it is recognised that in every time and in every civilisation man has tried to situate himself in the centre of the reality and to reach its last meaning. In the second half of ‘900 the researches of M. Eliade have documented in the presence of these dynamics in the archaic and traditional societies. Already the preliminary act for every constructive enterprise, the orientation in the space, has been lived as an imitation of a cosmogony. The division of the space in four horizons was the equivalent to the foundation of the World. The passage “from chaos to the cosmos” happened by breaking off the homogeneity of the space, conquering a “Centre” through the crossing of two straight lines and the projection of the four horizons in the four cardinal directions.

A symbolism of the house
The house imago mundi
The house, as temple, becomes therefore imago mundi. The space of the house becomes participant of the sacred space, because the cosmos is divine work. The communication with the cosmic level happens through functional elements of opening (e.g. fireplace) which assume the meaning of Axis mundi.

The symbolism of the house
The homology house-body-cosmos
In this symbolic code a medium term exists between the house and the cosmos. This is the human body. The house, as temple, represented at the same time the cosmos and the human body. The symmetry house-body-cosmos is documented in a variety of texts of various ages and traditions. The comparison between the human head and the spherical cosmos made by Plato in “Timeo” (44 D ss.), for example, is familiar to the whole ancient world. This homology, moreover, shows traces in the architectonic and physiological lexicon (in the architectonic and physiological Indian lexicon (e.g. Breath = pilaster), but also in the Latin literature (Ovid: bowels of the earth). In the running language itself we use architectonic metaphors in order to speak about our body or physical ones in order to indicate parts of the house. In the European modern literature, the German Romanticism discovered this nexus again, indicating the purpose of physiology in the discovery of the existing symmetry between the laws of cosmology, of architecture and of the organic world.

The change of the cosmological model
We conclude these notes with some pages by C. S. Lewis, where there is the change of the cosmological model and of the representation of Universe in the collective imagination tied to the scientific and industrial revolutions and to the cultural problems opened by modernity.
(essay by C. Lewis)
While, in fact, a substantial continuity between the ancient, medieval and modern world in the representation of Universe as a “domestic” space exists, in modern and contemporary times it is asserted a problematic conception of the relation between I and world and it is deeply modified the concept of knowledge and experience itself.

A hypothesis to verify
Our intention is not to penetrate in complex gnosiological topics. Our interest is rather to notice that also these transformations of mentality haven’t cancelled the symbolic structure of inhabiting of which we had intention to give some introductory examples. Architecture, in particular, has never forgotten its “cosmogonic” vocation, neither the symmetry man-house-cosmos;” the archetypical imagine of ancient and medieval cosmology is only replaced with an aesthetic and mathematical formula.”(MIRCEA ELIADE, The Rituals of constructing, Jaca Book, Milan 1990, p 95).