Home (series) -- No. 14

Taken from Martin Heideigger's "Building Dwelling Thinking":

We do not dwell because we have built, but we build and have built because we dwell, that is, because we are dwellers.  But in what does the essence of dwelling consist?  Let us listen once more to what language says to us.  The Old Saxon wuon, the Gothic wunian, like the old word bauen, mean to remain, to stay in place.  But the Gothic wunian says more distinctly how this remaining is experienced.  Wunian means to be at peace, to be brought to peace, to remain in peace.  The word for peace, Friede, means the free, das Frye; and fry means preserved from harm and danger, preserved from something, safeguarded.  To free actually means to spare.  The sparing itself consists not only in the fact that we do not harm the one whom we spare.  Real sparing is something positive and takes place when we leave something beforehand in its own essence, when we return it specifically to its essential being, when we "free" it in the proper sense of the word into a preserve of peace.  To dwell, preserve, the free sphere that safeguards each thing in its essence.  The fundamental character of dwelling is this sparing.