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Habitation can be interpreted as the utilization of an "implement" among "implements." The home would serve for habitation as the hammer for the driving in of a nail or the pen for writing. For it does indeed belong to the gear consisting of things necessary for the life of man. It serves to shelter him from the inclemencies of the weather, to hide him from enemies or the importunate. And yet, within the system of finalities in which human life maintains itself the home occupies a privileged place. Not that of an ultimate end; if one can seek it as a goal, if one can "enjoy" one's home, the home docs not manifest its originality in the possibility for its enjoyment. For all "implements," besides their utility as means in view of an end, admit of an immediate interest. Thus I can take pleasure in handling a tool, in working, in accomplishing, using gestures which, to be sure, fit into a system of finality, but whose end is situated beyond the pleasure or pain procured by these isolated gestures themselves, which fill or nourish a life. The privileged role of the home docs not consist in being the end of human activity but in being its condition, and in this sense its commencement. The recollection necessary for nature to be able to be represented and worked over, for it to first take form as a world, is accomplished as the home. Man abides in the world as having come to it from a private domain, from being at home with himself, to which at each moment he can retire.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-9342-6_10

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