Abstract
In this article, the leading question is: How will we dwell on Mars? If dwelling is always more than mere housing and survival, will we be able to dwell on Mars at all? To dwell and be at home encompasses far more than simply having a roof over your head. In fact, for many, home is a place of oppression and something to escape from, yet it remains a focal point of returning and orientation. Concepts such as house, housing, homelessness, building, apartment, couch surfing, residence, shelter, home, and camping all allude to what it means to dwell and to come home. Why is this question important when dealing with Mars? Precisely because I want to ask whether humans can dwell and be at home on Mars. By asking this question, we may move closer to understanding what it means to dwell and be at home.
In the essay “Building dwelling thinking” (Bauen Wohnen Denken) of 1951, Martin Heidegger reflects on what it means to dwell (Wohnen), especially in uncertain times. Heidegger observes that modern housing does indeed provide shelter – it may even be well planned, easy to maintain, attractively affordable, and open to air, light, and sun – but it does not guarantee that people will be able to dwell in it. We are thus immediately made aware of the difference between mere housing and dwelling.
In this article, I want to transpose the question of dwelling to the planet Mars, speculating that we may be able to lodge and shelter there, but that dwelling, as proposed by Heidegger, may remain unrealisable. The background assumption is that dwelling takes a specific form and requires designated states, beings, places, and encounters before it becomes a real possibility. It is suggested that Heidegger’s notion of the fourfold (das Geviert) may be a useful starting point for examining the form that dwelling takes, not only on Earth but also on the Martian surface. If dwelling is something humans do without even thinking because “humans are essentially dwellers”, what happens to dwelling on Mars?
Heidegger unpacks the fourfold as the gathering and revealing of our existence in its relationality. The fourfold is the gathering or intersection of the Earth and Sky, mortals and immortals, and it is in their relationality that things unfold and open to one another. If one refers to the Earth, one immediately also conjures the other three, and the same goes for the Sky, mortals, and immortals. We cannot think of one without implying the others, yet we often forget how they are bound into a simple oneness. As Heidegger strikingly explains: “But ‘on the earth’ already means ‘under the sky’” (Heidegger 2009[1971]:147). Despite their entanglement, the four cannot be reduced to one another, meaning that the Earth cannot be reduced to the Sky, or mortals to immortals, yet they belong to a primal oneness. They remain unique and singular in the gathering and revealing because “each member forms a bridge by which the thing relates to the world” (Mitchell 2014:215). According to this relationship, to be human is to be a part simultaneously of the fourfold of the Earth, Sky, immortals, and mortals.
It is proposed that to dwell on Mars in the fourfold, the relationality among the four elements will have to be separated and split into distinct techno-components. The relationship or correspondence among the fourfold will have to be shaken, altered, and differently revealed on Mars. One significant aspect Heidegger stresses about revealing in the openness created by the fourfold is that the event of revealing cannot be reduced to “the moulds of total revealing” (Joronen 2013: 634). In other words, how the revealing occurs cannot be predicted, manipulated or calculated.
For deep space travel and the colonisation of Mars, we need to make assumptions about both the human and the Earth, and, by implication, about the Sky and the immortals. Thus, by planning and plotting existence on Mars, we must act as if we know the planet entirely and it has revealed itself without any concealment. Also, we need to assume that we similarly know the endless malleability of humanness when dislodged from the Earth and mortality. In other words, we need to act and plan as if the unfolding of human existence between the force fields of the Earth, the Sky, mortals, and immortals is fully revealed to us. The fourfold also needs to be severed into separate, controllable, and completely knowable entities.
It is proposed that our existence will unfold differently in outer space and on the Martian surface, since our relation to the fourfold of the Earth and Sky shifts, just as our relation to mortality and immortality alters. The fourfold implodes if the horizon becomes Sky, and the prospects of mortals become immortality. Even more, mortals will receive the Earth as divinities from up in the heavens, and no longer as mortals. What Heidegger also suggests here, in terms of outer space travel and colonisation, beyond the Earth’s horizon, the mortal no longer receives the Sky as Sky. In other words, as the Earth recedes from view, the ungrounded bearing of the Earth turns to only Sky. Earth and Sky no longer mirror each other as different yet relational entities; one disappears into the other’s horizon (Earth into Sky and Sky into Earth) and morphs into a new, but different, relationality.
The discussion explores what Mars would be like as a place of dwelling. Following Heidegger, it is argued that dwelling occurs in place and within things. Furthermore, dwelling manifests in the fourfold, or is the embodiment of the interplay of the fourfold. How will the interplay between mortals and immortals, and the meeting of the planes of Earth and Sky, unfold on Mars? How are we to think and build on Mars to respond authentically to the continuous call of dwelling?
I aim to unpack this question by breaking the problem into the four components of the fourfold: How will mortals and immortals, Earth and Sky, interact and unfold on the planetary surface of Mars? The analysis is divided into four sections: Mortals (on Mars), Earth (on Mars), Sky (on Mars), and Immortals (on Mars). Obviously, my division of the elements of the fourfold into separate headings is fictitious and for speculative purposes, since it is not possible to take them apart or separate them into distinct units.
Keywords: Earth; fourfold; Martin Heidegger; immortals; Mars; mortals; multi-planetary species; outer space travels; terraforming
- This article’s featured image was created by RDNE Stock Project and obtained from Pexels.