The Analysis of the Term Ortsverbundenheit (Dependency on the Location Relationships) in Heidegger

This paper attempts to analyze the concept of dependency on location relationships by M. Heidegger, who is the most influential thinker of 20th century philosophy in general, and contemporary German philosophy specifically. This concept naturally not only has a philosophical content but also a spatial, vital, sociological and psychological content. Being tied to places first of all requires being a resident in a certain place. And being a resident is to “dwell” or to “live” in a particular geography of the world. To dwell in means to find rest in a place and to have rest in an another meaning is to have peace and comfort. In short, to be tied to roots and hold onto them refers to sitting, taking root, to secure one’s position and in another saying to find peace; meanwhile the opposite of all these refers to having no fixed place, to be rootless, to be cut off from roots and to be baseless. The natural outcome of becoming rootless is to ‘change place’, that is to say to migrate. Holding onto roots and migrating are two terms that excludes one another constantly. Sustaining the relationship with the roots and the relationship with the underground is the primary condition for a tree to produce fruit. A tree that loses its connection with the roots cannot maintain its existence. When applying this relationship to human, it is possible to talk about a “withering away”, “decaying” or “not adopting to present place”; even if we cannot talk about an absolute death in the sense we know. The sine qua non for a person to be successful and happy is to be attached to his roots. Here, the attachment to roots should not be understood as a spatial relationship. Being tied to roots also means being bound to a culture, a system of values, a language and a tradition. At this point, the psychology of the immigrants whose relationship with their motherland and people are cut off is the matter of discussion. A person who immigrates is a man whose values that make him who he is are shattered and who does not know exactly how to nourish these values in the new land or country he wants to take roots. In this context, to migrate is a rootless person’s search for roots, which is the hardest task a person could fulfill in life, rather than simply the spatial sense to travel from one place to another. This paper attempts to scrutinize the idea of migration in philosophical, psychological and sociological aspect with Heidegger’s notion of ‘Dependency on Roots’