1. Fragile Refuge: A Rethinking of Levinas on the
Meaning of Home
Ned Strasbaugh
Gettysburg College
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Submitted Fall 2013

2. In Totality and Infinity (1961) Emmanuel Levinas described the meaning of home as both a
refuge for the self and a gateway to the Other. But his philosophical approach to dwelling leaves
home incapable of growth or dynamic change from within. This thesis argues that a more
adequate conception of home must acknowledge its vulnerability to transformation, dissolution,
political violence and reconstitution. To this end, I attempt to reconcile Levinas's conception of
home with all that jeopardizes and renders home fragile. I draw on Hannah Arendt’s analysis of
statelessness from The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) and the German-Turk immigrant
experience.
Chapter 1: Fragile Understandings of Home
Home is commonly turned to as a safe place, a refuge from the outside world. It has been
thought as such by several well-known Continental philosophers of the 20th century: Edmund
Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas. Home as refuge is taken for
granted by each philosopher as a fundamental fact about home. From this belief in the sanctuary
of home, other conclusions have been drawn about home: home is intimately personal, a place
that reflects our inner consciousness, a stable comfort that is either unchanging or lost with no
chance of reclaiming it. Conceptions of home rarely take into account change or transformation,
or the fact that homes are often lost and recreated.
In this thesis, I consider such claims and question whether such an account of home is
complete. Is home adequately described in this way? Is home a static refuge? Is it something
that, once lost, can never be reclaimed? Is home a physical dwelling, or is it where one makes it?
Is home found among our loved ones, among cherished belongings, or just in ourselves? Does
home consist of some combination of these? To be sure, we understand that home, as a physical
object in the world, cannot last forever. To see it as an unchanging sanctuary where we can find
shelter from a cruel world, then, appears contradictory. It appears to be contradictory, both for
those who face natural disaster and the loss of home, and for refugees, immigrants and the

3. homeless. Such loss of home occurs so frequently that it is surprising that home should be
considered a refuge at all.
What is needed to give an adequate philosophical account of home is to recognize this
element of change in home: it is not a static place, and though it may be a safe haven and even an
extension of us, it is important to recognize the fragility of home. We must recognize that home
can and is affected by a multitude of factors, be they from the outside or even from inner
transformation. The recognition of the dynamism of home is crucial in understanding issues
affecting home, in both an existential and political context. The philosophical account on home is
incomplete.
It’s important to deliberate on home; in fact, the stakes can hardly be greater. If home is
something to which we feel deeply connected, to the point where some suggest that home is a
place where the consciousness dwells and comes into being in the world, then we will have
greater awareness and resolve to address the crucial issues that jeopardize the security and refuge
of home. With greater understanding of the changes that occur in home comes greater
understanding of the risks to home that individuals and families face—people who might not feel
safe in their homes, for instance, or people who might feel that someone else’s home is rightfully
their home. Additionally, if home is a place where we recollect ourselves, yet is constantly in
flux, we need to know how that flux might influence our recollection. Recognition of home as
changing allows us to view home with a new eye: we can judge more adequately what home
means to us and what comprises home for us. We can be more aware of what may jeopardize our
homes, so that we do not become overly attached to home or can respond quickly and
accordingly if home should be lost. Deliberation on home allows us to measure its fragility, how

4. meaningful something so fragile should be to us, and the political and ethical responsibilities that
are entailed with something both fragile and meaningful.
But given the significance of other topics in metaphysics, ethics or political philosophy,
home is something that is rarely considered by philosophers. Perhaps this is because we feel
home to be safe and untouchable, or perhaps because home is viewed as a place for recollection
on other activities, and is rarely itself the object of recollection. Yet these are fields in which
home has a significant role: questions of home abound as to who deserves a home, how home
shapes our identity and vice versa, what home really is, if home is intimately related to us as
humans, if home can be bestowed or taken away, if home is something to be provided for by the
state, or can even be shaped by the state. These questions about home remind us of the vital
questions at the intersection of personal and community life. Using this idea of home as
something that is in flux, I plan to show the ways in which the nature of home can evolve or else
become endangered and what this means for home as a concept. To do this, I will first trace some
of the history of philosophical thought on home.
Attention to the concept of home by contemporary philosophers first appeared in the
thought of Edmund Husserl gathered now in Husserliana, the collection of his works. Husserl
thought of home less as a particular place and more as a homeworld (XV 430), the place with
family and memories as well as the people who comprise the community and the actions that
people do there. It is an intersubjective place, allowing us all to share a homeworld that means
something for us individually, and is affected by how we relate to our surroundings. It is a “mode
of constitution in which the individual participates; it is a mode of constitution that occurs
‘through’ and ‘beyond’ the ego, and does not simply begin with egological subjectivity”
(Steinbock 189). The homeworld, which stands opposed to the alienworld, is populated by

5. homecomrades: people who, even if they cannot be called an acquaintance, are familiar and
occupy the same homeworld, such as the bus driver who drives your bus every day (Steinbock
224). It is as if home is a set of overlapping circles for each dimension of life, such as historicity,
culture, language, and societal values and norms, with different people and locations in each
circle: “There are already within a nation differences of homeland and alien” (XXIX 9). All of
these constitute the homeworld for Husserl.
Home can thus have a great deal of meaning for us, yet is not limited solely to being a
place. It can exist in the past, through collective memory or co-constitution of others, as well as
in the future, through a promised homeland (Steinbock 233-234). Thus, people such as the
homeless can still have a home somewhere, since it is not necessarily a physical manifestation,
as well as nomads and those who constitute a diaspora, because such people as the nomad “hat
sein Territorium, in dem er wander und das er als sein Land, sein Herrschaftsgebiet,
Nahrungsgebiet etc. ansieht [has his territory, through which he goes and which he holds as his
land, his dominion, his home etc.]” (A V 10 I 78a). This description also accounts for the
phenomena of homesickness, a longing for the familiar and homey (Steinbock 195). This also
puts an interesting spin on how the homeworld can cease to be, either with the breakup of a
family, the destruction of a territory, or the burial of cultures or values because of irrelevance or
submission to stronger cultures and values.
However, this view seems to take for granted the change that occurs in the homeworld.
Home can be constituted by something of the past, beliefs about the future, or the different
circles that we inhabit in our lives, but Husserl doesn’t discuss how home can grow to have such
meaning in these ways. Likewise, the ways that home can be destroyed seem to constitute an
ultimate end for home, and the people who were victim to such destruction must learn to move

6. on. Husserl’s view also doesn’t seem to constitute how we can grow into home either: he claims
that, though children can have home, they are not homecomrades because they do not
appropriate or shape their homes, rather being shaped by their homes as they adjust to their
culture, values and norms (Steinbock 226). It seems as if, all of a sudden, they wake up one day
and are homecomrades, as if the homeworld has been there all along for them.
Husserl based these views on his phenomenology, and these were the views that opened a
new train of thought in his student, Martin Heidegger. In his work Poetry, Language and
Thought Heidegger used the etymological origin of the German word bauen, to build, and
showed that it originally also meant to dwell in Old English and High German, buan, as well as
showing that the word bauen is related to the word bin, the conjugated form of “to be”. In other
words, dwelling is encompassed by building, which is encompassed by being, and “The way in
which you are and I am, the manner in which we humans are on the earth, is Buan, dwelling”
(Heidegger 144-145). As Heidegger continues his discourse of dwelling, he also says that it is to
remain or stay in the place, but in the Gothic language, the same word also has the implication of
being at peace, and thus to dwell is to be at peace (Heidegger 147). This describes the sense of
belonging that home can entail for us, and he is thus able to tie home to the four states of being in
the world, as sky, earth, mortals and divinities: “When we speak of mortals [human beings], we
are already thinking of the other three along with them, but we give no thought to the simple
oneness of the four. This simple oneness of the four we call the fourfold. Mortals are in the
fourfold by dwelling” (Heidegger 148). In this view, mortals dwelling gives them the property of
being a part in the fourfold, that is, taking up their role in the fourfold. And so, dwelling is to
accept one’s role in the fourfold, and to maintain a status of belonging in it.

7. Dwelling is allowed for by space, where room has been made for dwelling and being to
occur (Heidegger 152). These spaces can be physical, but as mortals, we dwell in space by
definition; and because of our role in the fourfold, we are connected to each other by way of our
thoughts, which can traverse space. Thus we can find home even if we are physically far
removed from it, for “The relationship between man and space is none other than dwelling,
strictly thought and spoken” (Heidegger 155). He also talks about how we grow into our homes,
since the word for building also means to cherish and care for (Heidegger 145); when we put a
lot of time and effort in growing our dwellings, we earn them more and more, and so belonging
to these dwellings is obtained. Heidegger also makes a distinction between feeling at home and
being at home, for instance feeling at home when one is at work, saying that dwelling is where
we can take shelter (Heidegger 143-144). It’s not that one doesn’t feel at home when one is at
home, but one can feel at home in places which are not home too.
Heidegger’s thought on home is a turn away from Husserl’s thought, and it is a more
complete analysis of what it means to have a home and to be at home. Heidegger does include
growth, making home something that one cultivates and really becomes invested in, such that
this is how one’s consciousness can be embedded in home. But he doesn’t really describe the
fragility that also comes with home. Heidegger considers home as something that gives us place
in the fourfold, which gives us purpose, and that even if we are far away from home, we can
think of it and be brought back to it. This makes it seem as if home can’t really be broken open,
and that if we should lose our home, we also lose our place in the fourfold; anything less drastic,
and we haven’t really lost home at all. This doesn’t account for people who have lost their
homes, for instance immigrants or refugees, and implies that they should be at home when they
think back to their home.

8. A fellow student under Husserl with Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, describes home as
the gateway between the outer, physical world, and the inner world of the consciousness in
Totality and Infinity: “Simultaneously without and within, [man] goes forth outside from an
inwardness [intimité]. Yet this inwardness opens up in a home which is situated in that outside”
(Levinas 152). This allows the consciousness to come and go from the outer world by means of
the home, and that after we have been in the world, we can come back to this refuge and
recollect in safety: “To exist henceforth means to dwell. To dwell is… a recollection, a coming
to oneself, a retreat home with oneself as in a land of refuge, which answers to a hospitality, an
expectancy, a human welcome” (Levinas 156).
For Levinas, home is also a place by which one can interact with the Other. The
hospitality of one’s home that can be bestowed on the Other is an act of transcendent
selflessness, because “No human or interhuman relationship can be enacted outside of economy;
no face can be approached with empty hands and closed home. Recollection in a home open to
the Other—hospitality—is the concrete and initial fact of human recollection and separation; it
coincides with the Desire for the Other absolutely transcendent” (Levinas 172). But the
relationship with the Other is concretized in language, the pinnacle of which is teaching;
teaching embodies how the Other makes a connection with us, because teaching “signifies the
whole infinity of the exteriority” (Levinas 171), that is, we are given information that is not ours
from interaction outside of our own consciousness, and thus our world changes to accommodate
it. Thus, we transcend into a new world when we come in contact with the Other, and our home
changes or grows because it is limited as a totality, “whereas the relation with the Other breaks
the ceiling of the totality” (Levinas 171).

9. What Levinas has in his conception of home that Husserl and Heidegger don’t have is the
belief that home should be a place not just for us but for those around us, the Other. This really
adds an ethical weight to home that Husserl’s and Heidegger’s accounts did not have. Whereas
the others still allow that home can exist in a place, Levinas takes place out of it for the most
part, only saying that home is the physical place where our consciousness can come into
existence in the world; it makes home that much more inclined to change, since it’s not tied
down much by its physical manifestation. Yet this version of home, while different in its
approach, still doesn’t quite have what we need: it makes home more fragile, capable of
changing from the outside, but at the cost of not allowing for change from the inside. This
definition of home in terms of the Other, while also allowing for home as a refuge for
recollection, also makes it extraordinarily dependent on the Other, almost too much so; it means
we would have to surrender some of our own autonomy in our home.
Greatly influenced by Levinas’ line of thought was Jacques Derrida, who was a good
friend of Levinas. Derrida also comments on the home as a social ground in On Hospitality, a
place of hospitality towards others, and that with respect to being an outsider in a community. In
doing so, he draws an argument from The Sophist that the foreigner disturbs the norm for
society-dwellers. It is as if the foreigner commits parricide: he is not a political relative in any
way to a citizen of a society, not like a fellow citizen is. And therefore, the identity of being a
political relative, a fellow citizen, has been destroyed (Derrida 7). But Derrida goes on to reject
this, recalling Socrates’ argument in his Apologia that he wanted to be treated as a foreigner
since there is a right granted to foreigners in his Athens of old: the right, or norm, to be accepted
as perhaps different, the first act of hospitality to a foreigner (Derrida 19).

10. Here, Derrida makes his first connection from inside the family or society to an outsider
as an act of hospitality: “It is not, here, although the things are connected, a question of the
classical problem of the right to nationality or citizenship as a birthright—in some places linked
to the land and in others to blood…. It is not only a question of the citizenship offered to
someone who had none previously, but of the right granted to the foreigner as such, to the
foreigner remaining a foreigner, and to his or her relatives, to the family, to the descendants”
(Derrida 21-23). Recognition of one as a foreigner, and fair treatment to them as such, is what is
important for Derrida. One’s nationality, citizenship, or birth should not be determining factors
in this treatment, and home should not be judged on that basis.
In discussion of how hospitality can be managed by rights, Derrida brings up occasions
when the state violates these rights, especially in the context of our increasingly technological
age, with phone lines, emails and faxes acting as an extension of our homes. If the state should
tap someone’s phone for malicious intent, for instance, “then the intervention of the state
becomes a violation of the inviolable, in the place where inviolable immunity remains the
condition of hospitality” (Derrida 51). And here we see how he connects home and hospitality
together: home is where hospitality can be bestowed unto others. It allows for hospitality to
occur, and is in a sense the act of giving home to others. Likewise, if the home is violated, as in
his example, the negative consequences will occur: “wherever the ‘home’ is violated, wherever
at any rate a violation is felt as such, you can foresee a privatizing and even familialist reaction,
by widening the ethnocentric and nationalist, and thus xenophobic, circle: not directed against
the foreigner as such, but, paradoxically, against the anonymous technological power (foreign to
the language or the religion, as much as to the family and the nation), which threatens, with the
‘home,’ the traditional conditions of hospitality” (Derrida 53). Home is a very personal thing that

11. one can connect to, and one violation of it would have repercussions that affect whatever is
linked to home.
But there is a problem with hospitality in Derrida’s eyes: when one is entirely hospitable
to an outsider, when one gives their home completely to them, then the outsider is not an outsider
anymore, since they are in possession of the home now: “absolute hospitality requires that I open
up my home and that I give not only to the foreigner (provided with a family name, with the
social status of being a foreigner, etc.), but to the absolute, unknown, anonymous other, and that
I give place to them, that I let them come, that I let them arrive, and take place in the place I offer
them, without asking of them either reciprocity (entering into a pact) or even their names”
(Derrida 25). Absolute hospitality, is therefore, not possible, since to offer absolute hospitality is
a paradox in itself.
The biggest problem with Derrida’s account is, perhaps even more than the account of
Levinas, he seems to put too much stock in how we should relate to others when considering
home. It’s certainly understandable since he’s looking at home from an ethical perspective, but
surely there’s more to home than that. An adequate account should also be about how we
individually relate to home.
Meanwhile, a rising philosopher named Hannah Arendt was learning under Martin
Heidegger, and also coming to her own conclusions about home in The Origins of
Totalitarianism. In contrast to the others, she examines the political meaning that home has for
us, and does so in the context of minorities and people who are stateless. In the years following
the First World War, with the establishment of the Minority Treaties, it was declared officially
what had since been implicitly true, that “only nationals could be citizens, only people of the
same national origin could enjoy the full protection of legal institutions, that persons of different

12. nationality needed some law of exception until or unless they were completely assimilated or
divorced from their origin” (Arendt 350-351). The Stateless, then, could not be citizens of a new
place, and could not receive any rights or protections from that place, in a denial of their
differences and origins.
Arendt continues her historical development in The Origins of Totalitarianism of how
states tried to deal with displaced minorities after the First World War with two solutions,
repatriation and naturalization. The first failed when no country wanted to accept those stateless;
the second, because it was designed for those people born and made citizens of a territory since
birth, could not get rid of the otherness ascribed to the stateless (Arendt 360-361). The stateless,
as they came into the political eye in the twentieth century, were left on the fringes of societies
that didn’t want to give them a home. They were neither pushed away nor were they accepted in
totally, and so they were caught in limbo, without any real solution provided by the state they
inhabited. This happened everywhere, not only in states where the stateless were openly rejected:
“The Rights of Man, after all, had been defined as ‘inalienable’ because they were supposed to
be independent of all governments; but it turned out that the moment human beings lacked their
own government and had to fall back upon their minimum rights, no authority was left to protect
them and no institution was willing to guarantee them” (Arendt 370). This loss of the political
rights, and the human rights so closely related to them, left the stateless to feel alienated in a
world away from home.
The right to a home is one of the first rights lost for the stateless that Arendt mentions:
“the loss of the entire social texture into which [the rightless] were born and in which they
established for themselves a distinct place in the world…. What is unprecedented is not the loss
of a home but the impossibility of finding a new one” (Arendt 372). This loss of home, and the

13. condition of being homeless and stateless in the world, was devastating for the people who were
left alienated. The political rights, which they could not gain from the state they sought refuge in,
were inevitably linked to basic human rights. It was the kind of condition that led the stateless to
want to do something to change it, and perhaps get these rights back. They “were as convinced
as the minorities that loss of national rights was identical with loss of human rights, that the
former inevitably entailed the latter. The more they were excluded from right in any form, the
more they tended to look for a reintegration into a national, into their own national community”
(Arendt 371). For Arendt, this alienation from a community, from home, is something
antithetical to the human condition, whether we are considering someone who is stateless, or
whether we are the stateless ourselves.
The human being who has lost his place in a community… is left with those
qualities which usually can become articulate only in the sphere of private life and
must remain unqualified, mere existence in all matters of public concern. This
mere existence, that is, all that which is mysteriously given us by birth and which
includes the shape of our bodies and the talents of our minds, can be adequately
dealt with only by the unpredictable hazards of friendship and sympathy. (Arendt
382).
It is not as if systems of politics can eliminate inequalities such as personal qualities or
origins. But Arendt feels that we have an obligation to seek justice, for instance in spite of
someone’s lack of state, to offer someone a right to home.
Arendt gives the notion of home urgency. She doesn’t so much ask what home is, but
goes into details of who has lost it and in what ways the political systems of the twentieth
century failed to give it back to them. While this leaves open the questions of what is home and
how we should consider it, it closes questions that the others couldn’t answer, such as different
ways home can grow and be broken, as well as what home can mean to us.

14. The ideas of these philosophers, while enlightening and provocative for our purposes in
finding the meaning of home, must be examined carefully. For instance, all of these philosophers
are of the Western traditions, and no Eastern thought is being given consideration. As we try to
remember the transitoriness of home, we must remember that we are sifting only through one
school of thought, and so conclusions we come to, while more adequate than before, may still
not be complete. Something else to bear in mind is that four of the mentioned philosophers are of
Jewish background, and so their philosophical conceptions of home may be influenced by the
particular historical experience, perhaps with emphasis on a diasporic way of life. However, we
can judge this by seeing how the conclusions I draw here about their work hold up when placed
into the context of immigrant Turks in Germany as well as other contexts I examine in the third
chapter.
Levinas’ view of home particularly interests me because of how he tries to bring together
both the subjectivity of home as a refuge of recollection and make it a connection with the Other
and the outside world. This blend will allow us to understand the different ways in which home
can be shaped, from outside and from inside, and can lead us to a new understanding of home’s
fragility. Arendt will also be most useful for my purposes because of her unique approach to
understanding what home can mean for us in a practical, political context; I will assume, as she
does, that home is a political good, and will show the importance of understanding home’s
fragility through her thought.
Chapter 2: Developing Conceptions of Home

15. There is a deeper reason why I will examine Levinas and Arendt in greater detail. I seek
to develop a way of thinking of home as embodying change and growth, lest we fail to
acknowledge its susceptibility to loss. In the third chapter I will examine a home situation which
is complex, and can only be properly understood with a version of home that allows for change.
As such, I choose to examine the situation of German-Turks in Germany, from the original
workers of the Gastarbeiter movement (1961-1973) to their descendants that live in Germany
today. Much pressure faces the German-Turks, such as political inequality and social differences
from other Germans, and this can make their home seem unbearable; yet, they consider Germany
their home, although it is a different home from their ancestry. I choose to examine Levinas most
closely, in light of this, because of the connection he draws between home and the outside world,
mirrored in the vulnerability of German-Turks to the wider German society. This vulnerability,
appreciated by Levinas, thus allows me to consider home in the German-Turkish context as an
ethical issue that deals with the Other.
Levinas understood that a sense of home can manifest in a particular place, but this is
neither necessary nor sufficient for understanding what home means to us. Rather, Levinas
describes home as a way to recollect oneself, a retreat to the soul, away from the intersubjectivity
of the rest of the world, to try and make sense of it. The home is a reflection of the soul, where
we can feel safe and personal, almost as if in a land of refuge; though we are present as part of
the world, the home allows us to simultaneously step back and look at the world calmly and
composedly. Home also gives us labor, because with the recollection of who we are and what our
place in the world is comes understanding of what we are going to do next: it transforms the
being of our consciousness into the action of our exteriority. The condition for this recollection is
the Other: the Other shakes up the paradigm of subjectivity, and gives us reason to think about

16. our existence and how it is to be lived on earth meaningfully. The relationship with the Other is
defined by teaching, the production of exteriority that allows the Other to impress his or her
consciousness on our home and make a connection between us: we learn new things from the
world because if we are left to ourselves, there would be no reason to change. Our interaction
with the world is the reason that we grow.
This idea of home as a gateway to the soul that is affected by our relationships with the
outside world seems to explain both the personal feeling we can individually have for home,
which must be tailored to the many different kinds of homes, and the universality of the
existence of home throughout the world. Yet there is something about this definition of home
that seems odd when re-examined: we learn from others because if we are left to ourselves, we
don’t change and don’t grow. That seems peculiar to say, especially for a philosopher, for whom
inner reflection should perhaps be one of the most important means of inner growth. Is it true
that the home, the physical manifestation of our soul, only grows from connection to the outside?
I can think of an example that affirms this, such as bringing in new decorations from an outside
source to hang up. Yet, even this example is not totally clear-cut: hanging new decorations, even
if they were obtained from elsewhere, reflects my own inner taste. Maybe I suddenly feel that my
beige dining room doesn’t allow enough light, and a key lime green is more fitting. Maybe I just
moved into a new home, and I need to settle into it on my own to feel at home there. Maybe my
home reflects more my parents’ tastes, so that when I move into my own place, I finally have a
chance to make it my own. Growth can come from consideration, deliberation; not just from
events that happen on the outside, but learning from the events that happen on the outside.
Levinas seems to agree that this is an odd principle for a philosopher to stand by,
defending himself by saying “In this commerce with the infinity of exteriority or of height the

17. naïveté of the direct impulse, the naïveté of the being exercising itself as a force on the move, is
ashamed of its naïveté…. Commerce with the alterity of infinity does not offend like an opinion;
it does not limit the mind in a way inadmissible to a philosopher” (Levinas 171). In this, I do not
disagree: we can and do most certainly grow from our interaction with the outside world. Yet it
seems a mistake to me to imply that this is always how we should learn: to deny what the
philosopher has done over the course of history. He describes the limit of growth within a home
as a totality, because “Limitation is produced only within a totality, whereas the relation with the
Other breaks the ceiling of the totality” (Levinas 171). The metaphor is made all the more
complete with the destruction of the ceiling of the totality, or the ceiling of one’s home, opening
up to the Other beyond.
This is further elaborated on when he talks about hospitality. When relating to the Other,
Levinas claims that “No human or interhuman relationship can be enacted outside of economy;
no face can be approached with empty hands and closed heart” (Levinas 172). The interaction
with the Other is formed out of the desire to become whole, that is, to find that exterior
personality that gives our soul life and meaning. To this end, we must transcend both our worldly
possessions through hospitality and our worldly knowledge through language and teaching:
when we give everything we have to another, when we make these transactions in possession and
teaching, then our homes grow as we do. Yet this seems to be wrong at its very foundation: how
is it that relationships with other people can always involve transactions of this or that nature?
Especially when the point of more intimate relationships, such as those of friends and lovers, is
that you don’t expect anything from the other but just enjoy their company. Again, while it
seems true that we can and do grow from our interactions with others, this doesn’t always need

18. to be the case. We are very capable of growing from within, and since our homes are a reflection
of our inner selves, they are capable of growing from within too.
It was something that his contemporary, Heidegger, had noticed. In his etymological
study into the meaning of home, Heidegger mentions that the word for dwelling is encompassed
by the word for building, bauen. But he points out that bauen also has another meaning, that of
cultivating or growth: “to cherish or protect, to preserve and care for, specifically to till the soil,
to cultivate the vine. Such building only takes care—it tends the growth that ripens into its fruit
of its own accord” (Heidegger 145). Based on Levinas’ belief in the importance of relations with
the Other as the culmination of our existence, it is hardly surprising that he might have
overlooked how the home is also a place for growth; yet this must be kept in mind as we try to
create a fitting description of home. The question for both seems to be where growth in the home
can lie, if home is both deeply personal and a gateway to the world. Heidegger doesn’t regard the
importance of the Other as Levinas does, whereas Levinas seems to disregard the idea of
personal growth in the home.
Perhaps Levinas was inclined to overlook growth within the home because of his belief
that the home, admittedly a part of who we are personally, is nevertheless still within the world.
This was a critique that he had of Heidegger, one that must be kept in mind: “In Being and Time
the home does not appear apart from the system of implements. But can the ‘in view of oneself’
characteristic of care be brought about without a disengagement from the situation, without a
recollection and without extraterritoriality—without being at home with oneself?” (Levinas 170).
If the home is intimately connected to the exterior world, the Other, as well as to each of us, we
must allow for how we can be part of this world. This thought complements his view of the
Other well, and could explain why he feels the Other must be linked to growth of the home. Yet

19. this claim seems to go too far, now making home more of something that is totally encapsulated
within the world. It seems to bypass the simultaneous nature of the home as both an extension of
each of us personally and still a part of the world around us.
We need to bear the importance of growth in mind, then, when we examine the rest of
Levinas’ ideas on home. Are his other ideas affected by this need for growth in home? Not all of
his ideas are, such as how home allows someone to feel at home, or how home can allow the
private self to manifest in the world. However, some ideas are affected. Levinas claims that “to
exist henceforth means to dwell. To dwell is… a recollection, a coming to oneself, a retreat home
as if in a land of refuge, which answers to a hospitality, an expectancy, a human welcome”
(Levinas 156). We have already seen that the second half of this thought, while still true, is not
the entire story of what is needed for home. So it can be true that to exist is a coming to oneself
which answers to a human welcome, but this need not necessarily be the case. If that human
welcome is not there, then for Levinas, that existence is a coming to oneself that stays exactly as
it is. Yet this can’t be the case, because we know of examples where there isn’t necessarily a
human welcome, for instance with an exile from his or her country who can learn what about his
or her home really matters, or with an immigrant who must come to terms with his or her home
when they might not be considered to totally belong there. Do we say that their homes do not
grow, or that their feeling of home cannot possibly grow at all?
Two other ideas that are intimately related to Levinas’ idea of home are his ideas on labor
and on language. These must then be explored to see how the change in my idea of home affects
them as well. With the reflection that comes with dwelling, labor becomes simply the action that
guides what one possesses, or comes in contact with. It again is an idea of how we relate to
things outside of our home, our subjective world. We come into contact with, meet, know,

20. experience other things, by acquiring them, and labor is how that happens: “The hand
accomplishes its proper function prior to every execution of a plan, every projection of a project,
every finality that would lead out of being at home with oneself…. Labor in its primary intention
is this acquisition, this movement toward oneself” (Levinas 159). It is a similar way or relating to
things as Levinas described relating to others; yet, in this case, it does not seem we are capable of
growing on our own as we were without relating to the Other. The Other opens us up to new
possibilities, as do objects of our labor, yet the purpose of the labor is to come into this contact
with other things: therefore, labor and the Other must be thought of as separate. Labor is a
specific way of coming into contact with and growing through the exteriority; the Other is in that
exteriority through which we can grow.
Language is explained by this conclusion too. Levinas explains language as “contact
across a distance, relation with the non-touchable” (Levinas 172), an attempt to connect with the
Other. It puts us in a world in common with the Other, and is “a first action over and above
labor, an action without action, even though speech involves the effort of labor, even though, as
incarnate thought, it inserts us into the world, with the risks and hazards of all action. At each
instant it exceeds this labor by the generosity of the offer it forthwith makes of this very labor”
(Levinas 174). Language is like a labor, since it is a method to help us relate to the exteriority,
but this is specifically a way of communicating the soul across to the Other. We can only
examine this as if we were examining labor, since it involves the effort of labor, though we must
bear in mind that it is not exactly like labor. Labor requires dwelling in that the hand recollects
and knows what it wants; so can we assume that language also acts after a retreat in on itself, that
language knows specifically that it is to connect with the Other. But since this is also a method,
and not an object, we do not need to make exceptions for growth in home because growth is not

21. what we are striving for here: we are simply striving for growth through the Other, and language
is thus only one method of obtaining that growth.
What about the first home, the body? For Levinas, it is not as if we are our bodies. The
body is something that we must give up someday when we die, a shelter for our soul, “my
possession according as my being maintains itself in a home at the limit of interiority and
exteriority” (Levinas 162). It is something that is at once home, intensely natural for each of us
to wield, responding to our thoughts and needs instantaneously through our body’s wiring, and
also a thing that houses the consciousness, a part of the environment that surrounds us. This state
is something that crops up often in Levinas’ work, that “To be a body is on the one hand to
stand… to be master of oneself, and, on the other hand, to stand on the earth, to be in the other,
and thus to be encumbered by one’s body. But… this encumberment is not produced as a pure
dependence; it forms the happiness of him who enjoys it…. To be at home with oneself in
something other than oneself… is concretized in corporeal experience” (Levinas 164). How is it
that we should grow within a body when we are in on only ourselves? If the body is our home,
then Levinas must be implying that we do not grow by ourselves, just from exposure to the
Other. Yet how can that be so, when growth is one of the fundamental parts of maturation into an
adult, when the body both literally grows by itself into a taller human and mentally grows with
the development of thought, as it learns to think for itself and comes to know more about itself?
An idea intimately related to the body, and the home in general, that Levinas considers is
the idea of death, and how home relates to it:
The dwelling, overcoming the insecurity of life, is a perpetual postponement of
the expiration in which life risks foundering. The consciousness of death is the
consciousness of the perpetual postponement of death, in the essential ignorance
of its date. Enjoyment as the body that labors maintains itself in this primary
postponement, that which opens the very dimension of time…. In patience the

22. imminence of defeat, but also a distance in its regard, coincide. The ambiguity of
the body is consciousness. (Levinas 165)
This seems to be an understanding that recollection, which occurs in the home, gives rise
to consciousness of who we are, awareness. This consciousness moves us away from pure
physicality, which takes no stock of what is going on, and is not capable of recollection or,
importantly, is unaware of time. With this unawareness of time, we are unaware of the passage
of time as well as unable to foresee the future, that is, death. The recollection allowed for in
home, then, makes us conscious of death; but because we become conscious of it, we become
aware of how it is not here yet, how far away it can be for us. At the same time, we become
conscious of the time we are alive, and so our death is postponed. This postponement is not, nor
can it ever be, total: we all must die. It seems that Levinas is suggesting that the permanent
postponement of death would be logically possible if we could retreat completely out of the
world and into our homes, ourselves. However, this is physically impossible because the home is
a part of the world. The idea of home with growth doesn’t greatly impact Levinas’ view of death,
though it clarifies his own thoughts on home a little bit more. This view of death and home is
also compatible with the idea of home capable of growth, since a home with growth is still a
home where recollection can occur.
What we need, then, is an idea of home that does allow for growth. Such a conception is
not just for people who can build on new tastes, but also for people who might have a different
conception of home. The homeless, who, though they have by definition lost their home for one
reason or another, can find refuge or stability in carrying the same collection of newspapers or
resting at the same street corner, members of the diaspora, who spread to different places around
the world yet maintain a sense of connection with others in the diaspora, and immigrants, who

23. might be part of a country yet considered outsiders to it, to name a few. Home has to be
considered more dynamic than Levinas allows.
Hannah Arendt’s thoughts on the matter can provide us with a springboard to an
enlightened conclusion. Her political and historical thoughts on what it means to be displaced
from one’s home are very insightful for chronicling growth and development within a home. She
describes how, following the chaos of World Wars I and II, large groups of people were all of a
sudden stateless, and became the responsibility of new and different governments that either
didn’t necessarily want them or know what to do with them. The rights that they had were
minimal, making their lives in their new countries difficult and “perfectly ‘superfluous’” (Arendt
375), from which their lives would then be in danger. These people, put simply, don’t belong to
“a community willing and able to guarantee any rights whatsoever” (Arendt 377), and the
hardships they suffer therefrom are numerous.
Home comes into play this way because the first loss for the rightless was the loss of
home, and the “social texture into which they were born and in which they established for
themselves a distinct place in the world” (Arendt 372). This is reflective of the great changes that
can overcome home, and shows the necessity that homes should have growth as well. People
who were stateless, or refugees, or immigrants in a new land, had lost or given up their original
homes and needed to make a new home elsewhere. This was to develop into their home from the
ground up, grown from their new situation by their comfort and belonging in their new society.
Arendt is aware that, following the loss of one’s home, the finding of a new one is hardly
possible because of the political organization. Once they were thrown out of the political life,
they were thrown out of active life altogether. For once one is inside the political life, “The more
highly developed a civilization, the more accomplished the world it has produced, the more at

24. home men feel within the artifice—the more they will resent everything they have not produced,
everything that is merely and mysteriously given to them” (Arendt 382). In here, we can see the
disagreement with Levinas’ conclusions again, that home should not allow for growth from
within but should be bestowed on us from the outside. Without a political life to include the
stateless, the existence with only the things they have not produced and have been given since
birth “can be adequately dealt with only by the unpredictable hazards of friendship and
sympathy, or by the great and incalculable grace of love” (Arendt 382). This is in accord with
Levinas’ beliefs on how ethics should be conducted, though Arendt’s analysis reveals the
inadequacy felt by humans who believe in the bestowal of growth from the outside. Levinas’
belief can’t be the end of it.
This means that there should most certainly be room for growth in the concept of home.
Sometimes circumstances are unavoidable in which a home is no longer home. Suddenly, people
who are stateless are left to forge home anew, and if the state cannot provide it for them, they
have to do the best they can on their own. Imagine the immigrant, who is considered an outsider
in a new country and is not socially accepted into the country as a comrade; he or she was born
there, grew up there and knows no other home. Home is something that he or she would need to
come to terms with, and the longer the immigrant stays there, the more they feel at home there.
Imagine the refugees, who must abandon home due to unsafe conditions like war. We can
understand if they never lose their desire to return to that home someday, yet they have to learn
to adapt to a second home in a new place, and get used to the conditions that are there. Imagine
the nomad, who never has the ideal conception of home to begin with; he or she feels most at
home when he or she is not at home at all, and this feeling of being at home comes from the

25. inner necessity of journeying to new places. Arendt saw that such people could not live with
stationary concepts of home, and must be accounted for as well.
With this combination of Levinas’ and Arendt’s thought, we can reach a better
understanding of home that can account for many diverse types of experiences of home, even if
it might seem that they have lost or given up an essentialist notion of home completely. It
provides us with an ethico-political account of home that is quite useful in understanding what
home should entail and how we must view home. I will explore how this version of home as a
place of growth holds up in a case study of German-Turks in Germany, as immigrants and
outsiders in their society. By doing so, I hope to show that home must be viewed as fragile, that
it takes on a greater significance when we view it as fragile, and that it then leads us to become
more aware of the political and ethical responsibilities that might surround issues of home
around the world.
Chapter 3: Necessary Responsibilities of Home
Where does the German-Turk belong, Germany or Turkey? Someone of Turkish descent
born in Germany faces problems when answering that question. There is undoubtedly a political
spin on it: since the Gastarbeiter movement in the 1960’s, German-Turks have encountered
problems such as leaving behind their families, differences and blends between the two cultures,
prejudice and intolerance, identity questions, hostilities based on culture, and power issues
(Horrocks 47-53). When we consider each of these hardships individually, it seems surprising
that there would be a question that German-Turks should belong in Germany at all.

26. In response to each obstacle: home can seem incomplete without having one’s family
around, people who seem as much a part of our life as to make home livelier. Without the family,
unless one isn’t comfortable with one’s family, it seems more likely that one would feel alone.
Meanwhile, if one leaves a familiar culture and goes to a place with different beliefs and
customs, naturally it will feel strange to be in this new culture. While it may feel like a breath of
fresh air for some, who might really feel compatible in this new culture, it cannot be said that
everyone will enjoy leaving familiar contexts in this way. Certainly, since immigrant Turks were
outsiders to this new culture, there was and is prejudice and intolerance on the part of the
Germans towards these outsiders. Such prejudice makes it harder for one to settle in this new
home, where one does not feel welcomed or hospitality from the citizens living there. It deprives
one of the sense of belonging which can help to make home the refuge we seek. In addition to
the social prejudice and intolerance, which operates at a sociological level, there is political
prejudice too, such as citizenship laws that can only grant dual citizenship between Germany and
Turkey to the younger generations but not the older ones, legislation which was only passed
recently and is part of a debate that still rages (Heinrich). There are issues of power on the
political level that harken back to Arendt’s analysis, and are still trying to be resolved; but until
they are resolved, German-Turks are made to feel less welcome in a place that they might
consider home. All of these factors conspire together to complicate the issue of identity for
German-Turks living in Germany: do they really belong there? Are they German, or Turkish?
Are they both, or neither? This uncertainty, raised with the issues surrounding their home in
Germany, help to make this refuge not very safe.
This echoes Arendt’s thoughts that home, a human right, has not been granted to
foreigners in a new country; indeed, this status has proven to be so accurate for German-Turks

27. that Horrocks and Kolinsky describe them as “‘resident non-Germans’ to highlight the
paradoxical status of Turks and other foreign nationals who find themselves between acceptance
and exclusion” (Horrocks xi). For the vision of home as Levinas has it, a place for the self both
to find refuge as well as serve the Other, this simply cannot be home. The German-Turks are
made to feel as if this home is not theirs, and that they are not welcome there. There is hardly any
refuge for them. And yet, for the German-Turks as they settled in Germany for the Gastarbeiter
movement, and especially for the second- and third-generation German-Turks who were born
there, Germany became home. It was the land they lived in, where their families may have
moved too, where they received education, where they grew up. Here, we see that the immigrant
Turks, who for the most part decided not to leave Germany following the expiration of their
contracts as Gastarbeiter, home grew from within. It was not something that came from the
Other, in an environment where they were made to feel unwelcome, but it became their home
nonetheless. This illustrates clearly that home, as a refuge, is susceptible to any number of
factors that might inhibit it or allow for it to grow.
How can we say that home is perfect for the German-Turks? How can we say that
homeworlds are perfect reflections of the different circles that people inhabit, or where they
make good on their existence, or a safe place from the outside, or a source of hospitality to
others, as Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida have it? Home is a fragile refuge for them: it
can only be viewed as a place of refuge that is subject to change, which might at any point be
affected by both the outside and inside. If it is a safe place, it must contend with factors that
threaten it, or do affect it. Home is far from perfect: home is a place that is changing, and can
change at any moment, and we need to be aware of this if we are to understand the precarious
homes that some people have.

28. With this realization, what can we do to offer a more complete understanding of home?
We now have Levinas’ view of home as working for the Other, and we are now aware that it is a
place that is delicate and susceptible to a great many factors, as Arendt saw. We have seen that
this is not only the situation of German-Turks who have found home in Germany, but that it is
necessarily so. Because of these conclusions, home takes on a much greater significance. It is not
simply the untouchable refuge that we view it, but a part of the world that is susceptible to a
great many factors from without or within that cause it to change or develop. Lest we lose home
to such factors, it becomes something not to be taken for granted, that is, something that we must
cherish.
If you or I were told that we would lose our home in such a way, that we would
immigrate to a new country, where we were considered outsiders by that country’s citizens, how
would we react? We might do what we could to try and preserve the home that we have, so that
we wouldn’t lose it so easily. Failing that, we might cherish the time that we have left in our
home, actively trying to preserve every memory, every detail, everything that we love about our
home. Perhaps, in our new home, we would do what we could to try and bring old decorations or
old traditions from our home with us. When we recognize that home is under the threat of
change, it attains an added significance and becomes something that we truly appreciate for
when it is a refuge.
But with German-Turks in Germany, it’s more complex. The home that they have made
in Germany is under threat from forces such as leaving family behind or facing prejudice and
intolerance in their new societies, forces which can either be unavoidable or expected. Yet, with
home as such a fragile refuge, we know that there must be a greater awareness of the need to
preserve and appreciate home, especially for those most vulnerable. Thus, ethical and political

29. responsibilities exist in responding to the fragile or lost homes of vulnerable populations. Home
is under threat for German-Turks in Germany, and this on an ethical and political scale, as
Levinas and Arendt understood: and so we can learn how home is threatened ethically and
politically, and what ethical and political responsibility that entails.
Home can be recognized as a political good, not only for the German-Turks but for others
as well. Home, be it a political good or a political casualty, has a link to politics which is forged
through one’s political identity: the identity that one can feel by belonging to a nation is
powerful, to the point that “A nation – like all ‘imagined communities’ – is not merely an
extended web of relationships between those who share a certain identity; it also involves a
conception of the community to which the members belong” (Alcoff 272). This gives those in
the community, with a common identity, a sense of belonging and comradeship with each other
that is not given to those who don’t belong. This sense of belonging also includes having a home
in the community: “This identity provides us with a land in which we are at home, a history
which is ours, and a privileged access to a vast heritage of culture and creativity. It not only
provides us with a means to understand this heritage; it also assures us that it is ours” (Alcoff
272). There is a link between home and the political community: the political community defines
our identity, grouping us together with our comrades, and this gives us a sense of belonging,
from which we feel at home. If there is no sense of home, then there is no sense of belonging in
the political community, and anyone who doesn’t belong to the community politically shouldn’t
have a home.
But here we see a fallacy: someone who doesn’t belong to the community politically still
has the possibility of having home there, though that home manifests in a different way. This is
what we see in the situation of the German-Turks in Germany. Arendt provides a critique of

30. these political problems: that German-Turks are different and don’t belong in Germany, that they
are outsiders, and that they might be corrupting the culture. Such outsider status is also analyzed
well by Anderson in his book Imagined Communities. Anderson accurately describes the nation
as an anthropological concept, without any real, physical boundaries or characteristics, but as
such lives in the consciousness of people as much as gender and race:
It is an imagined political community…. imagined because the members of even
the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or
even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their
communion…. It is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual
inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always
conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that
makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not
so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings. (Anderson 6-7)
It seems remarkably curious, based on this, that nations should reject certain people,
citizens by right, as foreign or different, when the concept of the nation itself is superficial and
only arisen from past cultural ideals.
Moreover, this exclusion of political outsiders from having a home is challenged is
through the idea of transmigration: in this view, the earlier conception of the word ‘migrant’ is
abandoned in favor of a definition that accounts for both one’s former and current society based
on the interactions with both through networks and patterns of life (Kaya 486). This explains
how, in the case of German-Turks, they can live in Germany with pressures that threaten their
home, and yet still be able to call it home: as if they have one foot in each country, “Frequent
visits to Turkey, making investments in both places, constructing a ‘new home’ away from home
architecturally resembling the place left behind, having affiliations in both countries, and paying
relatively equal attention to German and Turkish media all show that German-Turks
simultaneously dwell in both countries” (Kaya 487). But even though German-Turks have been

31. able to settle in Germany as a home in spite of pressures they may face, it is still necessary to
recognize the responsibilities that come with home politically.
Therefore, if home is to be recognized on this political scale, then the political
responsibilities toward home must also be recognized. For the German-Turks, we have seen that
Germany is a home in spite of the pressures that may face them from the society or the politics.
This is perhaps because Germany has become as much a home as Turkey in the ways that
German-Turks connect with both lands, to the point that German-Turks have ceased viewing
Turkey as the place of eventual return and are weighing both countries equally (Kaya 489). We
have also seen that it is perhaps naïve to judge too swiftly who belongs to a nation and who
doesn’t when nations are imagined communities that are tied together by past cultural ideals; to
continue to judge people this way is to not allow for change in the nation, either. To try and
intervene in home politically, at least to inhibit one having home in a certain place, is not what
we should do: it becomes our political responsibility to allow for someone to have a home at a
place that they choose. Hannah Arendt states:
Something much more fundamental than freedom and justice, which are rights of
citizens, is at stake when belonging to the community into which one is born is no
longer a matter of course and not belonging no longer a matter of choice, or when
one is placed in a situation where, unless he commits a crime, his treatment by
others does not depend on what he does or does not do. This extremity, and
nothing else, is the situation of people deprived of human rights. They are
deprived, not of the right to freedom, but of the right to action; not of the right to
think whatever they please, but of the right to opinion. (Arendt 376)
This deprivation of rights by states, or the allowance by the state of conditions of
homelessness to persist, is inhumane since it leaves people without a sense of belonging to a
community. It becomes a political responsibility to allow people to belong.

32. Aside from the political responsibilities towards home, there is also the ethical dimension
of issues related to home, which Levinas also sought to account for. Although Levinas did not
allow for as much change in home as is needed, he did make home as much a place for meeting
the Other as a place for refuge of the self, which is why I found his analysis of home intriguing.
In order to best illustrate this in terms of German-Turks in Germany, I turn now to one particular
example: the infamous Döner-Morde. In the case of the Döner-Morde, nine German-Turkish
immigrants were murdered between 2000 and 2006. German-Turkish relatives and the German-
Turkish Mafia were suspected, but the real culprits were members of a neo-Nazi cell (Witte).
However, it was revealed that the police had sufficient reason to investigate the cell and didn’t,
leading to an uproar. Following this revelation, 55% of German-Turks believed that right-wing
extremists were protected by the state and about two-thirds of German-Turks believed that
German politicians tried to hush up the crimes (Witte).
The Döner-Morde, so named (and as such, politically incorrect) because of the stereotype
that German-Turks mainly work in Germany as owners of döner-kebap stands, stands that sell
the fast food marketed as Turkish food, led to overwhelming sorrow in the German-Turkish
population, as well as feelings of insecurity and distrust in the German government that once
invited them to their country as Gastarbeiter (Daği). This incident, with other incidents of ethnic
violence and discrimination, shattered the feeling of being at home in Germany: about 95% of
people of Turkish descent born in Germany say that they feel Turkish first (“Turks in
Germany”). These are not conditions of the natural environment that have come together to make
German-Turks feel unwelcome in a nation they have begun to call home; this is the work of the
people who live in Germany with them, from the media who dubs the murders with a politically
incorrect name, to the neo-Nazi cell who committed these heinous acts, to the police who didn’t

33. act. This schism between Germany and German-Turks culminated in 2010, when Chancellor
Angela Merkel proclaimed that the attempt at multiculturalism in Germany had failed (Weaver).
It further highlights the German state as having German citizens and the ‘resident non-Germans’,
rather than one people.
The belief that German-Turks will one day return to Turkey is long gone. Today, more
than three-quarters of German-Turks feel “well integrated into German society and want to stay
in the country long-term” (Witte). It leaves the German-Turks in a predicament: they feel
pressured from all sides, making their home very precarious, yet they still consider Germany
their home. This situation only serves to make the German-Turkish home that much more
unstable, with tension that has little outlet, and makes the sorrow that they feel with incidents
like the Döner-Morde associated with the home they live in.
From an ethical perspective, this surely cannot be right. To allow people to live in a home
where they constantly feel sorrow, mistrust, or insecurity is to expect them to live constantly on
edge, which isn’t healthy. Coming back to Levinas’ thoughts, that home is a place where one can
show hospitality to the Other, native Germans have failed to do so with regard to the German-
Turkish immigrants. According to Levinas, home is a place where one can be at home, where
one comes into the world “from a private domain, from being at home with himself, to which at
each moment he can retire” (Levinas 152). This is not the case for the German-Turks, who make
their home in a sometimes hostile environment. For the duty of one to the Other is to show
hospitality in the home, which is something fundamental to being human. “Recollection in a
home open to the Other—hospitality—is the concrete and initial fact of human recollection and
separation; it coincides with the Desire for the Other absolutely transcendent” (Levinas 172).
There is not enough hospitality being shown to German-Turks in Germany, who live in a state of

34. sorrow in their home. From the viewpoint of Levinas, greater ethical responsibility is needed to
insure a safe and welcome home for German-Turks.
We have now seen, in the case of the German-Turks in Germany, that home is a fragile,
delicate refuge that is susceptible to change of many kinds, both from without and within. This
state of home as a fragile refuge not only leads us to view it as more precious, and more
conscious of what affects it; we are now aware of different ethical and political responsibilities
that come with home. Though the German-Turkish case is very specific, and only one example
of many diverse issues regarding home, I consider the German-Turkish example to embody the
change I believe characteristic of home. For the German-Turks, their home in Germany is
threatened by incidents in the community as well as by evolving attitudes and resistance in
German-Turkish citizens. At the same time, Germany is still considered their home, a refuge
nonetheless, and thus this entails different political and ethical responsibilities to help maintain it
as such. The German-Turkish settlement into German life is far from resolved, however a deeper
understanding of the factors that come into play helps in formulating a more complete account of
home.
Finally, if home does embody an element of change, how far can home change? If home
does allow for change, then it can change in any which way, until every situation that can be
imagined would be home. However, we know this not to be true: some place might be home, but
not every place is home. How far a home can change until it is no longer a home? This is a
worthy problem, and though I have concluded that home must allow for change, I can only
speculate how far that can go. We have seen in the case of the German-Turks that home can be
affected by society, politics and ethics, as well as location, and yet hold fast. It is a refuge, and
though that refuge is fragile and can be affected from all sides, it is a refuge nonetheless. The

35. most I can offer is that home is rooted in one’s culture. Whether it is in the way one interacts
with the Other, how one is treated by the state, or in the history of one’s family, or the current
conditions of one’s family, home seems to be consistently rooted in culture, customs and
traditions. If these were to be changed against one’s wishes, one would be alienated from home.
Finally, it must be noted that though home must be viewed as a fragile refuge, the desire
to rebuild and recreate a home returns from where it was struck down. This is seen in the
unsettled case of the German-Turks, who face social and political resistance to their making a
home in Germany. German-Turks left home to come to work in a new country, and after
deciding to stay, new generations have faced inequality on many levels of society. Yet for most
German-Turks, Germany is still home to them, and rather than give up and go back to Turkey,
they seek to feel at home in Germany. This fragile refuge has durability to it; it endures harsh
challenges, and when it is destroyed in one way or another, can be recreated again. We must take
care in noting the fragility of home, and in our responsibilities to protect it. At the same time, we
can appreciate how home is cultivated, both by individuals and by communities who insure
security, how assistance is given when homes are damaged, and how political protection is
extended when homes are threatened or individuals risk being driven from their homes.
As Hannah Arendt has argued, the rightless have no protections if they lose their homes.
Having an adequate and complete philosophical conception of home insures that we can confront
the threats that jeopardize the right of people to have a secure home and address the difficult
philosophical questions that derive from the fragility of home.

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