Nick DeHoust: The Space Trilogy and Heidegger’s Fourfold

I think that the setting for the space trilogy books (especially Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, which take place in space/on other planets) is extremely significant. Lewis wrote Out of the Silent Planet twenty-three years before any human being had entered space (Out of the Silent Planet was published in 1938 and Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space in 1961). This is chronologically significant because it resonates well with Martin Heidegger’s construction of the “fourfold.” “By a primal oneness the four—earth, sky, divinities, and mortals—belong together in one,” he writes in his essay “Building, Dwelling, Thinking” (351). These four constitute the horizons of the dimension in which we as humans exist. We are on the Earth, under the sky, before divinities, and among mortals. Thus, for Heidegger, the fourfold gives us the sphere of human existence. It allows the dimension into which human beings are essentially thrown. “Mortals are in the fourfold by dwelling,” he writes. “But the basic character of dwelling is safeguarding [of Being]. Mortals dwell in the way they safeguard the fourfold in its essential unfolding” (352). The sky—and beyond it space—is one aspect of the fourfold. It is one horizon. For Heidegger at the time, as well as for Lewis when he wrote Out of the Silent Planet, space was quite literally unreachable. It was beyond the limit of human discovery. “The sky is the vaulting path of the sun, the course of the changing moon, the wandering glitter of the stars, the year’s seasons and their changes, the light and dusk of day, the gloom and glow of night, the clemency and inclemency of the weather, the drifting clouds and blue depth of the ether,” writes Heidegger (351). We are here on Earth in that we are under the sky. For Heidegger, the two (and with them divinities and mortals) are inseparable. To think the truth of Being thus means to attentively consider (to “safeguard”) the unfolding of the essence of this fourfold. “Mortals dwell in that they receive the sky” (352). Heidegger goes on to say that we preserve “the fourfold in that with which mortals stay: in things” (353). Books are things. In other words, Heidegger argues that we create responsibly (in terms of our responsibility to safeguard Being in the fourfold dimension of existence) by creating things thoughtfully and with an awareness of our position within the fourfold. For Heidegger, by letting the essence of the fourfold shine through in the creating of the thing, we safeguard Being. Lewis’s thinking toward space as the setting for his book did just that. He chose to position his story extraterrestrially, which furnishes it with a certain feeling of beyondness—of heavenliness and ineffability. As we read through the space trilogy, we consider our groundedness on Earth and the awesomeness of space. Lewis’s beautiful and challenging mythopoeia finds a fitting home in the vastness and unknownness of space, and his book-thing gathers into itself and safeguards Heidegger’s fourfold.