Abstract

Being at home is an important if not central part of everyday existence. The idea of home is at the core of our traditions and a mainstay of popular culture and commerce. Yet in our ever increasingly global and technological society, "home" is taking on new and more ambiguous meaning. The word home is used to describe an ever widening array of places, products and experiences, while our unique experience of what it means to be "at home" is in danger of becoming lost. ;This dissertation is a study of the idea of home and the experience of at-homeness. It is divided into four parts: the history of home, the psychology of home, home and philosophy, and home and hermeneutics. It is argued that home serves as a focal point of both existential and conceptual meaning. An "ecohermeneutic" method of interpretation is proposed, based on an awareness of being at home, tempered by a cultural-historical understanding of our home's formative features