Philosophy of the Home: Domestic Space and Happiness

by Emanuele Coccia

A bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom - are these rooms all that make a home? Not at all, argues Emanuele Coccia. The buildings we inhabit are of immense psychological and cultural significance. They play a decisive role in human flourishing and, for hundreds of years, their walls and walkways, windows and doorways have guided our relationships with others and with ourselves. They reflect and reinforce social inequalities; they allow us to celebrate and cherish those we love. They are the places of return that allow us to venture out into the world.

In this intimate, elegantly argued account, Coccia shows how the architecture of home has shaped, and continues to shape, our psyches and our societies, before then masterfully leading us towards a more creative, ecological way of dwelling in the world.


Emanuele Coccia is a philosopher teaching at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He has lectured and taught courses at several universities, including Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Amsterdam, Harvard and Columbia, and collaborated on many art exhibitions in France and Italy. He is the author of numerous books translated into several languages, including The Life of Plants (2018). He is a columnist for Libération and collaborates with Le Monde and La Repubblica. He is currently writing a book on the relationship between fashion and philosophy with Gucci's creative director Alessandro Michele.


I have been waiting for Philosophy of the Home. Coccia’s reflections take you through the complexity of the notion of home – not merely as a place, but as a space of philosophy, history, politics, and art
Hans Ulrich Obrist

A precious guide … There is so much more at stake than the material quality of a place for living … For us human beings, the house represents the universe
Chris Dercon

An insightful book that illuminates the rooms you live in and makes you understand what they mean
la Repubblica

A hymn of praise for the home
Die Presse

I absolutely DEVOURED this book and have been recommending it to every architect and academic I know
Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Architecture, Design, Art, Literature

208 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2021

About the author

Emanuele Coccia is a philosopher teaching at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He has lectured and taught courses at several universities, including Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Amsterdam, Harvard and Columbia, and collaborated on many art exhibitions in France and Italy. He is the author of numerous books translated into several languages, including The Life of Plants (2018). He is a columnist for Libération and collaborates with Le Monde and La Repubblica. He is currently writing a book on the relationship between fashion and philosophy with Gucci's creative director Alessandro Michele.

Reviews

[Léa · Rating 5 out of 5]

"a home is a space-time curvature where the tiniest portion of matter says 'I' and vice versa, where personality, emotions, memory and sense render subjects and objects indistinguishable. we need to build homes to give life to objects and to draw them all of the soul that our body cannot produce and accommodate. this is what we try to grasp each time we imagine the presence of ghosts and spectres: a home is no more than the clearest, most disturbing symptom of the fact that the mind can live everywhere and circulates freely from human beings to objects and from objects to human beings."

[lorinbocol · Rating 3 out of 5]

luminoso monolocale in contesto storico, recentemente ristrutturato e con affacci caratteristici. finiture eleganti, alcuni dettagli di pregio. prezzo interessante, zona ben collegata, classe energetica A2.
… peccato che sia fotografato col grandangolo: per quanto il libretto consti di 150 pagine scarse, circa 1/3 di queste mi han dato l’impressione di star lì solo per rincicciare il discorso (spesso portandolo fuori tema, e più di una volta con divagazioni non sufficientemente sapide da giustificarlo). insomma: gli spunti sono stimolanti, l’autore è brillante e il momento storico ‘round lockdown è quello giusto per raccontare cosa fa di una casa «l’evento morale per eccellenza». però due oneste pagine su alias, robinson e/o la lettura per quel che mi riguarda sarebbero state sufficienti.

[kirby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Home is where the wi-fi connects automatically. I think I have many homes.

>talks about a room you usually have in a house
>autobiographic fragment regarding that room
> something is wrong with how we percieve the function of that room
> wild solution
>refuses to elaborate
> next room/topic

[LaCabins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un manuale agile, ma denso, sulla filosofia domestica. Coccia è bravo a sfruttare la contingenza storica del lockdown capitalizzando il tema a suo favore ma in alcuni punti, sembra perdere il filo del discorso. Il tema dei gemelli, per citarne uno, mi risulta davvero oscuro nell’economia del testo.
Nel complesso da’ alcuni spunti di valore sul mondo stesso, visto come la nostra casa nel senso più originale del termine.

[Oliver Flaig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really lovely chapters in here, with imaginative ways of looking at things we take for granted, with personal details from the author which were sometimes interesting and philosophical discussion that I couldn't always understand. Some chapters felt like they were being wrangled to fit the theme a little bit.

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Once we have entered someone’s house, we become planetary migrants, tourists in other people’s psychedelia.”

My sister bought me a copy of this book, which she was also reading, at the Leopold Museum bookstore in Vienna. It turned out to be a perfect companion to much of what we were absorbing in the city: the interplay of space and the body, the reflection on what homes mean and how they change, the contrast between a grand public space and a mean private one. It's a bit like a modern take on Bachelard's Poetics of Space, though there's a good deal less poetry here.

[SergioEavesDropping]

Bought in Fully Booked in BGC, Metro Manila, a very special place.

[Tom · Rating 1 out of 5]

Far too unfocused, wide, and shallow to be of any value. Coccia presents his conclusions as if they are self evident and refuses to interrogate them for any substance. Rather than developing from his ideas a model, thesis, or conception of any practical worth, he instead wanders around them, aimlessly adorning them with second rate metaphor and half-baked musings. Nowhere in this book is there any generally applicable insight into the home and happiness.

2/10.

[Emma Strawbridge · Rating 2 out of 5]

i’m just. not sure what to make of this. i think for emanuele coccia, the home begins as a room and ends as a planet-sized thing where everyone and everything is just down the hall. i am interested in his writing about bathrooms, clothes, and kitchens— i think these were his strongest sections. also when he says home he is almost exclusively referring to city apartment, which is a fine generalization but should be noted. i felt like generally the theme of home got lost in some chapters until it was drawn in at the last second but this feeling could also be a response to not reading a lot of books about contemporary philosophy. i liked the idea of a philosophy of the home but i’m not sure there was a strong thesis. whether or not that is due to my failure to critically analyze this text, i DO really think that there were two big things coccia missed or didn’t spend enough time on that feel very urgent for what my consideration of a philosophy of the home would be: other people, and women.

coccia has moved over 30 times and i trust that through this repetition has a good sense of what home is and what it takes to make something feel like home (i wish he’d spent more time talking about what it means to belong to a space, but whatever). most of that time was spent living alone, and though he does mention his twin brother and ex girlfriend (and their daughter), it really seems like his perspective is that of someone living in solitude. maybe every philosopher tends to sound like that. idk. but the concept of cohabitation i feel like was barely touched on.

he also mentions briefly, early on, that much of the concept of domesticity is relegated to the world of women and thus the home (of domesticity) is ignored for the city by men who philosophize. so true!! except then he doesn’t talk about women again or how a “domestic life” has changed…and then reveals he didn’t know really what an onion was or did until very late in life…curious…anyways. i’m just not sure we can philosophize about the home without starting with who traditionally spends the most time there. sorry!!

ultimately i think his question of “how do we live in a home that is as large as the whole planet?” (179) is really interesting when thinking about inter species relationships (but i don’t think it means the death of ecology? not sure how we jumped to that conclusion) and what social media does to the concept of public/private, but i didnt exactly love how we got there. i just think he needed to elaborate some more and connect chapters to the theme of home in a more robust way.

[Isabella LoCicero · Rating 3 out of 5]

Learning about space and place in a time of home seeking.

[PJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty out there tbh but some fun observations. As someone whose job it is to find homes for people and adapt them to their needs it is quite interesting to read it from a philosophical perspective the role of the home and the city. Coccia’s intuition is very bourgeois but idk, it’s cool.

[Clarise Ng · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his book, Emanuel Coccia skilfully expands the definition of the home as beyond a physical structure to planetary, cosmical, and, of course, digital, but my favorite part of his ruminations are those that talk about the home the way we most commonly know it— that finite, tangible space where we retire everyday.

As someone who has (often regretfully) committed 20 years of her life to home loan payments, I often find myself wondering if it is moral to spend a great part of my life and around 70% of my monthly salary on our house. Is it right to devote so much of my skills and hard-earned income on material things, and is it right to take up so much space in this world?

What Coccia says (or at least how I choose to interpret what he said) about this is comforting, and which I choose to be my main takeaway from this book— that the home, that structure made of cement and wood and divided by walls and floors, is more than just a collection of temporal, material things built for our shelter and protection. It is more than just a place to sleep, and a set of walls to keep us warm and dry from the weather. Its purpose is beyond the functional but psychical and spiritual. It is a way for us to be, to be an “I” in this physical world and be intimate with it, and therefore absolutely necessary for us to achieve happiness. The purpose of the home thus ennobled, I think it’s only right that i dedicate much of my resources and life to it.

And as the home is a way for us to be an “I,” the objects within it should be manifestations of ourselves and enable us to live in the world as ourselves. Objects are then necessary to make a space habitable, which is to say, make living possible. I often wonder if my preoccupation with filling our home with what I think are beautiful things is just vanity— in Coccia’s purview, it is actually necessary, a way to be myself and be.

All this to say, I am happy that my 20-year commitment to this house is justified as not just materialism, but in fact, living. I badly needed to read this book. 😅

[Char · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It’s almost never the place in which we spend the most time, but it’s where we go back each day: our place of return.” (22)

[rebecca_booklover · Rating 3 out of 5]

Philosophische Reise durch die eigenen vier Wände

Emanuele Coccias „Das Zuhause“ ist ein kompaktes und facettenreiches Buch über den häuslichen Raum, den wir Menschen als Zuhause bezeichnen. Der Autor erklärt darin auf philosophische-analytische Weise, welche materielle, strukturelle und psychologische Bedeutung die verschiedenen Räume, teils auch das Inventar sowie Flur, Garten und Terrasse für den Menschen haben. Seine philosophischen Ausführungen lassen einen nicht nur über das Zuhause an sich und seinen moralischen Wert nachdenken, sondern auch über viele andere Themen wie Geschlecht, Liebe, Identität und Elternschaft, wobei mir manchmal der Zusammenhang zum Thema Zuhause fehlte.
Gelegentlich schweift der Autor auch vom Thema ab, wird zu theoretisch oder verliert sich in Nebensächlichkeiten, wodurch man leider schnell den roten Faden verliert. Erschwerend für das Textverständnis kommt hinzu, dass der Autor sich vorwiegend eines gehobenen Sprachstils mit langen und verschachtelten Sätzen bedient. Von Vorteil ist hierbei, dass die Kapitel nicht zu lang sind und thematisch nicht aufeinander aufbauen, sodass man die Kapitel überspringen kann, die einem nicht zusagen.

Insgesamt ist „Das Zuhause“ von Emanuele Coccia ein interessantes und zum Nachdenken inspirierendes Buch, bei dem aber manchmal der Eindruck entsteht, dass sich der Autor ein wenig zu sehr im philosophischen Aspekt des Hauses verliert und daher die Konzepte auf die Leser*innen etwas abstrakt wirken bzw. dass sich kein eindeutiger Zusammenhang zum überordnenden Thema des Zuhauses erkennen lässt. Daher eher nur für Liebhaber philosophischer Texte zu empfehlen.

[Emanuela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incuriosita, come per altri titoli dell'autore, affronto anche questo.
Dice cose molto originali, in un ibrido tra filosofia e antropologia, affrontando un ambito spesso trascurato dalla prima e non so quanto dalla seconda.
C'è una certa contaminazione di pensiero che attinge alle due opere precedenti che ho letto, "La vita sensibile" e "La vita delle piante. Metafisica della mescolanza".
Anche qui, infatti, la casa è vista come entità osmotica, specialmente in quest'ultimo periodo dove tanti sono stati costretti a rendere la propria casa in centro di socializzazione. Ma il libro è stato scritto prima dei lockdown dove già si manifestava questa scombussolamento paradigmatico del dentro/fuori.
Sono tante le prospettive di analisi che comprendono sia l'aspetto strutturale, materiale, quasi da assumere un aspetto "organico", sia psicologiche e mentali.
Riflessioni su condizioni, apparentemente scoperte negli ultimi anni e che, invece, appartengono all'umanità dalle sue prime interazioni con il mondo.
Idee sulle quali riflettere.

[Ally Moulis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picked up this little book at a homewares store in Saigon (shout out to Nem Space, we love you)! As someone who has a keen interest in domestic space, objects, clothes and interior design, I had high hopes for this volume of writing. Unfortunately, it fell short of my expectations and in fact, I couldn’t finish it. I felt the author centred himself too much in the book, a lot of his musings felt personal and anecdotal whereas I would have preferred observations grounded in theory. Where I anticipated a love letter to domestic spaces and their role in our lives, I found a strangely far-fetched set of personal stories and conclusive statements unbacked by evidence. Never have I wanted to rewrite a book so desperately!

[Holly Castleton]

An interesting premise that ultimately underdelivered for me— I found the lack of a closer read on things like gender and consumerism baffling (how can you have a sustained discussion on clothing and identity without even mentioning fast fashion? Or even get into the book without spending a significant amount of time addressing the fact that your (the authors) feeling of disconnection from home has a lot to do with socially gendered expectations of space? How interiority has been feminized in a way that has a straight line back to conceptions of women’s responsibility to the home?). I did really liked the chapter on social media and would have loved to had more on how neo-nationalism comes ultimately from an expectation of “home” though.

[Lucie de Z · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of the book sets a bit misleading expectations. While it offers a pleasant exploration of personal experiences and thoughts, it falls short on philosophical depth. Surprisingly, it left me feeling that ikea delves deeper into the philosophy of home topics.

[Claudia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Das Thema ist interessant, aber der Titel führt etwas in die Irre.

[Andreas · Rating 3 out of 5]

"the city is a group of human individuals who dream of being a forest."

[Aidan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Timeless and much needed obvious truths. The conclusion is thoughtful.

[Farah · Rating 2 out of 5]

One star for the introduction, which convinced me that this book would actually be good.
Another star for the sheer absurdity of the claims that Coccia makes, because they made me chuckle.

[(:Alexia:) · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3,5 stars)

MAN did it take a long time to finish this book...FINALLY. Well, where to begin? I will try to keep this more short and sweet in order to make up for all the time wasted reading this book because of the overly inaccesible language...

On the one hand, the author is well-intended and really tries to disect every room of the home, as well as other specific things and explain what they mean to humans on a more spiritual level, using very long paragraphs for the same ideas and, as mentioned, overly complicated writing. He just explains many concepts philosophically, as well as tries to give suggestions of improvements for the home. However, on the other hand, these sugested improvements are rather ambiguous and it seems like the author hasn't thought them through that well, as he barely mentions them and moves on to the next topic. These resolutions also seem quite unrealistic and coming from the mind of a philospher that is just the absolute dreamer and that also wishes for a more united planet without conflict and with a bigger openness from humans towards nature and other species of animals. Basically he envisions this utopian, unrealistic future for the planet, that he also doesn't elaborate much on, as mentioned, and where he does not take many existent factors into account, hence the lack of realism.

Don't get me wrong though, as I started reading this book I had quite high hopes for it and even started annotating it a bit too eratically I must say, but maybe the fancy language impressed me also and signalized to me falsely for a second there that this would be a superior, revelatory work. Upon rereading some of my underlined quotes, I found some nice concepts/explanations, but if I really sit and think about it, they are just normal or normally biological things, impulses, behaviour, facts that are just explained sometimes in a more poetic way (that's not so bad I must admit) or in a longer, more complicated way that's not really needed. I unfortunately honestly can't say I've really learned sth new from this, although I expected the opposite, and it only made me view things with different eyes for a second there rather. Further, the difference in quality of the chapters is real and noticeable: while some are quite good, perhaps a little thought-provoking? (in a way that the author presents subject matters from a poetic and philosophical pov), some are either too autobiographical or more messy structurally perhaps, because ideas are thrown out there or things are mentioned that you think would lead somewhere, so your hopes are up, but in the end they don't pretty much? Yeah...

Overall, this book still has a decent rating, because it's a nice all-encompassing collection of all of these mostly common thoughts/concepts about human life, the home and relationships, but all told from a philosopher's perspective that tends to be, again, more poetic, but also more peculiar and I can't say it did not make me smile sometimes, or think damn you can also see things that way ig, and because of the author's good intention to advise the world about becoming better and more open, although not so well put across💫

[Keen Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 Stars!

Talk about the mundane and every day and then plaster a half-baked pseudo intellectual veneer over it and pretend to make some deeper point about life when you haven’t really said anything of value at all?...Done.

I have to say, publishing this under the Penguin Classic imprint, seems a tad presumptuous, ambitious and er misleading…Reading this made me realise that writing these short “philosophy” books mustn't be a bad gig at all. You can repeatedly state the obvious, throw in some big, well-known names and relate them to almost anything, but at the same time you really don’t have to commit to anything original, profound or even that interesting. And if it seems too dull to the reader, well you can just accuse them of not “getting it” and maybe they can’t grasp what a genius thinker you are. Where I come from this guy would be called a "blether" but in publishing intellectual circles, they appear to think otherwise...Uch I’ve had enough, I’m away to write my own wee philosophy book…

[Hanie Noor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t usually enjoy this kind of slice-of-life read although I very much enjoy nonfictions. But this one is raw and relatable, it’s the reality, and I guess I picked it up at the right time. For someone who does not have a permanent place called home, sometimes I felt the sense of longing for one, be it a person or a place. But “home is where the heart is”, sometimes when I’m travelling and I got to pray despite the conditions, that was the moment that made it felt like home—“home is where the heart is”. Even when I have my own space now, it does not feel like home. It feels like a stopover or a mere transit point, it’s empty and cold. The title is very fitting, Coccia discusses everything that makes a home—your own space, your happiness—and elements that builds our moral reality, ultimately fulfils something we call ‘home’.

[Gregor Kulla · Rating 5 out of 5]

ma armastan cocciat ja ma armastan seda raamatut. hästi tõlgitud ka: huumor tuleb läbi. eesti k tõlgitud "Metamorfoosides" ei tulnud, natuke puine oli lugeda, aga jällegi, pole tolle ingl või it k vers lugenud, st äkki seal polegi huumoriminuteid. üks rida, mida mind nüüd igal pool tsiteerimas kuulete, kõlab nii: "We have to carry our consciousness into the world and not the world into our consciousness." see on väike katke ptkst social media. seda raamatut soovitan küll kõigile. minu selle aasta lemmiklugemine vist! pole veel mckenzie warki reverse cowgirli juurde jõudnud (ostsin talt neli raamatut, varsti ta spetsialist)

[dosiakk_ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,25;
Niesamowicie ciekawa pozycja - pokoje, części domu, przeprowadzki i dom jako całość stanowią przykłady, na podstawie których autor prowadzi dalsze refleksje na tematy filozoficzne, socjologiczne, problematykę ekologiczną i wiele innych 🤓. Na plus - powiązanie architektury, własnych wspomnień i przeżyć z poważniejszymi problemami życia współczesnego człowieka (i nie-człowieka!) w społeczeństwie.
“Living means relocating. It means absorbing a part of the world and being absorbed by it, then allowing it to say ‘I’ in us.”

[Inès · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5/5 stars

As someone who has been reading a lot about philosophy regarding (interior)architecture for the past decade, I felt this one was missing important aspects. Sure, Coccia introduced us to ideas or views but didn't really elaborate further with them.

If it is your first introduction to the topic, go ahead! But in case you already know a lot, this felt bland. It is only written from the author's perspecte - and sure personal value is important, but I wished it was mentioned more clearly.

[Wyatt strawbridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is sort of about home, and mostly a collection of pretty interesting ideas. The introduction and first two chapters were really strong, and then throughout the book drifted from strange ideas to really inspiring ones. I think the book could have been about home, but it would need to be reorganized and some chapters refocused. Lots of very personal sections were decent examples but got away from some of the more universal and abstract aspects of home that maybe should have been the focus given the books title. Substack will be hearing from me about this I predict.

[Sian Lile-Pastore · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
Interesting but not quite what I was after and I also preferred the first half to the second.
I enjoyed parts and liked that he shared personal stories too.