Ringing the Fourfold: A Philosophical Framework for Thinking about Wellness Tourism

Abstract

Perhaps no other area of tourism more needs a philosophy than wellness tourism with its transcendental aims and spiritual dimension. This paper explores Heidegger's rich philosophical concept of the ringing of the fourfold—an intimate relationship between earth, sky, mortals and divinities that Heidegger says reveals wholeness and authenticity and brings us into intimate contact with the world in the amazing event that is human existence. This paper argues that the ringing of the fourfold may be a philosophical basis for wellness and suggests tourism may actually facilitate the ringing of the fourfold. It uses the fourfold to explore how wellness tourism might balance and integrate lives unsettled and fractured by runaway time, frantic busyness, disconnection from the natural world and other people, loss of spirituality, and longing for a sense of place in an alien, impersonal and out-of-control world. First, it explores the possible origin of our lack of wellness by explicating Heidegger's ‘epoch of technicity’, a time when the world is seen as something to be managed and exploited for human gain by people who are reduced to little more than the engineer-servants of this management and exploitation. This part of the paper uses tourism literature to confirm the accuracy of Heidegger's predictions of rampant consumerism, ecological devastation, corporate greed, personal hubris, artificial community created by technology, and stress created by too little time, isolation, loss of identity and exhaustion. Next, the paper proffers a philosophical description of existential wellness by exploring Heidegger's concept of the fourfold as an alternative way to understand and experience the world. By returning to the tourism literature again, we show how touring may facilitate appreciation of the fourfold (and a sense of wellness) by bringing tourists into an authentic encounter with not only earth and sky (grounding and freeing nature) but also divinities and mortals who together create a world unlike the world of technicity. Finally, the paper looks at the implications of wellness tourism as a site for the ringing of the fourfold.