heidegger

his view inverts the traditional priority of theory over practice. for him the theoretical view is artificial and comes from just looking at something without any involvement, such an experience is 'levelled off'. for heidegger this attitude is given the moniker, "present-at-hand" and it is parasitic upon our more fundamental mode of interaction, called "ready-to-hand". parasitic in the sense that in our history we must first have an attitude or mood toward the world before we can adopt a scientific or neutral attitude toward it. such a re-evaluation of science allows him to say, for example, that the friend caught sight of across the road is in fact closer than the street upon which one walks, that the voice on a phone is closer than the handpiece, that the glasses pushed back on your head, can be, when not found, considered as remote and far away.

two of his most basic neologisms, present-at-hand and ready-to-hand, are used to describe various attitudes toward to things in the world. for heidegger, such "attitudes" are prior to, i.e. more basic than, the various sciences of the individual items in the world. science itself is an attitude, one that attempts a kind neutral investigation. other related terms are also explained below. however, heidegger's overall analysis is quite involved, taking in a lot of the history of philosophy. see being and time for a description of his overall project, and to give some context to these technical terms.[1][2]

ready-to-hand (german: zuhanden, readiness-to-hand, handiness: zuhandenheit)

however, in almost all cases we are involved in the world in a much more ordinary, and more involved, way. we are usually doing things with a view to achieving something. take for example, a hammer: it is ready-to-hand; we use it without theorizing. in fact, if we were to look at it as present-at-hand, we might easily make a mistake. only when it breaks or something goes wrong might we see the hammer as present-at-hand, just lying there. even then however, it may be not fully present-to-hand, as it is now showing itself as something to be repaired or disposed, and therefore a part of the totality of our involvements.

importantly, the present-at-hand only emerges from the prior attitude in which we care about what is going on and we see the hammer in a context or world of equipment that is handy or remote, and that is there "in order to" do something. in this sense the ready-to-hand is primordial compared to that of the present-at-hand. the term primordial here does not imply some-thing primitive, but rather refers to heidegger's idea that being can only be understood through what is everyday and "close" to us. our everyday understanding of the world is necessarily essentially a part of any kind of scientific or theoretical studies of entities - the present-at-hand - might be. only by studying our "average-everyday" understanding of the world, as it is expressed in the totality of our relationships to the ready-to-hand entities of the world, can we lay appropriate bases for specific scientific investigations into specific entities within the world.

for heidegger in being and time this illustrates, in a very practical way, the way the present-at-hand, as a present in a "now" or a present eternally (as, for example, a scientific law or a platonic form), has come to dominate intellectual thought, especially since the enlightenment. to understand the question of being one must be careful not to fall into this levelling off, or forgetfulness of being, that has come to assail western thought since socrates, see the metaphysics of presence.

present-at-hand (german: vorhanden, presence-at-hand: vorhandenheit)

with the present-at-hand one has an attitude, in contrast to ready-to-hand, like that of a scientist or theorist, of merely looking at or observing something. in seeing an entity as present-at-hand, the beholder is concerned only with the bare facts of a thing or a concept, as they are present and in order to theorize about it. this way of seeing is disinterested in the concern it may hold for dasein, its history or usefulness. this attitude is often described as existing in neutral space without any particular mood or subjectivity. however, for heidegger, it is not completely disinterested or neutral. it has a mood, and is part of the metaphysics of presence that tends to level all things down, the destruktion (see above) of which heidegger sets out to accomplish.

presence-at-hand

is not the way things in the world are usually encountered, and it is only revealed as a deficient or secondary mode, eg, when a hammer breaks it loses its usefulness and appears as merely there, present-at-hand. when a thing is revealed as present-at-hand, it stands apart from any useful set of equipment but soon loses this mode of being present-to-hand and becomes something, for example, that must be repaired or replaced.

the worldliness of the world

in chapter 3 we saw that heidegger criticizes the idea of a self-contained subject directed toward an isolable object and proposes to redescribe intentionality as the ontic transcendence of a socially defined "subject" relating to a holistically defined "object," all on the background of a more originary transcendence.

then in chapter 4 we followed heidegger's attempt to do justice to the insights of the epistemo-logical tradition while avoiding its distortions by giving a detailed description of various modes of ontic transcendence from pure coping, to the thematically conscious practical subject, to the thematizing theoretical knower.

we saw how heidegger uses against traditional epistemology with its subject/object relation the ontological observation that our transparent ev­eryday way of coping with the available can be carried on inde­pendently of the emergence of a thematically conscious subject with mental content, which must then be related to an object. with all this in mind we can finally turn to heidegger's main concern in chapter iii--originary transcendence or the worldliness of the world. in describing the phenomenon of world heidegger seeks to get behind the kind of intentionality of subjects directed towards objects discussed and distorted by the tradition, and even behind the more basic intentionality of everyday coping, to the context or background, on the basis of which every kind of directedness takes place. against traditional ontology, heidegger will seek to show that all three ways of being we have considered--availableness, unavailableness, and currentness--presuppose the phenomenon of world (with its way of being, worldliness), which cannot be made intelligible in terms of any of these three. the description of the -88-

'seeing without observing' §16: 'the worldly character of the surrounding world making itself known in innerworldy beings' [72-76]

usually, in circumspect absorption, dasein is thematically unaware of the very thing he is using and its worldly quality remains quite hidden. however, there are certain modes of taking care that uncover it:

1. when equipment is missing it is not 'at hand' at all. what is at hand is then shown in a certain kind of mere objective presence: it 'obtrudes'. we stand, helpless before our task, and discover 'the being-just-present-at-hand-and-no-more of something ready-to-hand'.
2. things may get in the way and thereby exhibit 'obstinacy'. such unhandy things disturb us and make evident the objective presence of something that must be taken care of before anything else.

3 modes of concern reveal the objective presence of things through heedful circumspection, without recourse to the 'deficient' mode of only knowing. through

1. conspicuousness,

2. obtrusiveness,

3. obstinacy

we 'see' the world without merely 'observing' it. in each case 'the character of objective presence making itself known is still bound to the handiness of useful things'.

the structure of being of handy things has been shown to be determined by references (§15). references themselves are not seen but they become explicit when disrupted in one of the ways described above. then 'the context of the work, the whole 'workshop'' is uncovered 'as a totality that has continually been seen beforehand in our circumspection. but with this totality world makes itself known.'

the 'being-in-itself' of useful things is comprehensible only on the basis of the phenomenon of world. if things are divorced from their referential context then they can be only observed (as merely present-at-hand) and the 'in-itself' loses its ontological content. a thing only exhibits its being-in-itself when it is absorbed within its referential context which, in turn, must remain undisclosed and nonthematic for circumspection. it is precisely when the world does not make itself known, when the ready-to-hand 'holds itself in', that an innerworldly being exhibits its 'being-in-itself'.

so: 'being-in-the-world signifies the unthematic, circumspect absorption in the references constitu-tive for the handiness of the totality

heidegger's world view is unfamiliar and difficult to understand. it is, in truth, profoundly different to the prevailing western view of what constitutes 'the world'. this digression is an informal, simplistic addition to my brief commentary on §15-16. but before worldliness is laid bare, a few thoughts about some of the key terms in heidegger's esoteric vocabulary...

circumspection

looking at this website and finding your way around it is not a theoretical exercise. certainly its content is largely theoretical, but actually reading it and jumping from page to page is a practical activity about which you hardly think at all. this unthinking way of doing things is the way we all relate to the world most of the time. unthinking, but with an end in sight. this is heidegger's 'heedful circumspection'.

handiness

in §15 heidegger spells out what 'handiness' means. useful things are always interconnected by innumerable 'references', and this whole complex web is necessarily known in advance of any single item in it. indeed, an object can only show up because it makes sense within this larger whole.

so, consider the computer on which you are viewing these words. as you read them you implicitly recognise (though almost certainly fail to think about) the following:

1. the 'equipmental totality' into which the computer fits - the screen, the power source, the keys beneath your fingertips, and so on.

2. the 'work' - that is the reason you're using the computer: presumably in this case to find out what i think 'being and time' is all about and so understand this puzzling book a bit better... or, if you're familiar with the text, to pass judgement on my efforts to understand it.

3. 'nature' - the source of the materials from which your computer's components have been fashioned.

4. the 'public world' - in this case the world of the web, a hugely collaborative, public construct made possible only by the numerous people who create and sustain it.

5. the 'surrounding world of nature' - not a very obvious reference in the case of a computer perhaps, but heidegger's sketchy mention of 'clock equipment' certainly applies in some fashion.

these five headings (which are by no means of equal importance in heidegger's analysis) gather together the myriad 'references' that make any piece of equipment usable. this is the way things are 'in themselves', heidegger maintains. first and foremost things are 'ready-to-hand' or, in other words, useful and used.

at first sight this description of the way things fit together seems unexceptional but it is the claim that practical engagement with useful things is more fundamental than any detached observation of the world that is so startling. it really does turn things on their head.

merely looking

heidegger does not deny that detached observation of worldly objects is possible. how could he? but he will not grant this objective view the privileged status that it is popularly accorded. if, in a moment of curiosity, you consider the way your computer actually works heidegger says that you are dealing with it in a 'deficient' way. you are merely looking at it rather than using it and have, in effect, removed it from the world.

looking or using: which comes first?

so we can look at things or use them. there are two contadictory accounts of this fact:

1. using things as equipment is possible because we first observe them disinterestedly as objects and then add our meanings and intentions

2. observing things as mere objects is possible only because we first use them (and that without consciously doing so).

the first option would be the popular choice but it is the second that is heidegger's. he maintains that a detached, objective view of the world is not fundamental and is, in fact, made possible only on the basis of everyday, background, practical coping. in turn both ways for objects to be (used or observed) is dependent on a third way of being, namely 'existing', which is the way of being for people. the world, for heidegger, is not a repository of objects, amongst which humans are to be counted. rather, a correct understanding of the world must accommodate the way things actually are and, as part of this, it must incorporate the distinctively human way to be from the outset.

disruption

so things are truly themselves when they fail to show up. you are understanding your computer best when you view this or any other file and fail to notice the machine at all (which happens most of the time). but doesn't that render an analysis of the content of heidegger's world impossible? either you observe things objectively and fail to see them as they truly are or you use them as they are 'in themselves' but then they are, to all intents and purposes, invisible.

fortunately there are circumstances when the world, in heidegger's sense, becomes visible. when equipment is unusable, missing or in the way - and its use thereby disrupted - things and their reference relations are shown forth in the midst of our heedful circumspection. so if you were to grow frustrated by the incorrectly displayed sign at the beginning of §15 of this site and try to put it right by refreshing the page you would 'see' the presence of an item in the world (the sign) without merely looking at it. and as you saw it just 'lying there' not doing what it should, its links with its whole context would become apparent and the reference structure of the world would come into view. (i might have made this point more forcibly by having my website deliver some horribly destructive virus to your machine. then you would experience a disruption that you simply could not overlook and the objective-presence-in-the-midst-of-handiness that shows forth the world would be all too obvious. but i don't know how to do that, and you wouldn't thank me if i did.)

heidegger is here hinting towards the supposed 'theoretical' posture of traditional ontology: being a part of the world in the way he has portrayed, how can we know about it? such a practical familiarity with things at hand, for heidegger, is not a situation from which to flee theoretically as the platonic tradition does (to gain an imagined perspective of critical distance, an 'ideal' to posit as prior to the 'real'); it is not a limitation, but is rather an advantage: possibilities are open to da-sein as being-in-the-world that simply are not for the 'subjective self' or 'spirit' of the traditional view. being and time , dreyfus notes, " is supposed to make manifest what we are already familiar with [...] and in so doing to modify our understanding of ourselves and so transform our very way of being" (dreyfus, 8).

human beings implicitly understand the totality of worldliness in our effectual relations with it, in heidegger's view, and yet, when "the constitutive reference of the in-order-to to a what-for [the referential process of average understanding] has been disturbed" (bt, 70), the possibility of encountering an isolated thing "in a 'new' way, as something objectively present" (bt, 330) becomes plausible. this is an interesting and somewhat perplexing theoretical move on heidegger's part, for, at least traditionally, 'objectively present' things in isolation combine to form the aggregate whole of the world. heidegger's metonymic interpretation, on the other hand (placing the totality of at-handedness in prior relation to objective presence), operates as a reversal, a retrieve to reconfigure the fallacious assumptions of the historical development of ontology. "to expose what is merely [plainly, clearly] objectively present, cognition must first penetrate beyond things at hand being taken care of" (67). and this penetration becomes possible when the routine functioning of useful things is disturbed:

the modes of conspicuousness [an 'unhandy' thing, eg. when a hammer breaks], obtrusiveness [not 'at hand' at all, eg. when the hammer is lost], and obstinacy [when something is in the way, 'at hand' yet not needed] have the function of bringing to the fore the character of objective presence in what is at hand. what is at hand is not thereby observed and stared at simply as something objectively present. the character of objective presence making itself known is still bound to the handiness of useful things. [...] in its conspicuousness, obtrusiveness, and obstinacy, what is at hand loses its character of handiness in a certain sense. but this handiness is itself understood, although not thematically, in associating with what is at hand. it does not just disappear, but bids farewell, so to speak, in the conspicu-ousness of what is unusable. handiness shows itself once more again, and precisely in doing so the worldly character of what is at hand shows itself, too (bt 69).

heidegger, here concerned with the ontological possibilities that become manifest in the fleeting perspectival transformation from handiness to objective presence (emergent from such a three-fold rather, it is paradoxically a positive or pro-jective interpretive activity in which thinking ( theoria ) is doing-in-the-word ( praxis ). it is [...] praxis that always already destroys the reified determinations (the re-presentations) inscribed in the subject by metaphysics (and its linguistic, cultural, and political elaborations) and simultaneously discloses the understanding's radical and multisituated temporality (spanos 107)

heidegger employs the hammer in his formulation of da-sein as being-in-the-world (as always intimately engaged in a practical affiliation with things at hand -- a posture to which theore-tical circumspection invariably returns), as exemplary of the interpretive fore-structure of practicality. prying apart the traditional (platonic) idealized abstraction of theory with his own theoretical "destructuring" (bt 20), heidegger's thinking is a doing. the matter is of methodological concern -- heidegger does not claim that practical circumspection is superior to the theoretical, but only that the philosophical tradition has covered up its inception and progress as always engaged in the practical. hammering is a striking example of this simple recasting of the tradition's history: as an initially atheoretical engagement in activity, the act of hammering can certainly be theorized, but -- lest one strike one's thumb -- it is probably better off approached, and left, as praxis. originally a chaos of ideas. the ideas that were consistent with one another remained, the greater number perished--and are perishing (wp 508, 276). inconsistent and variously enacted, there is hammering in the texts of twilight of the idols and being and time. without a hammerer, a subjective substratum theoretically affixed to the act, much noise is made. "it is usually assumed that the hammer with which nietzsche philosophized was a sledge hammer" (112), speculates kaufmann: nietzsche forcefully sounds out traditional ideals in his emphatic revaluation. aptly complimenting his task of destructuring, heidegger proposes the hammer as a salient example of what is at-hand: heidegger pries and wrenches with historic distinctions in his postural revolution. in the very elocutionary construction, the written enactment , of their thinking, both nietzsche and potential disruptive breakdown of everyday worldliness), does not seek to posit the two postures of awareness in a hypothetical hierarchy.

'theoretical' understanding, which apprehends the objective presence of things, is no more than ontically secondary to the (apparently) more 'practical' understanding already implicated in being-in-the-world. the two postures are in fact not essentially different; each reverting to the other, they are themselves mutually interdependent. as franco volpi notes in "dasein as praxis ," "heidegger becomes convinced that theoria is only one of the different possibilities and modalities of the uncovering attitude of poieses or that of praxis by means of which too man is related to being and apprehends it" (volpi 40). emergent from the " disruption of reference " (bt 70) between entities in the totality of worldliness (when a hammer breaks, is lost, or is in the way), it is when the referential structure of the interconnected relevance of entities to each other and their environs is interrupted, that possibilities for da-sein to alter its comportment towards being arise -- anywhere from the practically theoretical to the theoretically practical (to conflate traditional distinctions). [3]

'practical' behaviour is not 'atheoretical' in the sense of a lack of seeing, and the difference between it and theoretical behaviour lies not only in the fact that on the one hand we observe and on the other we act , and that action must apply theoretical cognition if it is not to remain blind. rather, observation is a kind of taking care just as primordially as action has its own kind of seeing. (bt 65)

theory and praxis do not stand in binary opposition in heidegger's analysis of being (and time). they are not two categorically distinct ways of "circumspection" (bt 328), of "just-looking-around" (bt 327), of being-in-the-world. the thoughts of a carpenter, engaged in the practice of building, are certainly geared to praxis, just as the tools of an academic are employed in the labour of theory; and yet, as circumspection, both "move in the relevant relations of the context of useful things at hand" (bt, 328). both are postural, practical possibilities of da-sein's being-in-the-world -- "just as praxis has its own specific sight ('theory'), theoretical investigation is not without its own praxis" (327-328). by never positing a 'self,' "a 'theoretical subject,' and then [complementing] it 'on the practical side' with an additional 'ethic'" (bt, 291), the mistaken path of traditional epistemology in heidegger's view; but by starting out instead with the analysis of being-in-the-world (that i have cursorily sketched), heidegger is able to do away with the theory/praxis dualism which has perpetuated many of the tradition's (pseudo) 'philosophical problems.' thinking, philosophy, in heidegger's destructuring formulation, to the extent that it is an authentic comportment of da-sein, is praxis. thrown into the world as we are, always projectively interpreting and articulating our (pre-) understanding, da-sein is at once a doing being, practically engaged in-the-world, no matter what it is presently occupied with. heidegger's "destruction is not, therefore, a nihilistic activity of thought," writes spanos adeptly in heidegger and criticism: heidegger emphasize hearing -- sounding and attunement respectively -- over the traditional philosophic accentuation of the sensory primacy of sight. this move epitomizes their divergent endeavours to re-tune thought with chaos, hammer with hammering, theory with praxis. both demand to be heard -- hammered in.

notes

1. both nietzsche and heidegger expound upon the designation 'chaos' in great detail, and there is not here room for an in-depth explication of the term. for present purposes, it will suffice to refer 'chaos' to nietzsche's conception of heraclitean 'world-play,' to "the fluid and unbounded power of life" (granier, 198). chaos, writes heidegger, "means 'the gaping'; it points to the direction of a measureless, supportless, and groundless yawning open, [...] chaos means not only what is unordered but also entanglement in confusion, the jumble of something in shambles. [...] chaos also always means some kind of 'motion'" ( nietzsche : vol. 3 , 77). chaos here is a non-abstracted experience with the world as a never static flux of 'becoming.'

2. significantly, nietzsche is here making use of conventional metaphorical constructs of the indo-european language tradition -- now architectural (spacial) metaphors -- to such an extreme that they become refreshingly innovative. as alan schrift notes, "this reiteration of metaphor emerges [...] as a concrete illustration of the praxis of nietzschean transvaluation: within his strategic rehabilitation of the tradition's metaphors, the values implicit in these traditional metaphors are revalued" (93). form and content fuse in nietzsche's style so effectively that it appears his aphorisms, often allegorical, are literally penned with a hammer.

3. further due to such breakdowns, the "fore-structure" (bt, 143) of interpretation can reflexively apprehend the "as-structure" (bt 329) of beings in the world: here, the possibility arises for the hammer to be revealed as the hammer itself, without reference to the totality of the "work-world" (bt 323). there is not here room for further explication of this possibility of da-sein's relational being-in-the-world. how heidegger employs the exemplary hammer in his discussion of the 'as-structure' -- "the existential- hermeneutical 'as' in distinction from the apophantical 'as' of the statement" (bt 148) -- is a topic for another inquiry.