Failures flip tools from ready-to-hand to present-at-hand objects.

Evidence

These have a particular Being which Heidegger calls Zuhandenheit: ‘readiness-to-hand’ or ‘handiness’. While I am hammering, the hammer has that kind of Being for me. If, for some reason, I lay down the hammer and gawp at it as a Hammerding, then it has a different kind: Vorhandenheit or ‘presence-at-hand’. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 215 (#expands, via linked claim)

That which had existed objectively but had not been perceived in its deeper implications (if indeed it was perceived at all) begins to “stand out,” assuming the character of a problem and therefore of challenge. Thus, men and women begin to single out elements from their “background awareness” and to reflect upon them. These elements are now objects of their consideration, and, as such, objects of their action and cognition. — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 239 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Tools and surroundings are grasped through the ends they serve, not in themselves; Tools disappear from awareness during successful use but surface when they fail. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 233; Small tool failures can cascade into wholesale life questioning. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 237 (+6 more)

Related

• Tools reveal their being only in use, not when stared at (similarity 0.89)
• Breakdown reveals tools as inert objects rather than extensions of our projects (similarity 0.88)
• Tools disappear from awareness during successful use but surface when they fail. (similarity 0.88)
• Tools and surroundings are grasped through the ends they serve, not in themselves (similarity 0.83)
• Broken equipment discloses the world’s obstinacy and our situated confusion (similarity 0.81)
• Tool breakdowns reveal the world’s stubbornness and our disorientation. (similarity 0.81)
• Partial occlusion by objects is constitutive of their being in a world (similarity 0.79)
• Problem-posing makes previously inconspicuous background elements into objects of cognition and action. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• An object’s being shifts between use and detached observation. #expands (0.92) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 215
• Tool breakdowns reveal the world’s stubbornness and our disorientation. #expands (0.85)
• Problem-posing makes previously inconspicuous background elements into objects of cognition and action. #expands (0.80) — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 239