Motion alters a quality’s mode of being rather than its essence

Evidence

Under the term action, besides motion, a tendency, though so it be without actual motion, seems to be included. Held back by strings, a magnet and a bar of iron, suspended at a certain distance from each other, remain both of them without motion: cut the strings of either of them, it moves till it comes in contact with the other; but for the state of mutual action which preceded the cutting of the strings no such motion would have taken place. — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 510 (#expands, via linked claim)

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 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A quality’s being is radically distinct from the for-itself’s mode; The quality’s inner figure-ground relation differs from the this-world relation; Motion resists ontological derivation and must be accepted as a contingent fact (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Action modifies the being of things, not just their appearance #expands (0.90)
• Action includes tendency to motion, not just actual motion #expands (0.85) — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 510
• An object’s being shifts between use and detached observation. #exemplifies (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 215
• Aristotle conflates passivity and activity under motion as imperfect activity #expands (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 410
• Transformative change is gradual within continuities, not clean breaks #qualifies (0.75)