The being of everyday objects is veiled by their instrumental function

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)

For Heidegger, the philosophers’ second-biggest mistake (after forgetfulness of Being) has been to talk about everything as though it was present-at-hand. But that is to separate things from the everyday ‘concernful’ way in which we encounter them most of the time. It turns them into objects for contemplation by an unconcerned subject who has nothing to do all day but gaze at stuff. And then we ask why philosophers seem cut off from everyday life! — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 216 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Things are primordially instrumental-things, not things that later become instruments — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 618; Perception is indistinguishable from the practical organization of the world into instruments — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 860; The body is the instrument that cannot be used like other instruments (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• An object’s being shifts between use and detached observation. #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 215
• Everyday perception reveals things as permanent wholes indifferent to their changing profiles #complicates (0.80)
• Classical philosophy’s detachment from everyday life stems from treating things as inert objects. #expands (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 216
• The observing gaze is constituted by being set apart from its object #expands (0.70) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 70