Things are primordially instrumental-things, not things that later become instruments

Evidence

The thing, in so far as it both rests in the quiet beatitude of indifference and yet points beyond it to tasks to be performed which make known to it what it has to be, is an instrument or utensil. The original relation between things, that which appears on the foundation of the quantitative relation of the thises, is the relation of instrumentality. This instrumentality is not subsequent to or subordinate to the structures already indicated: in one sense it presupposes them; in another it is presupposed by them. The thing is not first a thing in order to be subsequently an instrument; neither is it first an instrument in order to be revealed subsequently as a thing. It is an instrumental-thing. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 618

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘instrumentality’ as the original relation between things — the instrumental-thing is a unitary structure, not a two-stage construction.
• XREF: Directly engages and corrects Heidegger’s definition of world as circuit of selfness — relevant to the reader’s continental background. — connects to: The world’s instrumental organization depends partly on constituting consciousness; The being of everyday objects is veiled by their instrumental function; Modern physics reframes reality as instrumentality rather than being — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 565

Broader Connections

• The being of everyday objects is veiled by their instrumental function #expands (0.85)
• Modern physics reframes reality as instrumentality rather than being #complicates (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 565