Present at Hand

Posted on July 7, 2010
Filed Under Heidegger, Philosophy | 4 Comments

I wanted to continue on something I’d said over at Enowning recently. I think most who have read Heidegger are familiar with his terms read-at-hand and present-at-hand. As part of his analysis of being in the world Heidegger notes the we encounter things in use. This means we encounter things as equipment. When we use a piece of equipment properly it withdraws from us, meaning we don’t notice it. So when typing on a computer or using a mouse the mouse and keyboard withdraw from your awareness and you are just using them. If that use breaks down (such as with a computer mouse that doesn’t track correctly – very frustrating) we notice the things as present.

Heidegger argues (quite persuasively in my mind) that much of how philosophy considered things is as these purely present objects. This then allows a lot of philosophical thinking to proceed. To be is to be present. By focusing in on distance and withdrawal of phenomena Heidegger allows being to be a matter not just of presence but of absence or withdrawing.

What I also think that the equipmental breakdown allows is for us to encounter things as more than just equipment. That is they offer resistance of a sense. At the time of Being and Time Heidegger doesn’t focus in on this quite as much. However it’s interesting that in his later works. So in What is Called Thinking? (191) he says,

“To use” means, first, to let a thing be what it is and how it is. To let it be this way requires that the used thing be cared for in its essential nature – we do so by responding to the demands which the used things makes manifest in the given instance.

The idea is a harmony between user and thing which only functions if we allow the things to be what they already are. In equipmental breakdown this harmony ceases. This could be because the device stops functioning (such as a mouse LED not working properly) or because we are using it wrong. In other words in our use we sometime think we fully comprehend the thing: have mastered it. In breakdown we discover we haven’t mastered it at all. It escapes our control. There is resistance.

Often read-at-hand relations are tied to technology. Heidegger speaks of the technological consideration of being characteristic of our time as a kind of standing reserve. Things exist for our use and objects are produced to be used up. While one could easily see all use in this sense Heidegger is careful.

“Using” does not mean the mere utilizing, using up, exploiting. Utilization is only the degenerate and debauched form of used. When we handle a thing, for example, our hand must fit itself to the thing. Use implies fitting response. (ibid, 187)

(Note the above analysis is heavily influenced by Dreyfus’ paper “Heidegger’s History of the Equipment” from which I borrowed the quotations because I’m eating lunch at work and too lazy to look up the works directly when I get home)

Now as I mentioned at Enowning I think that in the breakdown we encounter objects as more than we thought. But it’s also clearly the case that to use something as ready-at-hand demands an authentic relationship with the things in that we let them be the things they are. The reason for the “more” though is that objects exist in many worlds. (World here means a collection of equipment and the purposes they hold in a kind of totality: think paintbrushes, paints, ladders etc. all for painting walls) The breakdown though shows first that our world of practices is insufficient for the object. We have to encounter it in other new ways. Secondly it enables us to recognize the object.

It is true that we can fall back to a theoretical model where objects are treated as purely present – losing the fact they can withdraw from us. If we attempt to master objects as theoretical they simply don’t function. The obvious example of this is attempting to think about walking carefully. Try to walk and think about it. It just doesn’t work. Our practices only are able to really function properly when the equipment that is part of the practices withdraw. But that can only function when we respond to equipment in the proper fashion. In that harmonious use. To do that demands that we respond to the demands of the objects themselves.

So what do you think? Am I misreading Heidegger here? I confess I’m pretty persuaded by this way of thinking – but perhaps I’m inappropriately reading later Heidegger back into Being and Time.

Related posts:

  1. Heidegger on Present-at-Hand Relations
  2. Heidegger on Art
  3. Heidegger and Science
  4. Does Heidegger Reify Language?
  5. Peirce, Heidegger and Ready at Hand
  6. Three Types of Present-at-Hand

Comments

4 Responses to “Present at Hand”

I’m not sure what you are trying to tease out between present-at-hand in B&T and later, but I have a couple comments may help distinguish.

One of the problems with B&T, Heidegger said later (Letter on Humanism), is that it was open to being interpreted in a Cartesian sense. That ready-to-hand and present-at-hand could be interpreted as different modes of an internal subject (e.g., see Sartre); the external aspects or requirements weren’t expressed explicitly enough in B&T.

In the two quotes above, when he writes “responding to the demands” and “our hand must fit itself to the thing”, he is now emphasizing dasein’s response to the “earth”. For example, the carpenter making a chair picks the pieces of wood that are best shaped for making a leg, the seat, or the back of the chair. The carpenter is responding to her materials, rather than imposing her will on them. And this is not longer going on in the Gestell, where materials are ready to be ordered up for the mass manufacture of chairs. Where there was poesis, where the carpenter would work with the wood, to draw out its properties, that is no longer going on, and we have lost our connection to the earth. Today the subject merely orders up resources, and doesn’t have a reciprocal relationship with things.

“To do that demands that we respond to the demands of the objects themselves.”

This sounds somewhat like the concerns voiced by Object Oriented philosophers (though it certainly isn’t owned exclusively by them). Is OOO an influence on your thoughts here?

Right. I wasn’t addressing the gestell or the more technological issue. More trying to read the later sense of response into the present-at-hand and ready-at-hand conception in Being and Time. After I’d posted those comments over at your site I suddenly realized that this might be inappropriate and might be a case of me overly Dreyfusizing Heidegger in a way many would disagree with. (Ironic given that the discussion was Harmon’s own reading of the same)

My argument is basically just that background practices with equipment depend logically upon our already responding to the demands of the things. When equipmental breakdown happens it is because that response is breaking down which requires us to reconfigure to the thing if we are to again engage in background practices. This ought entail, I believe, a kind of responding more akin to Levinas’ analysis. I think one can also find responsibility somewhat more explicitly akin to Levinas in Being and Time – but Heidegger’s focus in those sections like around BT 132-137 is much more on Dasein own existence becoming manifest.

If we have to reconfigure our response then we recognize that the things themselves are more than simply our practices otherwise our practices couldn’t break down.

Now one can do that sort of analysis in terms of technology and the standing reserve. But I was more interested in the equipmental breakdown itself.

An old post that gets at a little better what I’m talking about is this one on Levinas.

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