In-der-Blog-sein

Inky Needle on how the later jug is not like the early hammer.

”The jug’s thingness resides in its being qua vessel.” This seems to return us to the famous example of the tool from Sein und Zeit, but Heidegger is not interested here so much in whether the jug is present- or ready-to-hand as in exactly how a vessel holds. It would seem logical to say that we owe the vessel’s capacity to contain to its physical dimensions, but here, as Heidegger guides us around the aspects of a jug intensely slowly, he chides us “But not so fast!” We don’t pour the wine into the sides and bottom of the jug, but between the sides and over the bottom. To be sure, it seems to follow, it is the “emptiness, the void [which] does the vessel’s holding.” So Heidegger moves by a process of refinement in his articulation of the jug’s being which is at each step a demystification even as it seems in fact to further mystify.

I'd make the case that it is also significant that the jug is grounded by the earth. The handed-ness of the hammer applies equally to a dasein in zero g, or in free fall - to an astronaut. But we could not pour into a jug on the International Space Station. The jug doesn't "thing" without the earth.  ¶ 12:56 PM