The situational matter of daily things: a dialogue between Martin Heidegger and Wilhelm Schapp

Abstract

This paper explores a way to think about an individuality of everyday things from the kind of being that Heidegger called readiness-to-hand (Zuhandenheit). To do this, we propose a dialogue between his theses on world’s meaningfulness and Wilhelm Schapp’s considerations on to-something-thing. From Heidegger’s thought, we will expose the physical objectual individuality as result of the mere spatial presence (Vorhandenheit). Then, we will approach the useful-thing according the what-for that constitutes the sense of the situation. Schapp’s considerations will contribute to understand that things have to be approached from its situational belonging and not from the bodily and perceptual activity of a subject. From this perspetive and in contrast to physical matter, the material dimension of everyday things will be understood as “of somthing”. Thus, from Heidegger and Schapp, we propose a concept of situational materiality of historical character as the everyday thing’s singularization and that we propose as a way to investigate its immediate individuality.

Keywords: Matter, mere spatial presence, readiness-to-hand, Heidegger, Schapp.