Eve asked:

What is a thing?

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Martin Heidegger opposed 'thing' with 'object'. There are different translations of his terms
Vorhandenhutand Zuhandenhut. So, I think that his term Zuhandenhut(means 'adjutant') can be
aligned with the term of 'thing' while Vorhandenhut(means 'available') is restricted to term of 'object'.

Zuhandenhutapplies to the things which are used by man everyday, which are perceived by man as
inseparable from him, which exist close to his body. Zuhandenhutapplies to things which comprise
the wider context of human activity.

For example, clothes are Zuhandenhutfor all the people, excepting designers for whom clothing is
the object of activity. Most of people do not perceive their clothes as a separate thing. Our clothes
become part of our body. Like other things which we use everyday, we would not fancy our life
without them: shower, glasses, shaver, chair, table, paper, etc.

Another example of Zuhandenhutis that thing which we make. Painting a picture we do not perceive
the thing before us as the product of art. We perceive the canvas as the matter of our work. It exists
with respect to our work.

Vorhandenhut refers to those things which remain aloof from us, which are perceived by man as
independent from our activity and out body objects. Vorhandenhut is an object which has its own
existence, which detaches itself from everyday life.

For example, an exhibit is the Vorhandenhut. An exhibit is detached from the person's everyday life.
Exhibits are not to be touched. A shaver which becomes an exhibit will never used everyday to shave
the face, the glasses which become an exhibit will never rest on one's nose.

The product of our working is Vorhandenhuttoo, because when we have made it, it becomes an
independent object from us. Finishing the picture we alienate it from our body, from our activity and
our creative power. The accomplished work becomes an object for a master.

Zuhandenhut can become Vorhandenhutjust as Vorhandenhutcan become Zuhandenhut. These
models are interchangeable. So, when examining our familiar glasses we can find some peculiarities,
which we have never noticed before. And we can marvel at these peculiarities of the familiar thing
(Zuhandenhut) so that it becomes the object (Vorhandenhut) of our aesthetic feeling.

Contrariwise, the object can become the thing then we appropriate the external object. For example,
when we correct the spelling in a student's essay, we appropriate the student's work and perceive it
as material for our correcting. Or when we buy a relic we can start to use it, touch it, even though
before this relic was a museum exhibit. Alienating, we transform a thing (Zuhandenhut) into an object
(Vorhandenhut), and arrogating we transform an object (Vorhandenhut) into a thing (Zuhandenhut).

I think that this Heideggerian alienation of author from his creation is close to Roland Barthes idea of
the author's death. This idea of alienation was previously envisaged in the works of Hegel and Marx.

So, in answer to your question: a thing is dependent on us. It belongs to the context of our everyday
life and does not exist out of this context.

Dmitry Olshansky
Urals State University
Yekaterinburg City
Russian Federation

Oooh... I just can't resist this one. You have asked one of the most horrendous questions that can be
asked, and one of the most important. The problem is that answering this touches virtually every
school of philosophy, and no one (except their founders) has been happy with the answers. You won't
be happy with mine.

How's this: short answer 1: a thing is not a person. Short answer 2: a thing is what has substance.
Short answer 3: a thing is what a person experiences through their senses. Short answer 4: a thing is
what is intended through the act of conscious reference, i.e., roughly, a thing is what we are
conscious of. Veryshort answer 5: a thing is not an entity which has concern for its being as one of its
aspects (it's not a "dasein"). Short answer 6: a thing is what lies behind its sensory presentations.
Short answer 7: a thing is an idea in (some) god's mind. Short answer 8: a thing is what all sensory
presentations have in common. Short answer 9: a thing is an abstraction on which we perform
experiments in order to clarify its properties.

I could go on... an on... and each of these short answers are sort of vague approximations to answers
that have libraries of arguments for, against, around, under... Are you happy? No? Well, that's all
right, no one else is either. What philosophers do, usually, with this (and the other really horrendous
questions) is postpone them... the idea is that we'll do some reading, learn some of the schools, the
viewpoints, the arguments, and then, when we're real grown upphilosophers, we'll either be arrogant
and write 'the' book explaining it all, or we'll be humble and keep on with the more tractable issues. I
haven't made up my mind yet which route to go... but if you want to get into this, you'll really have to
start from scratch, so to speak, and just plow into philosophy from the beginning, being careful not to
get seduced by some particular answer on the way through it all.

Steven Ravett Brown