Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects

by Graham Harman

Tool-Being offers a new assessment of Martin Heidegger's famous tool-analysis, and with it, an audacious reappraisal of Heidegger's legacy to twenty-first-century philosophy.

Every reader of Being and Time is familiar with the opposition between readiness-to-hand ( Zuhandenheit ) and presence-at-hand ( Vorhandenheit ), but commentators usually follow Heidegger's wishes in giving this distinction a limited scope, as if it applied only to tools in a narrow sense. Graham Harman contests Heidegger's own interpretation of tool-being, arguing that the opposition between tool and broken tool is not merely a provisional stage in his philosophy, but rather its living core. The extended concept of tool-being developed here leads us not to a theory of human practical activity but to an ontology of objects themselves.

Tool-Being urges a fresh and concrete research into the secret contours of objects. Written in a lively and colorful style, it will be of great interest to anyone intrigued by Heidegger and anyone open to new trends in present-day philosophy.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Nonfiction, Metaphysics

344 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 14, 2002

About the author

Graham Harman (born May 9, 1968) is a professor at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. He is a contemporary philosopher of metaphysics, who attempts to reverse the linguistic turn of Western philosophy. He terms his ideas object-oriented ontology. A larger grouping of philosophers, Speculative Realism, includes Harman and the philosophers Iain Hamilton Grant, Quentin Meillassoux and Ray Brassier.

Reviews

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

The core idea sustaining OOO (object-oriented ontology) is so misguided that one has to wonder how it gained any parlance within contemporary philosophical circles in the first place.

With Tool-Being, Harman takes a bewildering, and to his credit, original interpretive leap in his reading of early Heidegger, arguing that the conception of Dasein's non-thematic "background" comportment to beings--Zuhandenheit, or ready-to-handness--is a brilliant kernel of thought surrounded by superfluity, and that Heidegger himself was unable to bring this idea to full fruition on account of his entrenchment within a Kantian anthropocentric subjectivity.

Harman's move, then, is to expand Zuhandenheit beyond human-to-being relations such that it may be applied to any being-to-being relation whatsoever. In other words, a flat-ontological account for this mode of comportment allots no greater significance to one's engagement with the world than to one's desk chair's "engagement" with the floor beneath it, however one attempts to give a rigorous definition of said relation. From what I've gathered through watching a couple of Harman lectures, he argues something to the effect of "an object interacting with another object only does so through a 'caricature'--fire burns cotton but it does not 'grasp' cotton in its entirety", i.e. no object can engage with the entire chemical, physical, or metaphysical substrate of another, a trivial point if there ever was one, and it remains to be seen how this bears any significance to comportment. Even a surface-level reading of Heidegger should understand that Zuhandenheit is inextricable from existential temporality, and therefore cannot be extrapolated beyond Dasein without entering into metaphysical folly. Does my chair really exist for-itself within a hermeneutical horizon?

It is of great disrespect to Leibniz that Harman's naive anthropomorphism is compared to his grand architectonics, and it is of even greater absurdity that this philosophy is still taken seriously.

[T · Rating 2 out of 5]

A celebration of misreading, an unfounded confidence, a caricature of philosophy, and an ode to the nonsensical. This is Graham Harman.

[Diego Navarro · Rating 5 out of 5]

What do you know, a Graham Harman book on "relational ontology" that doesn't mention Latour once.

I'm uniquely unqualified to write a philosophical review of Tool-being: I'm entirely new to Heidegger (other than trying to read - and giving up before a third of the way - Miguel de Beistegui's Truth and Genesis a couple of years ago) and I read it over the course of a few days/many hours a day as if it was a crime novel.

What I can say is that charges of repetitiveness are true: the man does revisit his ongoing, gradually transforming position every few paces so we don't get lost, which was really helpful for me. I often review philosophical books saying that people should read the conclusions first so they don't get lost (this is true for Deleuze & Guattari, for example), but here what one'd expect in "the conclusions" is well-spread throughout the book as it develops. Also, there's a plot twist near the very end.

Hidden gem: a whole section comprising a rather positive appraisal of Slavoj Zizek's work from The Ticklish Subject on. This on a dry tome that tries to squeeze the "speculative realist" position (a reality independent of human access, etc.) Harman is impressively erudite, and knows his Lacan better than I know my English.

[Eric Phetteplace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harman occupies an interesting place in the Speculative Realism canon for me, in that I find his chief ideas to be rather bland (compared with Meillassoux, Brassier, Negarestani, etc.) but writing to be second to none. I know little about Heidegger and phenomenology, but Harman's style is eminently accessible and rife with great examples/illustrations. It is a great credit to him that I never felt lost or confused in a book referencing a thinker I've found to be incomprehensible. Tool-Being is quite repetitive--and Harman admits as much early on--and also far too concerned with defending particular arguments than carrying its concepts on to new conclusions. I would wholeheartedly recommend Guerrilla Metaphysics to almost anyone, since it does trek into new territories, but T-B can be safely passed over by those not writing a dissertation on Harman or Heidegger.

[George Beckett · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting foray into synthesising traditional substance theory (objects exist as entities in their own right) with the context-centric theories of Being (entities are constituted by the relationships in which they participate) that Harman sees as having championed metaphysical thought in the 20th century. The name 'Tool-Being' nods to the famed 'Tool Analysis' (Zeuganalyse) from §69 of Heidegger's 'Being and Time', out of which Harman develops his own theory.

The book is by no means an exhaustive exposition of so-called 'tool-being', but rather a grounding exercise in anticipation of future, more penetrating ontological scholarship. 'Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects' might thus be said to resemble the analytic of Dasein undertaken by Martin Heidegger in the completed sections of 'Being and Time' as it prepares to address the much broader question of Being, at least to the extent that Harman endeavours to open new questions and clear the way for a more thorough analysis of the Being of beings.

Harman's writing is precise and deeply informed, if a little dry at times. This is perhaps less the fault of Harman than the inevitable demands of dealing with the topic in question. Overall, the book was a pleasurable read, regardless of whether one believes that 'tool-being' might produce a credible topology for navigating the ontological landscape.

[Michael Hubbard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every academic hopes that they can find a good idea in graduate school. Graham Harman created the foundation of an idea that has demanded attention, serious attention, for nearly twenty-five years, found here in Tool-Being. Even those who adamantly oppose his re-reading of Heidegger are perplexed by the clarity and precision of his argument. No one seems to be uncertain about what he is claiming. Harman's incisive and daring reading of Heidegger, founded within his dissertation, is here exposed.

[Ray · Rating 2 out of 5]

i think i need to step far away from object oriented ontology for maybe the rest of my life.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a joy and frustration to me. Harman starts with a rather large assertion that he is introducing an entirely 21st century approach to philosophy. In my anticipation of the "and your point is..." Harman repeatedly defers his argument over and over. He is an interesting writer, and his offsides are well-thought and interesting. When it comes to his main arguments I found him a little short. I get what he is saying, I just wish there'd been a little more depth.

Also, I thought it somewhat hypocritical that while he starts off claiming that he is working off Heidegger, going beyond him, he spends a lot of time critiquing others for having misread Heidegger. Have your cake or eat it.

[Hameed · Rating 1 out of 5]

I agree with other reviewers that Harman spends more time on critiquing others for misreading Heidegger, and fails to justify his claims that he is going beyond Heidegger. On the contrary, he beats around the bush, per say, and spend much time praising 'his favorite' authors (Žižek, Lacan, and others in this group) without providing any convincing arguments. Skip this one.

[Manraaj Nijjar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very flowery ways of getting to not that flowery material. As a starting point to OOO it's fine much better if you've read the work it's criticizing better but not necessary as you can context clue your way there

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why do I find myself reading lots of stuff on Heidegger these days?