2.60
It’s wrong to think of a thing as just ‘sitting there.’ This is the case for several reasons.
Things are always part of a larger situation. The clock on my mantle is always ‘active,’ gesturing beyond itself, flinging one away from it back to the time reckoned for various tasks. The stone is trodden over as part of the path, enticing one along this route. Things are ready-to-hand before present-at-hand, the latter of which is a modification of the former (§2.4), and we encounter things from out of our thrown, projective, temporal world.
Things are never just ‘sitting there’ because they’re always part of various throws and worlds; because all worlds and all things are relational (§2.59) and constituted by difference (§2.54), and because relations are always changing, things, too, are never inert. A stone resting on the path is there for other lifeforms. Each of these encounter the stone from out of their thrown, projective, temporal world.
For itself, this stone is withstanding, holding itself open to encountering other beings, open to this encounter and this attempted withstanding (§2.43). A stone opens temporally (§2.28) to come what may (i.e., possibilities) and to its own holding of its past. It finds itself in the midst of beings (§2.43). Therefore, the stone, too, opens its own thrown, projective, temporal world. This stone is in its own throw.
As its own throw, this stone also throws itself into other worlds. Things never just ‘sit there’ because they actively implicate themselves into the worlds of others. They call out. Thus, not only are things taken up projectively, things also give themselves projectively: i.e., they’re thrown in a world and throw themselves into worlds. Things ‘intrude’ upon others.
And when things call out, they call to be heeded, attended, and responded to. Things offer the possibility of showing glimpses or flashes (to varying degrees) of their worlds; of what it would be like to be in a stony world (for example). They can pulse out and cover all things: “That is how much it is possible to attend; that is how large complete attention would be.”[1] Things whisper or shout, hum or sing, buzz or boom.
Things gesture across worlds. In this way, they’re implicated in a meshwork of meaning, stretching through worlds.
Therefore, beings are actively and relationally involved with others, and are actively involved in withstanding and maintaining themselves. They can be taken as just ‘sitting there’ only if we do them violence and cut them off from their modes of being.
[1] Zwicky, W&M, LH57.