Harking for Harman

“Philosophy has gradually renounced its claim to have anything to do with the world itself (…) forfeiting all comment on the realm of objects, it sets itself up as a master of a single gap between self and world. But beneath this ceaseless argument, reality is churning." (Harman 2010 pp.94)

Graham Harman takes the view that Heidegger, whilst not without his flaws, has, in relation to objects, been deeply misread. Moreover, Harman’s early thoughts regarding objects which would later evolve into the theory of Object Orientated Ontology were based on Heidegger’s texts; most influential of which was Being and Time (Heidegger 1962)

Harman (2010) explains that objects, in Heidegger’s writings, are divided up into two “opposed poles: tool and broken tool.” The tool being invisible, withdrawn into their “subterranean function” (pp.97), and broken tools being those which are observed - or literally broken - thus revealing themselves to us. Explained in simpler terms: despite our reliance on them - objects go unnoticed until we perceive them, or they malfunction; thus, objects are supposedly withdrawn up until the point of human observation. 

 

[behind me, the crow lurks. Crow is not grinning, nor cawing, just watching. I feel the weight of Crow, I feel crow anticipating it, the moment when I deem them ‘object’]

But wait, hark – “The dualism between broken tool and tool actually has no need of human beings” says he, they “would hold perfectly well of a world filled with inanimate entities alone.” (Harman 2010 pp.100)

 

To view Heidegger’s seminal text in this way, as an analysis of the human use of tools alone, is to obscure the richest part of the philosophy of Heidegger, where the terms and ideas were simply not pushed far enough. Therefore, we see Harman emphasising that “tool-being is the name for a fundamental dualism which rips through the heart of everything that is: not just tools in the limited sense, but also plants, animals, numbers, machines, rocks and even people.” (Harman 2010 pp.46) Therefore this term ‘object’ aligns, in Harman’s philosophy, with ‘beings’ or ‘entities’ and the dualism of which he speaks denounces the anthropocentric idea that is it through our eyes objects reveal themselves or become uncovered, as this “oscillation between tool and broken tool occurs in each entity at every moment” and crucially, has a latent power to happen without any human existence. (Harman 2010 pp.47)

“Withdrawal or invisibility is an essential part of the being of beings: animals withdraw beyond the horizon of our world and our understanding.” (Brogilo 2011 pp.23)

 

 I reach for crow and -

 Crow withdraws.

 

 So, Crow. A misreading or unimaginative take of Heidegger would have me posit that when we fail, fall, as is symptomatic of man; we are revealed. ‘Humankind’ is therefore, in this incorrect translation, a broken tool. When this hypothesis fails, it reveals another facet of humankind’s itchy anthropometrism, a Kantian desire to be on top, to be up:

 

Why then is it, that we are so down?

 

In an ooo-ing swoop, a graceful flip, we discover that it is precisely because we are so up that therefore we are so down. We know that there are aspects of animals we will never be able to see, understand or know fully, and so “we are confronted with how to understand others’ perspectives without reducing them to our own” (Broglio 2011 pp.7) and this has historically created a Big Problem for human. To rally against this anxiety,  misunderstanding, inaccurate translation, we have assumed our way to assuming our position at the top. For, how to think of things without things to think with? Humans need a medium for the thinking, we need to describe, denotate, determine our dominion. In his examination into the animal, Derrida posits that many famous philosophers write as if they have never truly been looked at by an animal that addressed them through their animal gaze itself; “in sum they have denied it as much as misunderstood it” (Derrida 2008 pp.14). Moreover reems of historic thinkers have paved the way for our perception to be deemed the only important one, preparing an ontological and philosophical framework which stacks human at the top, however this is not the case. Other beings have conscious perception, others exist out with our human existence, and therefore these other beings, other objects, must be reconciled to us; or us to them. In short - they must be levelled with.

If we are to get anywhere, we must continue to get down, as when we all get down together, we can get to the surface of things, as a level horizontalling of surface is the ontological site of fair-play between objects.

 

And of course,

for crow, a flat surface, a steady ground, is an eternal potential springboard for an ungrounding, unworlding, flipping up flapping out.

The only way up is down.