From the range of the basic questions of metaphysics we shall here ask this one question: What is a thing? The question is quite old. What remains ever new about it is merely that it must be asked again and again.
- Heidegger, Various Ways of Questioning about the Thing
Take the trouble to listen to a single word: in that word, nothingness is struggling and toiling away, it digs tirelessly, doing its utmost to find a way out, nullifying what encloses it-it is infinite disquiet, formless and nameless vigilance. Already the seal which held this nothingness within the limits of the word and within the guise of its meaning has been broken; now there is access to other names, names which are less fixed, still vague, more capable of adapting to the savage freedom of the negative essence-they are unstable groups, no longer terms but the movement of terms, an endless sliding of "turns of phrase" which do not lead anywhere. Thus is born the image that does not directly designate the thing but, rather, what the thing is not; it speaks of a dog instead of a cat. This is how the pursuit begins in which all of language, in motion, is asked to give in to the uneasy demands of one single thing that has been deprived of being and that, after having wavered between each word, tries to lay hold of them all again in order to negate them all at once, so that they will designate the void as they sink down into it-this void which they can neither fill nor represent.
Blanchot, Literature and the Right to Death
We are now in a position to approach the analysis of the thing as an inter-sensory entity. The thing as presented to sight (the moon’s pale disc) or to touch (my skull as I can feel it when I touch it), and which stays the same for us through a series of experiences, is neither a quale genuinely subsisting, nor the notion or consciousness of such an objective property, but what is discovered or taken up by our gaze or our movement, a question to which these things provide a fully appropriate reply. The object which presents itself to the gaze or the touch arouses a certain motor intention which aims not at the movements of one’s own body, but at the thing itself from which they are, as it were, suspended. And in so far as my hand knows hardness and softness, and my gaze knows the moon’s light, it is as a certain way of linking up with the phenomenon and communicating with it.
- Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
We understand the term "thing" in both a narrower and a broader sense. The narrower or limited meaning of "thing" is that which can be touched, reached, or seen, i.e., what is present-at-hand ( das V orhandene). In the wider meaning of the term, the "thing" is every affair or transaction, something that is in this or that condition, the things that happen in the world -occurrences, events. Finally, there is still another use of this word in the widest possible sense; this use was introduced within the philosophy of the eighteenth century and was long in preparation. With respect to this, Kant speaks of the "thing-in-itself" (Ding an sich) in order to distinguish it from the "thing-for-us" (Ding fur uns ), that is, as a "phenomenon." A thing-in-itself is that which is not approachable through experience as are the rocks, plants, and animals. Every thing-for-us is as a thing and also a thing-in-itself.
- Heidegger, Various Ways of Questioning about the Thing
We do not see the same object that we feel; neither is the same object perceived by the microscope, which was by the naked eye. But in case every variation was thought sufficient to constitute a new kind or individual, the endless number or confusion of names would render language impracticable.
-Berkeley, Hylas and Philonous: Third Dialogue To cognize an object, it is required that I be able to prove its possibility (whether by the testimony of experience from its actuality or a priori through reason). But I can think whatever I like, as long as I do not contradict myself, i.e., as long as my concept is a possible thought, even if I cannot give any assurance whether or not there is a corresponding object somewhere within the sum total of all possibilities. But in order to ascribe objective validity to such a concept (real possibility, for the first sort of possibility was merely logical) something more is required. This "more," however, need not be sought in theoretical sources of cognition; it may also lie in practical ones.
- Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
As soon as the question was raised as to what beings as such arc, it was the thing in its thingness which thrust itself forward as the paradigmatic being. It follows that we are bound to encounter the delineation of the thingness of the thing already present in the traditional interpretation of the being. Thus all we need to do, in order to be relieved of the tedious effort of making our own inquiry into the thingliness of the thing, is to grasp explicitly this traditional knowledge of the thing.
- Heidegger, The Thing
This effort of thought seems to meet with its greatest resistance in attempting to define the thingness of the thing, for what else could be the reason for the failure of the above attempts? The inconspicuous thing withdraws itself from thought in the most stubborn of ways. Or is it rather that this self-refusal of the mere thing, this self-contained refusal to be pushed around, belongs precisely to the essential nature of the thing? Must not, then, this disconcerting and uncommunicative element in the essence of the thing become intimately familiar to a thinking which tries to think the thing? If so, we should not force our way into the thing's thingness.
- Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art
After a series of intellectual misadventures not worth recalling, Mr. Palomar has decided that his chief activity will be looking at things from the outside. A bit nearsighted, absent-minded, introverted, he does not seem to belong temperamentally to that human type generally called an observer. And yet it has always happened that certain things stone wall, a seashell, a leaf, a teapot present themselves to him as if asking him for minute and prolonged attention: he starts observing them almost unawares, and his gaze begins to run over all the details and is then unable to detach itself. Mr. Palomar has decided that from now on he will redouble his attention: first, by not allowing these summons to escape him as they arrive from things; second, by attributing to the observers operation the importance it deserves.
At this point he faces his first critical moment: sure that from now on the world will reveal to him an infinite wealth of things, Mr. Palomar tries staring at everything that comes within eyeshot; he feels no pleasure, and he stops.
A second phase follows, in which he is convinced that only some things are to be looked at, others not, and he must go and seek the right ones. To do this, he has to face each time problems of selection, exclusion, hierarchies of preference; he soon realizes he is spoiling everything, as always when he involves his own ego and all the problems he has with his own ego.
