thinghood

is not dependent on whether Dasein looks at a thing or not.

The jug is not just an object, since it remains a container whether we look at it or not. Although this was already true of equipment in Heidegger’s early writings, the emphasis in that period was on the need for human Dasein to be present for any reality to exist at all: without Dasein, there would be no truth and no world. By 1949, Heidegger’s thinking about things had shifted in a subtle way. He now emphasizes that the thinghood of the jug is not dependent on whether Dasein looks at it or not.

has a fourfold structure consisting of earth and sky, gods, and mortals.

This brings us to Heidegger’s least understood and most neglected major concept: the fourfold. Whereas Plato, Aristotle, and all later thinkers failed to notice the thinghood of things, Heidegger tells us that this neglected thinghood has a fourfold structure. It is a fourfold of earth and sky, gods and mortals.

thinghood, n.Definitions

thinghood