Heidegger’s Presentational Strategies: The Ontological Priority of the Readiness-to-hand over the Presence-at-hand

Abstract

Drawing upon the interpretations of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time offered by the favorable commentators such as Hubert Dreyfus, Robert Dostal, Harrison Hall, and Charles Taylor, this paper responds to Heidegger’s unsympathetic commentator Herman Philipse’s critical interpretation of Being and Time (Sections 12-18 of Division I) and shows the validity of Heidegger’s claim for the ontological priority of the practical world over the theoretical world. This has been done by showing that the practical world where readiness-to-hand is the norm, emerges from a self-correcting, transient originary situation where readiness-to-hand is primordial to us while we arrive at the theoretical aspect of presence-at-hand when we encounter the unreadiness-to-hand. This paper also shows that Heidegger’s text is coherent and consistent. This has been done by looking at the structure of Heidegger’s presentational strategies and by making links explicit in them. We have also looked afresh at how he defines certain pivotal elements of his practical world and their relationship with each other.