On Being: A Glass of Milk

 I'm in my kitchen when I accidently knock the glass of milk I'd just poured myself off the counter. The glass cracks as it falls.

"What is a glass?" I wonder as I examine the shards of glass. "If the glass shards are not the glass, where is it now?"

A glass is defined as "a drinking container made of glass" by the dictionary. It is correct that a glass is a container composed of solid material with a flat base and an open top from which we can drink. However, it does not have to be constructed of glass because a plastic glass can also be used as a drinking container.

But isn't my understanding of what a glass is tied to the practical use I make of it rather than the theoretical description I just wrote? Now that the milk in the glass has spilled all over the kitchen floor, I'm reminded of what a glass is basically – its nature – since I can't drink from it.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), a German philosopher, investigated fundamental concerns about the nature of being, human existence, and the meaning of life. He asserted that the existence of anything -- its nature -- exposes itself to us when we recognise what it accomplishes for us, because we connect with things largely through their practical application rather than their theoretical explanation. The essence of something is not merely an objective attribute of that thing, such as its material, size, or colour, but rather a dynamic relationship between the thing and the user, which Heidegger referred to as "Gelassenheit" or "bringing-forth."

Interestingly, we can extrapolate how we would characterise the nature of life from this question regarding the nature of a drinking glass. Is it only an objective property or combination of properties like lifespan, children, financial assets, and so on, or is it when we realise that the dynamic link between life and us will be broken someday, somehow?

#Heidegger #Being