Object-Oriented Ontology 3. Graham Harman. 3

 Graham Harman. Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects. Open Court. 2011

In my summary of this book, you can find the basics of Object-Oriented Philosophy or Ontology (OOO); so, this summary serves as an introduction to OOO. 

Click on the Figure for a better view

Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) is a beautiful and nice philosophical tool to understand the being, the things, and the world. The figure above summarizes the elements, the "OOO pieces" by which you can analyze a thing or things. To make the idea of OOO and its usage understandable, I will apply the OOO pieces (in the figure above) to an example taken from the book. 

Wreck in the Sea of Ice, by CD Friedrich, 1798

In the Wreck in the Sea of Ice painting we see three objects, mainly, sea, a ship, and a boat with people. Each one of these things is discernable; it has its own boundaries, it is durable over time, it can interact with other objects, and it also consists of "smaller" objects that are - eventually - form it. Let us analyze the sea and the ship according to the OOO. 

The sea is there, we can see it; we, humans, perceive a sea. It is not, at any rate, melted with the ship or with the people we see in the painitng. We can see that the ship was sailing in this sea, and we can see also a boat carrying a few people, and we can perceive that ice has been formed from the sea, on its surface, so the ship got stuck. We assume, although we do not directly see, that marine animals exist under the surface. We know also that the main component of the sea is water. All of these types of knowledge allude to our interactions as humans with the sea; the sea is a unitary object. All types of interactions between other objects and the sea, such as the ship wrecked in it, a boat floating on it, animals living in it, also allude to the fact that this sea is a unitary object interacting with other objects (humans and non-humans equally). 

The relations the sea has with other objects are critical to us, the humans, to understand the sea; they are critical to the sea itself to make itself manifest in the world, showing its features or properties.  If this sea does not interact with the ship (say by wrecking it) and with the boat (say by allowing it to float) and with humans (say by permitting traveling for us), the sea will not be known, not only for the humans but also for the other objects. The sea appears, acts, as a specific object (i.e., as a sea not as a river, for example) because it manifests through relations in this world with other objects. The sea acts through relations with other objects as a specific object. 

The sea, finally, is composed of other objects: water, animals, salts, air, rocks, etc. Without these objects, the sea is a sea no more. However, the sea is not reducible to any of these components. If the whole animals are dead inside this sea, it continues to be the sea; if no salt has been in it, it continues to be the sea. In other words, the sea as a unitary object can endorse its unitary even when some of its components evaporate (apparently, not the water). The sea is made of components, but it is more than its components.  

A thing, the sea in this example, (1) is a unitary object/thing; (2) is composed of other objects but it is more than them; and (3) it is related to other objects but is not contingent on them as well. 

Bearing that in mind, the sea as an object has its own being, its own "essence," it is a thing-in-itself. A thing-in-itself refers to a thing that exists away from any other relations, including our understanding of it as humans. It exists there as it is, and it does not need to be related to other things. The sea is the sea (and is not the thing in which a ship is wrecked). Using Heidegger's term (but from the OOO's perspective), the sea as any other object (humans or non-humans) is a Dasein. Dasein means "to be its there" (p.45, emphasis in origin): The sea is in its being as a sea. Hence, we cannot understand the sea fully as a Dasein; we cannot interact with the sea using the whole properties it has; and no other object (ship, boat, etc.) can ever interact with the sea-Dasein exhausting its whole features. In other words, no relations can exhaust their relata. This is exactly why each object is a Dasein, a thing-in-itself. Needless to say that an object interacts with, relates to, other objects through its properties. That is how the sea is able to wreck a ship. The ship interacts with the sea in multiple ways: it sails, it is wrecked. But both of these two relations do not exhaust the whole properties of the sea as a Dasein. The sea is also a place for animals, a huge lump of water that balances the climate, etc. The relation between the sea and the ship does not show us the salty feature of the sea, for example. 

We need to understand the tension between an object as a dasein, thing-in-itself, and its relations with other objects. 

Finally, 

water is H2O, two elements, each one of them is an object in-itself; water is also an object in-itself, and water + salt + rocks+ animals + huge hole in the earth is a sea, which is in turn a thing-in-itself. We see that these objects can be melted together; hence, they can lose their boundaries. This is true. We need also to pay attention to the tension between  (1) an object manifesting in the world as a system of relations between many objects bringing them together, where at the end every thing, every object, will be related or even melted with other objects, and (2) that object keeping its own specific entity, appearance, action, as a specific object that is different from others. It seems that the world does not accept many objects and tends to devour them all in one world, one being, or one object. 

In sum, 

• Obejct as a thing-in-itself is called, in Heidegger's terms, ready-to-hand. It is unknown to any other object, it is concealed. 
• Object as manifesting, interacting with other object is called present-at-hand. 
• However, when an object is present-at-hand, it appears as-object; i.e., a hammer appears as a hammer, a sea appears as a sea not the sea itself, not the hammer itself. 
• Finally,  the world tends to devour the whole objects, melting them together in one object which is the world itself; that is, because of the ability of interactions between objects.