Use

Heidegger argues that we discover nature in use of useful things: “nature must not be understood as what is merely objectively present, nor as the power of nature . The forest is a forest of timber, the mountain a quarry of rock, the river is water power, the wind is wind ‘in the sails.’ As the ‘surrounding world’ is discovered, ‘nature’ thus discovered is encountered along with it. We can abstract from nature’s kind of being as handiness; we can discover and define it in its pure objective presence. But in this kind of discovery of nature, nature as what ‘stirs and strives,’ what overcomes us, entrances us as landscape, remains hidden. The botanist’s plants are not the flowers of the hedgerow, the river’s ‘source’ ascertained by the geographer is not the ‘source in the ground.’”

Among the many insights here is the insistence that nature is only discovered as humans interact with it and use it for human ends. “Nature” is not estranged from man and his work, but integral. Also crucial here is the insight that knowledge of the world is bound up with labor in it, and that knowledge comes through this practical encounter. Finally, since Heidegger insists that labor is a social reality, he implies that knowledge is likewise socially formed.