OBJECT OF ONTOLOGY

Having flown very small flags for a number of writings from 50BCE (Lucretius) to the present day, one final clog in the flag-waving wheel is required. Martin Heidegger. Yes, he has had a mention before, but it's worth delving into his essay, 'The thing', to see a negotiation between an object (which may be human but in Heidegger's figuring is a jug, which inevitably and in a more complicated way, is human-related) and its way of being-in-the-world:

The jug is a thing as a vessel -- it can hold something. To be sure, this container has to be made. But its being made by the potter in no way constitutes what is peculiar and proper to the jug insofar as it is qua jug. The jug is not a vessel because it was made; rather, the jug had to be made because it is this holding vessel.

The making, it is true, lets the jug come into its own. But that which in the jug's nature is its own is never brought about by its making. Now released from the making process, the self-supporting jug has to gather itself for the task of containing. In the process of its making, of course, the  jug must first show its outward appearance to the maker. But what shows itself here, the aspect (the eidos, the idea), characterises the jug solely in the respect in which the vessel stands over against the maker as something to be made.

(Heidegger, M 1975, 'The thing', in Poetry, language, thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter, Harper & Row, New York, 163-86)

A number of things are signalled here, that have come up in earlier posts: collaboration, idea/concept materialised, and so on. Compare Heidegger's jug with Wallace Stevens' jar: is a jug all outward appearance and interior potential?

And we haven't even touched the sides yet ...