TECHNOLOGY
with this thought of the standing reserve does the thing find its basic tension, the relationship that first
grants it its essence. Only in an epoch of standing reserve could there be things. Let us then turn now to
the dominant characteristic of this standing reserve, its availability for immediate ordering.
a. The Standing Reserve Is Available
The availability of the standing reserve is perhaps its most prominent feature. The availability in question places the standing reserve at the disposal of a general requisitioning (Bestellen). This requisitioning demands that the being show itself. It “challenges” it to come forth, but to come forth as solely what it is, devoid of both the concealment and the relations to others that sustain the thing. The standing reserve thus names “the way in which everything presences which is met by an unconcealing that challenges forth [herausfordernden Entbergen]” (GA 7: 17/QCT 17, tm). Availability is the way in which the being discloses itself when challenged forth.
The challenge of this challenging forth is the demand [fordern] that all it meets come out [aus] from where it is and show itself here [her], outside [heraus]. It demands that things show themselves in their entirety as arrayed for our disposal. It demands they come out of their hiding, and for Heidegger this entails that they cease their essencing.9 We have already addressed the role of concealment for essencing in the preceding introduction. Let us recall only that this must be understood as running through the entirety of the thing. The concealment of essencing is nothing partial, but a way of being. Understood ontologically, then, concealment prevents the closure of presence from befalling the thing, and in so doing it opens it to the world. As this negotiating of concealment and unconcealment, essencing establishes a differentiation within the thing itself, a differentiation that allows the thing to exceed itself and thereby grants that thing its relational purchase on world.
Heidegger’s consideration of availability takes place in the midst of his engagement with Heraclitus (between the lecture courses of the mid1940s and the essays of the early 1950s). As availability targets the concealment of essencing, Heidegger’s interpretation of Heraclitus fragment 123 is of particular note. This famed fragment reads, physis kryptesthai philei, or in Freeman’s shamelessly conservative translation, “nature likes to hide.”10 Heidegger’s translation is more daring. Physis names emergence and kryptesthai the concealment endemic to it. Philei then names the relation between them and Heidegger sees in philein here a favoring or a granting (of one’s grace). This granting stands as the pivot of the relation between unconcealment (the emergence of physis) and concealment