ready and is the positioned piece of an ordered standing reserve of ordering.
The pieces of the standing reserve are piece-for-piece equivalent. Their character as pieces demands this uniformity. As equivalent the pieces are isolated against one another in the extreme; just in this way they heighten and secure their character as pieces. The uniformity of the pieces provides that one piece can be exchanged for the other without further ado, i.e., is in place for this, and thus stands at the ready. One piece of standing reserve is replaceable by another. The piece as piece is already imposed upon for replaceability. Piece of standing reserve means: that which is isolated, as a piece, is interchangeably confined within a requisitioning.
Even that which we name a machine part is, strictly thought, never a part. Indeed it fits into the gearing, but as an exchangeable piece. My hand, on the contrary, is not a piece of me. I myself am entirely in each gesture of the hand, every single time.
With the name “piece” we commonly represent to ourselves something lifeless, although one also speaks of a piece of livestock. The pieces of the standing reserve are nevertheless each time loaded into a requisitioning and positioned by this. Admittedly, the human also belongs to what has been so positioned, though in his own way, be it that he serves the machine, be it that he constructs and builds the machine within the requisitioning of the machinery.14 In the age of technological dominance, the human is placed into the essence of technology, into positionality, by his essence. In his own way, the human is a piece of the standing reserve in the strictest sense of the words “piece” and “standing reserve.”
The human is exchangeable within the requisitioning of the standing reserve. That he is a piece of the standing reserve remains the presupposition for the fact that he can become the functionary of a requisitioning. Yet the human belongs in positionality in a wholly other way than the machine does. This way can become inhuman. The inhuman, however, is ever still inhuman. The human never becomes a machine. The inhuman and yet human is admittedly more uncanny, while more evil and ominous, than the human who would merely be a machine.
14. this way exceptional—despite all the uniformity