human, then we may not say that the open-region enregions things.
SCIENTIST: We will come to know how matters stand in this regard when we clarify the open-region and its regioning in relation to things.
SCHOLAR: But, in my opinion, precisely this is what we may not pass over now; otherwise the clarification of the open-region will likely remain lopsided.
GUIDE: I agree with you entirely. But the task is difficult, and our preparation for it is meager. Above all, our capacity to purely experience the regioning of the open-region in relation to things is hardly awakened.
SCHOLAR: Perhaps it will suffice if we clarify what is vague with an appropriate example.
SCIENTIST: We have already named things such as bowls and jugs.
GUIDE: What is a jug?
SCIENTIST: A container, that is, a holder [Gefäß]. What contains or holds are its sides and bottom, and this holder can itself in turn be held by its handle.
SCHOLAR: If it is, for example, a clay jug, this holdable holder is manufactured by the potter. The jug consists of specially prepared and shaped earth.
GUIDE: The jug not only consists of earth, but it can also only first stand—directly or indirectly—on the earth by means of that of which it consists.
SCHOLAR: This consisting [Bestehen] and standing [Stehen] make it possible that the jug can be an object [Gegenstand] for us. [127]
SCIENTIST: Yet we of course do not want to represent the jug as object, but rather to experience and think it as thing.
GUIDE: Now, is what we have just said of the jug said of it as thing or of it as object?
SCHOLAR: I would like to say that it is true of the jug as a thing subsisting by itself; for its subsistence [Bestehen] is that of which it consists [besteht] and how it consists of this, that is, its material and its form. This subsistence, as well as the standing (on a table, for example) based on this, belong to the jug itself; and this is also the case when humans do not represent it and make it into an object.
SCIENTIST: That of which the jug consists as manufactured and by means of which it also stands, is precisely also that in which it subsists as a jug-thing. And, as I now suddenly realize, something like the open-region is not also needed in order to characterize this standing-in-itself, that is, the thing-character of the thing.
GUIDE: Yet have we not examined the jug exclusively in view of its manufacture?