e) Is partaking something common?
Our question is whether the commonality of the chalk in use is the commonality that is primarily constitutive of being with one another alongside. . . .
The fact that we share the chalk in using it is surely possible only if this chalk stands at the disposal of us all, that is, ready for possible and legitimate use, left for us in lying before us. Making use of it entails that it is manifest to us for this end, that we are already alongside it with one another, that it is something common in and for our being alongside . . ., even if the latter is not an explicit preoccupation with it. In order for us to be able to share the chalk in our use of it, it must first already be something common in a more original sense; we must already share it in advance in such a way that it is left freely up to us whether to make use of it or not. Already before such use, and for such use, we must all already partake in the chalk, so as to leave it for ourselves reciprocally in using it or to refrain in common from using it.
What kind of partaking [Teilhabe] is this, and in what respect is the chalk something common for us in this partaking? The initial task is to clarify what it is that we share whenever we all have the same chalk, this particular useful thing, lying before us, and do so even and precisely when we are not making use of it, when we are not expressly preoccupied with it, but let it lie there just as it is in itself. It is precisely in this, in our letting the chalk lie there, in what and how it is as this thing to be used, that we must find what we are seeking: namely, our partaking in the chalk, this original sharing of the chalk in accordance with which it is something common and our being alongside it is a being with one another.
Our being alongside the chalk is, we say, a letting the chalk lie there as it is, a letting lie, just because it is something and is in such a way that it lies before us. Lying before, being present at hand before us, is the way in which this chalk is in itself as this useful thing, its manner of being; we let it lie there, we let it be, just as it is in what it is. Our being alongside the chalk is something like a letting be of the chalk.
We let this being be; we take nothing from it and give it nothing; we do not push it away and do not pull it close; we leave this being to itself, and precisely in this leaving, we encounter the chalk in what and how it is, as this chalk.
f) Of the letting be of things
We let things be as they are, leave them to themselves, even and precisely when we are preoccupied with them, no matter how intensively. Indeed, precisely in and for its use, I must let the thing be what it is. If I were not to let the chalk be chalk, if I were to crush it in a mortar, for instance, then I would not be using it.
This letting be of things lies in our using them and in our not using them, and indeed, it underlies all our useful dealings with things. Yet not only in useful