firsthand dealings-with-things gets transformed into the about-which of a statement that determines the thing, at that point the genuine ontological property of the thing (the chalk, for example) withdraws. The chalk gets flattened out into a mere thing, “This white thing here”—whether this piece of paper or that lamp—is no different from any other thing, since I understand them all as just things on hand.
The chalk’s particular, original way of being—as an implement—is now leveled down to this average state of mere thereness, where it is no different from any other thing. This way of showing something—this determination performed in the declarative-determining form of “The chalk is white”—is possible only on the basis of a re-concealing of the chalk as a means whereby we deal with things. Admittedly, it is not necessarily a concealing: in this statement too, we can still hold on to the original implement. However, we come to understand this kind of statement when we in some way clarify the two limit-cases: that of a direct, unexpressed, unthematic dealing with something, and that of the thematizing determination of a something that is just there. This latter way of uncovering and showing-something-as by means of a statement is itself a modification of the structure of the “as.”20
* * *
We have defined determining as the act of indicating and bringing into view something just-there in its state of being just-there in this way or that. Such determining, as a declaration, is a way of uncovering, and therefore it necessarily has the structure of the “as.” Insofar as it is a way of uncovering, the original hermeneutical as-structure has been modified. This modifying, which I explained by contrasting three different forms [of the statement], now signifies in se to a flattening out [159] of the original structure. In fact, insofar as the statement is now directed thematically toward something (the chalk) with which I have original functional dealings, the thing about which I make the statement becomes merely something-there. It is now simply something to be understood, a statement’s subject matter in its mere thereness.
When something that was originally used as an implement gets thematized into something just-there, the original ontological character of the object (the chalk) is at the same time covered-over insofar as the chalk is now no longer immediately there as an implement, but rather as a mere present-thing in which I find a property that I attribute to the thing and, by so doing, determine the thing. The statement as indicating and determining hovers over, as it were, the objects that are given
20. [Here (Moser, p. 319) Heidegger ends his lecture of Thursday, 10 December 1925, to be followed by that of Friday, 11 December, which opened with a 340word summary that is omitted in GA 21.]