Thing-Ontology

Definition

Thing-ontology names the philosophical investigation of the ontological status of ordinary things — the objects, stuff, and matter of everyday life. Two complementary approaches converge in this wiki: (1) Spuybroek's ontological spectrum (object → thing → stuff → mess → trash → waste), grounded in Heidegger's distinction between objects (Gegenstand, "what stands against") and things (selbstständig, "standing by themselves"), where things converge ontologically with event, issue, and habit; and (2) Bucchioni's extension of Ingarden's theory of cultural objects to all ordinary objects, arguing that ordinary objects have the "purely intentional mode of being" — dependent on both physical objects (mind-independent) and intentional acts (mind-dependent). Together, these approaches challenge both naive realism (ordinary objects are simply physical objects) and eliminativism (ordinary objects do not exist), offering a "third way" in which things are neither reducible to matter nor mere projections of mind.

Key Thinkers

• lars spuybroek — the ontological spectrum of things; Heidegger's object/thing distinction applied to inhabitation; entropy and reversibility as the condition of appropriation.
• martin heidegger — the foundational distinction between objects (Gegenstand) and things (selbstständig); "the thick of things" as the ontological convergence of object with event, issue, and habit.
• roman ingarden — the purely intentional mode of being; cultural objects as doubly dependent (on physical objects and intentional acts); existential moments.
• guillaume bucchioni — extends Ingarden's theory to all ordinary objects; vagueness as the mark of conventionality and mind-dependence; the "third way" between realism and eliminativism.
• donald norman — the cognitive-engineering account: everyday things as designed objects whose operation must be understandable; affordances as the relational properties between thing and user; "twenty thousand everyday things" we must learn.
• edmund husserl (via Winka Dubbeldam) — a third lineage beside Heidegger's and Ingarden's: all things "necessarily [have] to have a bodily character"; thing-shapes as spatiotemporal shapes with "material" qualities, defined by their surfaces ("more or less 'smooth'") — things known by how their surfaces register, not by ontological mode.
• Graham Harman — a fourth lineage: object-oriented ontology (OOO). Via Clay Odom's chapter, Harman's exposition of Latour supplies the flat-ontological formula — "For Latour there are no cryptic essences lying behind… There are only actants of all possible and actants are fully expressed in each moment … it is true that new features of objects appear through the unfolding of successive events" (The Prince of Networks, p. 47) — with OOO ("Tool-Being") positioned, against Böhme's Atmospheres, as one of the two theoretical poles between which production-oriented practices work (not yet paged — see log).
• Jane Bennett — the concept's internal critic: "it is unfortunate to simply decouple the object from its productions as it is to limit the role of subject and object as a dialectical condition, rather than a linked one" — the object retained in its productions, subject and object linked rather than dialectical (via Odom 2018; not yet paged — see log).

Related Concepts

• dwelling — things as the "doubles" of the inhabiting self; the house as the place "where we live with the ghost of ourselves imprinted on the things around us."
• everyday life — the ordinary objects of the everyday as the site of thing-ontology's investigation.
• appropriation — things "flicker between presence and absence" in the thickened sphere of appropriation; reversibility enables appropriation.
• poche — the thickened wall-space where things are drawn in and suspended from their original meaning.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Being and Time (Heidegger 1927) — the foundational distinction between ready-to-hand (zuhanden) and present-at-hand (vorhanden); equipment as withdrawn in use; breakdown revealing presence-at-hand. "The less we just stare at the hammer-Thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become" (§15, H. 69).
• Habit and Inhabit, Stuff and Trash (Spuybroek 2025) — the ontological spectrum; Heidegger's object/thing distinction; entropy, reversibility, and the circulation of things.
• The Nature of Ordinary Objects (Bucchioni 2022) — Ingarden's purely intentional mode of being extended to all ordinary objects; material constitution; vagueness and mind-dependence.
• Design and Order in Everyday Life (Csikszentmihalyi 1991) — empirical evidence that ordinary objects function as "concrete symbols" carrying personal meaning; objects as the site of a "symbolic ecology" rather than formal/aesthetic value.
• The Design of Everyday Things (Norman 1990) — everyday things as designed objects whose operation must be visible and understandable; affordances as the perceived properties that determine how things could be used; conceptual models as mental representations of how things work.
• Thing-Shapes (Dubbeldam 2002/2006) — the Husserlian lineage of "thing" language: in Husserl's world of "things… all things necessarily [have] to have a bodily character," and his "thing-shapes" are "spatiotemporal shapes [with] 'material' qualities" whose defining feature is their surfaces — "more or less 'smooth,' more or less perfect" (p. 98, quoting Husserl). Dubbeldam's deployment relocates the object/thing question from ontology to design: "Bodies are seen not as objects in themselves but as integral parts of a system of thing-shapes with layered smooth surfaces, generating and regenerating space" (p. 100) — the thing not as a mode of being (Ingarden) or a gathering (Heidegger) but as a registering surface. See thing-shapes.
• Productions: spatial practices, processes, and effects (Odom 2018) — the OOO lineage and its design consequence: Harman's flat-ontological actants ("no cryptic essences lying behind… actants are fully expressed in each moment") positioned — with Böhme's atmospheres — as the theoretical breach "where the concept of Productions and Production-Oriented Practices is developed"; Bennett's correction supplies the concept's design translation: "unfortunate to simply decouple the object from its productions" — so the object/production dialectic is replaced by a "linked" condition in which "an active ecology of design processes and design productions allows for critical engagement with the world, rather than estrangement from it." Where Spuybroek's things converge with habit and Ingarden's depend on intention, Odom's design-ontological objects are fully expressed in each moment of the systems that produce them — and their "productions" (effects, atmospheres) are inseparable from what they are. See flat-ontology, nonhumans.

Open Questions

• How do Spuybroek's phenomenological-poetic spectrum and Bucchioni's analytic-ontological framework relate — are they compatible accounts of the same thing, or fundamentally different projects?
• If ordinary objects are mind-dependent (Bucchioni/Ingarden), what does this mean for architectural objects — are buildings "cultural objects" whose persistence depends on collective intentional acts?
• Can the "third way" between realism and eliminativism inform the debate on architectural ontology (the building as physical object vs. cultural/social production)?
• Does the reversibility of waste (Spuybroek) map onto the generic dependence of ordinary objects on collective intention (Bucchioni) — is the "circulation of things" an intentional circulation?

Related Syntheses

• Heidegger's Dwelling, Genius Loci, and the Everyday — the thingly turn as the most recent extension of the Heidegger → genius loci → everyday thread.