(BSpace)
A suitable starting point is provided by Heidegger’s analysis of human spatiality in Being and time, which, despite being restricted by the different direction of the questions raised in this book, clearly discusses the decisive features of this space. I will follow it, without keeping in detail to the structure required by the total context of the book. The concept of what is ‘ready-to-hand’ which Heidegger applies to the original condition of things, or, in his phrase, of equipment [Zeug], is well chosen in this respect, for it refers from the start to a space. That a thing is ‘ready to hand’ after all signifies that it is available for my use, that it is thus accessible and I need only reach out to take it in my hand and use it in the way I wish. For this easy accessibility, at the same time, a certain spatial proximity is necessary. It must be conveniently graspable. A book for example, which is ready at the library for me to collect, is certainly accessible to me, but it is not yet ready to hand. For this, I must first have collected it and placed it in the proximity of my workplace. Thus what is ready to hand, understood in the strict sense, is bound to a certain close area, without my being able to name its exact limits. This already distinguishes the narrower region of space of action from the more widely ranging path space.
But for a thing to be lying ready to hand for me, it must at the same time lie (or stand) in its right place, where it belongs and where I will find it without having to search too much. At this particular place the object is in a certain spatial relationship to me. It lies in a certain direction, which I must reach towards and if necessary walk towards, and it lies at a certain greater or smaller distance, determined by its easier or more difficult attainability. In the same sense we could also speak of the place to which the thing belongs, in order to denote the functionality of its task in life. ‘Place’ is from a purely linguistic point of view an even more appropriate term, as it clearly expresses the connection with the activity of ordering, namely ‘to place’ (along with ‘replace’, ‘misplace’, ‘displace’, and so on). Every object has its place or position in the human environment.