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The purpose of these pages it to focus philosophical reflection on the humblest denizens of our life world, the lowly artifacts. Nor do I wish to speak of the more picturesque of their kind, crafted by hand and endowed with a derivative humanity by long caring use, the birchen bowl, the long-cherished enamel coffee pot, the teddy bear or the earthenware pitcher in which, as Heidegger would have it, the potter's hand and the fruit of the vine focus the richness of the earth, the vastness of the sky, the glimse of the holy and the bittersweet awareness of mortality. ¹ I am concerned with, so to speak, the "second generation" artifacts, the anonymous objects stamped out in their thousands by automated machines, distributed en masse and discarded in the same manner — plastic cups, rental typewriters, last Christmas' video games and cheap tin ashtrays — that invade our life world like anonymous aliens.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-2614-6_23

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