to when we say that something is handy; γ) the specific function of encounter of the work-world for letting us encounter that which is always already there, which means the peculiar connection whereby, out of the environing world of concern and in it, the world as a whole, the public world and the world understood as nature are appresented.
From this outline we already see the central position which the work-world of the specific environing world of concern occupies overall in structuring the reality of the real.
α) The work-world:
more detailed phenomenological interpretation
of the environing world of concern
The worldly aspect of the environing world is encountered in references and, like these, first in concerned preoccupation. By way of example, we shall begin with an environing world and occupation of the simplest sort, a handicraft and craftsman.
The tool has the character of being of 'in-order-to.' The range of usability of a tool is narrower or wider. A hammer has a wider range of usability than a watchmaker's instrument, which is tailored precisely to his particular kind of concern. The narrower the sphere of use, the more unequivocal the reference. Within its sphere a tool can be applied now to particular parts and pieces of that which is to be produced and then to particular stages in the course of production. Encountered in concern as it is, the tool is not regarded in its outward appearance. The genuine relation to it is to be occupied with it in using it; the tool thus becomes absorbed in the reference. But this implies something essential: concern in a certain sense looks away from the tool as thing; it is primarily not even there as such a thing, but rather as a tool, as 'equipment for,' which is used. And insofar as it is encountered in use, this means that, in relation to sight, its genuine reality appears in looking away from it as a mere thing on hand. Its specific kind of being is encountered in use, and it is characteristic of practical usage that no scrutinizing objectification occurs, not even the objectification of reference, that is, of the usability in which concern dwells. Dwelling in it, that is, having the tool in use, means precisely not having the reference itself objectively. But the attention of concern, that is, its attending to the references as its specific type of performance, has placed in its care the work to be produced, that to which the tool in its specific usability refers. Occupation with the tool [its very use] is performed as absorption in the reference on the basis of already having present that to which the reference is directed, namely, the work to be produced. This work to be produced is what concerns us as such. It supports the referential totality of the craft regarded