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What is the significance of the hammer in Heidegger's philosophy?
The hammer is used as a tool. It has a purpose, and contributes to the production of other tools (i.e., it can be made into a nail). This contribution is not arbitrary, but rather necessary for its continued existence: if it were no longer useful in this way, then it would lose its value and become worthless. The hammer's use thus makes explicit both the fact that it exists and how it ought to exist; furthermore, this gives rise to an understanding of what the world should be like--a normative claim.
But this is only the surface meaning of the hammer, implicit in its existence as a tool. There are other ways to interpret what it means to be a hammer; namely, that it exists with no purpose or goal whatsoever and gives rise to no normative claims about how things should be.
This is a risk that comes with the purpose of every tool: its existence as a thing gives rise to philosophical questions about what it means to be one. The hammer and other tools in particular are problematic because they both exist with some purpose given by humans, yet also have an independent inner life. What does it mean for the hammer to 'exist'? Is it just a lump of metal? Or is there more going on inside?
One way to approach this question is via Heidegger's existential framework. This framework holds that the hammer only has a meaning in relation to humans, and thus its existence as a tool is defined by human use: it does not exist on its own, but rather as an extension of human will.
However, this framework fails to address the inner life of non-human objects--including the hammer. It would seem that there is some deep connection between such tools and humans, given how we judge whether they are useful or not. But what could account for this?
One possibility is that the inner life of a tool cannot be laid at Heidegger's feet. It may not have an existence outside of human use, but this does not mean it has no other meaning than what we give to it.