This bothers me immensely. For, what about the objectivity of a thing?! Surely, the subjectivity of death is part of the definition. I wasn't trying to declare that only the death of a thing is the objectivity of the thing's perfection. I was trying to say, that it's not until the death of a thing that the objectivity in question can actually be formulated.

I agree with Heidegger...and you most certainly agree with Heidegger..."a thing is not a thing until it is the thing that is thinging." However, I think it's just as fair to state that a thing hasn't fully been the thing until said thing can no longer thing(ing). Understand?

For example...take that ole' pen again.

In death, it's true, the pen has now become something different. But hey, so what...if it's now something different, how can you use that argument against the thing that it was? How can you say: No, B isn't A! Of course it's not. That's a moot point. The symantics of the discussion are nil. I know B isn't A. But, before B became it's own, there was A. And I'm only interested in A. When A changed, A ended. That's the entire scope of A. And only of A. As for B, well it's similar to A (such as, both are letters in the alphabet...or rather, the pen still looks like a pen), but we can all agree that B isn't A.

Therefore, as I already stated, I'm only concerned with A. And the death of A is very much part of that concern. A may come into being when it's formed; A may be best defined when in use; but A can only truly be understood when it's no longer...when it has made that leap into B. The death of a thing has some subjective significance.

And I rather liked Apostate's comical example about humanity and God. But I'll take it a step further...

Take two pens...give them all of the same physical characteristics...in fact, these two pens are both Bic ballpoints with blue-ink...they came from the exact same package. In fact, they were made in the same factory and right after one another.

An example:

OBJECTS: Pen Number 1; Pen Number 2; sheets of paper (where, again, same type of paper, same factory, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah).

THE TEST (it would be neat if someone actually did this): The objective here is to take both pens. Make a 1 inch slash, applying the same pressure. See which pen dries up first.

Now, theoretically, both pens (being equal in nature) and doing the same thing, should dry out at the same time. But (and this is only hypothesis, since I'm not actually going to do the test myself), I'm willing to bet that one of them dries first. And there is probably a number of reasons why, but for the sake of this philosophical discussion...

If you take 1000 pens, and apply the same test, and you discover that...say, 40% of them made several hundred marks, while 50% of them only made a few hundred marks, and 10% dried out abnormally fast...

In a philosophical context, the death of these things is very much an important aspect in defining the overall perfection of the thing (objectively).

Pen 1 did better than Pen 2. Both pen's are perfect in their own right, but Pen 1 is more perfect. But how can we judge any of this...because in the death of the thing, all we're left with is trying to understand that thing.