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Bataille write about tools in his Theory of Religion. For example,

As one can see, I have placed tool and the manufactured object on the same plane, the reason being that the tool is first of all a manufactured object and, conversely, a manufactured object is in a certain sense a tool. The only means of freeding the manufactured object from the servility of the tool is art, understood as a true end. But art itself does not as a rule prevent the object it embellishes from being used for this or that: a house, a table, or a garment are no less useful than a hammer. Few indeed are the objects that have the virtue of serving no function in the cycle of useful activity. (29-30)

Bataille suggests that a tool may be thought of as an object that exists primarily as a means rather than an end. If tools are defined by their subordination to future ends, is temporality (instead of utility) the essential feature of tool-iness?

Bataille write about tools in his Theory of Religion. For example,

As one can see, I have placed tool and the manufactured object on the same plane, the reason being that the tool is first of all a manufactured object and, conversely, a manufactured object is in a certain sense a tool. The only means of freeing the manufactured object from the servility of the tool is art, understood as a true end. But art itself does not as a rule prevent the object it embellishes from being used for this or that: a house, a table, or a garment are no less useful than a hammer. Few indeed are the objects that have the virtue of serving no function in the cycle of useful activity. (29-30)

Bataille suggests that a tool may be thought of as an object that exists primarily as a means rather than an end. If tools are defined by their subordination to future ends, is temporality (instead of utility) the essential feature of tool-iness?