Matthew B. Crawford

A philosopher and mechanic extolls the virtues of manual labor, describing how the satisfactions and challenges of creating with one's own hands promotes a sense of connection to life that office work suppresses.

An Inquiry Into the Value of Work

Shop Class as Soulcraft

A follow-up to the best-selling Shop Class as Soulcraft investigates the challenge of mastering one's own mind, citing examples from professional sports and the working world to illuminate the role of negative cultural assumptions on today's attention-related crises.

On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction

The World Beyond Your Head

A philosopher/mechanic's wise (and sometimes funny) look at the challenges and pleasures of working with one's hands "This is a deep exploration of craftsmanship by someone with real, hands-on knowledge. The book is also quirky, surprising, and sometimes quite moving." —Richard Sennett, author of The Craftsman Called "the sleeper hit of the publishing season" by The Boston Globe, Shop Class as Soulcraft became an instant bestseller, attracting readers with its radical (and timely) reappraisal of the merits of skilled manual labor. On both economic and psychological grounds, author Matthew B. Crawford questions the educational imperative of turning everyone into a "knowledge worker," based on a misguided separation of thinking from doing. Using his own experience as an electrician and mechanic, Crawford presents a wonderfully articulated call for self-reliance and a moving reflection on how we can live concretely in an ever more abstract world.

An Inquiry into the Value of Work

Eşyanın Dilinden Anlamak 

Why do some jobs offer fulfilment while others leave us frustrated? Why do we so often think of our working selves as separate from our ‘true’ selves?Over the course of the twentieth century, we have separated mental work from manual labour, replacing the workshop with either the office cubicle or the factory line. In this inspiring and persuasive book, Matthew Crawford explores the dangers of this false distinction and presents instead the case for working with your hands. He brings to life the immense psychological and intellectual satisfactions of making and fixing things, explores the moral benefits of a technical education and, at a time when jobs are increasingly being outsourced over the internet, argues that the skilled manual trades may be one of the few sure paths to a good living. Drawing on the work of our greatest thinkers, from Aristotle to Heidegger, from Karl Marx to Iris Murdoch, as well as on his own experiences as an electrician and motorcycle mechanic, Crawford delivers a radical, timely and extremely enjoyable re-evaluation of our attitudes to work.

The Case for Working with Your Hands, Or, Why Office Work is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good

From the author of the landmark Shop Class as Soulcraft, a brilliant, first-of-its-kind celebration of driving as a unique pathway of human freedom, one now critically threatened by automation. "A thoughtful, entertaining, and substantive work about the joys of driving." —Wall Street Journal Once we were drivers, the open road alive with autonomy, adventure, danger, trust, and speed. Today we are as likely to be in the back seat of an Uber as behind the wheel ourselves. Tech giants are hurling us toward a shiny, happy “self-driving” future, selling utopia but equally keen to advertise to a captive audience strapped into another expensive device. Are we destined, then, to become passengers, not drivers? Why We Drive reveals that much more may be at stake than we might think. Ten years ago, in the New York Times-bestselling Shop Class as Soulcraft, philosopher-mechanic Matthew B. Crawford—a University of Chicago PhD who owned his own motorcycle shop—made a revolutionary case for manual labor, one that ran headlong against the pretentions of white-collar office work. Now, using driving as a window through which to view the broader changes wrought by technology on all aspects of contemporary life, Crawford investigates the driver’s seat as one of the few remaining domains of skill, exploration, play—and freedom. Blending philosophy and hands-on storytelling, Crawford grounds the narrative in his own experience in the garage and behind the wheel, recounting his decade-long restoration of a vintage Volkswagen as well as his journeys to thriving automotive subcultures across the country. Crawford leads us on an irreverent but deeply considered inquiry into the power of faceless bureaucracies, the importance of questioning mindless rules, and the battle for democratic self-determination against the surveillance capitalists. A meditation on the competence of ordinary people, Why We Drive explores the genius of our everyday practices on the road, the rewards of “folk engineering,” and the existential value of occasionally being scared shitless. Witty and ingenious throughout, Why We Drive is a rebellious and daring celebration of the irrepressible human spirit.

Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road

Why We Drive

vom Glück, etwas mit den eigenen Händen zu schaffen

Ich schraube, also bin ich

Worum geht es? Wir leben in einer Welt, die uns mit immer mehr und immer dauerhafteren Außenreizen bombardiert, nicht zuletzt durch Werbung. Wir verwenden einen Großteil unserer Aufmerksamkeit darauf, diese Reize zu verarbeiten, anstatt uns fokussiert und konstruktiv mit unserer Umgebung und uns selbst zu beschäftigen. Wir eignen uns die Welt kaum noch aktiv an, statt dessen wird sie uns aus zweiter Hand aufgedrängt – über die Vermittlung der Medien und nach den Vorgaben der Wirtschaft. Wie kann man unter solchen Bedingungen eine autonome Individualität entwickeln? Wir leben in einer Welt, die uns mit immer mehr und immer dauerhafteren Außenreizen bombardiert, nicht zuletzt durch Werbung. Wir verwenden einen Großteil unserer Aufmerksamkeit darauf, diese Reize zu verarbeiten, anstatt uns fokussiert und konstruktiv mit unserer Umgebung und uns selbst zu beschäftigen. Wir eignen uns die Welt kaum noch aktiv an, statt dessen wird sie uns aus zweiter Hand aufgedrängt — über die Vermittlung der Medien und nach den Vorgaben der Wirtschaft. Wie kann man unter solchen Bedingungen eine autonome Individualität entwickeln? Der Philosoph Matthew B. Crawford fordert: Wir müssen wieder lernen, uns zu fokussieren. Und wir müssen uns einen direkten Zugang zur Wirklichkeit erschließen — durch konkrete Tätigkeiten, zum Beispiel ein Handwerk oder eine Sportart. Nur auf diese Weise wird es uns gelingen, zu einem authentischen Individuum zu werden, das sich nicht nur durch äußere Einflüsse definiert, sondern sich durch eigenes Tun in der Welt behauptet.

Matthew B. Crawford

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