Richard Sennett

In his most ambitious book to date, Richard Sennett offers an original perspective on craftsmanship and its close connections to work and ethical values

The Craftsman

antonia maria wagner she/they

She wanted me to draw the f people who make things usually don't understand what they are doing. 

„simple needs“ and the power of limitation

Heidegger speaks to a desire in many of us, that of returning to a way of life or achieving an imaginary future in which we will dwell more simply in nature. As an old man Heidegger wrote in a different context that "the fundamental character of dwell. ing is this sparing and preserving," against the claims of the modern machine world.7 A famous image in these writings of his old age in- vokes "a hut in the Black Forest" to which the philosopher withdraws, limiting his place in the world to the satisfaction of simple need. B This is perhaps a desire that could be kindled in anyone facing the big numbers of modern destruction. ng fig-

 The Human Condition, published in 1958, affirms the value of hu- man beings openly, candidly speaking to each other. Arendt writes, "Speech and action.. are the modes in which human beings appear to each other, not indeed as physical objects, but qua men. This appear- ance, as distinguished from mere bodily existence, rests on initiative, but it is an initiative from which no human being can refrain and still be human." And she declares, A life without speech and without ac- tion is literally dead to the world."12 In this public realm, through debate, people ought to decide which technologies should be encour- aged and which should be repressed. Though this affirmation of talk may well seem idealistic, Arendt was in her own way an eminently realistic philosopher. She knew that public discussion of human limits can never be the politics of happiness.

homo faber as the man as maker that asks why rather than how

 By contrast, Homo faber is her image of men and women doing another kind of work, making a life in common. Again Arendt enriched an inherited idea. The Latin tag Homo faber means simply "man as maker." The phrase crops up in Renaissance writings on philosophy and in the arts; Henri Bergson had, two generations before Arendt, applied it to psychology; she applied it to politics, and in a special way. Homo faber is the judge of material labor and practice, not Animal laborans's colleague but his superior. Thus, in her view, we human beings live in two dimensions. In one we make things; in this condition we are amoral, absorbed in a task. 

what the process of making concrete things reveals to us about ourselves? 

that people can learn about themselves through the things they make, that material culture matters. 

 The contents of Pandora's box Can indeed be made less fearsome; we can achieve a more humane material life, if only we better understand the making of things. 

Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake. 

The Craftsman explores these dimensions of skill, commitment, andjudgment in a particular way. It focuses on the intimate connection between hand and head. Every good craftsman conductsa dialogue be- tween concrete practices and thinking; this dialogue evolves into sus- taining habits, and these habits establish a rhythm between problem solving and problem finding. The relation between hand and head ap- pears in domains seemingly as different as bricklaying, cooking, design- ing a playground, or playing the cello-- but all these practices can mis- fire or fail to ripen. There is nothing inevitable about becoming skilled, just as there is nothing mindlessly mechanical about technique itself.

In its second part, the book explores more closely the development of skill. I make two contentious arguments: first, that all skills, even the t abstract, begin as bodily practices; second, that technical under- nding develops through the powers of imagination. The first argu- ment focuses on knowledge gained in the hand through touch and movement. The argument about imagination begins by exploring lan- guage that attempts to direct and guide bodily skill. This language works best when it shows imaginatively how to do something. The use of imperfect or incomplete tools draws on the imagination in develop- ing the skills to repair and to improvise. The two arguments combine in considering how resistance and ambiguity can be instructive experi- ences; to work well, every craftsman has to learn from these experi- ences rather than fight them. A diverse group of case studies illustrates the grounding of skill in physical practice-the hand habits of striking a plano key or using a knife; the written recipes used to guide the neo- phyte cook; the use of imperfect scientific instruments like the first telescopes or puzzling instruments like the anatomist's scalpel, the machines and plans that can work with resistances of water, ambigu ities on land. Developing skill in all these domains is arduous, but it is not mysterious. We can understand those imaginative processes that of using minimum force in over, uses solutions to unc problem finding are intima reason, curiosity can ask, "V ect. The craftsman thus bot out of it. The book concludes by working can give people ar drawn fault lines dividing pı sion, craftsman and artist, from this historical inheritan also suggests ways of using t ing about materials that rema to conduct life with skill. The volumes that follow bui first book. Pandora remains aggressive destruction; the enable us to become better at doing things.

The Craftsman quotes

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