The Craftsman
by Sennett, Richard (2008)
Abstract
Why do people work hard, and take pride in what they do? This book, a philosophically-minded enquiry into practical activity of many different kinds past and present, is about what happens when people try to do a good job. It asks us to think about the true meaning of skill in the 'skills society' and argues that pure competition is a poor way to achieve quality work. Sennett suggests, instead, that there is a craftsman in every human being, which can sometimes be enormously motivating and inspiring - and can also in other circumstances make individuals obsessive and frustrated. The Craftsman shows how history has drawn fault-lines between craftsman and artist, maker and user, technique and expression, practice and theory, and that individuals' pride in their work,
Key Passage
In learning to make a Barolo goblet O’Connor passed through stages that resemble those we’ve explored among musicians and cooks. She had to ‘‘untape’’ habits she’d learnt in blowing simpler pieces in order to explore why she was failing, discovering, for instance, that the easy way that had become her habit meant that she scooped too little molten glass at the tip. She had to develop a better awareness of her body in relation to the viscous liquid, as though there were continuity between flesh and glass. This sounds poetic, though poetry was per-haps dispelled by the shouted comments of her mentor, ‘‘Slow it down there, cowgirl, keep it steady!’’ O’Connor happens to be small and demure; wisely, she took no offense. Her coordination thereby increased. Now she was better positioned to make use of the triad of the ‘‘intelligent hand’’—coordination of hand, eye, and brain. Her coach urged, ‘‘Don’t take your eyes off the glass! It [the molten gob at the blow-tip] is starting to hang!’’ This had the effect of her loosening her grip on the tube. Holding it more lightly, as a cleaver chef would his knife, she increased her control. But she still had to learn how to lengthen her concentration. This stretch-out occurred in two phases. First, she lost awareness of her body making contact with the hot glass and became all-absorbed in the physical material as the end in itself: ‘‘My awareness of the blowpipe’s weight in my palm receded and in its stead advanced the sensation of the ledge’s edge at the blowpipe’s mid-point followed by the weight of the gathering glass on the blowpipe’s tip, and finally the gather towards a goblet.’’ The philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty describes what she experienced as ‘‘being as a thing.’’ The philosopher Michael Polanyi calls it ‘‘focal awareness’’ and recurs to the act of hammering a nail: ‘‘When we bring down the hammer we do not feel that its handle has struck our palm but that its head has struck the nail. . . . I have a subsidiary awareness of the feeling in the palm of my hand which is merged into my focal awareness of my driving in the nail.’’≥∂ If I may put this yet another way, we are now absorbed in something, no longer self-aware, even of our bodily self. We have be-come the thing on which we are working. This absorbed concentration now had to be stretched out. The challenge O’Connor met was the result of a further failure. Though her well-positioned, relaxed, absorbed self had succeeded in gathering the glass into a bubble and forming it into the desired Barolo-friendly shape, the glass, when left to cool, turned out ‘‘lopsided and stout,’’ a thing now dubbed by the master craftsman a ‘‘globlet.’’The problem, she came to understand, lay in dwelling in that moment of ‘‘being as a thing.’’ To work better, she discovered, she needed to anticipate what the material should become in its next, as-yet non-existent, stage of evolution. (p.173)
Keywords
Craft, Craftsmanship, Skill, Art, Pride, Technique, Heidegger, Work Quality, Meaningful Work, ArtistThemes
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