Volume LIV Number 9
Quadrant magazine is the leading general intellectual journal of ideas, literature, poetry and historical and political debate published in Australia.
You can subscribe to the print edition of Quadrant or Quadrant Online, or both versions. See our subscription page for more information.
Books
The Unity of Hand and Brain
The Craftsman, by Richard Sennett; Penguin, 2009, 300 pages, $26.95.
If there is one guiding thought behind Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman, a long digressive series of reflections on his life’s work as a social critic, it is the maxim, “making is thinking”. This brings him directly into conflict with his old teacher, the philosopher Hannah Arendt, who erected a division between the world of animal needs—unreflecting work for beasts of burden—and the higher world of homo faber, of those who reflect on art and work, and even draw moral conclusions from it. That division started with Plato, who belittled cooking as a “knack”, something done without the full exercise of reason. As a pragmatist, Sennett believes this is a serious philosophical error with important ethical and political consequences. It isn’t only that it demeans those who do manual labour, it also suggests that thinking comes after making: it is a justification for the kind of politics which gives status to expert elites and technocrats (ours), and in which the word benchmark is nothing more than an empty signifier.
Subscribe to Quadrant to access archived content
The full text of this archived article is only available to subscribers to Quadrant Premium.
To gain access, subscribers need to first login at the top of the Home page. To become a subscriber click here.