Shop Class as Soulcraft_ An Inquiry Into the Value of Work - Matthew B. Crawford [82]
This book probably wouldn’t have been written if not for my relationship with Thomas Van Auken. In the years 2002-5, our efforts to figure out what was wrong with our customers’ motorcycles often digressed into broader discussions of art, machines, and economics as we huddled close to a feeble propane heater, or took turns near the window fan, in a decaying warehouse in Shockoe Bottom. This book grows out of those conversations.
The craftsmen of Taylor and Boody, who build pipe organs, were extremely generous in explaining their work to me on my frequent visits. An account of their work was originally going to be part of this book but will appear instead as a separate book, to be entitled The Organ Maker’s Shop.
The Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia has supported me in writing this book. The conversation there is unusually bold and searching, and I attribute this to the incubator environment established by James Hunter and Joe Davis. I thank them for including me. In the halls of beautiful Watson Manor, the Institute’s home, I have had many conversations that pointed me down paths I wouldn’t otherwise have taken. In particular, Joe Davis, Talbot Brewer, and David Franz have been the source of key insights and criticisms. They will recognize many of their own thoughts here, hopelessly enmeshed with my own. David Ciepley also helped me to see some things more clearly. Together, I take this group to be working out a new way of thinking about economics, or perhaps recovering an older way, so that it becomes once again a humanistic discipline. Others at the Institute introduced me to thinkers I now find indispensable. Josh Yates turned me on to the writings of Albert Borgmann; Andrew Witmer introduced me to Michael Polanyi; Chris Nichols gave me a book of Jackson Lears; Amy Gilbert pointed me to Iris Murdoch. Somehow I had never read Alasdair MacIntyre before he was assigned in the Institute’s Friday seminar, led by Slavica Jakelic. MacIntyre’s influence is evident throughout these pages. The ancient historian Xenophon reports Socrates saying, “The treasures . . . left written in books, I turn over and peruse in company with my friends, and if we find anything good in them, we pick it out, and think it a great gain if we thus become useful to one another.”
I have benefited from conversations with Maria Pia Chiri nos, James Poulos, Susan Arellano, Krishan Kumar, and Steve Talbot. David Novitsky gave me some very penetrating comments on chapter 3. Matthew Feeney read the entire manuscript and suggested countless improvements. What can I say about Feeney? He’s the guy whose e-mails I most look forward to. We find the same things worthy of praise or blame, and together I think we have been honing the edge of a certain critical dispensation that has yet to be named. Eric Cohen and Adam Keiper, both of The New Atlantis, gave me an outlet for writings that wouldn’t have been printed anywhere else, and helped to shape the essay that gave rise to this book. Vanessa Mobley, my editor at Penguin and an expert builder of books, brought real sympathy for the material and helped me in crucial ways to bring out its potential.
I want to thank my mother for her sensitivity to the finer things, my father for showing me that thinking is the highest pleasure, and my sister for sharing the weirdness of our childhood. Without the courage, wisdom, and endurance of my wife B., I never could have taken on the hazards of entrepreneurship,