The Phenomenology of Craftsmanship

Tanner Horst (Tidelines Institute, Alaska)

The Phenomenology of Craftsmanship  

Course Leader: Tanner Horst (Tidelines Institute, Alaska)
Dates: 9 / 16 / 23 / 30 March 2025 (Sundays)
Time: 7.15-8.45pm (BST)
Location: Online (Zoom)

The encounter with man-made objects is a fundamental scene of phenomenology. The history of the object, the technologies used to make it, the care or lack of care required by a human maker, the object’s world, its material, form, and purpose— all of these stand before us as sites for inquiry. In our era of mass-production, questions about production technology and its traces and effects are particularly salient.

What really distinguishes an IKEA wardrobe from one by a late Victorian master carpenter? As makers and consumers, we each are thrown into a world where we constantly ask and answer questions about quality, material, provenance, and expense— and are sold stories about what matters in manufacture. This course will have participants think and critique the built environment as mediated by technologies of production through two very different thinkers: the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the craftsman and professor of design David Pye.

Topics will include handwork vs. machine work, Pye’s immersive and phenomenological aesthetics of the built environment next to Heidegger’s notion of art as salvific from technologies of mass production, and pragmatic concerns: How do you know if you’re dwelling, or if a craftsperson really dwelt in building your house? What is the value of handcrafted goods, over and above a romanticized cottage life? Is craft vital, or is it superfluous, a dalliance of those who can afford it?

These two thinkers will test one another chiastically: we will consider Pye’s practical aesthetics from the lens of Heidegger’s existential ontology, and Pye will challenge Heidegger’s thinking about technology, poeisis and building to apply to actual objects, which we will examine as part of this course.

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