People bemoan the loss of craftsmanship, and rightly so. We wonder what has happened to pride and care about every little detail, just because. Indeed, too many have only read about such craftsmen. But there is something much deeper going on that often escapes our notice.

There is a greater craft—and it is truly a craft—that underlies and gives meaning to all other crafts. Every human person is called to develop this craft as we mature. Indeed, forming the young in this craft should be the real focus of ‘raising’ or ‘educating’ our young. But of this craft, and how to cultivate it, and how it has been set aside, we hear precious little.

There is not one easily recognizable name for this craft—and this makes it more difficult to speak about. One name is the cardinal virtue called ‘prudence.’ But on hearing this the reader is perhaps crestfallen. So, all this was a lead-in to talking about a common virtue? (Though, ‘commonly’ spoken of and commonly practiced are two distinct things.) Yet I ask the reader to step back and take a new look. We can even for now set aside the word ‘virtue’ and ‘prudence,’ and use the words ‘craft’ and ‘life-craft.’

Every craft, or what Aristotle called an ‘art,’ is a deeply engrained know-how about achieving some end. Crafts such as the medical art or ship-building were used by the great thinkers to illustrate what a craft is. The life-craft, simply put, is the deeply engrained and well-practiced know-how about human happiness itself. Another name for this is ‘practical wisdom,’ which is a habit of crafting the good human life in oneself and, according to one’s state in life, in others.

In the first chapter of one of the greatest books, the Republic, we see exemplified for all time the great dichotomy between two worldviews. There will always be proponents and practitioners of what Thrasymachus’s enunciates: a self-serving approach that advances one’s own interests through power, regardless of the consequences for others. Here a root conviction is that “a person of great power outdoes everyone else” (340a).

How one uses power is indeed a great indicator of one’s worldview. And so we have Socrates enunciate an alternative of the most striking beauty:
“No one in any position of rule, insofar as he is a ruler, seeks or orders what is advantageous to himself, but what is advantageous to his subjects; the ones of whom he is himself the craftsman. It is to his subjects and what is advantageous and proper to them that he looks, and everything he says and does he says and does for them.” (342e)

Perhaps the reader’s heart beats faster at these words that encapsulate an entire worldview. Authority, power, rule: these are always for the sake of crafting the good of persons. What a notion! A man as a craftsman of men! Beginning with himself. And then others, according to one’s state in life. And “everything he says and does he says and does for them!”

Two further words come to mind: father, and mother. Craftsmen both. Craftsmen together. Craftsmen first of themselves and their shared life. Then craftsmen of all those who are given to them. This is no surprise. Our God is both Father and Craftsman, and we are his children and masterpieces.

Every man is to be a father in some real sense, and every woman a mother. Of course, what else is life for, than to do all in our power to live well, and cultivate real life in others? It is the most demanding and delicate, the most exhausting and rewarding, the most subtle and complex of crafts.

Why but because of this craft, would anyone really care to develop the other crafts? If we are not a culture of such life-crafters, then we will not be a culture that really crafts anything. This is why we struggle to believe so many advertisements proclaiming the ‘craftsmanship’ of their products.

While some craftsmen—of the lower yet still noble crafts—do sell their products, in the end real crafting is never most about monetary gain. Every craftsman knows that. Only a restoration of the ultimate craft, the life-craft that stands outside the realm of what is bought and sold, will lead to a return of real craftsmanship in the economic realm.

But of course our main motivation for promoting this craft is what it directly effects, both in its practitioners and in all those for whom it is practiced. And, no surprise here, the household is the natural home of the life-craft. It is where a man and a woman realize that all they do and have done to become better persons now comes to its further fulfillment as part of how they craft such life for others. ~ ~ ~

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Image with post is by Leon Lhermitte, a detail of The Woodcutter’s Lunch

John Cuddeback

Husband, father, and professor of Philosophy. LifeCraft springs from one conviction: there is an ancient wisdom about how to live the good life in our homes, with our families; and it is worth our time to hearken to it. Let’s rediscover it together. Learn more.