Handicraft Philosophies: Craft, Representation, and Social Knowledge in Eighteenth-Century Britain (1)

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Synopsis
The term "Enlightenment" still carries its tie to a grand philosophical tradition that in Britain moves through Bacon, Locke, and Hume. But the literature and philosophy of the Enlightenment was full of practical knowledge associated with the body and with craft. This book is an account of the eighteenth-century thinkers from across social classes who turned to the body to formulate new ways of knowing natural and social worlds—what Ruth Mack calls handicraft philosophies. The writers discussed in this book include a formerly enslaved man, Olaudah Equiano, and a washerwoman, Mary Collier, as well as gentlemen Joseph Banks and James Boswell, and the artist William Hogarth. In their efforts to communicate embodied ways of knowing, they bring together theory and practice; they set aside objectivity and relish the practical ways of knowing that are traditionally associated with lower classes and less-than-privileged bodies. Mack focuses on how such knowledge proved especially helpful for understanding "society" as a new object of enquiry in the Enlightenment, laying the groundwork for the emergence of anthropological and sociological thought. Complicating the intellectual history of Enlightenment Britain amidst the rise of popular science and imperial expansion, Handicraft Philosophies is a new account of the thinkers who configured "philosophy" as a practice open to all.
Copyright:
2025

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
Book Size:
296 Pages
ISBN-13:
9781503642942
Related ISBNs:
9781503606371, 9781503642935
Publisher:
Stanford University Press
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
History, Nonfiction, Science, Literature and Fiction, Social Studies, Language Arts
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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