Handicraft philosophies : craft, representation, and social knowledge in eighteenth-century Britain /
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...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Stanford, California :
Stanford University Press,
[2025].
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| Summary: | 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 amid 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. |
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| Physical Description: | viii, 285 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781503606371 1503606376 9781503642935 1503642933 |