Philosophy
Art, Craft & Philosophy
Our Project explores the essence of craft, art, and philosophy, uncovering their universal significance and similar functions. What appears on the surface is shaped by profound contemplation, historical lineage, and the unconscious manifestations of material, labor, and thought. Join us on a journey across the globe as we engage with the most passionate and interesting blacksmiths.
Some of our sources we take up directly, others work in the background as a guide. Below are some of the texts that act as our intellectual muses-- inspirations we must explore through the material and through our stories.
Episode 1
Who knows what will make the final cut, but we’ve engaged these works so far:
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Alva Noë, The Entanglement: How Philosophy and Art Make Us What We Are
--- Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature
Richard Sennett, The Craftsman
--- Togetherness
Hegel, Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics
--- Phenomenology of Spirit
John Dewey, Art as Experience
Fischer, Ernst. The Necessity of Art
The Creativity Issue.” Philosophy Now: A Magazine of Ideas, no. 153.
The Philosophy of Creativity: New Essays, Paul, Elliot Samuel, and Scott Barry Kaufman, editors. .“
Vico, Giambattista, The New Science
Zizek, Slavoj. Violence
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition
Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom!
--- Go Down, Moses
--- Light in August
Wright, Richard. Native Son
Murray, Albert. The Omni-Americans: Some Alternatives to the Folklore of White Supremacy.
Crawford, Matthew B. Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work
Heidegger, Martin. “The Origin of the Work of Art.” from Poetry, Language, Thought.
Honneth, Axel, et al. Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea
Marx, Capital: Volume I.
Collins, Randall. Violence
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These may be included in future episodes based on what we’ve shot and what we see ahead:
Baldwin, James: Collected Essays (LOA #98)
Berger, John. Portraits: John Berger on Artists.
Berry, Wendell. What Are People For?: Essays.
---. The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry.
Danto, Arthur C. After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History.
Ellison, Ralph. The Collected Essays of. Modern Library Paperback Edition, 2003.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Self Reliance
Fanon, Franz. Black Skins, White Masks.
--- The Wretched of the Earth. Grove Press,
Fisher, Mark. Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures.
Gramsci, Antionio. The Gramsci Reader
Heidegger, Being and Time
Hartman, Saidiya V., Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social
Upheaval
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism and Human Emotions
Schiller, Friedrich. Aesthetical Letters and Essays
Striking Iron and the Mande Blacksmiths- Tom Joyce, Patrick McNaughton, and others.
Stoic Wisdom – Nancy Sherman
Slave Narratives (LOA #114), Andrews, William L., and Henry Louis Gates, editors.