Craft as a Place of Knowing in Natural Law. (November 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: McCarthy, David M.; Pinches, Charles R.
• Is Part Of: Studies in Christian ethics. Volume 29:Number 4(2016)
• Page Start: 386
• Page End: 408
• Publication Date: 2016-11
• Subjects: Craft -- craftsmanship -- Iris Murdoch -- moral realism -- natural law -- Thomas Aquinas; Christian ethics -- Periodicals; Morale chrétienne -- Périodiques; 241.05
• DOI: 10.1177/0953946815610022
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0953-9468

Abstract

The article offers a proposal about natural law inquiry in terms of knowledge attendant in the practices of a craft. We begin by discussing Aristotle's analogical use of crafts in considering knowledge of ethics and politics in the Nicomachean Ethics . We inquire further into craft as a way of knowing by consulting the works of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and sociologist Richard Sennett. The framework of a craft is connected to moral realism through an analysis of works by Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil. Finally we provide a proposal for natural law inquiry in relation to the embodied and embedded nature of craft.