Philosophy in the garage

All final year students know “ The School of Athens “. On this fresco by Raphael, symbol of the opposition between idealism and empiricism, we recognize Plato, in the center, pointing to the sky, in full discussion with Aristotle, pointing to the ground. If he had to choose, Crawford would unhesitatingly side with Aristotle. Because for him, we have lost contact with the material world, and that is very regrettable: because we now live in the sky of ideas, in words, outside of things, blinded by the light of our screens, at the mercy of marketing and social engineering specialists.

All of Crawford’s thinking is based on this dichotomy, sometimes stretched to the point of caricature: on the one hand, the situated self, authentic action, the direct relationship to reality and to others ; on the other, a postmodern ego, falsely “ free ” And “ autonomous ”, which reduced the outside world to a misleading image and a consumer good.

Less impactful than his first book, which brilliantly argued for the virtues of manual labor, Contact is a lively essay but sometimes a bit of a catch-all. By drawing philosophical lessons from his own existence (much more than from the authors he summons without really discussing them), Crawford eloquently shows the intellectual depth of our concrete experience of the world. His disillusioned criticism of the knowledge economy ”, which stupefies us by disconnecting us so much from reality, is more beneficial than ever.

Incarnation versus mediatization

The cardinal point of Crawford’s reflection is that “ we are located in a world not of our making “. More precisely, we are triple located (and to these three dimensions correspond the three parts of the work): we are incarnated in a bodywe belong to a Companyand we register in a history. Vast subject.

Unfortunately, regrets the author, these very concrete foundations of our existence are less and less accessible to us. Typically, the course of events seems to be the plaything of impersonal forces, such as subprime and globalization ; office work tends to dissolve the links of cause and effect ; and a growing number of mediations continue to come between us and the world.

It is this last phenomenon which particularly attracts Crawford’s attention. For him, reality is offered to us in an ever more sanitized, functional and personalized form (virtual reality and video games are the most striking examples). Instead of directly confronting the rough and unresponsive materiality of our material environment, we are increasingly content to press buttons, sheltered in our soundproof cocoons (offices, cars, homes, etc.). Our experience of the world is thus increasingly dependent on digital interfaces and behavioral engineers who use these layers of abstract representations to manipulate us without our knowledge.

The more the world moves away from us, the more we adhere to the ideal of an unattached, all-powerful, egocentric and solipsistic self, who is satisfied with consuming a cardboard reality and is not offended to see his attention sold to the highest bidder. Such an individual looks for ready-made solutions in technology and consumption. Less and less concentrated and self-disciplined, he is more vulnerable every day to commercial solicitations and false certainties.

Our value system, which glorifies “ freedom » and the “ autonomy ”, in turn depreciates the outside world, reduced to an infinite source of constraints and frustrations. However, it is difficult to criticize this anthropology, depressing as it may be, as the philosophers of the Enlightenment made it the pinnacle of modernity. Without fearing to caricature Descartes, Locke and especially Kant, portrayed as the supreme evildoer, Crawford intends to demonstrate that these thinkers contributed to making the individual a “ autistic » who no longer believes in the materiality of things, but only in the mental images he has of them. Reality, far from revealing itself, must now be reconstructed using scientific tools and abstractions. Wanting to criticize religious and moral authorities, Enlightenment thinkers ended up undermining the foundations of all authorities. We no longer trust anything, not even our own experience. In this regard, Crawford concludes, “ it is the entire anthropology of modern liberalism that poses a problem. » And, with it, the harmful influence exercised over us by representations.

We see here to what perilous extremes our author is led when his philosophical machine goes into overdrive. In his desire to valorize the material, to do and to act to the detriment of contemplation and intellectual work (“ the philosophical project of this book is to claim reality against the representations », he announces in the introduction), Crawford assimilates mental representations to illusions which, far from making the world intelligible and habitable, would in fact prevent us from accessing it.

We can legitimately regret that our practices are increasingly subservient to above-ground theories. ; but reducing representations to vague ratiocinations that would distance us from reality is questionable to say the least – especially in the mouth of a philosopher. On the contrary, does human life not rest on this faculty of forming representations and communicating them to one’s fellow human beings which we call language, and on these universes of meanings which necessarily accompany our action and which we calls cultures ?

Authentic action versus consumption

In his Praise of the carburetorCrawford lamented that the faculty ofact on the world is increasingly reduced to the possibility of simply choose between several prefabricated and pre-selected products. We no longer do anything for ourselves, he remarked, we just consume.

Acting, he continues here, means taking into account reality and the individuals who inhabit it ; it’s about confronting the material and others. The outside world, with its inflexible constraints and its reactivity, conditions our ways of doing things and our ways of seeing. In doing so he does not restrict us ; on the contrary, it constitutes us, by allowing us to acquire know-how and cultivate interpersonal skills.

Conversely, the consumer society is a world that revolves around us. We don’t have to conquer our place there: a cozy seat awaits us, as well as a remote control. In this world, there is no problem that does not have a ready-made technical solution – and this solution is generally more medical and individual than moral and collective. The people you meet there are likely to be trying to sell you something. It is a world purged of all roughness and conflict. A leveled world that only knows statistical averages and only accepts singularity as a selling point.

Crawford advocates, on the contrary, for a pragmatic relationship with reality and the past which reconciles technology and tradition. The book ends with a long visit to an organ builders’ workshop, portrayed as uninhibited heroes of modernity. Neither nostalgic for tradition nor fanatics of innovation, these entrepreneur-artisans are essentially concerned with efficiency: their goal is to manufacture the best possible organs at a reasonable cost, and that’s all. And Crawford concludes, admiring these men to whom he once considered devoting an entire work: “ love the world as it is: this could be the motto of a rooted ethic. »

Here we find, summarized in one sentence, the ambiguities of Crawford’s thought. Behind the nobility of organ manufacturing, these instruments which dialogue with the divine, there is the resounding constraint which imposes itself on any enterprise: to be profitable. In other words, the “ market dynamics » and the search for profit, to which Crawford attributes most of the evils denounced in his two works, can in certain cases be a means in the service of highly laudable practices. But in what cases exactly ? Where is the line between commercial manipulation and craftsmanship? ? Is it a question of company size, management methods, ethics ? We won’t know.

Then, what about this “ world » that Crawford talks about so much ? Should you love it? as it is ”, with its marketing experts, misleading representations and distracting technologies ? Or should we criticize it and act on it, in order to make it a place open to beneficial and altruistic practices (while earning enough money to pay our bills, which is no easy feat) ? This, it seems to me, is a blind spot in Crawford’s thinking, which advocates embracing the world while depicting it as a Babylon filled with distractions and populated by incapable people.