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‘To cope with Pandora requires a more vigorous cultural materialism’
(Richard Sennett)
Richard Sennett is perhaps the most creative sociologist of this moment. His programme sounds relatively simple: a critical analysis of the different shapes which actual capitalism has adopted, and their impact on modern society. Less simple is the wide range of his interventions to counter corrosion (a favourite word of Sennett).
Especially these positive interventions are remarkable and original. Sennett seeks to maintain a certain moral standard in society. Before I elaborate on this, I will start with a short overview of Sennett’s programme: his critique, aim and method.
Sennett’s critique on capitalism stems from the mid-seventies and it has, as far as I know, never essentially changed. Being a social liberal and a left-winger, the
American sociologist has repeatedly re-elaborated his vision on the state of capitalism, most recently in The Culture of the New Capitalism (2006). Important sources are American sociologists such as Riessman and Parsons, and critical philosophers, such as Arendt and Foucault. The core of his critique is twofold: 1. fast, flexible capitalism robs individuals of the steady pillars for their career and even their life story; 2. it pulls off the social mask worn by the people in a welfare state, ruins the social tissue and makes entire communities resentful. And the winner takes it all.
One of the consequences is an escape into consumerism. In present-day flexible capitalism, in which many no longer have a steady career but rather a frequently interrupted series of jobs, products and consuming is the only thing to hold on to.
Consumerism is the dominant narrative of late-capitalist culture. This completes the circle, and capitalism wins.
However, Sennett is not the moral critic of consumerism. He is rather the keeper of self-respect and of respect among people. Changes in community building and moral education have major consequences. The character of late modern individuals is
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threatened (‘corroded’) by flexible working. Moreover, the sense of community in our society corrodes. Feelings of authenticity, connection and sympathy become ever more scarce. Sennett’s interventions consist on the one hand of a range of ideas on social actions around togetherness, respect and craftsmanship. On the other hand he discusses all kinds of practical solutions around organizing life, work and citizenship.
There is a clear moral commitment in Sennett’s sociology. This could be described as follows: how can we further that people tell a coherent, meaningful story about themselves and each other, in times of individualization and flexibility, fragmentation and insecurity? His work is indeed characterized by certain dialectic and intends to stimulate mutual respect out of self-respect and self-respect out of mutual respect.
Sennett’s critical sociology has some Marxist features. He starts from matter and works towards the idea, not vice versa. As domains for sociological research he chooses among others work, housing, craftsmanship, time and technology. He moves from work towards morality, not from moral values and virtues towards work. What kind of routine and flexibility are needed for people to flourish at work? Or in the case of architecture: how could a building be so designed, build and furnished, that people can live well and cooperate? Sennett does not proceed as a moral philosopher, imposing values and virtues. He is a materialist, not an idealist. He calls his method
‘cultural materialism’.
In the agency versus structure debate, Sennett is situated somewhere ‘in between’.
As a sociologist he believes more in what I would call ‘a social solution’, but he never becomes a real communitarian. He simply does not believe in a completely harmonious society based on trust and connectedness. He has not the slightest sympathy with the therapeutic movement. He does not believe in psychology, selfcare and all kinds of individual solutions. Sennett detests the contemporary obsession with private life, and rejects the thought that meaningfulness results from individual, subjective experience.
Meanwhile, his commitment is definitely moral. As a social liberal he aims to put an end to societal inequality. Sennett is anti-hierarchical in his thought and wants to further connections among people. His question is: could people feel inspired again if they could be connected to others in the context of something greater and more comprehensive, like a job, a project, an organization, a community or even a worldview? He is concerned with mutual respect in spite of all kinds of differences.
Sennett is against homogenization and advocates openness. Consequently, he proceeds in a pragmatic way.
Sennett’s pragmatic definition of cooperation is “an exchange in which the participants benefit from the encounter.” (Sennett, 2012, p. 5). Sennett himself surely belongs to the philosophical movement called pragmatism. He starts from lived experience. Concepts must work in practice, in practical action, and should not be merely produced at a writing desk. Sennett himself is not only a sociologist, or rather as a sociologist he is also storyteller, writer and artist. His main interest is ‘man as work in progress’, to use the title of his Spinoza lecture of 2010. Consequently, he employs a qualitative, hermeneutic method. It is all about the storyteller and his stories. For his books, Sennett often interviews hundreds of people, starts dialogues with them and asks them to talk elaborately. He advocates telling stories about one’s own life, in order to make one’s complex existence more understandable in a
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narrative way. Could all events and fateful coincidences of life in some way still form a coherent story? That is the question of every migrant, and eventually of every human being.
Sennett has summarized his vision on his own work as follows: “It took me twenty years to understand how life courses develop. As a city person I would say that it is mainly the way we shape our living environment that can help man to develop a feeling of togetherness. People need an environment, which brings them into contact with other forms of life. They need social meeting points, where different people can meet each other. In a transitive sense, we could speak of a new form of modesty, because people would be less fixed in their lives on themselves and their personal needs. My vision on modern society aims at developing a new feeling of meaning: understanding and having a feeling of responsibility towards our fellow man. In our society, where extreme forms of turbo-capitalism play the leading part, these are values which are disappearing.” (translation JDO from the Dutch cover text, an interview in the journal Die Welt )
In this paper I provide an overview of three important texts by Sennett, in which the concept ‘character’ takes central stage. That is remarkable, because character is typically a psychological notion. Of course Sennett does not deny character in this sense, but he gives a different, sociological analysis of its substance. I am mainly interested in the moral aspects of his quest: How does Sennett treat morality? What is the moral point of his work? What is his method to enhance that morality? I will successively treat The Corrosion of Character (1998), Respect (2003), and The
Craftsman (2008), and I shall end with a short critical remark.
Around the turn of the century, in 1998, Sennett wrote a very important essay: The
Corrosion of Character.
The subtitle of that essay is significant: The Personal
Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism.
The book has been translated in Dutch as De flexibele mens. Psychogram van de moderne samenleving (2000). For two reasons this is a very bad translation. From the main title in Dutch the corrosion of character has disappeared. And in the subtitle the relevant domain of our lives has disappeared, just like the cause of the corrosion. After all, it is our work that changes fundamentally because of recent developments within capitalism.
The central idea of the book is that our world society has arrived at a new phase of capitalism: flexible capitalism. Labour sociologist Richard Sennett reflects on the consequences of the new flexibility of labour in American businesses and organizations. Some years later Sennett said that the book was mainly intended for the
European context, for in Europe it is not too late. In The corrosion of character , a couple of core ideas come to the fore:
• The character of people in our society is mainly threatened by a new type of labour: flexible work
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• There is no coherence and continuity anymore between work experiences.
People used to have a long lasting career, now they have temporary jobs
• Feelings of authenticity become scarcer, alienation from our own needs and ideals increases
• Organizations are continually changing and don’t have continuity anymore
• Power grows and becomes more invisible
• Community spirit is slowly disappearing from society.
Character
Sennett understands character not as the intimate atmosphere of our feelings, but underlines their social nature. He chooses to define it as ‘the ethical value we place on our own desires and on our relationships to others.’ (Sennett, 1998, p. 10). In his
Foreword he refers to Horatius, who saw character as ‘dependent on someone’s connections to the world.’ (ibidem) Character then, focuses on the result of our emotional experiences in the long term, and is about sustainable qualities. Character comes to expression through loyalty and mutual commitment, by striving towards long term goals, or by delayed gratification for the sake of a future end (Sennett,
1998, 10).
For Sennett, the most important qualities of character are faithfulness, loyalty and involvement. These can be obtained through self-discipline and good investment.
Sennett writes in his foreword: “Character concerns the personal traits which we value in ourselves and for which we seek to be valued by others.” (Sennett, 1998, p.
10). The corrosion of character means that the sustainable qualities and the social engagement are simultaneously lost. Here Sennett raises some important questions:
• How do we decide what is of lasting value in ourselves in a society which is impatient, which focuses on the immediate moment?
• How can long term goals be pursued in an economy devoted to short term goals?
• How can mutual loyalties and commitments be sustained in institutions, which are constantly breaking apart, or continually being redesigned?
Old and new capitalism
Sennett sketches the transition from the old capitalism towards the new. On the one hand, the old capitalism did not provide any room for an individual life; on the other hand it did make an important contribution to the detachment from the traditional society.
The classical industrial organizations were very paternalistic, such that people could not develop their own life story. At the same time, capitalism provided a growing economic independence, so that people became less restricted by traditional boundaries. They earned higher wages, became more financially independent and had therefore less need for fixed social relations. Some philosophers like Diderot were very enthusiastic about capitalism, for its routines would be character shaping. While
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Adam Smith has a reputation as the main advocate of capitalism, he did pay a lot of attention to the dark sides of capitalism and its mind-numbing character.
Sennett is a captivating writer. He gives a wonderful illustration of the transition from old to new capitalism based on two life stories: that of Enrico, an Italian manual labourer, and his son Rico, a highly educated manager. After his emigration to the
US, Enrico worked for decennia as a cleaner. Together with his wife Flavia he works, saving up everything, always in the same treadmill, towards his retirement. “What struck me most about Enrico and his generation was how linear time was in their lives: year after year of working in jobs which seldom varied from day to day”
(Sennett, 1998, pp. 15-16) His son Rico is a successful engineer who married an equally successful economist Jeanette. Sennett describes their life-course, in which both move continually from city to city for the sake of their careers.
Prosperous as they are, the very acme of an adaptable, mutually supportive couple, both husband and wife often fear they are on the edge of losing control over their lives. This fear is built into their work histories.” (Sennett,
1998, p. 19)
In the story of Rico we can exactly see how he could escape from his narrow minded, smothering milieu in order to accept a fragmented life. The life stories of Enrico and
Rico symbolize according to Sennett “the corrosion of character in the new capitalism.” The father is at the lowest wage scale, and always feels secure and connected with his family. The son has reached the highest wage scale, but he and his wife feel threatened during their whole marriage.
Sennett describes the most typical characteristics of the new capitalistic dynamics: continual reorganization, flexible production, and intransparency of power.
Organizations are so complex and continually on the move, that employees can never estimate whether they are making a downward, sideward or upward step. It is usually unclear for an employee whether or in which direction he should develop, how long his knowledge and capacities will still be acknowledged, and who are his reliable partners.
Teamwork becomes more superficial, time has a different value in an economy that continually reorganizes everything, hates routine and is focused on the short term.
Employees experience at first-hand the absence of sustained human relations and targets. The frightening image is that you cannot make something of yourself through your own work anymore. The late modern life is no longer determined by consistency, stability and reliability. Insecurity and fragmentation are the main features of the characters produced by the new capitalism.
The dangerous pronoun
Sennett offers no practical solution and does not tell us how to get ourselves out of the impasse, but he does make us think. His final chapter: ‘The Dangerous Pronoun’, ends thus:
If change occurs it happens on the ground, between people speaking out of inner need, rather than through mass uprisings. What political programs follow from those inner needs, I simply don’t know. But I do know a regime
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which provides human beings no deep reasons to care about each other, cannot long preserve its legitimacy.’ (Sennett, 1998, p.148).
The ‘dangerous pronoun’ Sennett is pointing to is: ‘we’. The use of ‘we’ has become an act of self-protection. The pronoun ‘we’ is usually being abused: as a defence against ‘them’ (usually immigrants), it is a false locution against the outside world.
More generally it is used as a defence against confusion and dislocation. Even communitarianism uses a false ‘we’, according to Sennett, because it emphasizes unity as the source of strength. This harmonious unity simply doesn’t exist.
Nevertheless, Sennett does not do away with this dangerous pronoun, although he keeps fast to it with extreme reservation.
He rather believes in a community in which mutual incomprehension and conflicts among people are openly acknowledged. “Strong bonding between people means engaging over time their differences.”(Sennett, 1998, p.143). Secondly, he advocates a re-valuation of the concept dependence. In a good community, people will always need each other in some way, so independence cannot be the highest value per se.
At last, Sennett offers his own ‘solution’. In fact it is not a practical solution; it is an idea. But it is an idea that is important in all practical contexts. It is the question:
‘Who in this society needs me?’ This is maybe the exact opposite of the liberal hypergood : ‘What do I need?’ So in the end Sennett does choose for this dangerous little pronoun ‘we’. In opposition to the new capitalism a strong community of characters should emerge, who are not ashamed of their own dependence, and who are loyal to the people who need them.
Lack of respect, though less aggressive than an outright insult, can take an equally wounding form. No insult is offered another person, but neither is recognition extended; he or she is not seen – as a full human being whose presence matters. When a society treats the mass of people in this way, singling out only a few for recognition, it creates a scarcity of respect […].
Why […] should it be in short supply? (Sennett, 2003, p. 3).
This is how Sennett starts his most famous book Respect. The formation of character in an age of inequality (2003). The title of the Dutch translation reads: Respect in een tijd van sociale ongelijkheid . Again, this translation is not very adequate, because the essence of Sennett’s title is lost: the formation of character. Sennett initially intended to write a book about welfare that would fit closely to his analysis of modern labour in The Corrosion of Character , until he realized that lack of respect was the main problem for people living on welfare. This led him to investigate how this respect could be regained in an age of inequality. He therefore decided to make an analysis of the relation between respect and inequality.
Earning respect
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According to Sennett, behaviour expressing respect is rare. Moreover, respect is very unequally distributed in society. What respect exactly means is societally and psychologically complicated. Actions expressing respect – the art of recognizing others – are rare. Within sociology, there exist many synonyms expressing different aspects of respect, such as ‘status’, ‘prestige’, ‘recognition’ , ‘honour’ and ‘dignity’.
Status refers to someone’s position within a social hierarchy. Prestige refers to the emotions which status raises in others, yet the relation between status and prestige is complicated. A high status does not necessarily lead to a lot of prestige. People who independently perform a useful craft, like furniture makers, often enjoy more prestige than top managers who do not have complete control over the company’s politics.
According to Homer, honour, coronets and eternal glory were of vital interest for the old Greeks. Losing your honour is the worst thing that may happen in a culture of masculinity. What is missing in all these descriptions is mutuality. This can be found in ‘recognition’. For Rawls, recognition means respecting the needs of those who are different from us. For Habermas it means respecting the points of view of those who disagree with us. For Taylor, recognition is something that needs to be earned. People must be able to provide legitimate reasons their behaviour and their actions.
According to Sennett, the concept ‘human dignity’ arises in the eighteenth century
(Beccaria, Fichte, Jefferson) as a condemnation of torture in criminal proceedings.
Later, the concept figures in the context of the human body. Subsequently, together with the rise of capitalism, the concept of dignity of labour comes to the fore. To work, according to this concept, means to be able to maintain yourself.
Unemployment thus becomes connected with losing one’s dignity. The social dimension of dignity and recognition are of fundamental importance for respect.
According to Sennett, there are three ways to earn respect:
• Making something of oneself
• Taking care of oneself, and
• Helping others
Making something of oneself
The first way to earn respect is related to self-development, especially the development of talents and skills. You can make something of yourself by developing and employing your talents in the best possible way. In order to show that you got talent, you first have to develop talent. This requires institutions, like schools for example. Within these institutions, talent is not only developed but also judged and compared. This creates inequality. Only the one who finds a way to develop his talent, gets respect. An intelligent person, who wastes his talent, cannot compel respect. A less gifted person, who pushes towards the limits of his or her capabilities, does earn respect.
Taking care of oneself
The second way relates to self-care. In antiquity, taking care of oneself meant learning to deal with the pleasures and shortcomings of the body. Augustine believed that man
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could take care of himself by learning how to confess his sins to God. Machiavelli understood taking care of oneself as synonymous with self-protection, for example by raising fear or awe in others.
Nowadays, taking care of oneself usually means that you don’t bother other people. An adult, who is in need, exposes himself to contempt, but an independent person earns respect. This way of earning respect results from society’s abhorrence of parasitism. Modern society is afraid of wasting things but, whether it’s right or not, it is even more afraid of getting drained by unjustified demands. One can thus earn selfrespect by taking care of one self. This has the disadvantage that you lose your selfrespect once you’re unable to take care of yourself.
Helping others
The third way to earn respect is by giving others something back. This is maybe the most universal, timeless and deepest source of appreciation for someone. When we watch a theatre play, we may applaud someone’s virtuosity or the display of talent.
Yet nothing touches us more than someone who gives something back to society. A respectful society runs not only on exchange, but also to a large extent on gifts as voluntary donations.
A design for dignity
According to Sennett our society is the first where the elite proclaims itself to be ‘the standard’. Everyone must be equally enterprising, independent and flexible as society’s most successful representatives. Those who are less successful, or are in need of help, should actually be ashamed of themselves. This means that the weak cannot develop character. The question is how the strong can give any respect to those who are doomed to remain weak. Sennett makes three suggestions: instead of development of talent, we should grant priority to dignity; we should allow adults a justified demand for help; we should let people participate more actively in the design of their own aid and welfare.
The Craftsman was published in 2008 and translated in Dutch as: De ambachtsman.
Again, the central theme of this book is Sennett’s critique of contemporary society. In
The Craftsman Sennett is in search for a new work ethic. He investigates the skills by which craftsmen learn to know and manufacture their material.
For Sennett, craftsmanship means no more and no less than an apprenticeship for work ethics. Craftsmanship is the skill of making things well (Sennett, 2008, p. 8).
Everyone has the capability to become a good craftsman and to further develop him or herself. Sennett envisions a new, more social form of labour, for knowledge
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resulting from developing craft skills reinforces social competences and social skills.
Good craftsmanship is yet another answer to the corrosion of character and society.
Craftsmanship as a result of conscious knowledge and tacit knowledge
What is craftsmanship and how is it acquired? Craftsmanship rests on a long-lasting development of skill. According to a commonly used measure, it requires about ten thousand hours to become a master carpenter or musician. That is fifty weeks of forty hours, for five years long. Knowledge needs to get embedded. The process of embedding by transforming information and practice into unconscious knowledge is essential for every craft.
When we say that we ‘act on instinct’, we usually mean actions which have become such a routine, that we no longer have to think about them. For example, if we would need to consider every bodily movement when we wake up, it would take us an hour to get out of bed (Sennett, 2008, p. 50). Learning a skill refers to a constant interplay between tacit knowledge and self-conscious awareness. The unconscious knowledge, ‘tacit knowledge’, functions as an anchor. The explicit consciousness has a critical function. Typical for the craftsman is the desire to do a job well for its own sake (Sennett, 2008, p. 9). This doesn’t only concern the concrete skill of the craftsman, but also his moral attitude.
Craftsmanship, skills and virtues
According to Sennett, craftsmanship is characterized by three basic abilities:
- The ability to give concrete form to and focus on something important happening in the course of a process.
- The ability to investigate the specific object. The craftsman maintains a critical view towards the process and reflects on his qualities.
- The ability to approach problems in alternative ways. The craftsman is curious, directed towards working with others and motivated to learn from them.
These three abilities can be developed by the combination of mental and manual labour. Good craftsmanship is characterized by learning to cope with resistance, without getting frustrated. The craftsman can improve himself by making mistakes and learning from them. In this sense, learning is a dialectical movement between making mistakes and improving yourself, and for this, the craftsman actually needs others. All the skills need time to get embedded.
This characterizes a good craftsman:
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• A good craftsman knows the importance of an outline and has no blueprint from the start
• A good craftsman is prepared for the confrontation with unforeseen events and obstacles
• A good craftsman avoids to deal with a problem so rigorously that it comes to stand entirely on its own
• A good craftsman avoids perfectionism and doesn’t work for public recognition
• A good craftsman learns when it’s time to stop. To continue would probably do injustice to his efforts
• A good craftsman has at his disposal the virtues of modesty (imperfection), empathy, earnestness, patience, courage and dedication.
Dedication makes the craftsman diligent and attentive in his work. Courage enables the craftsman to take up challenges. Patience enables him to work with routine, to stay focussed and to endure resistance. The sincere attitude with which the craftsman does his work, determines for a large part its quality. Physical coordination and cooperation together create an emphatic attitude, which surpasses the inequality in skills.
The importance of craftsmanship
Why is craftsmanship of such importance? It provides craftsmen with satisfaction and self-respect and it leads to solidarity with others. A craftsman develops a large amount of skills and virtues. This gives him a feeling of competence and increases his self-respect. Craftsmanship is also very important for the development of a social attitude. The skills of craftsmanship are developed according to the rules of practice, handed over by previous generations.
This provides a communal bond between the craftsman and his ancestors, but also between fellow craftsmen through their practice of the same craft (Sennett, o.c., p.
22). Cooperation does not arise when people practice a craft while working alone.
We cannot assume that everyone can master a skill to the same extent, but precisely by practicing together, craftsmen can improve themselves and each other. Usually, it is only when people aim towards the same goal, and support each other in this aim, that people become truly connected.
This ultimately implies a societal interest. Craftsmanship helps us to understand our relationships with others in a new way. The mutual handling of material and technique by craftsmen shows that moral improvement is a social learning process.
Craftsmanship teaches us something about how we can improve society: by working together and being mutually committed to a practice like craftsmen, in all kinds of contexts of personal and public life. That is Richard Sennett’s message in
The Craftsman.
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The Craftsman’s final chapter expresses the moral tenor of Sennett’s project. “We want the shared ability to work to teach us how to govern ourselves and to connect to other citizens on common ground.” (o.c., p. 269). This is the moral impetus of
Sennett’s entire oeuvre. In the dynamics of flexible capitalism, both qualities of character – autonomy and connection - become undermined. People and society are corroded.
Because people have no steady jobs anymore, and because of the sort of jobs they have, their self-confidence and self-respect becomes affected. Their character becomes ‘corroded’, for they cannot build up any routine, they lose permanence and patience and do no longer learn to conquer any resistance. For the same reasons, every possible form of community is undermined, since people cooperate less with each other, do not learn from one another and therefore cannot develop any loyalty and mutual trust. People lose their resilience and their self-confidence to cope with mutual differences. In philosophical terms, all three values of the Enlightenment are at stake: Freedom, Equality and Fraternity. Meanwhile, the economic differences between rich and poor are increasing. Individuals, groups, and whole communities are alienated from each other.
The method of his critical sociology is described by Sennett as ‘cultural materialism’: the attempt to determine very pragmatically, in all kind of contexts, how people can get mutually involved via collective practices, and can redevelop selfrespect and mutual respect (Sennett, 2008, p. 7). Sennett keeps himself at a great distance from any idealistic type of morality, which imposes top down values and virtues on human actions and practices. Pragmatism wants to emphasize the value of asking ethical questions during the work process; it contests after-the-fact ethics, that is: ethical enquiry beginning only after the facts on the ground are fixed. However, morality does not arise directly from craftsmanship. “Craftsmanship is, from an ethical point of view, ambiguous.” (Sennett, 2008, p. 11). Acquiring a moral attitude of respect, both of self-respect and mutual respect, can only take place in and through practices. These practices are a necessary, but not a sufficient condition. For example, it is possible that the craftsman morally implodes, and uses his craftsmanship only to make as much money as possible. This possibility can never be excluded in late modern life.
This is the bottom line in Sennett’s work: his aversion from independence as the dominant hypergood in neoliberal morality. Sennett’s work is mainly about the values of equality and fraternity. He wants to emphasize respect for people who are lower in the social hierarchy, and more generally, he is concerned with promoting mutual respect.
For Sennett, enhancing human dignity is a much more important ideal than the dominant neoliberal moral ideal of self-determination and self-actualization. The neoliberal idea of freedom is usually restricted to striving for independence. This is a disastrous development, precisely because this tendency undermines the social cohesion among people. Moreover, this endeavour excludes those who are less self-
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sufficient and who are seen, because of their lack of autonomy, as the losers of our capitalist society.
There are good grounds, theoretical and practical, to participate in Sennett’s mission. Sennett is of course right in his view that raw capitalism makes many casualties and stirs up many forms of immorality. Spoken generally, postmodern society refers to the dominance of markets, media and technology, at the cost of religion, morality and philosophy. In view of this situation, Sennett does not resort to communitarian ideas nor does he take a moralistic stance. Moreover, there are concrete possibilities for the implementation of his suggestions. A good example is provided by an initiative of the Dutch philosopher Henk Oosterling. Partially based on Sennett’s work, he has developed a large project in Rotterdam for native and foreign youth where they learn cooking, gardening, judo and philosophy. This is an educational project, in which youngsters, by growing vegetables together, cooking together, practicing martial arts together, and learning to think and argue together, develop their autonomy and their solidarity, as well as responsibility. Such a project is much more effective than teaching morality. In other words, Sennett’s ideas can be fruitfully turned into practice.
My main point of critique concerns Sennett’s vision of freedom. Since he wrote The fall of public man (1977), he seems to reduce all attempts of self-actualization to the terror of intimacy. This is a blind spot, which Sennett shares with many critical sociologists. Presently, there are enough well known philosophers who convincingly show and legitimize the deeply social content of the search for autonomy, authenticity and moral self-development. Adopting these perspectives would provide, to use
Sennett’s favourite music-metaphor, a new sound and even a new register in his in this respect somewhat monotonous late work.
Sennett, Richard (1998). The Corrosion of Character. The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism.
New York/London: W. W. Norton & Company.
Sennett, Richard (2003). Respect. The formation of character in an age of Inequality . New York/London: W. W.
Norton & Company Inc.
Sennett, Richard (2008). The craftsman . London: Penguins Books Ltd.
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