*These intellectuals of the French “Ancien Regime” are really working the class distinctions between art and technology here. Mere mechanical craft is something you’re forced to do in order to be made to be useful to others, and is mostly crass labor you could do as a repeated routine with a blindfold on. While art is maybe laborious, but more of a spiritual exploration by someone of a more noble status who doesn’t allow himself to be compelled to crank out repetitious market commodities.<\/p>\n
*These low-engineering\/fine-art distinctions may seem pretty old-fashioned, until you reach the present day, when a tiny trillionaire aristocracy is inventing mass-production machines that can crank out novels, paintings and thriller-movies at the press of a button. Then one can perceive that, my goodness, oligarchy and class-war distinctions among the social Estates can indeed become a thing.<\/p>\n
*As for the Encyclopedists themselves, they were stern progressives. “…what difference is there really between a head filled with unconnected facts lacking any order or usefulness, and the instinct of a craftsman reduced to mechanical execution?\u201d In other words, if you’re just some free-spirited dilettante hacking around in the studio-lab, a mechanical-artist merely expressing yourself, then what’s the consequential difference between some aimless social-butterfly like you, and some grimy leather-aproned peon pounding an anvil? You’re not a disciplined soldier of the Enlightenment, you’re just some indolent, scatterbrained hacker weirdo.<\/p>\n
Alessandro Conti, “History of the Restoration and Conservation of Works of Art”: <\/p>\n
… it was in France that this interest in the mechanical arts manifested itself always more clearly, and was one of the inspirations behind the Encyclop\u00e9die. In the preliminary discussion to that great work, d\u2019Alembert makes the distinction between the mechanical and the liberal arts:<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the mechanical arts depend on manual operation and are, if I might be allowed to use the term, subject to a kind of blind practice, they have been left to those men whom prejudice has placed in the lowliest positions. Indigence, which has forced these men to apply themselves to such [mechanical] tasks, more often than their desires or inclinations might have directed, has subsequently become a reason for despising them, so much does it harm that which it accompanies. As far as those operations of the free spirit are concerned, they have become the prerogative of those who have felt themselves privileged by nature. However, the superiority of the liberal arts over the mechanical ones, because of the travail they demand of the spirit and because of the difficulty of excelling in them, is sufficiently compensated by the much greater usefulness
\nwhich, by and large, the latter procure us. It is this very utility which has pushed us to reduce them to purely mechanical operations, in order to facilitate their access to a greater number of men. But society, although it must duly respect the great geniuses which illuminate it, must not revile the hands which serve it \u2026 and what difference is there really between a head filled with unconnected facts lacking any order or usefulness, and the instinct of a craftsman reduced to
\nmechanical execution?\u201d<\/p>\n
Diderot analysed the distinction between the liberal and the mechanical arts even more radically under the heading \u201cArt\u201d:<\/p>\n
\u201calthough there is some foundation [for this distinction], it has had a bad effect, debasing highly respectable and highly skilled people and reinforcing in us a tendency towards laziness, which has already led us to believe too easily, that to apply oneself with constancy and continuity to particular material tasks was in some way to detract from the dignity of the human spirit; and that to practise or even just to study the mechanical arts entailed lowering oneself to study things which were laborious, the meditation of which was ignoble, the exposition difficult, the commerce dishonourable, the number without end, and the value minimal. On one side of the scales lay the true advantages of the most sublime sciences and the most honoured arts, and on the other the mechanical arts, and you will note that the esteem in which one and the other are held is not distributed proportionately to the advantages, and that the men who have done their best to make us believe that we are happy have been much more highly praised than those who have done their best to truly make us so\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cLes Arts M\u00e9chaniques d\u00e9pendans d\u2019une operation manuelle, & asservis, qu\u2019on me permette ce terme, \u00e0 une esp\u00e8ce de routine, ont \u00e9t\u00e9 abandonn\u00e9s \u00e0 ceux d\u2019entre les hommes que les pr\u00e9jug\u00e9s ont plac\u00e9s dans la classe la plus inf\u00e9rieure. L\u2019indigence qui a forc\u00e9 ces hommes \u00e0 s\u2019appliquer \u00e0 un pareil travail, plus souvent que le go\u00fbt & le g\u00e9nie ne les a entrain\u00e9s, est devenue ensuite une raison pour les m\u00e9priser, tant elle nuit \u00e0 tout ce qui l\u2019accompagne. A l\u2019\u00e9gard des op\u00e9rations libres de l\u2019esprit, elles ont \u00e9t\u00e9 le partage de ceux qui se sont crus sur ce point les plus favoris\u00e9s de la Nature. Cependant, l\u2019avantage que les arts lib\u00e9raux ont sur les arts m\u00e9caniques, par le travail que les premiers exigent de l\u2019esprit, & par la difficult\u00e9 d\u2019y exceller, est suffisamment compens\u00e9 par l\u2019utilit\u00e9 bien sup\u00e9rieure que les derniers nous procurent pour lpl\u00fbpart. C\u2019est cette utilit\u00e9 m\u00eame qui a forc\u00e9 de les reduire \u00e0 des op\u00e9rations purement machinales, pour en faciliter la pratique \u00e0 un plus grand nombre d\u2019hommes. Mais la soci\u00e9t\u00e9, en respectant avec justice les grands g\u00e9nies qui l\u2019\u00e9clarent, ne doit point avilir les mains qui la servent \u2026. quelle diff\u00e9rence r\u00e9elle y-a-t-il entre une t\u00eate remplie de faits sans ordre, sans usage, sans liaison, &
\nl\u2019instinct d\u2019un artisan r\u00e9duit \u00e0 l\u2019ex\u00e9cution machinale?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201ccette distinction, quoique bien fond\u00e9e, a produit un mauvais effet, en avilissant des gens tr\u00e9s estimables & tr\u00e9s utiles, & en fortifiant en nous je ne sais quelle pareses naturelle, qui ne nous portrait d\u00e9j\u00e0 que trop \u00e0 croire que donner une application constante & suivie \u00e0 des exp\u00e9riences & \u00e0 des objets particuliers, sensibles & mat\u00e9riels, c\u2019\u00e9tait d\u00e9roger \u00e0 la dignit\u00e9 del\u2019esprit humain; & que de pratiquer ou m\u00eamed\u2019\u00e9tudier les arts m\u00e9caniques, c\u2019\u00e9tqit de s\u2019abaisser \u00e0 des choses dont la recherche est laborieuse, la m\u00e9ditation ignoble, l\u2019exposition difficile, le commerce deshonorant, le nombre in\u00e9puisable, & la valeur minutielle \u2026 Mettez dans une balance les avantages r\u00e9els des sciences les plus sublimes & des arts les plus honor\u00e9s, & dans l\u2019autre c\u00f4t\u00e9 ceux des arts m\u00e9caniques, & vous trouverez que l\u2019estime qu\u2019on a faite des uns & des autres, n\u2019ont pas \u00e9t\u00e9 distribu\u00e9es dans le juste rapport de ces avantages, & qu\u2019on a bien plus lou\u00e9 les hommes occup\u00e9s \u00e0 faire croire que nous \u00e9tions heureux, que les hommes occup\u00e9s \u00e0 faire que nous le fussions en effet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
*These intellectuals of the French “Ancien Regime” are really working the class distinctions between art and technology here. Mere mechanical craft is something you’re forced to do in order to be made to be useful to others, and is mostly crass labor you could do as a repeated routine with a blindfold on. While art […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"yoast_head":"\n