Abstract

Prompted by Heidegger’s search for great art in the modern times, this paper looks into crafts as answering the philosopher’s frustrated call. Using Soetsu Yanagi’s idea of a “religion of beauty,” which turns to the ordinary as beautiful, it suggests that crafts—carefully made by hand while considering its affinity with nature and the human body that uses it—is a way of being, the way Heidegger described the way of “dwelling poetically.”