Where character forbids self-indulgence, transcendence still hovers around.
–Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences.
Weaver is arguing that the contemporary loss of pride in craftsmanship (think industrialism and consumerism) is due, foundationally, to the abandonment of the ideals, the abandonment of the abstract true and good. When workers are living in right accord with the transcendent, the result will be that their work is the translating, or the fleshing out, of the ideals, “a bringing of the ideal from potentiality into actuality.”
However, we have abandoned the ideals and now give supreme value to what works, to the practical. Weaver tells us the inevitable result:
When utilitarianism becomes enthroned and the worker is taught that work is use and not worship, interest in quality begins to decline.
The road to the recovery of craftsmanship in work is the fresh remembrance that all of our work is to be bringing the ideals to life, interpreting that which is transcendent. More so, it is looking to the One in whom all truth is sourced. Essentially, it is the realization that all of life is worship before the holy and triune God. It is Luther’s realization of Coram Deo: we live every second of every day before the face of The Almighty. It is the glad acceptance of the believer’s position in Christ, and the ambitious obedience of our Lord’s commands.
Jacob G. Hanby 