“Of course, the original meaning of the concept of “leisure” has practically been forgotten in today’s leisure-less culture of “total work”: in order to win our way to a real understanding of leisure, we must confront the contradiction that rises from our overemphasis on the world of work. “One does not only work in order to live, but one lives for the sake of one’s work,” this statement, quoted by Max Weber, makes immediate sense to us, and appeals to current opinion. It is difficult for us to see how in fact it turns the order of things upside-down.”

And what would be our response to another statement? “We work in order to be at leisure.” Would we hesitate to say that here the world is really turned upside-down? Doesn’t this statement appear almost immoral to the man or woman of the world of “total work”? Is it not an attack on the basic principles of human society?

Now, I have not merely constructed a sentence to prove a point. The statement was actually made–by Aristotle. Yes, Aristotle: the sober, industrious realist, and the fact that he said it, gives the statement special significance. What he says in a more literal translation would be: “We are not-at-leisure in order to be-at-leisure.” For the Greeks, “not-leisure” was the word for the world of everyday work; and not only to indicate its “hustle and bustle,” but the work itself…

…the Greeks would probably not have understood our maxims about “work for the sake of work.” Could this also imply that people in our day no longer have direct access to the original meaning of leisure?”

Joseph Pieper, Leisure, the Basis of Culture, (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 1998 [orig. 1948]), 4 – 5.