work

Festivity and Work

“To celebrate a festival means to do something which is in no way tied to other goals, which has been removed from all “so that” and “in order to.” True festivity cannot be imagined as residing anywhere but in the realm of activity that is meaningful in itself.

The further implication is, then, that anyone who is at a loss to say what activity that is meaningful in itself is will also be at a loss to define the concept of festivity. And if that incapacity is existential, instead of merely intellectual, then the prerequisite for achieving any kind of festivity is lacking. With the death of the concept of human activity that is meaningful in itself, the possibility of any resistance to a totalitarian laboring society also perishes (and such a regime could very well be established even without concomitant political dictatorship). It then becomes a sheer impossibility to establish and maintain an area of existence which is not preempted by work.”

Joseph Pieper, In Tune with the World: a Theory of Festivity, (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 1999 [orig. 1963]), 9.

Work as “Not-Leisure”

“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.