Pieper
The relationship between work and a good or happy life has beenunderstood differently throughout history. As Josef Pieper notes inLeisure: The Basis of Culture, the modern world has come to see work as anend in and of itself, while the ancient world saw that true living wasthrough leisure, rather than work. Pieper suggests that it is the modernwork ethic that has fundamentally vanquished leisure from modern life. Asa result, he argues that our culture will ultimately be destroyed unless welearn to make time for reflection, and to understand beauty, truth and Pieper is one of the most well-read religious philosophers of themodern era. He was a professor at the University of Munster, West Germany. He has written a number of influential books, including Faith, Hope, Love,Four Cardinal Virtues, Abuse of Language Abuse of Power, and Happiness and Josef Pieper's book, Leisure: The Basis of Culture provides athoughtful insight into the nature and value of work and leisure, and howthese relate to a good or happy life. He notes that in the modern world,we have deeply internalized the Weberian protestant work ethic, or work for
Another can be through brute force (such as slavery), or throughspiritually impoverishment, or the inability for leisure. There are three main ways in which men may become stuck at the levelof the proletariat, or compelled to work. As such, leisure as a contemplativeand calm state that brings joy cannot be seen as the same as sloth. Pieper writes,through religion "man, 'who is born to work,' may truly be transported outof the weariness of daily labor into an unending holiday, carried away outof the straitness of the workaday world into the heart of the universe. Pieper quotes Max Weber, in the modern world, "onedoes not work to live; one lives to work". In the modern view, sloth is simpleinactivity, and as such work becomes the opposite of sloth. Work was onlyseen as a means to continue living, and one of the highest forms of livingwas through leisure. Instead, sloth is sadness about life that results indiscouragement and inactivity. In contrast, productive labor, and especially labor with amonetary reward, is an end in and of itself, rather than simply being ameans to achieve goals. In as much,work becomes a virtue by its simple opposition to the sin of sloth. Sloth is a sadness of the soul that cannotfind spiritual rest through leisure. Through the Christian religion, or cultus, man must learn to celebratevisibly, and be carried away from the world of work. Leisure is atbest a secondary pursuit, to be done after work is completed, and has noreal value. Instead, the frenzied work-for-work's sake that we often see in the modernworld is ultimately rooted in the flight from the sadness about life thatcharacterizes sloth.
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Acceptance Essays
