Sedulous, Save Thyself!
From the Unwitting Ignorance that will Inevitably Produce a Totalitarian Work State
The totalitarian work state is the clear historical consequence of our faulty understanding of the concept of leisure, argues Josef Pieper in his little book, Only the Lover Sings.
Perhaps, this statement comes across as rather alarmist to our modernist sensibilities since we live in a period of history where few still work everyday for mere survival, and vacations and “weekends” are normal occurrences—for most Westerners any way.
Nevertheless, we demonstrate our true ignorance of the word’s meaning and significance every time we casually interchange for the word leisure—whether in conversations or in thought—words like recreation, entertainment, and amusement. All of these, by definition, are means of providing respite from work.
Let us consider each, respectively.
Recreation is defined as “activity done for enjoyment when one is not working,” and comes etymologically into our usage through the Latin “recreation” from Anglo-Norman recreare and means, quite literally, to create again or renew.
Entertainment comes from two Latin words, inter (among) + tenere (to hold). Entertain originally meant to maintain or continue; later it shifted slightly to mean maintain in a certain condition, which is where we get our understanding of showing hospitality or holding someone’s attention—usually by means of creating an enjoyable experience.
This brings us finally to amusement. Amusement comes into modern English usage from the French, amuser, which means to divert one’s attention.
The only thing leisure has in common with the previous terms is all of them are not work. Yet, as Aristotle has acutely noted, leisure is that for which work is done. The others are what we do so we can return to work. We refresh ourselves, divert our attention, and recuperate strength so that we can return to our work.
Additionally, work—just like recreation, entertainment, and amusement—is also that which is done for something else, for some higher purpose. We work so we can eat, pay our bills, and have money to buy things we need or want. Work is a noble activity but it is also a servile activity. Work allows us to produce so we can consume. But why do we consume?
Before going any further in my argument, I find it necessary to digress momentarily at this point to highlight another confusion that exists in modern thought, the misleading dichotomy of the sedulous and the sluggard.
By sedulous, I mean the diligent worker. The one who is not only gainfully employed, but works overtime, is industrious, and “beats the bushes” as it were. His opposite is the sluggard of the biblical variety. He is slothful, shiftless, a real slacker! He is too lazy to lift his hand to his mouth, to roll himself out of bed, and has a million-and-one excuses for not going to work (e.g., there is a lion in the street). The former is always busy; the latter milks the state’s welfare system.
I highlight this dichotomy because while it is true that for most rational people, the sedulous are praiseworthy and the sluggards are odious, a largely industrialized, capitalist society like our own will far more often than it realizes (or like to admit), idolize work as a thing which can or should be done for it’s own sake.
The unwitting irony in the narrative of so many neoconservative politicians is too perspicuous to ignore. While pontificating on merits of only seeking a marketable degree that will land the graduate a good-paying job, all the while slandering the liberal arts, these politicians and pundits fail to remember a time when Western society made an important distinction between liberal and servile arts.
However obscene the latter term is to modern sensibilities, the distinction is important for keeping before our faces the hard fact that work is characteristically slavish. Had modern conservatives so-called actually conserved this meritorious distinction, perhaps the aforementioned misleading dichotomy (i.e., sedulous versus sluggard) would not have entrapped the minds of so many of the sedulous by making work more than it is—something done for its own sake rather than something done for the sake of something else.1
That “something else,” Pieper rightfully argues, is leisure, a term associated with liberal arts (from the Latin liberalis or liber), those arts which are suitable for a free man, but also serve to free men—not from work entirely—but from totalitarian servitude.
The word leisure comes from the Latin, licere, which means to be allowed. Here we should be able to make a few essential observations.
To flourish as a human being, we need to recognize that work is not an end in itself, but something we do, and do well, so that we can have leisure—so that we can engage in those things which are good or meaningful for their own sakes. This would then exclude recreation, entertainment, and amusement.
To be clear, the point is not to divest oneself of meaningful work, recreation, entertainment, or amusement. Those are important human activities. The point is to recognize there is something else for which we do all those things, something that is good for its own sake, not for the sake of something else.
Thus, in closing, we are left to answer the ultimate question this short essay raises: What is the point of leisure? What can we rightfully elucidate as something done for its own sake, an activity meaningful in itself? If we cannot answer this question, we have not yet discovered the meaning of our existence and will never be able to justify ourselves apart from our economic usefulness to society.
This is a question every person must answer for him or herself, but Pieper’s assertion is very much worth considering and that is what I’ll take up in next week’s post, so be sure to subscribe if you’re reading this on social media or somewhere other than your inbox.
Addressing the true sluggards here is irrelevant to this point since their problem is something entirely different; they are neither servants of work nor possessors of leisure.
That’s a fairly low view of work that corresponds to Augustinian and perhaps other classical lines but is out of step with Protestant and even recent RC opinions (Laborem Exorcems, JPII). Barth would also agree.