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One of the most important philosophy titles published in the twentieth century, Joseph Pieper's Leisure, the Basis of Culture is more significant, even more crucial than it was when it first appeared fifty years ago. Pieper shows that Greeks understood and valued leisure, as did the medieval Europeans. He points out that religion can be born only in leisure. Leisure that allows time for the contemplation of the nature of God. Leisure has been, and always will be, the first foundation of any culture. He maintains that our bourgeois world of total labor has vanquished leisure, and issues a startling warning: Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for nonactivity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our cultureCand ourselves. These astonishing essays contradict all our pragmatic and puritanical conceptions about labor and leisure; Joseph Pieper demolishes the twentieth-century cult of Awork as he predicts its destructive consequences.… (more)
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It is important to understand that Pieper stands in part in the tradition of the Romantic German Idealists. At least, epistemologically. Much of his argumentation is intuitive, and his discussion of "spirit" reminds me of Hegel. I find myself agreeing with many, if not most, of his definitions and assertions, but I find any grounds for such beliefs to be left as an exercise for the reader, or perhaps he considers these assertions to be self-evident from within. I would contrast Pieper with C. S. Lewis, who always searches for the grounds and justification for holding any belief, theologically, philosophically, or even matters of fact.
The problem with Pieper argument should have been clear to him: you cannot say that leisure is identical with worship; and that 'worship is either something 'given'... or it does not exist at all,'; and that 'no one need expect a genuine religious worship... to arise on purely human foundations,'; and then argue that the decline in leisure is lamentable. If it's not up to us, we can't lament it. The alternative, of course, is that the decline in leisure/worship is caused by very humanly founded things like economic demands, and that the best way to encourage worship is to make worship an actual intellectual possibility for people. Aristotle was right, the good life requires leisure/worship. Aristotle meant that the only people who could 'worship' were 'free' of economic necessity. Conclusion: increase the number of people free of economic necessity, and you'll make worship more possible for more people. That's pretty easy to do. Pieper doesn't mention the possibility, because of that fear of human foundations.
The greatest intellectual shame of the twentieth century, and continuing into this one, is that people like Pieper never read people like Marcuse (and so never thought 'oh, hey, perhaps we can get what we want with a stronger social welfare state!', and that people who read Marcuse never read people like Pieper (and so never thought 'oh, hey! Perhaps just bonking everyone isn't the solution to our problems!'). If they could have corrected each other, we might have avoided a few potholes on our road to liberation/sanctification.