A work of enduring significance from the twentieth century is Josef Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture.  In this book, which contains a pair of essays, Pieper's main argument is that we live in bondage under a world of total work, in which there is no time or space for leisure and, ultimately, connection with the mystery that is behind it all, namely God. 

This does not seem a controversial thesis.  We only need to glance around to notice how frazzled we are as individuals and as a culture, because we are overburdened with toil.  One need only visit a shopping centre on a Sunday to witness the decline in reverence given to the Sabbath.  It is hard for the Lord to be worshipped if the shops are open, if we have assignments or readings to do for the week, if we are given work to do on the weekend, or simply are just too tired because of the working week we have had.  We live in a culture whereby work is privileged for its own sake.  How often is it the case that the first thing we ask and are asked when meeting someone is “what do you do?”?

Whether this idolatry of work for its own sake is a function of the capitalist economy in which we live and work, or a cultural phenomenon that goes back to the advent of utilitarianism, I’m not entirely sure.  Pieper himself might lead the way to explanation when he describes the disjuncture between ancient and medieval philosophy, and modern philosophy as begun by Immanuel Kant.  As Pieper explains, the ancients and medievals recognised that all individuals have two mental capacities; that of the intellectus and that of the ratio.  The intellectus, according to these philosophers, is the receptive capacity within us all which allows us simply to know, or be related to, Being itself.  Thus, there are some things that we know simply by being human and not because of any work we’ve done ourselves.  The other part of our intellect is the ratio, the part of our mind that acts discursively, that is, that part which deduces knowledge and works to build on it.  In comparison, Kant did not recognize that we have the intellectus, but only the ratio.  Thus, all human knowledge comes from our own work and is not a gift from God.  Such an attitude, of course, is part and parcel of modernism’s make-up; “we don’t need God because we can figure it all out for ourselves.”  Whatever the historical and cultural explanations for its prevalence, it seems clear that we live in a world dedicated to work for its own sake and, what’s worse, with it having no real, eternal benefit, precisely because it has no connection to our Creator.

So how is that we overturn this modern trend and recapture what, for Pieper, is the basis of culture?  His answer is that we need, at some stage, to be at leisure.  As he points out, however, “leisure” is often understood in a pejorative sense today. Leisure, for many, is the epitome of laziness, idleness and sloth.  This is because leisure has no utility, no output which is useful in an economic or materialist sense.  And this, of course, is why work is so important to the modern person.  But Pieper does a bit of historical philosophical work to completely invert this understanding of work and leisure.  For the ancients and medievals, following the insight provided to us by Aristotle, “we are not-at-leisure in order to be at leisure”.  Thus, work properly understood, is done precisely so we do not have to work. 

But what about the issue of idleness; is this merely an excuse for us to be lazy? No, says Pieper! Acedia, the Latin term for sloth and idleness, did not mean a failure to work.  Acedia actually refers to when an individual gives up hoping and trying to be what “God wants him to be”.  In other words, slothfulness is not about not-working, but it is about not-working to our intended end, that is, a loving union with God Himself.  Now, it is clear that in our modern workaday world, it is very hard for us to be ourselves.  Not only is it because our culture has an understanding of the body and sexuality completely divorced from what the body and sexuality is meant to be about, but, perhaps more importantly, we don’t have an interior stillness that allows us to connect with God.  Our everyday business is not bringing us closer to whom we’re meant to be, but is rather a form of idleness, an idleness borne of a fear or inability to sit still and recognize our own smallness and vulnerability.  I can only speak from personal experience, but it seems that many desires that I have had to listen to music, watch TV, play computer games, or even to read, comes from an inability to confront how small and sinful I am and how utterly dependent I am upon Christ and God.  Of course, these are all valid activities in their proper context, but when the distractions of modern life drown out our interior life, they become highly problematic, because they drown out the interior stillness necessary for communion with God.

So what is the solution? Pieper seems to give two answers.  The first and most fundamental point is that leisure is inextricably linked to ‘festival’, and festival, understood properly is fundamentally connected to worship.  This is because religious worship, especially in its highest form (the Catholic Mass), involves the carving out of time and space that is not ‘useful’ to the workaday world but is in fact a time and space given completely over to God.  It also involves sacrifice..  In the Christian form, it also involves sacrament, which in the form of the Holy Eucharist is the meeting of heaven and earth, God and creature.

Leisure also involves, fundamentally philosophising, the subject of which is the concern of the second essay.  And philosophy is mainly concerned with wonder.  As Pieper says:

“The inner orientation of wonder does not aim for the stirring up of doubt, but rather the recognition that being as being is incomprehensible and full of mystery: that being itself is a mystery (because the) …light that it sheds is unfathomable, unquenchable, inexhaustible.”

As such, it behooves us to try to distill Pieper’s arguments and live them out in our own lives.  At the very least, it means attendance at Sunday Mass and an active participation in the sacrifice that takes place in Holy Mass.  This does not necessarily mean reading or serving at Mass, but concentrating throughout, joining our minds and voices to the Church’s prayer and, perhaps most importantly, listening to the Lord after we receive Holy Communion.  We should also not do any work but that which is necessary on Sundays.  We should seek quiet in our lives and time daily for prayer.  Above all, we should always ask the Lord for that interior stillness that allows us always to be at prayer and in communion with Him.