Last book to cap off the summer season before I dig into my stack for the fall/winter. I take book recommendations seriously, especially recommendations from smart people. Someone I watch on YouTube recommended this.
Josef Pieper is a German philosopher who references a lot of Plato and St. Thomas Aquinas. In Leisure, Pieper defines leisure not as idleness or boredom or mere rest. Actually, leisure is the opposite of being idle or bored. Leisure is contemplation. Leisure reinforces reality. Leisure is the rejection of utilitarian (service) work. Leisure is intellectual, philosophical work. Leisure doesn’t produce things that are particularly useful like the world of “total work” because leisure is the product itself; it is an end in itself, which is precisely what studying philosophy and history and art is. Pieper makes a good argument for USELESSNESS. Leisure transcends the world of service oriented work.
Another important point Pieper makes is that leisure is divine worship, and that’s what makes it the basis of culture. Pieper breaks down the etymology of culture. Culture comes from CULTUS, cultus comes the Latin word COLERE. The meaning: to tend to, to care for, to CULTivate. In other words, culture literally means to worship. When you tend to or care for something, you are worshipping it. Leisure is divine worship. Did you know the word school is borrowed from the Greek word schole, which means leisure? School literally means leisure.
Anyway, this is a very coherent book. Readers don’t have to struggle through dense prose. It’s very accessible and written in plain language. It’s also short, and it includes Pieper’s notion of the philosophical act transcending the world of work.
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