Leisure: The Basis of Culture

This is one interesting book. Like most people with true insight Pieper starts his analysis by noting that the very root of the word "leisure" is scola in Latin, schule in German, school in English. The original meaning of leisure has been lost in our culture of "total work". He notes that Max Weber made a statement that "One does not only work in order to live, but one lives for the sake of one's work",. This statement makes only to much sense to us today. In fact how many times have you heard someone use the word work as a noun or pronoun as in "I have to go to my work". The second part of the book is fairly dense as you might expect for a traditional book of philosophical analysis but the first section is approachable and well worth your time. We seem to have a vision of work and life that is upside down, treating work as paramount, boasting of the hours we spend on this project or that, as if using our most precious "commodity" time, something which is unrecoverable and hence invaluable, to secure the means to vacation as the greatest measure of our character and nature. Not! Leisure is not simply not working like a lunch break or a day off work, it is contemplative, restorative, a singularly human endeavor.