3 min. read
We often think of “leisure” as laid back time, nothing to do, nothing to worry about. But leisure is not idleness. A more robust understanding of leisure is informed by classical Greek and Roman thought which sees leisure as an attitude of the mind or condition of the soul. Leisure is the inner space to foster receptivity to physical and spiritual realities.
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Josef Pieper on Leisure
Leisure is the capacity that opens us up to higher things. It is not a break from work, in the sense of “leisure time.” It can be experienced under any circumstances, in any context, when an individual focuses on the life of the mind.
It may help us to think of leisure in terms of the posture of our souls, rather than anything to do with our schedules. In this way, it can be experienced at any time, at any place.
Josef Pieper, in his seminal work Leisure: The Basis of Culture, claims that something always happens in the realm of leisure: “the sphere of the ‘specifically human’ can, over and again, be left behind.” At first blush, this notion seems fantastical and hardly based in the practicality of everyday reality. To be un-leisurely in order to experience leisure seems so paradoxical for us to at once be impossible. How can we be leisurely when we have hectic jobs, families, societal obligations, etc?
If we were to accept Pieper’s assertion that this is indeed possible in order to be the basis of culture, how does the busy individual, once aware of the need for leisure, engage in it without sacrificing what is necessary for subsistence and existence? Pieper gives us a few clues.
Sacrifice
First is the notion of sacrifice. There must be some sacrifice in order to experience leisure. The sacrifice required must have an end, a purpose, what is classically called a telos. This purpose is not to master our natural bent, as Immanuel Kant suggests. Rather, Pieper turns to Aquinas who says that sacrificing toward virtue “makes us perfect by enabling us to follow our natural bent in the right way.” Considered in this light — sacrifice that leads us to follow naturally in the right way — leisure evolves as an effortlessness that knows nothing of difficulty.
Gift
This leads to Pieper’s most revealing clue. This is not something to be attained through strained effort, nor sacrifice without purpose. Instead, leisure becomes gift. Gift becomes the antithesis of sloth which is Kierkegaard’s “despair from weakness.” More specifically, it is gift received that is sloth’s antithesis. The individual’s happiness and cheerful affirmation of his own natural being results from his “acquiescence in the world and in God — which is to say love.” Consequently, leisureliness becomes the opposite of both idleness and the incapacity for it.
Sacrifice + Gift = Worship
There is perhaps too much of the mystical in Pieper’s narrative of leisure. And yet, this is no denial of practicality, but an awareness of, and willingness to not be completely dominated by, the principle of rational utilization. The whole thesis of leisure is situated on a decisive result that cannot be achieved through action, but can only be hoped for by receiving the gift.
Here we see the crux of Pieper’s argument entirely dependent on worship as historically illustrated in the Christian cultus. In worship, sacrifice and sacrament express themselves co-equally in the practically mystical posture of that which is gift. If it is not a gift, then it does not exist at all.
This understanding of leisure in 2016 US America certainly appears to be tenuous. The realization and experience of leisure cannot be achieved, nor controlled, nor created by human effort. Only in sacrifice with purpose, intending toward worship, can this mystically practical gift be received.
Pieper’s argument for this specific leisure is convincing, primarily because it is not totally dependent on, nor bookended with, reason only. The allowance of paradox strengthens the case.
So may we embrace the paradox, and through purposeful sacrifice, receive the gift of leisure. May we discover the space to be awed by new realities.