During a conference I attended a while back at the University of Notre Dame I was present at a lecture given by Alasdair MacIntyre. Actually, it would be more accurate to call it a “lecturing” in which he accused his American audience of “not knowing what to do with leisure.” “I,” he continued in his Scottish brogue, “can read Homer in Greek; you can’t!” Of course, if it weren’t for the pompousness with which he expressed himself, no one would doubt that reading Homer in Greek is a laudable feat, indeed something about which one might boast, but has anyone thought whether or not one should do so during his leisure time? I dare say that, owing in large part to the values of today’s culture, the thought of even asking such a question could hardly arise among large portions of the population. Leisure is, after all, that time in which one “relaxes” and “entertains oneself,” so we are told. It is hardly time meant for expending great amounts of effort and energy doing such things as reading an ancient poet in his original language.
Now I am not suggesting that leisure is inexorably connected with the activity of reading, but MacIntyre’s comments does have the value of raising a question to which many would presume they already know the answer: what is leisure, what does one do during leisure time? As a teacher, I have had the opportunity to put this very question to my students. In reply, the overwhelming number of them answer that during their leisure they watch television, play video games, sleep, go to or watch sporting events, etc. In short, one does whatever he can to amuse himself, for it is in such amusements that relaxation can be found. Amusement, and its accompanying relaxation, is an important part of human existence. Through it, we recuperate our spent energies—energies spent at work—so that once Monday comes around we can resume work. One might make the observation, then, that “I relax so that I may recuperate; I recuperate so that I may work.”
But is human existence merely for the sake of work? Do we really live so that, as Max Weber suggests, we may work? Or do we work so that we can keep the party going, that is, is it really the case that, as the 1980s Loverboy contends, “everybody’s working for the weekend,” for amusement? I think it safe to say that in our present culture the latter prevails. During my time in college I recall having a roommate who did nothing but sleep from 4am to 4pm and during 4pm to 4am would play only video games. His studies deteriorated, as did his relationships and the sanitary conditions in his part of the room. (In fact, so neglected was his hygiene because of his absorption in playing his video games that he actually had patches of fungi growing from his bed sheets, or at least what once used to be his bed sheets!) Here, then, was someone who lived only for amusement, for entertainment, but rather than achieve any kind of human flourishing or excellence sank to a virtually sub-human level, to the merely animalistic. Of course, his example is an extreme one and not all who live for amusement do so to the same degree as he. Yet, here I think Aristotle makes a good observation: “[I]t would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer all our life long merely to amuse ourselves” (Nicomachean Ethics 10.6.1176b28-30).
It would seem, then, that we amuse ourselves for the purposes of relaxation, and relaxation for the sake of work. But is the claim that human life is merely for the sake of work any more intelligible than the claim that it is for the sake of amusement? One might consider that through work, one ultimately procures, either directly or indirectly, those necessities that are necessary for the sustenance of life: food, water, clothing, shelter, etc. Through work one sustains life itself, but if taken only so far, what has one really achieved except a kind of animal-like existence? After all don’t animals toil day in and out to obtain those things they need to survive and continue the species, beyond which concerns there is nothing more. But if we are other than merely animal life, superior and nobler, then life itself must have some further end. It should not be overlooked that, again as Aristotle points out, it was only when man was free from the toils and labors needed to procure the necessary staples of life that science, the perfection of the human mind, first began. “When all the discoveries [pertaining to the necessities of life] were fully developed, the sciences which relate neither to pleasure nor yet to the necessities of life were invented, and first in those places where men had leisure. Thus the mathematical sciences originated in the neighbourhood of Egypt because there the priestly class was allowed leisure” (Metaphysics 1.1.981b20-25).
I think here it is somewhat instructive that the Greek term for leisure is σχολή: scholē, from which derive such English cognates as ‘school,’ ‘scholar,’ ‘scholarship,’ etc. Accordingly, it would seem that the Greek notion of leisure was one in which a person was free from the necessary toils aimed at sustaining life and free for the development of the highest levels of his being, that is, reason, the intellect. Put another way, leisure is that time in which one is liberated from the mundane and free to be truly, and fully, human. How radically different from our own present conception of leisure, a conception that conflates leisure with amusement. The question, then, is what kind of activity brings about self-actualization and realizes oneself as human? This is a question much trickier to answer and in fact depends upon a prior philosophical anthropology. To understand what activity will realize one’s self as fully human, one must first understand what it means to be human. To answer that latter question, however, takes us beyond the scope of a discussion on leisure proper, but if what Christianity teaches be true, namely, that Christ is true man and the new Adam, then an answer can only be given in reference to Christ. Suffice it to say for now, with our insatiable and growing desire for entertainment, pleasant distractions, greater special effects, and the like—each desired for its own sake as an end that guides and determines our human existence—we, as a society, have lost sight of what it truly means to be at leisure, of what it truly means to be free from the mundane. This is no insignificant observation for it also means that we have lost sight of what it means to be human, and as we abuse our leisure so too do we abuse our humanity.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In