Leisure, the basis of culture
Josef Pieper (Author), Alexander Dru (Translator), T. S. Eliot (Writer of introduction)
Pieper shows that Greeks understood and valued leisure, as did the medieval Europeans. He points out that religion can be born only in leisure. Leisure that allows time for the contemplation of the nature of God. Leisure has been, and always will be, the first foundation of any culture. He maintains that our bourgeois world of total labor has vanquished leisure, and issues a startling warning: Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for nonactivity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture and ourselves. These astonishing essays contradict all our pragmatic and puritanical conceptions about labor and leisure; Joseph Pieper demolishes the twentieth-century cult of work as he predicts its destructive consequences
Mentor-Omega book, MT851
xxi, 130 pages ; 21 cm.
9780451624697, 0451624696
8990976
Leisure, the basis of culture
The philosophical act
Contains Leisure, the basis of culture (a translation of Musse unde Keit) and The philosophical act (a translation of Was heisst philosophieren?)