Leisure: The Basis of Culture

Description

Josef Pieper’s Leisure, the Basis of Culture is a classic twentieth-century philosophy title that has maintained its relevancy and importance even fifty years after its original publishing. This edition also includes his work The Philosophical Act – both offering insightful passages on the topic of leisure as an attitude of the mind and as a condition of the soul.

Pieper highlights essential values surrounding leisure, ranging from its indispensable role in fostering our capacity to perceive reality to being a foundational influence in culture. He offers historical insight to reflect on cases such as those of Greek and Medieval Europeans that best embody this concept. Moreover, he emphasizes how religion requires leisure for its contemplation – acknowledging it’s interconnectedness with leisure and the everpresent need for free time to let our minds explore simply.

This book offers profound exploration into the realm of leisure and shines light into one specific but truly necessary aspect of life. Whether you’re interested in understanding more about philosophy or want to appreciate leisure on a deeper level, read Pieper’s Leisure, the Basis of Culture for a comprehensive and professional study into this topic.

Quotes

“Philosophy–inevitably–becomes more and more distant, strange and remote; it even assumes the appearance of an intellectual luxury, and is felt to be a load on the social conscience, as the workaday world extends its claims and its sway over man.”

“It is true to say that in the act of philosophizing we transcend the world of work and are carried beyond the world of work.”

“The philosophical act, the religious act, the aesthetic act, as well as the existential shocks of love and death, or any other way in which man’s relation to the world is convulsed and shaken–all these fundamental ways of acting belong naturally together, by reason of the power which they have in common of enabling a man to break through and transcend the workaday world.”