Be still and see: leisure, labor, and human dignity in Josef Pieper and Blessed John Paul II.

Hebert, L. Joseph, Jr.

IN TWO CLASSIC ESSAYS, written in 1947 and published together in English translation under the title Leisure, the Basis of Culture, (1) the German Roman Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper argues that the source of human dignity is found in leisure, a sphere of life free from work. He warns against recent philosophic and social tendencies that would reduce all human affairs to work, punctuated only with occasional necessary periods of rest or recreation. He claims that the very survival of Western civilization depends upon an explicit and public restoration of respect for a realm of human endeavor transcending the notion of utility. Grounding his argument in what he sees as a venerable and self-consistent tradition of philosophy and theology--epitomized in the works of Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas, and undermined in key parts by modern philosophers such as Rene Descartes, Francis Bacon, and Immanuel Kant--Pieper understands his position to be harmonious with that of the Catholic Church's social magisterium, whose famous efforts to defend the dignity of labor he interprets as demanding not so much the exaltation of work as such, but rather an extension of leisure to the working classes.

Though Pieper's work has generally not received the attention it merits, it has succeeded in deeply impressing numerous readers over the years, includingT. S. Eliot, (2) C. S. Lewis, (3) and contemporary political and cultural minds such as Gilbert Meilaender, (4) Roger Scruton, (5) Ralph McInerny, (6) Roger Kimball, (7) James V. Schall, (8) and Thomas Hibbs. (9) Given Pieper's credibility among so many who share his concern for the application of the classical Christian intellectual patrimony to the challenges of our day, it is interesting to consider one such prominent voice that, at least initially, does not appear to support Pieper's thesis. In 1981, Blessed John Paul II published the encyclical letter Laborem Exercens. (10) In this writing, beginning from prior magisterial teachings on labor, John Paul seeks to stress more strongly than before the centrality of work not only to "the modern 'social question,'" but to the good of human life as such. He describes work as not only related to but even constitutive of man's vocation, dignity, and imaging of God in the world, and defines work so as to encompass seemingly all intellectual activities, which Pieper emphatically insists upon classifying as leisure and not work. In developing a "spirituality of work," John Paul goes so far as to call Jesus Christ "a man of work" and his Gospel "the gospel of work," and seems to suggest that Christianity nullifies the distinction between servile and liberal arts, whose recovery Pieper considers a necessary condition for the preservation of human freedom and flourishing (LE, Preface, nos. 1-3, 24-27; Leisure, II, IV).

Can John Paul's interpretation of the Christian wisdom on labor be squared with Pieper's reading of this same heritage? Or is the former in effect a refutation of the latter? This paper will seek to answer this question through a more detailed analysis of the claims made by each author, considered in light of the philosophic and theological tradition in which each sought to ground his thought.

Pieper on Leisure and the Threat of Total Work

To grasp Pieper's case in defense of leisure and against the progress of what he calls "total work"--a mode of existence in which the overvaluation of work leads to the nearly complete neglect or suppression of leisure and the goods it secures--we must first grasp precisely what he means by leisure and by work. Though in the modern context leisure emerges as a realm that must be preserved from the imperious claims of work, Pieper draws his understanding of these terms from classical and medieval philosophy, which distinguishes between [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or otium--time spent on matters of intrinsic worth--and the negative concept [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or negotium, signifying a lack or deprivation of such leisure. To the classical mind, leisure is closely associated with the ultimate and perfect good of man, and therefore with human freedom and the artes liberales, while work is tied to the realm of necessary, contingent, and subordinate goods, and hence to the artes serviles. In contrast to the modern view, which sees work as the source of all value, and rest as tolerable only in the service of work, the classical view is encapsulated in Aristotle's reflection that "we work in order to be at leisure." The essence of Pieper's distinction between work and leisure, then, can only become clear in light of a distinctively classical view of human nature, its relation to the world, and the character of human happiness (Leisure, I).

Significantly, Pieper presents this classical view in the context of his objection to the contemporary term "intellectual work," implying as it does that "the whole field of intellectual activity, not excepting the province of philosophical culture," is subject to the "totalitarian claims" of work. As he explains more fully in his concurrent essay The Philosophical Act, and in his 1957 essay Happiness and Contemplation, classical philosophy sees man as capex universi or possessing a spiritual nature that cannot be satisfied with anything less than the whole or universal good. Since man himself can neither become nor make the whole of things, neither moral virtue nor work can provide him with ultimate happiness; his possession of the whole and achievement of happiness can only take place through contemplation, which for this reason must be understood as the distinctive aim of leisure or intrinsically valuable activity. By contemplation Pieper means the "simple vision" of reality by the mind's eye--the intellectus, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], or understanding--as distinct from, and reaching beyond, the discursive thinking of the ratio, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], or reasoning faculty. Modern philosophy, which sees knowledge itself as the fruit of human labor, and regards both nature and knowledge as nothing but materials to be exploited for the power and pleasure of man, attempts to turn man into a god of his own universe, but ends by cutting him off from the true source of human happiness, and thereby fettering him to the very instruments of his mastery. Classical philosophy, by acknowledging that man must ultimately receive his greatest good as a gift, frees him from the Sisyphean task of trying to render himself happy by himself, while opening to him the path of genuine self-perfection (Leisure, II; Act, I; Happiness, II, IV).

For Pieper it is no stretch to say that the aim of every human life consists in an experience that must be described both as intellectual and as surpassing entirely anything we might properly call work (Happiness, I). It therefore violates the dignity of man as such to limit his sphere of activity to work; and this loss of dignity occurs whether such a limitation originates primarily in external causes, such as political oppression or economic exploitation, or results from internal causes, such as a lack of willingness or capacity to cultivate leisure (Leisure, IV).

This observation leads to the first challenge Pieper faces in reconciling the classical view of leisure with a Christian perspective on labor. Ancient thought, as exemplified by Plato, saw an unbridgeable gulf between the philosopher, "free to pursue knowledge as an end in itself," and "the proletarian who knows nothing beyond the sparetime which is barely sufficient for him to renew his strength for his daily work." Christianity, which insists on the dignity and potential for happiness of every human soul, cannot accept this gulf as definitive, and modern Christian social thought explicitly calls for the promotion of the dignity of the laboring classes. Yet the perception of an insuperable obstacle to this latter goal is no mere prejudice of the ancient world; instead, it reflects a profound awareness of what Pieper calls the "by no means 'leisurely' character of leisure." The highest intellectual activities--philosophy proper and other sciences "in so far as they are pursued philosophically"--are distinct from work in that they adopt an essentially theoretical stance toward reality. Though these sciences are not work, and their value in no way derives from whatever effort they may require, the fact remains that the highest knowledge, achieved through the effortless intuition of reality, normally presupposes tremendous labors on the part of the human mind--not to mention moral virtue and the efforts it also normally demands. If such achievements are a precondition of real happiness, then leisure itself is, so to speak, a full time job, and it would seem fanciful at best to demand that the majority of those bound to work for a living participate meaningfully in a fully dignified life (Leisure, II, IV).

Pieper makes no attempt to evade this problem by noting that philosophy as such can never fully grasp the whole it seeks, and can therefore provide us with an imperfect species of happiness at best; nor does he deflect the challenge by pointing to the beatific vision, which might be denied to the erstwhile happy philosopher and granted to the once miserable serf (Act, I, III). Though the philosophic and theological traditions to which Pieper adheres affirm both of these points, and though they are indispensable components of his response, as a student of the social magisterium of the Catholic Church Pieper sees that "everything must be done ... to obliterate a contrast of this kind between classes" even in the present life. (11) Since it would be "quite wrong, and indeed foolish, to attempt to achieve that aim by looking for social unity in ... [the] reduction of the educated stratum to the proletarian level," only one option remains: "the real abolition of the proletariat" by an amelioration of the conditions of the working class (emphasis added). Of course, this amelioration must be both external and internal. A family wage permits workers to support non-working persons and to become less dependent on work by accumulating property, and limited government permits citizens a wider scope for the pursuit of goods outside the demands of a narrowly conceived social utility. Yet these policies can liberate men from proletarianism if and only if they are accompanied by an enrichment of the inner life of the average citizen (Leisure, IV). We are thus thrust back on the point of explaining how the sublime benefits of profound contemplation, apparently dependent upon immense efforts of personal self-cultivation, can be brought within the capacity of the worker.

To understand Pieper's seemingly idiosyncratic answer to this question requires further clarification of the relationship between philosophy in particular and the broader phenomena of leisure and contemplation. Although he calls philosophy "the purest form of speculari, of theorein," and speaks of it as synonymous with the natural perfection of the human being, Pieper does not consider philosophy to be the exclusive means of achieving contemplation on earth. Not only do poetry and religion provide alternative paths to glimpsing the whole of reality, but common experiences such as looking into a child's face or drinking after a period of extreme thirst may constitute "a step toward that 'seeing of the beloved object'"--the goodness and glory of God underlying each detail of creation--"which is contemplation" (Act, I; Happiness, X).

In this light, we can understand why Pieper responds to the challenge of enriching the inner lives of working citizens by calling for a restoration of the public celebration of divine worship. Celebration is "the soul of leisure" inasmuch as it signifies public recognition of times and spaces set aside from practical use and dedicated to an encounter with the ultimate source of human dignity and happiness--an encounter that worship itself helps to place at the disposal of all human beings. Although worship cannot replace personal efforts to cultivate receptivity to reality, it can inspire and inform them, providing the conditions for each person to realize the maximum degree of freedom and happiness that his nature and circumstances, aided by grace, permit in this life. In fact, Pieper contends that a deeply felt cult of public worship--made possible by the cessation of servile work on Sundays and holy days--helps servants regain the dignity of human beings, placing them at least periodically "on a level with their masters" and stimulating their highest human potential. It also provides the only stable social support for investment in a truly vital and philosophical academic life--for academia, divorced from religion, will never succeed in mustering and maintaining the great resolve necessary to resist the threats and blandishments of total work. In this sense, Christianity not only ought to echo the classically inspired call for a defense of leisure from its modern assailants; it can also provide the most powerful means of securing genuine leisure for all men, regardless of social status or capacity for contemplative achievement (Leisure, IV).

Pieper and the Dignity of Labor

At first glance it might appear that Pieper's defense of the dignity of the laborer succeeds, if at all, only in spite of whatever labor the latter performs. Nowhere in these essays does Pieper expound at any great length the value of work per se. Indeed, Pieper's description of work as essentially ordered to the satisfaction of needs, combined with his fear that real or perceived social needs may suppress our awareness of the higher goods sought through leisure, sometimes leaves the impression that he views work as little more than a necessary evil. In his 1963 essay In Tune with the World: A Theory of Festivity, (12) Pieper notes that "Christendom's sacred books call work ... a punishment." Though he admits it is not fair to describe work as "nothing but vexation, meaningless business, [and] deadly drudgery," he insists that the reality of work is nonetheless falsified by attempts to deny its bitterness and pretend that it can be simply enjoyable and in itself choice worthy. It might seem then that labor has value for Pieper only as a sadly necessary way of securing the means of leisure, and as atonement for sin, a means of "restoring a balance that could not be restored in any other way" (In Tune, I).

Upon closer inspection, however, Pieper presents a number of arguments that help us to correct this misinterpretation of his views. Festivity--the pinnacle of public leisure, and therefore a phenomenon deeply at odds with the culture of total work--"can arise only out of the foundation of a life whose ordinary shape is given by the working day." In fact, "only meaningful work can provide the soil in which festivity flourishes" (emphasis in original). For Pieper, work can indeed be meaningful, though it is meaningful if and only if it is "procurement of the things that are truly useful for living." The ultimate end of each human life is contemplation; and only contemplation finds and preserves the truth, which is "the yardstick of every possible use"; leisure therefore gives us the capacity to measure (and hence limit) the value of labor. Yet by the measure of truth, genuine labor has true value. Man is not a pure spirit, created for constant contemplation. Rather, he is by nature--and not only as a consequence of sin--"a creature of action, destined to keep himself alive by his own activities"; to master his environment through labor and politics, and himself through moral virtues; to form "structures and works" through artistic power; and to prove his love for God through practical works. Man can no more be himself without work than he can make himself through work. Without leisure, and the truth it glimpses, work becomes destructive rather than productive of human goods. Yet without the realization of his nature in work, man is unfit for leisure: "An idle-rich class of do-nothings are hard put to it even to amuse themselves, let alone to celebrate a festival." (In Tune, I; Happiness, XI).

Pieper remains cautious about the notion of finding fulfillment through work, an idea he sees as the internal complement to and facilitator of the imperious external demands of total work. In the end, "it is a fiction to declare work, the production of useful things, meaningful in itself." It does not follow, however, that the activity of work cannot be meaningful, or that it ought to be kept to a bare minimum if life is to be happy and dignified. Rather, if Pieper is correct, work can be meaningful as work precisely to the degree that it stands in a real and conscious relationship to leisure and its ends. Pieper himself mentions at least three ways in which such a relationship may be manifested. First, as noted, work (or effort) is ordinarily a necessary component of activities culminating in receptivity to genuine truth. Second, as the epigraph to Leisure taken from Plato's Laws implies, (13) and as Pieper repeatedly observes, the fulfillment man achieves in leisure, though it is by no means directed toward work as its end, provides man with renewed strength, guidance, and inspiration, which he then carries into his work. In effect, the artes serviles owe as much or more to leisure as they do to work alone. In Christianity, this is expressed in the willingness of the worshipper, after contemplating the goodness of God as Creator and Redeemer, to offer himself in work as a loving sacrifice for God and man--though with eternal rest ultimately in view (Leisure, III, IV). Third, work can be meaningful for Pieper as a locus of leisure. Activity that is per se directed to external ends may produce insight within the doer; in fact, certain insights may "grow only in the course of a man's dealings with the pliable or resistant matter of a garden, or potter's clay, or marble" (emphasis added). It is in "this inner fructification" of work, Pieper claims, that we find "the truly beatifying element which we rightly ascribe to all creative activity" (Happiness, VI, emphasis added).

Neither work as preparatory for leisure, nor work as an outpouring of inspiration, nor work as a source of insight changes the reality that labor is usually toilsome and imposed on us by necessity (In Tune, I).Yet each demonstrates that work, when its claims upon man are prevented from becoming totalized, is a vital and necessary component of any happy life. Without denying the value of work as such then, Pieper consistently grounds its dignity in a greater reality whose highest end--leisure--consists in contemplation, without displacing a host of practical ends, whose worthiness comes from serving leisure while also (and therefore) remaining true to themselves.

Blessed John Paul II and the Dignity of Labor

At first glance, Blessed John Paul II's treatment of the dignity of labor in Laborem Exercens may seem to undermine Pieper's approach. Defining work as "any activity by man, whether manual or intellectual, whatever its nature or circumstances ... that can and must be recognized as work," and admitting that work is often toilsome and driven by necessity, John Paul proceeds to show how work is ordered above all to the cultural and moral perfection of man. From work, he argues, man's life "derives its specific dignity." Whether we look to the nature of the human person--"a subjective being capable of acting in a planned and rational way"--or to man as created in the image of God, and therefore possessing dominion over the earth, man comes to light as a being who "manifests himself and confirms himself," fulfilling "the calling to be a person," in a mastery that is exercised through work. If nature itself is incomplete until transformed by the labor of man, so is man until he transforms nature through his labor. From the prelapsarian command to subdue the earth, to the example of Jesus Christ, the God-man who "devoted most of the years of his life on earth to manual work," the Christian faith "does away with the very basis of the ancient differentiation of people into classes according to the kind of work done"--servile or free. Faith and reason concur in teaching that the modern social question of labor is best addressed by institutions that respect the inherent dignity of labor and promote the conditions in which work can be most fulfilling to the worker (LE, Preface, nos. 1, 4, 6, 12).

As with Pieper, closer attention to the details of John Paul's account allows us to correct initial misconceptions about his thesis. To begin with, we note that his definition of work applies to "any activity ... that can and must be recognized as work," not to all human activity as such. Next, in considering work as "a perennial and fundamental" aspect of the human condition, he makes clear that there are several aspects of human life, others of which might, and do, turn out to be fundamental. Furthermore, in declaring that "man is the image of God partly through the mandate received from his creator to subdue, to dominate, the earth," John Paul implies that there is at least one other respect in which man images God. In condemning "the ancient differentiation of people into classes according to the kind of work done," he by no means denies that work itself can be classified as free or servile, though he declines to use this terminology himself. Moreover, in speaking of man's need to transform nature, John Paul notes that the "riches and resources of the visible world" are found and not created by man; in work, therefore, "man comes up against the leading role of the gift made by 'nature,' that is to say, in the final analysis, by the Creator" (LE, Preface, nos. 1, 4, 6, 12). In other words, work itself brings us into contact with something we can only contemplate, not make. Since man receives from nature or God not only the material upon which he works, but also his capacity to work and indeed his very being, it follows that man cannot fully manifest, confirm, and fulfill himself in and through work alone.

Laborem Exercens is a magisterial document, and is thus meant to be read in harmony with all authoritative expressions of the Catholic faith. Further inspection reveals that, while the encyclical does not extensively analyze dimensions of human life other than work, it does provide clues pointing to elements of life prior to and more fundamental than work. This is most evident in the stress John Paul lays on the subjective value of work. The objective significance of work is man's ability to dominate nature and make it serve his needs. This corresponds to what Pieper, following the tradition, would call the bonum utile. The subjective dimension of work is encapsulated in the observation that "the basis for determining the value of human work is not primarily the kind of work being done, but the fact that the one doing it is a person." In fact, "the sources of the dignity of work are to be sought primarily in the subjective dimension," that is, in the personhood of the worker, rather than in the objective, material, or utilitarian value of the work done. Though man is destined for work, work is for man and not man for work. As soon as this point is obscured, work not only becomes purposeless and hence bereft of dignity, but actually threatens to assault human dignity by attempting to reduce man to an instrument of production (LE, nos. 5-7).

Citing Scripture as well as the Second Vatican Council's Gaudium et Spes and Lumen Gentium, John Paul claims that, in the final analysis, labor has no dignity unless it contributes to the fulfillment of the "total vocation of man." As these references make clear, that vocation involves the full self-development of man as a creature made to image God in both his work and his rest, but whose ultimate destiny is rest in union with his Creator and Redeemer, and whose "deepest meaning" as a creature is therefore found in his "orientation to the praise of God" (LE, nos. 25-26). As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (14) explains, man's path to beatitude begins with his "understanding the order of things established by the Creator" and ends in seeing, loving, and praising him eternally; work, understood as service to God, is essentially intermediate and ministerial in nature, taking its bearings from this beginning and this end (CCC, nos. 1704, 1720-21). In his 1998 apostolic letter Dies Domini, (15) John Paul himself characterizes the ultimate end of man--to be anticipated in this life especially through worship--as consisting in rest from work, receptivity to God as Creator and Redeemer, and participation in his contemplative joy (DD, nos. 11, 17, 28, 41, 61-68). Understood in light of these fundamental Christian dogmas, Laborem Exercens affirms the classical view that the bonum utile is ultimately ordered to the bonum honestum, in other words, that work is rightly in the service of leisure.

Synthesizing Pieper and John Paul II

As the above analyses reveal, the gulf that initially appears to separate Pieper and John Paul II on the dignity of labor is by no means unbridgeable. In fact, a close reading of what each author states, interpreted in light of the Catholic doctrine that both embrace, reveals a profound similarity in their views and goals. Even where their modes of expression and points of emphasis differ, reconciliation between them is possible. Though John Paul's concept of the subjective value of labor makes no explicit reference to leisure or any equivalent term, for example, his insistence that the value of labor not be measured by utility alone, on the grounds of the personhood or rational nature of the worker, is fully explicable only in relation to those truths about God and human nature that Pieper stresses in his defense of leisure. And in proclaiming that man through work images God as Creator, John Paul echoes a teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, given in his Summa theologiae long before the seeds of total work were sown, and to which Pieper could have no objection (ST II-II, q. 66, a. 1). For his part, Pieper points to a doctrine found in Aquinas, in the Church's recent Catechism, and in other writings of John Paul: that "God is happy by way of His existence," and not by virtue of his work; that God's creative and redemptive work is in fact an outpouring of his love, his self-enjoyment, and his happiness--not their condition (ST I, q. 26; CCC, nos. 293-94; Happiness, III). If the purpose of God's work is to help others share in a happiness that is essentially contemplative, then man in imaging God as worker must work with a mind to sharing a happiness that can come in the end only from being at leisure.

Despite this deeper agreement between Pieper and John Paul, however, it would be a mistake to dismiss their differences as merely semantic. Instead, it is far more fruitful to consider the strengths and weaknesses in the manner each treats the question of labor and human dignity, and to pursue a synthesis of their strengths, while attempting to avoid their weaknesses--all the better to promote the goals of Catholic social thought today.

The primary weakness of each author's presentation concerns the difficulty one has in clarifying the misapprehensions discussed above; in turn, the clarifications given above suggest how the strengths of one author help to reveal the true intentions of the other. In his reticence to give way to the pressures of total work, for example, Pieper neglects to fully develop a portrait of work in its healthy condition, bounded by leisure but in itself contributing indispensably to man's achievement--through a combination of effort and receptivity--of an imperfect happiness here below, and a hoped-for bliss in the life beyond. Such a picture would have immense value as a model of ways that work itself can be conducted by workers and structured by society to reflect better the human dignity of the worker. This is precisely what John Paul attempts to provide in his encyclical.

For his part, John Paul, who elsewhere speaks so eloquently of the goodness of a philosophy and worship transcending the modern dynamics of mere utility and rest, (16) alludes rather weakly to this primary and contemplative dimension of human life in Laborem Exercens's concept of the subjective value of work. This reticence to specify more forcefully the character of the higher goods to which labor must be subordinated also has practical consequences. Pieper insists that intellectual activity be distinguished from work and compensated with an honorarium rather than wages; he then interprets the family wage as an honorarium for the manual worker, honoring that part of his labor that transcends utility because of his human orientation to contemplation; finally, Pieper calls for a concerted effort to educate all citizens, including the working classes, to use their leisure well (Leisure, IV). By contrast, John Paul speaks of intellectual work; worries that intellectual workers will suffer unemployment if their intellectual skills are not in line with society's needs; and calls for intellectual training more closely tied to present social demands (LE, 8). This latter point is fair at a certain level of analysis, and John Paul does qualify it by noting that "education in itself is always valuable and an important enrichment of the human person." Still, effective resistance to a culture of "excessive bureaucratic centralization, which makes the worker feel that he is just a cog in a huge machine" (LE, 15), would seem to demand a more vigorous defense of liberal education where it already does or should exist among the intelligentsia, as well as an extension of its spirit as much as possible into the realm of those whose work is more manual than intellectual. This is precisely what Pieper provides in his writings. (17)

Reading Pieper and John Paul together allows us to probe beyond the surface of their respective writings on labor to see a harmony in their deepest thinking; this in turn allows us to discern how the salient points of one author's presentation fill in the lacunae of the other's. Together these two accounts reveal the great range and power of the riches of classical Christian wisdom as applied to contemporary questions about labor, leisure, and the social conditions favoring human dignity. The most thorough and careful reader of each author should be able to piece together the fuller picture that emerges when their arguments are synthesized. Yet the difficulty in doing so, combined with the very real threat that total work continues to pose to genuine freedom today, suggests the philosophical, rhetorical, and social benefits to be gained from an articulation of Catholic social thought on labor that combines an exposition of the value of labor itself with a more explicit and emphatic focus on the place of leisure in realizing the ultimate dignity and happiness of all persons, including the worker. (18)

Notes

(1.) Josef Pieper, Leisure, the Basis of Culture, trans. Alexander Dru (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1998 [1952]), containing Leisure, the Basis of Culture (Leisure) and The Philosophical Act (Act).

(2.) See his introduction to Leisure.

(3.) See Bernard N. Schumacher, "A Cosmopolitan Hermit: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Josef Pieper," trans. Michael J. Miller, in A Cosmopolitan Hermit: Modernity and Tradition in the Philosophy of Josef Pieper, ed. Barnard N. Schumacher (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009).

(4.) See "A Philosopher of Virtue," First Things (April 1998).

(5.) See his introduction to Leisure, the Basis of Culture, trans. Gerald Malsbary (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 1998).

(6.) See his introduction to Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation (Happiness), trans. Richard and Clara Winston (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 1998).

(7.) See "Josef Pieper: Leisure and its discontents," New Criterion 17, no. 5 (January 1999): 23-30.

(8.) See his forward to Leisure, the Basis of Culture, trans. Alexander Dru (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009).

(9.) See "Josef Pieper and the Ethics of Virtue," in A Cosmopolitan Hermit. For others sympathetic to Pieper's argument, see (in the same volume) Frank Tofer, "Josef Pieper on the Intellectual Foundations of Totalitarianism," trans. Grant Kaplan, Michael J. Miller, and Bernard N. Schumacher, and "The Twofold Discipleship of the Philosopher," trans. Michele M. Schumacher.

(10.) Blessed John Paul II, Laborem Exercens (LE) (September 14, 1981).

(11.) For Pieper's great interest in papal encyclicals, see Jon Vickery, "Searching for Josef Pieper," Theological Studies no. 66 (2005): 622-37; and Hermann Braun, "Josef Pieper's Early Sociological Writings," trans. Matthew Cuddeback and Michael J. Miller, in A Cosmopolitan Hermit.

(12.) Josef Pieper, In Tune with the World: A Theory of Festivity (In Tune), trans. Richard and Clara Winston (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press, 1999).

(13.) Plato, Laws (653 c-d).

(14.) Catechism of the Catholic Church, Popular and Definitive Edition (CCC) (2000).

(15.) Blessed John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Dies Domini (DD) (May 31, 1998). For an excellent analysis of this letter, see Mark E. Ginter, "Work and Rest: John Paul II's Perspective on the Lord's Day in His Theology of Work," presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, October, 26, 2007. Unpublished article.

(16.) See Blessed John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (September 14, 1998); and Dies Domini.

(17.) See also Pope Benedict XVI, "Address to Young Professors on August 19, 2011," Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly no. 34 (2011): 4-6: "At times one has the idea that the mission of the university professor nowadays is exclusively that of forming competent and efficient professionals capable of satisfying the demand for labor at any given time ... The authentic idea of the University, on the other hand, is precisely what saves us from this reductionist and curtailed vision of humanity."

(18.) Recent excellent accounts of Catholic social thought also neglect to mention leisure or equivalent terms in the context of labor and its value. See Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (Washington, D.C.: United States Conference of Catholic bishops, 2004) nos. 255-322; J. Brian Benestad, Church, State, and Society: An Introduction to Catholic Social Doctrine (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010) chap. 9. An exception is the Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy, ed. Michael L. Coulter, Stephen M. Krason, Richard S. Myers, and Joseph A. Varacalli (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007): see the articles on "Labor," by David L. Gregory; "Leisure," by Marie I. George; and "Work," by William J. Toth.