2

Leisure, the Basis of Culture

3
4
 Leisure
The Basis of Culture

Josef Pieper

Introduction by Roger Scruton

New translation by Gerald Malsbary

St. Augustine’s Press

South Bend, Indiana
1998

5
 Copyright 1948
c by Kösel-Verlag

Translation copyright 1998

c by St. Augustine’s Press, Inc.

Originally published in German as Musse und Kult and Was heisst Philosophieren?
by Kösel-Verlag. Author’s preface is from the first English edition, published by Pantheon
Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, record-
ing, or otherwise, without the prior permission of St. Augustine’s Press.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Pieper, Josef, 1904 - 1997

[Musse und Kult. English] Leisure, the basis

of culture / Josef Pieper: introduction by
Roger Scruton; new translation by Gerlad
Malsbary.
p. cm.

Consists of a translation of the author’s Musse und Kult, and of his Was heisst Philoso-
phieren?
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-890318-35-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Leisure. 2. God - Worship and love. 3. Culture. 4. Philosophy. I. Malsbary, Gerald.

II. Pieper, Josef, 1904 - 1997 Was heisst Philosophieren? English. III. Title.

BJ1498.P513 1998 175 - dc21

98-15340 CIP

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03

∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Printed Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1984.

6
INTRODUCTION
by T. S. ELIOT

The complaint is frequently heard that our time has little to boast
of in the way of philosophy. Whether this deficiency is due to some
ailment of philosophy itself, or to the diversion of able philosophical
minds towards other studies, or simply to a shortage of philosophers,
is never made clear: these are divisions of the question which are apt
to become confused. Certainly, ”Where are the great philosophers?”
is a rhetorical question often asked by those who pursued their philo-
sophical studies forty or fifty years ago. Allowing for the possibility
that the great figures of our youth have become magnified by the
passage of time, and for the probability that most of those who ask
the question have not followed modern philosophical developments
very closely, there remains some justification of the lament. It may be
merely a longing for the appearance of a philosopher whose writings,
lectures and personality will arouse the imagination as Bergson, for
instance, aroused it forty years ago; but it may be also the expression
of a need for philosophy in an older meaning of the word — the need
for new authority to express insight and wisdom.

To those who pine for philosophy in this ampler sense, logical

positivism is the most conspicuous object of censure. Certainly, log-
7
ical positivism is not a very nourishing diet for more than the small
minority which has been conditioned to it. When the time of its ex-
haustion arrives, it will probably appear, in retrospect, to have been
for our age the counterpart of surrealism: for as surrealism seemed to
provide a method of producing works of art without imagination, so
logical positivism seems to provide a method of philosophizing with-
out insight and wisdom. The attraction which it thus offers to the
immature mind may have unfortunate results for some of those who
pursue their undergraduate studies under its influence. Yet I believe
that in the longer view, logical positivism will have proved of service
by explorations of thought which we shall, in future, be unable to
ignore; and even if some of its avenues turn out to be blind alleys,
it is, after all, worth while exploring a blind alley, if only to discover
that it is blind. And, what is more important for my theme, I be-
lieve that the sickness of philosophy, an obscure recognition of which
moves those who complain of its decline, has been present too long
to be attributable to any particular contemporary school of thought.

At the time when I myself was a student of philosophy — I speak

of a period some thirty-five to forty years ago — the philosopher
was beginning to suffer from a feeling of inferiority to the exact sci-
entist. It was felt that the mathematician was the man
best qualified to philosophize. Those students of philosophy
who had not come to philosophy from mathematics did their best
(at least, in the university in which my studies were conducted) to
try to become imitation mathematicians — at least to the extent
of acquainting themselves with the paraphernalia of symbolic logic.
(I remember one enthusiastic contemporary who devised a Symbolic
Ethics, for which he had to invent several symbols not found in the
Principia Mathematica.) Beyond this, some familiarity with con-
8
temporary physics and with contemporary biology was also prized: a
philosophical argument supported by illustrations from one of these
sciences was more respectable than one which lacked them — even if
the supporting evidence was sometimes irrelevant. Now I am quite
aware that to the philosopher no field of knowledge should come
amiss. The ideal philosopher would be at ease with every science,
with every branch of art, with every language, and with the whole
of human history. Such encyclopaedic knowledge might preserve him
from excessive awe of those disciplines in which he was untrained,
and excessive bias towards those in which he was well exercised. But
in an age in which every branch of study becomes more subdivided
and specialized, the ideal of omniscience is more and more remote
from realization. Yet only omniscience is enough, once the philoso-
pher begins to rely upon science. No one today, I imagine, would
follow the example of Bosanquet, who in his Logic leant so heav-
ily upon illustrations drawn from Linnaean Botany. But while the
philosopher’s exploitation of science is now likely to meet with severe
criticism, we are perhaps too ready to accept the conclusions of the
scientist when he philosophizes.

One effect of this striving of philosophy towards the condition of

the exact sciences was that it produced the illusion of a progress of
philosophy, of a kind to which philosophy should not pretend. It
turned out philosophical pedagogues ignorant, not merely of history
in the general sense, but of the history of philosophy itself. If our
attitude towards philosophy is influenced by an admiration for the
exact sciences, then the philosophy of the past is something that has
been superseded. It is punctuated by individual philosophers, some
of whom had moments of understanding, but whose work as a whole
comes to be regarded as quaint and primitive. For the philosophy of
9
the present, from this point of view, is altogether better than that
of the past, when science was in its infancy; and the philosophy of
the future will proceed from the discoveries of our own age. It is
true that the history of philosophy is now admitted as a branch of
study in itself, and that there are specialists in this subject: but I
suspect that in the opinion of a philosopher of the modern school,
the historian of philosophy is rather an historian than a philosopher.

The root cause of the vagaries of modern philosophy — and per-

haps, though I was unconscious of it, the reason for my dissatisfaction
with philosophy as a profession — I now believe to lie in the divorce
of philosophy from theology. It is very necessary to anticipate the
resistance to such an affirmation: a resistance springing from an
immediate emotional response, and expressed by saying that any de-
pendence of philosophy upon theology would be a limitation of the
freedom of thought of the philosopher. It is necessary to make clear
what one means by the necessary relation between philosophy and
theology, and the implication in philosophy of some religious faith.
This I shall not attempt, because it is done very much better by
Josef Pieper: I desire only to call attention to this central point in
his thought. He is himself a Catholic philosopher, grounded on Plato,
Aristotle and the scholastics: and he makes his position quite clear to
his readers. But his writings do not constitute a Christian apologetic
— that, in his view, is a task for the theologian. For him, a philos-
ophy related to the theology of some other communion than that
of Rome, or to that of some other religion then Christianity, would
still be a genuine philosophy. It is significant that he pays a passing
word of approval to the existentialism of Sartre, on the ground that
he finds in it religious presuppositions — utterly different as they are
from those which Dr. Pieper holds himself.
10
The establishment of a right relation between philosophy and theol-
ogy, which will leave the philosopher quite autonomous in his own
area, is I think one of the most important lines of investigation which
Dr. Pieper has pursued. In a more general way, his influence should
be in the direction of restoring philosophy to a place of importance
for every educated person who thinks, instead of confining it to eso-
teric activities which can affect the public only indirectly, insidiously
and often in a distorted form. He restores to their position in phi-
losophy what common sense obstinately tells us ought to be found
there: insight and wisdom. By affirming the dependence of phi-
losophy upon revelation, and a proper respect for ’the wisdom of
the ancients’, he puts the philosopher himself in a proper relation
to other philosophers dead and living. Two dangers to philosophy
are thus averted. One is the conscious or unconscious imitation of
exact science, the assumption that philosophers should be organized
as teams of workers, like scientists in their laboratories, investigating
various parts of a problem which is conceived as soluble in the same
way as a problem in physics. The opposite error is that of an older
and more romantic attitude, which produced what I may call the
’one-man’ philosophy: that is to say, a world view which was a pro-
jection of the personality of its author, a disguised imposition of his
own temperament with all its emotional bias, upon the reader. I do
not wish to diminish the grandeur or the value of the greatest one-
man philosophies. When such a philosophy is done superbly well, as
by Spinoza, it retains a permanent importance for humanity: for an
acquaintance with Spinoza, and a temporary submission to his influ-
ence, is an experience of great value. On the other hand, the colossal
and grotesque achievement of Hegel may continue in concealed or
derivative forms to exercise a fascination upon many minds. I would
mention also the work of such a writer as F. H. Bradley, which owes
11
its persuasiveness to a masterly prose style. The charm of the au-
thor’s personality stimulates an agreeable state of feeling: and such
books will continue to be read as literature, for the enlargement of
our experience through a contact with powerful and individual minds.

Dr. Pieper also has style: however difficult his thought may some-
times be, his sentences are admirably constructed, his ideas expressed
with the maximum clarity. But his mind is submissive to what he
believes to be the great, the main tradition of European thought; his
originality is subdued and unostentatious. And as he is a philosopher
who accepts explicitly a dogmatic theology, his presuppositions are
in full view, instead of being, as with some philosophers who pro-
fess complete detachment, concealed from both author and reader.
The attitude towards philosophy which he maintains, and which dis-
tinguishes him from most of our contemporaries, is enough to ac-
count for his preference for expression in brief and concentrated es-
says rather than in constructions of greater bulk. Of such essays he
has already published an impressive list: the two here presented are
those which author, translator and publishers agreed upon as the
most suitable introduction to his thought.

T. S. Eliot

12
INTRODUCTION
by Roger Scruton

”Don’t just do something: stand there!” The command of an Amer-

ican President to a fussy official was one of those rare moments in
American politics when truth prevailed over industry. Josef Pieper’s
serene reflections on the art of being serene ought to be read by every
practical person — and the more that person is involved in business,
politics, and public life, the more useful will Pieper be to him. For
here, in a succinct yet learned argument, are all the reasons for think-
ing that the frenzied need to work, to plan, and to change things is
nothing but idleness under other names — moral, intellectual, and
emotional idleness. In order to defend itself from self-knowledge, this
agitated idleness is busy smashing all the mirrors in the house.

Leisure has had a bad press. For the puritan it is the source of vice;
for the egalitarian a sign of privilege. The Marxist regards leisure as
the unjust surplus, enjoyed by the few at the expense of the many.
Nobody in a democracy is at ease with leisure, and almost every
person, however little use he may have for his time, will say that he
works hard for a living — curious expression, when the real thing to
13
work for is dying.

The calumnies, however, do not apply: so argues Josef Pieper. We

mistake leisure for idleness, and work for creativity. Of course, work
may be creative. But only when informed by leisure. Work is the
means of life; leisure the end. Without the end, work is meaningless
— a means to a means to a means ... and so on forever, like Wall
Street or Capitol Hill. Leisure is not the cessation of work, but work
of another kind, work restored to its human meaning, as a celebra-
tion and a festival.

This is what religion teaches us, and the teaching is as important

for the unbeliever as for the person of faith. We win through to
leisure. ”At the end of all our striving” we rejoice in our being and
offer thanks. It is then, eating a meal among those we love, dancing
together at a wedding, sitting side by side with people silenced by
music, that we recognize our peculiar sovereign position in the world.

Our failure to understand leisure, Pieper makes clear, is one with

our failure to understand the difference between man and the other
animals. Think only of meal-times — and on this subject Pieper
writes with uncommon perceptiveness. The meal, as Pieper puts it,
has a ”spiritual or even a religious character”. That is to say, it is an
offering, a sacrifice, and also - in the highest instance — a sacrament,
something offered to us from on high, by the very Being to whom we
offer it. Animals eat, but there is nothing in their lives to correspond
to this experience of the ”meal”, as a celebration and endorsement of
our life here on earth. When we sit down to eat, we are consciously
removing ourselves from the world of work and means and industry,
14
and facing outwards, to the kingdom of ends. Feast, festival, and
faith lift us from idleness, and endow our lives with sense.

Pieper’s book is also a feast. With astonishing brevity, he extracts

from the idea of leisure not only a theory of culture and its signif-
icance, not only a natural theology for our disenchanted times, but
also a philosophy of philosophy - an account of what philosophy can
do for us, and what it ought to do for us, in a world where science
and technology have tried to usurp the divine command. And he
reiterates that command as it came in a ”still small voice” to Elijah,
and again to Pascal and Kierkegaard: in his own gentle way, Pieper
tells us to ”Be still”.

Roger Scruton
Malmesbury, March 1998

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16
Author’s Preface
to the English Edition

These two essays were published separately in Germany, the sec-

ond having been originally written in the form of lectures, given in
Bonn in the summer of 1947. They are intimately connected and
properly belong together. This is not only true in the sense that
they were both written in the same summer, in a single breath, so to
say; they both spring from the same thought.

Their common origin or foundation might be stated in the fol-

lowing words: Culture depends for its very existence on leisure, and
leisure, in its turn, is not possible unless it has a durable and conse-
quently living link with the cultus with divine worship.

The word ’cult’ in English is used exclusively, or almost exclu-

sively, in a derivative sense. But here it is used, along with worship,
in its primary sense. It means something else than, and something
more than, religion. It really means fulfilling the ritual of public sac-
rifice. That is a notion which contemporary ’modern’ man associates
almost exclusively and unconsciously with uncivilized, primitive peo-
ples and with classical antiquity. For that very reason it is of the first
importance to see that the cultus, now as in the distant past, is the
primary source of man’s freedom, independence and immunity within
17
society. Suppress that last sphere of freedom, and freedom itself, and
all our liberties, will in the end vanish into thin air.

Culture, in the sense in which it is used above, is the quintessence

of all the natural goods of the world and of those gifts and qualities
which, while belonging to man, lie beyond the immediate sphere of
his needs and wants. All that is good in this sense, all man’s gifts and
faculties are not necessarily useful in a practical way; though there
is no denying that they belong to a truly human life, not strictly
speaking necessary, even though he could not do without them.

Among the bona non utilia sed honesta which are at home in the
realm of freedom, in its innermost circle indeed, is philosophy, the
philosophical act, which must be understood in the traditional sense
of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, and as they understood
it. Grant this original sense of the word ’philosophizing’ to be the
true one, and it is no longer possible to speak of the philosophical
aspect in the same way that one might speak of a sociological and
historical or a political aspect as though one could take up the one
or the other at will. In the tradition of which I am speaking, the
philosophical act is a fundamental relation to reality, a full, personal
attitude which is by no manner of means at the sole disposal of the
ratio; it is an attitude which presupposes silence, a contemplative
attention to things, in which man begins to see how worthy of ven-
eration they really are. And it is perhaps only in this way that it is
possible to understand how it was that Plato’s philosophical school,
the Academy in Athens, was at the same time a sort of club or soci-
ety for the celebration of the cultus. In the last resort pure theory,
philosophical theoria, entirely free from practical considerations and
18
interference — and that is what theory is — can only be preserved
and realized within the sphere of leisure, and leisure, in its turn, is
free because of its relation to worship, to the cultus.

Josef Pieper,
1952

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20
 Part I

Leisure, the Basis of Culture

21
But the Gods, taking pity on human beings -
a race born to labor - gave them regularly
recurring divine festivals, as a means of
refreshment from their fatigue; they gave
them the Muses, and Apollo and Dionysus as
the leaders of the Muses, to the end that,
after refreshing themselves in the company of
the Gods, they might return to an upright
posture.
- Plato

Be at leisure - and know that I am God.

- Psalm 45

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24
 I

We can begin, like the Scholastic masters, with an objection: vide-

tur qued non ... ”It seems not to be true that ...” And this is the
objection: a time like the present [i.e., a few years after the Second
World War, in Germany] seems, of all times, not to be a time to
speak of ”leisure”. We are engaged in the re-building of a house, and
our hands are full. Shouldn’t all our efforts be directed to nothing
other than the completion of that house?
This is no small objection. But there is also a good answer to it.
To ”build our house” at this time implies not only securing survival,
but also putting in order again our entire moral and intellectual her-
itage. And before any detailed plan along these lines can succeed,
our new beginning, our re-foundation, calls out immediately for ... a
defense of leisure.

For, when we consider the foundations of Western European cul-

ture (is it, perhaps, too rash to assume that our re-building will in
fact be carried out in a ”Western” spirit? Indeed, this and no other
is the very assumption that is at issue today.), one of these foun-
dations is leisure. We can read it in the first chapter of Aristotle’s
Metaphysics. And the very history of the meaning of the word bears
a similar message. The Greek word for leisure (σχoλή) is the origin
25
of Latin scola, German Schule, English school. The name for the
institutions of education and learning means ”leisure”.

Of course, the original meaning of the concept of ”leisure” has

practically been forgotten in today’s leisure–less culture of ”total
work”: in order to win our way to a real understanding of leisure,
we must confront the contradiction that rises from our overemphasis
on the world of work. ”One does not only work in order to live,
but one lives for the sake of one’s work,” this statement, quoted by
Max Weber1, makes immediate sense to us, and appeals to current
opinion. It is difficult for us to see how in fact it turns the order of
things upside-down.
And what would be our response to another statement? ”We
work in order to be at leisure.” Would we hesitate to say thet here
the world is really turned upside-down? Doesn’t this statement ap-
pear almost imorral to the man and woman of the world of ”total
work”? Is it not an attack on the basic principles of human society?
Now, I have not merely constructed a sentence to prove a point.
The statement was actually made - by Aristotle2. Yes, Aristotle: the
sober, industrious realist, and the fact that he said it, gives the state-
ment special significance. What he says in a more literal translation
would be: ”We are not–at–leisure in order to be–at–leisure.” For the
Greeks, ”not–leisure” was the word for the world of everyday work;
and not only to indicate its ”hustle and bustle,” but the work itself.
The Greek language had only this negative term for it (ά−σχoλία),
as did Latin (neg-otium, ”not–leisure”).
The context not only of this sentence but also of another one from
1
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [transl. by Talcott Parsons] (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1958, p. 264, note 24). Weber is quoting Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf.
2
Nicomachean Ethics X, 7 (1177b4-6).

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Aristotle’s Politics (stating that the ”pivot” around which every-
thing turns is leisure3) shows that these notions were not considered
extraordinary, but only self-evident: the Greeks would probably not
have understood our maxims about ”work for the sake of work”.
Could this also imply that people in our day no longer have direct
access to the original meaning of leisure?
Of course, we can expect an objection here too: how seriously
must we take Aristotle anyway? We can admire the ancient writers,
of course, but that doesn’t mean we are obliged to follow them.
On the other side, consider the following: the Christian concept
of the ”contemplative life” (the vita contemplativa) was built on the
Aristotelian concept of leisure. Further, the distinction between the
”Liberal Arts” and the ”Servile Arts” has its origin precisely here.
But is not such a distinction of interest only to the historian? Well,
at least one side of the distinction comes to the fore in everyday life,
when the issue of ”servile work” arises, the kind of activity that is
deemed inappropriate for the ”holy rest” of the Sabbath, Sundays,
or Holidays. How many are aware that the expression ”servile work”
can not be fully understood without contrasting it with the ”Liberal
Arts”? And what does it mean to say that some arts are ”liberal”
or ”free”? This is still in need of clarification.
This example might suffice, if we wanted to show, at least, that
Aristotle’s words do have some relevance to our times. And yet this
is still not enough to ”oblige” us in any way.
The real reason for mentioning it was to show how sharply the
modern valuation of work and leisure differs from that of Antiquity
and the Middle Ages. The difference is so great, in fact, that we can
no longer understand with any immediacy just what the ancient and
medieval mind understood by the statement, ”We are not–at–leisure
3
Politics VII, 3 (1337b33)

27
in order to be–at–leisure.”

Now, the very fact of this difference, of our inability to recover

the original meaning of ”leisure,” will strike us all the more when we
realize how extensively the opposing idea of ”work” has invaded and
taken over the whole realm of human action and of human existence
as a whole; when we realize, as well, how ready we are to grant all
claims made for the person who ”works.”
In the following discussion, the word ”worker” will not be used in
the sense of a distinct kind of occupation, with the sociological and
statistical sense of the ”proletarian worker,” although the ambigu-
ity is not coincidental. ”Worker” will be used in an anthropological
sense: as a general human ideal. It is with this meaning in mind that
Ernst Niekisch4 spoke of the ”worker” as an ”imperial figure,” and
Ernst Jünger5 sketched a portrait of that ”worker”-type which has
already begun to determine the future of humanity.

An altered conception of the human being as such, and a new

interpretation of the meaning of human existence as such, looms be-
hind the new claims being made for ”work” and the ”worker.” And
as we might expect, the historical evolution which resulted in this
changed conception is difficult to follow, and almost impossible to
recover in detail. If something of real import is going to be said on
the matter, it will be achieved not by reconstructing a historical nar-
rative, but by digging more deeply to the very roots of a philosophical
and theological understanding of the human person.

4
Ernst Niekisch, Die dritte imperiale Figur (Berlin, 1935).
5
Ernst Jünger, Der Arbeiter. Herrschaft und Gestalt (Hamburg,1932).

28
 II

”Intellectual work,” ”intellectual worker” - these terms character-

ize the latest stretch of the road we have traveled, bringing us at last
to the modern ideal of work in its most extreme formulation.
Up until this time (at least from the point of view of someone who
worked with his hands) the province of intellectual enterprise tended
to be looked upon as a kind of paradise, where nobody needed to
work; at the heart of this privileged province lay ”philosophy,” some-
thing at furthest remove from the working world.
Now, the takeover of this region of intellectual action (including
the province of philosophical culture) and its exclusive possession by
the realm of ”total work,” forms only the most recent phase of a whole
series of conquests made by the ”imperial figure” of the ”Worker.”
And the concepts intellectual worker and intellectual work (with
the evaluative claims that go with them) make the fact of that con-
quest especially clear and especially challenging to our times.
In this last part of the journey, however, the significance of the
whole historical process has gathered itself together to form an ex-
pression of utmost precision and clarity. For, in fully explicating the
inner structure of the concept ”intellectual work,” we come face to
face with the ”world of total work” and its real meaning.

29
 The concept of intellectual work has a number of historical an-
tecedents, which can serve to clarify it.
First, it is based on a certain interpretation of the human knowing
process.
What happens when our eye sees a rose? What do we do when
that happens? Our mind does something, to be sure, in the mere
fact of taking in the object, grasping its color, its shape, and so on.
We have to be awake and active. But all the same, it is a ”relaxed”
looking, so long as we are merely looking at it and not observing or
studying it, counting or measuring its various features. Such observa-
tion would not be a ”relaxed” action: it would be what Ernst Jünger
termed an ”act of aggression.”1 But simply looking at something,
gazing at it, ”taking it in,” is merely to open our eyes to receive the
things that present themselves to us, that come to us without any
need for ”effort” on our part to ”possess” them.
There would scarcely be any dispute about this, if we were speak-
ing about an act of sense perception.

But what about an act of knowing? When a human being consid-

ers something imperceptible to the senses, is there then such a thing
as mere ”looking”? Or, to use the scholastic technical terminology,
is there such a thing as ”intellectual vision”?
The ancient and medieval philosophers answered, ”Yes.” Modern
philosophers have tended to say, ”No.”

To Kant, for instance, the human act of knowing is exclusively ”dis-

cursive,” which means not ”merely looking.” ”The understanding
cannot look upon anything.”2 This doctrine has been characterized,
1
Blätter und Steine (Hamburg, 1934), p. 202.
2
I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, ed. R. Schmidt (Leipzig, 1944) p. 91.

30
in brief, as ”one of the most momentous dogmatic assumptions of
Kantian epistemology.”3 In Kant’s view, then, human knowing con-
sists essentially in the act of investigating, articulating, joining, com-
paring, distinguishing, abstracting, deducing, proving - all of which
are so many types and methods of active mental effort. According
to Kant, knowing — (intellectual knowing, that is, by the human
being) is activity, and nothing but activity.

It is no wonder that, starting from this basis, Kant was able to

conclude that all knowing, even philosophy itself (since philosophy is
at the greatest remove from sense perception), should be understood
as a form of work.
And he said so expressly: in 1796, for example, in an article writ-
ten to refute the Romantic ”vision” and ”intuitive” philosophy of
Jacobi, Schlosser, and Stolberg4. In philosophy, Kant objects, ”the
law of reason is supreme, whereby property is possessed through la-
bor.” And this Romantic philosophy cannot truly be a philosophy
because it is not ”work.” This accusation he directs even against
Plato, that ”Father of all raving enthusiasm in Philosophy,” while,
Kant says with recognition and approval, ”Aristotle’s philosophy is
truly work.” From such a perspective, originating from the exalta-
tion of a ”philosophy of work,” the ”recently exalted, privileged tone
of Philosophy” is branded as a false philosophy, in which one ”does
not work but merely listens with delight to the oracle within one-
self, in order to come into complete possession of the whole wisdom
promised by philosophy.” And such a ”pseudo–philosophy” thinks
itself superior to the strenuous labor of the true philosopher!
3
Bernhard Jansen, Die Geschichte der Erkenntislehre in der neueren Philosophie bis Kant (Paderborn,
1940), p. 235.
4
”Von einem neuerdings erhobenen vornehmen Ton in der Philosophie,” Akademie-Ausgabe 8, pp. 387-
406.

31
 Now, ancient and medieval philosophy had quite the opposite view,
without, of course, justifying any charge that philosophy was some-
thing ”easy.” Not only the Greeks in general - Aristotle no less than
Plato - but the great medieval thinkers as well, all held that there was
an element of purely receptive ”looking,” not only in sense perception
but also in intellectual knowing or, as Heraclitus said, ”Listening-in
to the being of things.”5
The medievals distinguished between the intellect as ratio and the
intellect as intellectus. Ratio is the power of discursive thought, of
searching and re-searching, abstracting, refining, and concluding [cf.
Latin dis-currere, ”to run to and fro”], whereas intellectus refers to
the ability of ”simply looking” (simplex intuitus), to which the truth
presents itself as a landscape presents itself to the eye. The spiritual
knowing power of the human mind, as the ancients understood it, is
really two things in one: ratio and intellectus, all knowing involves
both. The path of discursive reasoning is accompanied and pene-
trated by the intellectus’ untiring vision, which is not active but
passive, or better, receptive - a receptively operating power of the
intellect.

And something else must be added: the ancients likewise consid-

ered the active efforts of the discursive ratio to be the essentially
human element of human knowing; ratio as the decisively human
activity was contrasted with the intellectus, which had to do with
what surpasses human limits. Of course, this ”super-human” power
nevertheless does belong to man, and what is ”essentially human”
alone does not exhaust the knowing power of human nature; for it is
5
Diels-Kranz, ed., Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, frag. 112.

32
essential to the human person to reach beyond the province of the
human and into the or der of angels, the truly intellectual beings.
”Although human knowing really takes place in the mode of ra-
tio, nevertheless it is a kind of participation in that simple knowing
which takes place in higher natures, and we can thus conclude that
human beings possess a power of intellectual vision.” These are the
words of Thomas Aqumas, Disputed Questions on Truth.6 This
statement means that human knowing is a partaking in the non-
discursive power of vision enjoyed by the angels, to whom it has
been granted to ”take in” the immaterial as easily as our eyes take
in light or our ears sound. Human knowing has an element of the
non-active, purely receptive seeing, which is not there in virtue of
our humanity as such, but in virtue of a transcendence over what is
human, but which is really the highest fulfillment of what it is to be
human, and is thus ”truly human” after all (in the same way, again
according to Thomas Aquinas, the vita contemplativa as the high-
est form of human living is not ”properly human, but superhuman”:
non proprie humana, sed superhumana).7
For the ancient and medieval philosophers the ”laboring” nature
of the human ratio was likewise a mark of its humanness. The oper-
ation of the ratio, its discursive thinking process, really is work, and
a difficult activity.
But the simple act of the intellectus is not work. And whoever
thinks, along with the ancients, that human knowing is a mutual in-
terplay of ratio and intellectus; whoever can recognize an element of
intellectual vision within discursive reasoning; whoever, finally, can
retain in philosophy an element of contemplation of being as a whole
- such a person will have to grant that a characterization of knowing
6
Q.XV,1.
7
Quaestio disputata de virtutibus cardinalibus 1.

33
and philosophy as ”work” is not only not exhaustive, but does not
even reach the core of the matter, and that something essential is
in fact missing from such a definition. Certainly, knowing in general
and philosophical knowing in particular cannot take place without
the effort and activity of discursive reasoning, without the ”nuisance
of labor” (labor improbus) involved in all ”intellectual work.” Even
so, there is something else in it, and something essential to it, that
is not work.

The statement, ”knowing is work,” or ”knowing is an activity,” is

a statement with two sides to it. It implies a demand on the human
being, and a demand made by the human being. If you want to un-
derstand something, you have to work; in philosophy, Kant’s ”Law of
the Human Reason,” that property is acquired through labor,8 holds
true - and that is a claim on man.
The other, hidden, side of the same dictum - the side that does
not immediately show itself - is the claim made by man: if know-
ing is work, exclusively work, then the one who knows, knows only
the fruit of his own, subjec tive activity, and nothing else. There is
nothing in his knowing that is not the fruit of his own efforts; there
is nothing ”received” in it.

To sum up the argument: thanks to a certain underlying assump-

tion, the concept of ”intellectual work” has gained a great deal of
influence - the assumption that human knowing is accomplished in
an exclusively active/discursive operation of the ratio.
And when we look into the face of the ”worker,” it is the traits of
”effort” and ”stress” that we see becoming more pronounced there
8
Kant, op. cit (see note 4 above), p. 393.

34
and, so to speak, permanently etched. It is the mark of ”absolute ac-
tivity” (which Goethe said ”makes one bankrupt, in the end”9); the
hard quality of not–being–able–to–receive; a stoniness of heart, that
will not brook any resistance - as expressed once, most radically, in
the following terrifying statement: ”Every action makes sense, even
criminal acts ... all passivity is senseless.”10

But it is simply not the case that ”discursive thinking” and ”intel-
lective vision” are as exclusively opposed to one another as ”activity”
to ”receptivity,” or as active effort to receptive absorption. Rather,
they are related to each other as effort and struggle, on the one hand,
are related to effortlessness and calm possession, on the other.
From the contrast just mentioned - between effort and effortless-
ness - appears a second source of emphasis on the concept ”intel-
lectual work.” We speak here of a peculiar criterion for determining
the value of action as such. When Kant spoke of philosophy as a
”Herculean labor,”11 he was only using a convenient figure of speech.
For, in this laborious aspect, he saw a kind of legitimation of philoso-
phy: philosophy is genuine, insofar as it is a ”Herculean labor.” The
fact that ”intellective vision” didn’t cost anything is what made it
so suspicious to him. Kant expected no real gain in knowledge from
intellectual vision, because it is the very nature of vision to be effort-
less.
Would not such a viewpoint bring us to the conclusion, or at least,
close to the conclusion, that the truth of what is known is determined
by the effort put into knowing it?

9
Maximen und Reflexionen, ed. Günther Müller (Stuttgart, 1943), no. 1415.
10
Hermann Rauschning, Gespräche mit Hitler (Zurich/New York, 1940), quoted according to the selections
published in the journal Die Wandlung (I, 1945/6), pp. 684 ff.
11
Kant, op. cit., p. 390.

35
 Now, this is not so very distant from the ethical doctrine that
holds that whatever someone does by inclination - and that means,
without effort - is a betrayal of true morality. Indeed, according to
Kant, the moral law by definition is opposed to natural inclination.
It is simply part of the nature of things that the Good is difficult
and that the voluntary effort put into forcing oneself to do some-
thing becomes the standard for moral goodness. The more difficult
thing must be the higher Good. Schiller’s ironic verses point out the
problem:

I help my friends, and it feels nice

Until I fear that it’s a vice.12

So, effort is good. This was a thought formulated long ago by

the Cynic philosopher Antisthenes13, one of Plato’s friends and a fel-
low disciple of Socrates. Antisthenes, by the way, was a surprisingly
”modern” figure. He was re sponsible for the first paradigm of the
”worker” - or rather, he represented it himself. He not only came up
with the equation of effort with goodness, he also extolled Hercules
as the Accomplisher of Superhuman Actions.14 Now, this is an image
that still (or, once more?) has a certain compelling attraction: from
the motto of Erasmus15 to the philosophy of Kant, who used the word
”Herculean” to praise the heroism of philosophers, and on to Thomas
Carlyle, the prophet of the religion of Work: ”You must labor like
Hercules ...”16 As an ethicist of independence, this Antisthenes had
12
”Die Philosophen” (Gewissenskrupel): Gerne dient’ ich den Freunden, doch tu ich es leider mit Neigung
/Und so wurmt es mir oft, dass ich nicht tugendhaft bin.
13
Antisthenes’ statement is found in Diogenes Laertius, The Lives and Teachings of the Philosophers, VI,
1, 2.
14
Ibid.; a work of Antisthenes (no longer extant) bore the title, The Greater Hercules, or On Power.
15
Anton Gail told me of a portrait of Erasmus, painted by Hans Holbein, in which Erasmus has his hands
resting on a book with the title Herakleou Ponoi [Greek for ”the Labors of Hercules”] - Erasmi Roterodami.
16
Carlyle, as quoted by Robert Langewiesche (in an anthology of Carlyle’s writings, in German translation

36
no feeling for cultic celebration, which he preferred attacking with
”enlightened” wit;17 he was ”a-musical” (a foe of the Muses: poetry
only interested him for its moral content);18 he felt no responsiveness
to Eros (he said he ”would like to kill Aphrodite”);19 as a flat Realist,
he had no belief in immortality (what really matters, he said, was
to live rightly ”on this earth”).20 This collection of character traits
appear almost purposely designed to illustrate the very ”type” of the
modern ”workaholic.”

”Effort is good”: objecting to this thesis in the Summa theolo-

giae, Thomas Aquinas wrote as follows: ”The essence of virtue con-
sists more in the Good than in the Difficult.”21 ”When something is
more difficult, it is not for that reason necessarily more worthwhile,
but it must be more difficult in such a way, as also to be at a higher
level of goodness.”22 The Middle Ages had something to say about
virtue that will be hard for us, fellow countrymen of Kant, to under-
stand. And what was this? That virtue makes it possible for us ...
to master our natural inclinations? No. That is what Kant would
have said, and we all might be ready to agree. What Thomas says,
instead, is that virtue perfects us so that we can follow our natural
inclination in the right way.23 Yes, the highest realizations of moral
goodness are known to be such precisely in this: that they take place
effortlessly because it is of their essence to arise from love. And yet
the overemphasis on effort and struggle has made an inroad even on
[Königstein, n.d.], p. 28).
17
Cf. Wilhelm Nestle, Griechischen Geistesgeschichte von Homer bis Lukian (Stuttgart, 1944), pp. 313
ff.
18
Ibid., p. 314.
19
Transmitted by Clement of Alexandria, Stromata,II, 107, 2. In the same passage it is also reported that
”He considered the desire of love as an evil of nature.”
20
Cf. Diogenes Laertius, VI, 1, 5.
21
Summa theologiae II-II, Q. 123, a. 12, ad 2um.
22
Ibid., II-II, Q. 27, a. 8, ad 3um.
23
Ibid., II-II, Q. 108, a. 2.

37
our understanding of love. Why, for instance, in the opinion of the
average Christian, is the love of one’s enemies the highest form of
love? Because here, the natural inclination is suppressed to a heroic
degree. What makes this kind of love so great is precisely its unusual
difficulty, its practical impossibility. But what does Thomas say? ”It
is not the difficulty involved that makes this kind of love so worthy,
even though the greatness of the love is shown by its power to over-
come the difficulty. But if the love were so great, as completely to
remove all difficulty that would be a still greater love.”24

It would follow, then, that the essence of knowing would lie, not in
the effort of thought as such, but in the grasp of the being of things,
in the discovery of reality.
Just as in the realm of the Good, the greatest virtue is without
difficulty, so in knowing, the highest form would be the lightening-
like insight, true contemplation, which comes to one like a gift; it
is effortless and not burdensome. Thomas speaks of contemplation
and play in a single breath: ”Because of the leisure of contemplation”
[otium contemplationis] the Scripture says of the Divine Wisdom
itself that it ”plays all the time, plays throughout the world” [Wis-
dom 8, 30].25
Surely, such highest realizations of knowing would be preceded by
an exceptional effort of thought, and perhaps must be so prepared
(otherwise, such knowledge would be grace in the strict sense); but
in any case, the effort would not be the cause but rather a necessary
condition for it. And the holy effortlessness of the action of charity
would also be connected with previous, and heroic, exercise of the
will. ”Knowing” means that the reality of existing things has been
24
Quaest. disp. de caritate 8, ad l7um.
25
Commentary on the Sentences I, d. 2 (expositio textus).

38
reached; it does not consist in the effort of thought, or ”intellectual
work.”
This aspect too of the concept of ”intellectual work” - the over-
valuation of the ”difficult” as such - presents itself in the deeply
etched visage of the ”worker”: those mask-like, stony features, ready
to suffer pain, no matter what the reason. The un-related nature
of this readiness to suffer is the decisive difference because in this
case someone does not ask why. Such readiness to suffer (in which
the ultimate meaning of all ”discipline” has been seen to consist)26 is
radically different from the Christian understanding of self–sacrifice:
in the latter, one does not intend the painful as such, nor seeks ex-
ertion for the sake of exertion, nor the difficult simply because it is
difficult; rather, what one seeks is a higher bliss, a healing, and the
fullness of existence, and thereby the fullness of happiness: ”The goal
and the norm of discipline is happiness.”27
The innermost meaning of this over-emphasis on effort appears to
be this: that man mistrusts everything that is without effort; that
in good conscience he can own only what he himself has reached
through painful effort; that he refuses to let himself be given any-
thing.

We should consider for a moment how much the Christian un-

derstanding of life is based on the reality of ”Grace”; let us also
recall that the Holy Spirit Himself is called ”Gift”;28 that the great-
est Christian teachers have said that the Justice of God is based on
Love;29 that something given, something free of all debt, something
26
Ernst Jünger, Blätter und Steine, p. 179.
27
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, Q. 141, a. 6, ad 1um.
28
Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, IV, 23: ”It is the role of the Holy Spirit, to be given”; and
Summa theologiae I, Q. 38, a. 2 ad lum: ”The Holy Spirit, Who comes forth as Love from the Father, is
truly called a ”gift.”
29
Summa theologiae I, Q. 21, a. 4.

39
undeserved, something not-achieved - is presumed in every thing
achieved or laid claim to; that what is first is always something re-
ceived - if we keep all this before our eyes, we can see the abyss that
separates this other attitude from the inheritance of Christian Eu-
rope.

We have been inquiring into the origin of the concept of intellectual

labor, and we have found that the concept has its origin above all in
two theses: 1) the view that all human knowing is accomplished ex-
clusively in the man ner of discursive activity; and 2) the view that
the effort that goes into thought is the criterion of its truth. But
there is a third element involved as well, which appears to be even
more crucial than the first two and seems to compre hend both of
them within itself. This is the social doctrine that lies concealed in
the concepts of ”intellectual labor” and ”intellectual worker.”
Understood in this way, work means ”contribution to society.”
And ”intellectual work” is intellectual activity as social service, as
contribution to the common utility. But that is not all that the terms
”intellectual work” and ”intellectual worker” say. The contemporary
use of the words includes as well a reference to the ”working class,”
and something like the following is implied: not only the wage earner,
the hand-worker, and the proletarian are workers; even the learned
man, the student, are workers; they too are drawn into the social
system and its distribution of labor. The intellectual worker is also
bound to his function; he too is a functionary in the total world of
work, he may be called a ”specialist,” he is still a functionary. And
something else, something even more pointed is being said: nobody -
whether he be ”intellectual” or ”hand” worker - nobody is granted a
”free zone” of intellectual activity, ”free” meaning not being subordi-
40
nated to a duty to fulfill some function. With this, our inquiry meets
the very nub of the issue. Is it not clear to everyone how much the
problem has gone beyond the merely theoretical stage, to threaten
drastic implications?
And yet the ”social” - by which we understand the relationships
of social classes and groupings with one an other - the ”social” is
only the foreground, and we will have more to say about it later.

The real question, however, is a metaphysical one. It is the old

question about the justification and sense of the artes liberales.
What are ”liberal arts”? Thomas Aquinas provides some concep-
tual clarification in his Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics:
”Every art is called liberal which is ordered to knowing; those which
are ordered to some utility to be attained through action are called
servile arts.”30 Six hundred years later, John Henry Newman said as
follows: ”I know well,” Newman says, ”that knowledge may resolve
itself into an art, and seminate in a mechanical process and in tangi-
ble fruit; but it may also fall back upon that Reason which informs it,
and resolve itself into Philosophy. For in one case it is called Useful
Knowledge; in the other, Liberal.”31
”Liberal arts,” therefore, are ways of human action which have
their justification in themselves; ”servile arts” are ways of human ac-
tion that have a purpose outside of themselves, a purpose, to be more
exact, which consists in a useful effect that can be realized through
praxis. The ”liberality” or ”freedom” of the liberal arts consists in
their not being disposable for purposes, that they do not need to be
legitimated by a social function, by being ”work.”
To many people, the question about the justification and meaning
30
Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics I, 3.
31
Newman, Idea of a University, V, 6.

41
of the liberal arts will seem to be an already answered question, an is-
sue now put behind us. To translate the question into contemporary
language, it would sound something like this: Is there still an area
of human action, or human existence as such, that does not have its
justification by being part of the machinery of a ”five-year plan”? Is
there or is there not something of that kind?
The inner tendency of the concepts ”intellectual work” and ”in-
tellectual worker” point to the answer: No, the human being is es-
sentially, and with his whole exis tence, a functionary, even in the
most noble forms of his activity.
We can relate the question to philosophy and philosophical edu-
cation. Philosophy can be called the most liberal of the liberal arts.
”Knowledge is most truly free when it is philosophical knowledge,”
Newman said.32 And philosophy, in a certain sense, gave its name to
the liberal arts, for the ”Arts Faculty” of the medieval university is
today [in Germany] called the ”Philosophical Faculty.”
For our inquiry, then, philosophy, and how it is valued, becomes
an indicator of particular importance.
For there is not much to dispute about whether, or to what extent,
the natural sciences, medical science, jurisprudence, or economics
should have a circumscribed place for themselves in the function-
ing unity of the modern social system, and thus be capable of being
classed as ”work” in social-scientific usage. It is of the nature of
the individual sciences to be related to purposes that exist apart
from themselves. But there is also a philosophical manner of treat-
ing these special sciences, and then our question about philosophy
as such would apply to them also. ”The theoretically treated special
science” - that means that a science is being pursued in the origi-
nal, ”academic” sense - (for ”academic” means ”philosophical” or it
32
Ibid.

42
means nothing!).
Thus, if we are speaking about the place and justification for phi-
losophy, then at the same time, we are speaking, no more and no less,
about the place and justification for the University, for academic ed-
ucation, and for education [Bildung] in the genuine sense - in the
sense in which it differs from and transcends, in principle, all mere
career training.
The functionary is trained. Training is distinguished by its ori-
entation toward something partial, and specialized, in the human
being, and toward some one section of the world. Education is con-
cerned with the whole: who ever is educated knows how the world as
a whole behaves. Education concerns the whole human being, insofar
as he is capax universi, ”capable of the whole,” able to comprehend
the sum total of existing things.
But this is not to say anything against professional training, or
against the functionary. Of course, the vocationally specialized ex-
ercise of a function is the normal form of human activity; what is
normal is work, and the normal day is a working day. But the ques-
tion is this: can the world of man be exhausted in being the ”working
world”? Can the human being be satisfied with being a functionary,
a ”worker”? Can human existence be fulfilled in being exclusively
a work-a-day existence? Or, to put it another way, from the other
direction, as it were: Are there such things as liberal arts? The ar-
chitects of the total world of work would have to answer, ”No.” In
the world of the worker, as Ernst Jünger put it, there is a denial
of free research.33 In the consistently planned working-state there
can be neither genuine philosophy (to whose nature it belongs, not
to be at the disposal of purposes, and in this sense ”free”), nor can
the special sciences be treated in a philosophical manner (and that
33
Blätter und Steine, p. 176.

43
means, ”academically” in the original sense of the word).

Now it is in the term ”intellectual worker,” above all, that this

very situation is established and proclaimed. It is thus symptomatic,
and painfully so, that linguistic usage, and especially academic us-
age, has been so influenced by all this talk of ”intellectual worker”
or ”mental laborer.”

But the ancients said that there rightly exist non-useful forms of
human activity, that there are such things as liberal arts. There are
not only functionary sciences, there is also the knowledge of a ”gen-
tleman,” as J. H. Newman so happily translated the old term artes
liberales in his Idea of a University?34
It should go without saying that not everything that cannot ex-
actly be categorized as ”useful” is useless. And thus it is not at all
without significance for a people and the realization of a nation’s
common good that room be allowed, and respect be granted, for
what is not ”useful work” in the sense of immediate application. As
Goethe the Minister of State wrote to Friedrich Soret [Oct. 20, 1830]:
”I have never asked... how do I use the whole? - rather, I have only
attempted to speak out what I understood as good and true. Of
course, this was made use of... in a wider circle, but that was not its
purpose, only a necessary result.”35
According to Hegel’s fine formulation, there is not only use, there
is also blessing?36
In just such a sense can the medieval statement be understood,
34
The Idea of a University, V. 5.
35
Taken from Goethe’s Conversations with Eckermann.
36
Taken from the preface to Hegel’s Wissenschaft der Logic, where the fuller context says that ”the
contemplation of the Eternal and of a life that serves it alone” is motivated ”not for the sake of use, but for
the sake of blessing.”

44
that it is ”necessary for the perfection of the human community, that
there be persons who devote themselves to the [useless] life of contem-
plation.”37 To which I would only like to add that this is necessary
not only for the perfection of the individuals themselves, who devote
themselves to the vita contemplativa, but also for the perfection
of the whole human community! Would anyone who thinks only in
terms of the ”intellectual worker” be willing to say that?

37
Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences IV, D. 26, 1, 2.

45
46
 III

Our brief sketch of the ”Worker” type has brought into the open
three principal characteristics: an outwardly directed, active power;
an aimless readiness to suffer pain; an untiring insertion into the ra-
tionalized program of useful social organization. From the perspec-
tive of such a ”worker,” leisure can only appear as something totally
unforeseen, something completely alien, without rhyme or reason -
as a synonym, in fact, for idleness and laziness.
Now the code of life of the High Middle Ages said something en-
tirely opposite to this: that it was precisely lack of leisure, an inability
to be at leisure, that went together with idleness; that the restless-
ness of work-for-work’s-sake arose from nothing other than idleness.
There is a curious connection in the fact that the restlessness of a
self-destructive work-fanaticism should take its rise from the absence
of a will to accomplish something. This is a very surprising concept,
which requires no small effort to explicate. But it is worth the trou-
ble to spend a little time with the topic. What did the old code of
conduct mean by idleness, by acedia?1
To begin with, it meant something other than what we usually
mean, when we speak of the ”root of all evils.” Idleness, for the older
code of behavior, meant especially this: that the human being had
1
For more on acedia, see Josef Pieper, Über die Hoffnung, 5th ed. (Munich, 1955), pp. 58 ff.

47
given up on the very responsibility that comes with his dignity: that
he does not want to be what God wants him to be, and that means
that he does not want to be what he really, and in the ultimate
sense, is. Acedia is the ”despair of weakness,” of which Kierkegaard
said that it consists in someone ”despairingly” not wanting ”to be
oneself.”2 The metaphysical/theological concept of idleness means,
then, that man finally does not agree with his own existence; that
behind all his energetic activity, he is not at one with himself; that,
as the Middle Ages expressed it, sadness has seized him in the face of
the divine Goodness that lives within him - and this sadness is that
”sadness of the world” (tristitia saeculi ) spoken of in the Bible.3

What, then, would be the concept that opposes this metaphys-

ical/theological concept of idleness? Is it that acquisitive effort or
industriousness, as practiced in the economic life of civil society?
To be sure, this is how acedia has been understood by some, as
if it had something to do with the ”business-ethos” of the Middle
Ages. Sombart, for example, interprets it to mean the ”lackadaisi-
cal stay-at-home,” in contrast with the active and useful worker;4
but Max Scheler has already objected to this interpretation.5 But in
the wake of Sombart acedia has been translated by expressions like
”wool gatherer” or ”thumb-twiddler” [Leimsierderhaftigkeit], which
can only really imply that acedia is the lack of economic ambition
or enterprise.6 But especially to be regretted is the apologetic en-
thusiasm of the attempt to legitimize ”Christian teaching” through
2
The Sickness unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening, in
Kierkegaard’s Writings, vol. 19, ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, 1980), pp. 49 ff.
3
See Thomas Aquinas, De malo 11,3.
4
W. Sombart, Der Bourgeois (Leipzig, 1913), p. 322; cf. also (28)
5
Max Scheler, Vom Llmsturz der Werte (Leipzig, 1919), vol. 2, p.293.
6
Johannes Haessle, Das Arbeitsethos der Kirche nach Thomas von Aquin und Leo XIII: Untersuchungen
uber den Wirtschaftsgeist des Katholicismus. (Freiburg in Briesgau, 1923), p. 31.

48
making it agree with the current fashion and, in this connection,
to read modern activism into the ”working-ethos” of the Church.
This leads to a curious translation of this rather calm statement by
Thomas Aquinas: vivere secundum actum est quando exercet quis
opera vitae in actu7 as ”to live in actu means that one exerts one-
self, is creative, and active”8 - as if contemplation were not also an
”activity of life (opus vitae)” for Thomas!
The opposite of acedia is not the industrious spirit of the daily ef-
fort to make a living, but rather the cheerful affirmation by man of his
own existence, of the world as a whole, and of God – of Love, that
is, from which arises that special freshness of action, which would
never be confused, by anyone with any experience, with the narrow
activity of the ”workaholic.”
We would probably get this all wrong, if we hadn’t been expressly
told: Thomas Aquinas understood acedia as a sin against the Third
Commandment. So far from seeing in ”idleness” the opposite of the
”work-ethic,” he understands it as a sin against the Sabbath, against
”The soul’s resting in God.”9

And so, someone may ask, what has all this to do with our present
topic? Only this: that acedia is classified as one of the ”Seven Cap-
ital Sins.” But the translation of the Latin terminology here is not
exactly felicitous. Caput from which the word ”capital” is derived,
can mean ”head” as in ”head or source of a stream”: these are the
sins from which, as from a source arise, as it were, naturally, all
other errors. And from Idleness - this is what brings us back to our
own point of departure - from idleness springs, so the old teaching
7
De unitate intellectus.
8
Johannes Haessle (see note 6 above), p. 34.
9
Summa theologiae II-II, Q. 35, 3, ad 1um; De malo Q. 11, 3 ad 2um.

49
goes, among other vices, also those of Restlessness and Inability–for–
Leisure (and among the other ”daughters” springing from the same
source, is Despair , giving us a certain insight into the hidden mean-
ing of the expression, ”work and don’t despair!” since Restlessness
and Despair are ”sisters”).
Idleness in the old sense, then, has so little in common with leisure,
that it is the very inner disposition to non–leisure, that it is really
”lack of leisure.” There can only be leisure, when man is at one with
himself, when he is in accord with his own being. Acedia, therefore,
is ”disagreement with oneself.” Idleness and lack of leisure be long
with each other; leisure is opposed to both.
Leisure, then, as a condition of the soul – (and we must firmly
keep to this assumption, since leisure is not necessarily present in all
the external things like ”breaks,” ”time off,” ”weekend,” ”vacation,”
and so on – it is a condition of the soul) – leisure is precisely the
counterpoise to the image of the ”worker,” and we can now see how
this pertains to all three aspects we have dealt with: work as activity,
work as effort, work as social function.
Against the exclusiveness of the paradigm of work as activity,
first of all, there is leisure as ”non–activity” – an inner absence of
preoccupation, a calm, an ability to let things go, to be quiet.
Leisure is a form of that stillness that is the necessary prepara-
tion for accepting reality; only the person who is still can hear, and
whoever is not still, cannot hear. Such stillness as this is not mere
soundlessness or a dead muteness; it means, rather, that the soul’s
power, as real, of responding to the real – a co–respondence, eternally
established in nature – has not yet descended into words. Leisure is
the disposition of receptive understanding, of contemplative behold-
ing, and immersion – in the real.
In leisure, there is, furthermore, something of the serenity of ”not–
50
being–able–to–grasp,” of the recognition of the mysterious character
of the world, and the confidence of blind faith, which can let things
go as they will; there is in it something of the ”trust in the frag-
mentary, that forms the very life and essence of history.”10 The same
journal entry of the poet Konrad Weiss, from which that last quota-
tion was taken, speaks of Ernst Jünger’s precise style of thinking and
writing, which, with its ”fanaticism for the True and the Official,”
pursues things as an act of aggression, to steal their secret from them
and then to place them under inspection as if they were antisepti-
cally prepared microscope slides – this is what Weiss observed: such
”formulated” description is ”the very opposite of all contemplation,
and is like an idleness pushed to a sub lime level of exactitude ... as
distinct from the typical idleness, which gives its time to everything:
God, things, the world, everything, whether good or evil – letting
everything go by in indifference.”
Leisure is not the attitude of the one who intervenes but of the
one who opens himself; not of someone who seizes but of one who
lets go, who lets himself go, and ”go under,” almost as someone who
falls asleep must let him self go (you cannot sleep, unless you do so).
And in fact, just as sleeplessness and restlessness are in a special way
mutually related, just so the man at leisure is related to someone
sleeping; as Heraclitus said of those who sleep, that they ”are active
and cooperative in the business of the world.”11 The surge of new life
that flows out to us when we give ourselves to the contemplation of a
blossoming rose, a sleeping child, or of a divine mystery -- is this not
like the surge of life that comes from deep, dreamless sleep? And as
it is written in the Book of Job: ”God gives us songs in the middle of
the night” (35, 10), and as wise people know, God gives His blessings
10
Sept. 12, 1939. I owe my knowledge of this passage to the kind permission of the poet’s widow.
11
Fragment 75 (Diels, ed.).

51
to his own, and what rejoices them, in sleep - in just the same way,
do the greatest, most blessed insights, the kind that could never be
tracked down, come to us above all in the time of leisure. In such
silent openness of the soul, it may be granted to man for only an
instant to know ”what the world /holds in its innermost,” so that af-
terwards the insights of that happy moment have to be re-discovered
through the effort of ”labor.”

Second, against the exclusiveness of the paradigm of work as effort,

leisure is the condition of considering things in a celebrating spirit.
The inner joyfulness of the person who is celebrating [Der Feiernde]
belongs to the very core of what we mean by leisure [as does that
incomparable German word for ”quitting time” or ”festival-evening,”
Feierabend ]. Leisure is only possible in the assumption that man is
not only in harmony with himself [whereas idleness is rooted in the
denial of this harmony], but also that he is in agreement with the
world and its meaning. Leisure lives on affirmation. It is not the same
as the absence of activity; it is not the same thing as quiet, or even
as an inner quiet. It is rather like the stillness in the conversation
of lovers, which is fed by their oneness. In Hölderlin’s poetic frag-
ment, die Musse, are found the following three verses: ”I stand in a
peaceful meadow /as a beloved Elm tree, and as vines and bunches
of grapes, /the sweet play of life coils around me.” And as it is writ-
ten in the Scriptures, God saw, when ”he rested from all the works
that He had made” that everything was good, very good (Genesis
1, 31), just so the leisure of man includes within itself a celebratory,
approving, lingering gaze of the inner eye on the reality of creation.
The highest form of affirmation is the festival; and according to
Karl Kerényi, the historian of religion, to festival belong ”peace, in-
52
tensity of life, and contemplation all at once.”12 The holding of a
festival means: an affirmation of the basic meaning of the world, and
an agreement with it, and in fact it means to live out and fulfill one’s
inclusion in the world, in an extraordinary manner, different from
the everyday.
The festival is the origin of leisure, its inmost and ever-central
source. And this festive character is what makes leisure not only
”effortless” but the very opposite of effort or toil.

In the third place, leisure stands opposed to the exclusiveness of

the paradigm of work as social function.
The simple ”break” from work - the kind that lasts an hour, or
the kind that lasts a week or longer - is part and parcel of daily work-
ing life. It is something that has been built into the whole working
process, a part of the schedule. The ”break” is there for the sake of
work. It is supposed to provide ”new strength” for ”new work,” as
the word ”refreshment” indicates: one is refreshed for work through
being refreshed from work.
Leisure stands in a perpendicular position with respect to the
working process - in just the same way as the ”simple gaze” of in-
tellectus does not consist in the ”duration” (so to speak) of ratio’s
working-out process, but instead cuts through it at the perpendicular
(the ancients compared the ratio with time, the intellectus with the
”always now” of eternity).13 Now leisure is not there for the sake
of work, no matter how much new strength the one who resumes
working may gain from it; leisure in our sense is not justified by pro-
viding bodily renewal or even mental refreshment to lend new vigor
to further work - although it does indeed bring such things!
12
Karl Kerényi, Die antike Religion (Amsterdam, 1940), p. 66.
13
Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles II, 96.

53
 As contemplation, so leisure is of a higher rank than the vita ac-
tiva (even though this - the active life
indexlife!active life - is the truly ”human” in a sense). But the ranking
cannot be reversed: while it is true that the one who prays before
going to bed sleeps better, surely nobody would want to think of
praying as a means of going to sleep. In the same way, nobody who
wants leisure merely for the sake of ”refreshment” will experience its
authentic fruit, the deep refreshment that comes from a deep sleep.
Leisure is not justified in making the functionary as ”trouble-free”
in operation as possible, with minimum ”downtime,” but rather in
keeping the functionary human (or as Newman said it, so that he
can stay a gentleman); and this means that the human being does
not disappear into the parceled-out world of his limited work-a-day
function, but instead remains capable of taking in the world as a
whole, and thereby to realize himself as a being who is oriented to-
ward the whole of existence.14

This is why the ability to be ”at leisure” is one of the

basic powers of the human soul. Like the gift of contempla-
tive self-immersion in Being, and the ability to uplift one’s spirits in
festivity, the power to be at leisure is the power to step beyond the
working world and win contact with those superhuman, life-giving
forces that can send us, renewed and alive again, into the busy world
of work. Only in such authentic leisure can the ”door into freedom”
be opened out of the confinement of that ”hidden anxiety,” which a
certain perceptive observer15 has seen as the distinctive character of
14
”As God, Who made things, did not rest in the things He made, but rested from them, in Himself ...
just so should we learn to rest not in our things or in His things, as if they were the goal, but rather in God
Himself, in Whom our happiness consists. This is the reason why man should work for six days in His own
works, in order to rest on the seventh day, and be free for the worship of God. But for Christians, such rest
is appointed not only temporarily, but for eternity.” Commentary on the Sentences, II, D. 15, 3. 3.
15
The black American author, Richard Wright, according to a report in the international journal, Die

54
the working world, for which ”employment and unemployment are
the two poles of an existence with no escape.”
In leisure - not only there, but certainly there, if anywhere - the
truly human is rescued and preserved precisely because the area of
the ”just human” is left behind over and over again - and this is not
brought about through the application of extreme efforts but rather
as with a kind of ”moving away” (and this ”moving” is of course
more difficult than the extreme, active effort; it is ”more difficult”
because it is less at one’s own disposal; the condition of utmost exer-
tion is more easily to be realized than the condition of relaxation and
detachment, even though the latter is effortless: this is the paradox
that reigns over the attainment of leisure, which is at once a human
and super-human condition). As Aristotle said of it: ”man cannot
live this way insofar as he is man, but only insofar as something di-
vine dwells in him.”16

Umschau 1, no.2, pp. 214-16.

16
Nicomachean Ethics X, 7 (11779,2728).

55
56
 IV

After our initial attempt, in the foregoing pages, to formulate a

conception of leisure, further questions remain concerning its intrinsic
significance, its ”prospects” for being realized, its peculiar impetus
or trajectory in history. Or, to put the matter more concretely: will
it ever be possible to keep, or reclaim, some room for leisure from the
forces of the total world of work? And this would mean not merely
a little portion of rest on Sunday, but rather a whole ”preserve” of
true, unconfined humanity: a space of freedom, of true learning, of
attunement to the world–as–a–whole? In other words, will it be pos-
sible to keep the human being from becoming a complete functionary,
or ”worker”? What would have to be done beforehand in order for
this to succeed? For that the world of the ”Worker” is pushing into
history with a monstrous momentum (we are almost inclined, rightly
or wrongly, to speak of an unleashed ”demonic power” in history),
of that, there can be no doubt.

Resistance to this has been attempted from several directions and

did not begin yesterday. To be sure, certain forms of resistance have
proved inadequate. For instance, the position so fiercely fought for
during the First World War, of ”art for art’s sake” (l’art pour l’art),
has now be come a somewhat more justified attempt to shield the
57
realm of art from the widespread ”utilization” of the world. And
in our time [i.e., the post–World War II era], when the real his-
torical battle-lines are covered over and still unclear behind all the
scaffolding of restoration, still other attempts are underway, such as:
reaching back to ”Tradition” in general,1 calling upon the duty that
comes with our ancient origins, the battle over the Gymnasium [aca-
demic high school], and the academic and philosophic character of
university education (and that is a fight to keep the schola something
other than an institute for career-training), and even Humanism in
general - these are some of the movements through which a threat-
ened value is seeking to regain strength and defend its existence.
The question, however, is whether positions like these will really
hold out, or rather, whether they can do so. Is ”Humanism” an
adequate concept - adequate not just in terms of its psychological
appeal and attractiveness but in its ability to provide metaphysical
legitimation, ultimate credibility, and specific, historically effective
relevance? (Incidentally, it is interesting to note that in East Ger-
many ”Humanism” has been brought into use to describe economic
materialism, while in France the atheistic existentialists would like
to be considered humanistes and neither use is completely wrong!).
In fact, the question we are asking is whether an appeal to the hu-
manum as such can suffice against the demands of the ”total world
of work.”
But before we attempt to answer this question, the social as-
pect of our problem needs to be addressed. Therefore, with an eye
to a few related misunderstandings that hover around the prob-
lem, we will proceed to an Excursus on ”proletariat” and ”de–
proletarianization.”
1
On the questionable value of a generalized cultural ”Traditionalism,” cf. Josef Pieper, Über den Begriff
der Tradition (Köln u. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1958).

58
 Excursus on ”Proletariat” and
”De–proletarianization”
We have maintained that the expression ”intellectual worker” con-
tains an especially concise formulation of the totalitarian claims of the
world of work. Now, Trübners Deutsche Wörterbuch [a standard
German dictionary] maintains that these relatively recent terms ”in-
tellectual work” and ”intellectual worker” perform a useful service
because they overcome the (age-old, but in modern times increas-
ingly sharpened) opposition in society between a student and one
who works with his hands.2 Now, if we don’t accept the terms, or do
so only with reservations, does that involve us in a definite viewpoint
with regard to this social opposition? Our refusal to allow the con-
cept ”intellectual worker” validity certainly does imply something, at
least the following: the overcoming of the class-opposition in so-
ciety is either not possible or desirable at the level of ”working.”
But would this not mean, then, that the gap between an academic
educational level, which can afford to take knowledge for its own sake,
and the proletarian, who only knows the ”break” - barely enough to
renew him for his daily input of labor - will not this gap necessarily
get deeper as a result of our thesis, no matter what our attitude or
intention?
This is no small objection.
Plato, in fact, in one passage opposes the type of the philosopher
to the type of the banausos [hand-worker]. The philosophers are
those ”who have been brought up, not like slaves, but in the oppo-
site way. And this, O Theodoros, is the way of each of them: the
one, who has been raised truly in freedom and leisure, whom you call
a philosopher and who can get away with appearing very simple and
2
Trübners Deutsche Wörterbuch (Berlin, 1939 and later), I, 118.

59
good for nothing, when it comes to practical accomplishments, so
that he seems not to know how to tie a knot, to fasten up a bundle
to be carried, or how to cook up a tasty dish... ; the other is the
way of the one who knows how to do all these things nimbly and
neatly, but does not know how to wear his cloak like a free man, and
much less, how to praise with worthy accent the true life of gods and
men... ” This comes from the Theaetetus.3 In clarification of this
passage, and with regard to the ancient conception of the banausos,
it can also be said, that Plato means not only the uneducated, not
only the amousos [without the Muses], and not only the man with
no spiritual relationship with the world, but rather, and expressly,
the man who lives by his hands, in contrast with the man who is
”well off” and able to dispose freely of his time.
So then: are we suggesting that the concept of the banausic should
be renewed, with all its pre-Christian social and educational baggage?
Not in the least! But then again, isn’t such a consequence included
in the denial that the word ”work” - which, as is frequently said, is
a noble word - can be used to indicate the whole area of intellectual
activity? No, again! What I mean to say, instead, is that, on the
one hand, one should do everything in one’s power to overcome such
an opposition immediately, but that, on the other hand, we should
take care not to do something wrong, something completely nonsen-
sical, in order to attain that goal. We would be doing just that if
we were to seek social unity in the so-to-speak purely terminological
”proletarianizing” of the educational level, and not in a real ”de–
proletarianizing” of the proletariat.
But what do such words really mean - proletariat, proletarian,
de–proletarianize? It would seem a good idea, at this point, to leave
off discussing the political feasibility of de–proletarization, and pose
3
Plato, Theaetetus 175e-176a.

60
the theoretical question of principle: ”What is it to be proletarian
really, what is proletariat and de–proletarianization?”
Being ”proletarian,” first of all, is not the same as being poor.
One can be poor without being proletarian: the beggar in the class-
structured medieval society was not a proletarian. On the other hand,
one can be a proletarian, without being poor: the engineer, the ”spe-
cialist” in the total–work state is, certainly, proletarian. Secondly,
one must still state the obvious: the negative aspect of the prole-
tariat, the aspect we need to remove from it, does not consist in the
fact that the condition is limited to a certain social class, so that
the only way to eliminate the ”negative” would be to have everyone
proletarian! ”Proletarianism,” then, clearly cannot be overcome by
proletarianizing everyone.
Once again, then, what is it to be proletarian? If we take all the
various sociological definitions and reduce them to a common denom-
inator, it can be summed up something like this: being proletarian
is being bound to the working–process.
In this definition, ”working–process” does not refer in general to
the entire complex of human action that never comes to a stop; pro-
letarianness is not simply the orientation of man to activity as such.
”Work” is meant as useful activity, which means that by definition,
work does not have its meaning in itself, but is directed toward some
thing socially advantageous, a bonum utile, the realization of prac-
tical values and needs. And the ”working process” is the compre-
hensive, task-distributing process of usefulness, through which and
in which the ”common use” is realized (and ”common use” has not
the same meaning as the much more comprehensive term, ”common
good”).
To be bound to the working process is to be bound to the whole
process of usefulness, and moreover, to be bound in such a way that
61
the whole life of the working human being is consumed.
This ”binding” can have various causes. The cause may be lack of
ownership, for the proletarian is the ”wage–earner without property,”
who ”has nothing but his work,” and thus he is constantly forced to
sell his working–power.4 But such binding to the working process can
also be caused by dictate of the total–working state. The proletarian
is one who, whether or not he owns property, is constantly on the
move ”because of the practical necessities of the absolutely rational
production of goods.”5 In a third way, the binding to the working-
process can have its roots in the inner poverty of the person: the
proletarian is one whose life is fully satisfied by the working-process
itself because this space has been shrunken from within, and because
meaningful action that is not work is no longer possible or even imag-
inable.
One could add that these forms of proletarianism, especially the
two latter, are mutually encouraging: the total–working state needs
the spiritually impoverished functionary, while such a person is in-
clined to see and embrace an ideal of a fulfilled life in the total ”use”
made of his ”services.”
And in regard to this internal binding to the work–process, a
further question may be posed: whether or not proletarianism, so
conceived, is a symptom that characterizes all the levels of society
and is not at all limited to the social sector of the proletariat; it is
a general symptom that can be seen unusually clearly and in isola-
tion in the ”proletariat”; indeed, the question is whether we are not
all proletarians - even though our political views may be expressly
opposed to one another’s - all ripe and ready to fall into line as
ready functionaries for the collective working–state. And shouldn’t
4
Pius XI, Encyclical Letter Quadragesimo anno, no. 63.
5
Ibid., no. 119.

62
the fortification of the mind against the seductive strength of ”total”
education need to be sought from a deeper renewal of consciousness
than could be expected from the merely political level?6
It is in this connection that the distinction between the artes lib-
erales and the artes serviles obtains fresh significance. As Thomas
put it, it was the orientation toward ”a utility to be reached through
action” that Antiquity and the Middle Ages saw as the essential fea-
ture of the artes serviles. Proletarianism would consequently be
equivalent to the narrowing of existence and activity to the realm of
the artes serviles - whether this narrowness be conditioned through
lack of ownership, compulsion of the state, or spiritual poverty. ”De–
proletarization” would consequently be the widening of one’s exis-
tence beyond the realm of the ”merely useful,” ”servile” work, and
the restriction of the area of the artes serviles, to benefit the arts
liberales. And in the realization of such a program, again, three
things would be necessary: building up of property from wages, lim-
iting the power of the state, and overcoming internal poverty.
Of course, the very term ”servile arts” sounds horrible to our ears
today. Nevertheless, it is extremely risky to want to deny this char-
acter to work. For through the fiction, that work does not primarily
”serve” some end beyond itself, the very opposite happens from that
which someone intends to accomplish thereby: the very opposite of
a ”liberation” or ”rehabilitation” of the working man takes place.
What happens is actually the effect of the inhumanity of the total
world of work: the final binding of man to the process of produc-
tion, which is itself understood and proclaimed to be the intrinsically
meaningful realization of human existence.
6
My own essays, written in 1932 and 1933, Thesen zur sozialen Politik (3rd. ed.; Freiburg im Breisgau,
1947), even though they are expressly and quite consciously limited to the political level, now are in need of
thorough correction in this respect. It is characteristic of the ”Younger Generation” between the First and
Second World Wars, that as a whole they expected entirely too much from purely political measures.

63
 Authentic de–proletarianization, on the other hand, which should
not be confused with the struggle against need - and no words need
be wasted on the urgency of that struggle - and de–proletarianization
assumes that the distinction between the liberal and the servile arts
is meaningful in the distinction between ”useful activity” on the one
hand (which do not have their meaning only in themselves), and free
arts, on the other hand, which are not used for, nor adaptable to,
”useful purposes”; and it is completely in keeping with their position,
if the promoters of a ”proletarianization of everyone” dislike this dis-
tinction and try to show that it is unfounded.
For example, the distinction between the ”servile” and ”liberal”
arts is related to the distinction between an ”honorarium” and a
”wage.” The liberal arts are ”honored”; the servile arts are ”paid
in wages.” The concept of the honorarium implies a certain lack of
equivalence between achievement and reward, that the service itself
”really” cannot be rewarded. Wages, on the other hand (taken in
their purest sense, in which they differ from the honorarium), mean
payment for work as an article or commodity: the service can be
”compensated” through the wage, there is a certain ”equivalency.”
But the honorarium means something beyond this: it contributes to
one’s life-support, whereas a wage (again, in the strict sense) means
the payment for the isolated accomplishment of the work, without
regard for the life-support of the working person. It is characteris-
tic, now, of the mind that has been formed by the ”worker” ideal,
to deny this distinction between honorarium and wage: there are
only ”wages.” Thus Jean-Paul Sartre, in one of his programmatic
essays on the contemporary writer,7 where the ”social function” of
literature is proclaimed, maintains that the writer who only rarely
7
Published in the first volume of the journal Les temps modernes and reported also in the international
review Die Umschau 1, no. 1.

64
knows how to ”create a relationship between his works and their ma-
terial compensation,” must learn to see himself as ”a worker, who
gets compensation for his efforts.” Here, any incommensurability be-
tween achievement and compensation, as expressed in the concept of
the honorarium, is denied, even in the realm of philosophy and po-
etry, which is looked upon as nothing other than intellectual labor.
By contrast, a social doctrine that thinks in terms inherited from
Christian Europe, not only would want to preserve the distinction
between wages and honorarium; and not only would it deny that any
compensation is equivalent to any wage; such a doctrine would also
hold that there exists no compensation for any accomplishment that
does not also include, more or less, the character of the honorarium;
and this would be seen even in the ”servile” arts, insofar as they are
a human action, something that cannot be adequately paid for with
money. Even in these activities there is a certain incomparability
between accomplishment and compensation, as in the ”liberal” arts.
So then we arrive at the seeming paradox, that a totalitarian
dictator can say that payment for labor must be measured ”ac-
cording to productivity, and not according to needs,”8 while in the
Encyclical Letter Quadragesimo anno, (the aim of which was de–
proletarianization), we read: ”In the first place, the worker is entitled
to a wage that should suffice for the life-support of himself and his
family.”9
On the one hand, then, there is an attempt to narrow the space
of the liberal arts, or indeed to remove them altogether: the only
kind of work that makes sense is work that can be ”paid.” On the
other hand, there is the attempt to broaden the area of the ”liberal
8
Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, in a speech clearly designed for the current ”socialist” movement: ”Neue
Verhältnisse neue Aufgaben des wirtschaftlichen Aufbaus” (June 23, 1931). Published in Joseph Stalin,
Questions about Leninism (Moscow, 1947), p. 406.
9
Quadragesimo anno, no. 71.

65
arts” and bring them into the area of the ”servile arts.” The for-
mer aims at everyone’s proletarianization, the latter at everyone’s
de–proletarianization.
From this perspective, then, with the total–work state, defining
all non-useful activity as ”undesirable” and absorbing even leisure
time into its service, can we not see what it means for there to be an
institution in the world that prohibits useful actions, or the ”servile
arts” on certain days, and thus prepares space for a non-proletarian
existence?

Consequently one of the first socialists, P. J. Proudhon10 (whom

Marx rejected, of course, as a petit–bourgeois), was not so far off
the mark when he began his life–work with an essay on the celebra-
tion of Sunday, the social significance he expressed as follows: ”The
servants regain their human dignity for a day, and put themselves
on a level with their masters.”11 And the following sentence, taken
from the introduction to that pamphlet, hits very close to the heart
of the problem: ”Amidst all the problems, so much in the forefront
of current attention, about work and compensation, organization of
industry and the nationalization of the workplace, it occurred to me
that it would help to consider a legislative program based on the
theory of rest.”12 Of course, the true depth of such a ”theory of rest”
would not come into view if it were treated exclusively, as it was by
Proudhon, ”from the perspective of health, morality, family and civil
relationships.” And this very point will have to be addressed in what
follows.
10
P. J. Proudhon, Die Sonntagsfeier, aus dem Gesichtspunkt des öffentlichen Gesundheitswesens, der
Moral, der Familien-und bürgerlichen Verhältnisse betrachtet (Kassel, 1850) [German translation of French
original, published Besançon, 1839].
11
Ibid.,p.18.
12
Ibid.,p.vi.

66
 We can now sum up what has been said in this excursus: when
”being proletarian” means nothing other than being bound to the
work–process, the real key to overcoming the condition - that is to
say, a true de–proletarianization - would consist in making available
for the working person a meaningful kind of activity that is not work
- in other words, by opening up an area of true leisure.
But political measures which expand life economically only are
not sufficient to attain this goal. Although, to be sure, something
necessary would be done thereby, the decisive thing would still be
missing: it is not enough merely to create the external conditions for
leisure; the project would only come to fruition if it were possible
for the human being as such to ”be–at–leisure,” as the Greek expres-
sion has it - [scholen agein], ”to do leisure” - whereby the ”not-idle”
nature of the real leisure is indicated). ”This is the main ques-
tion, with what activity one’s leisure is filled.”13 Would
anyone have guessed that such a sentence is taken from a book over
two-thousand years old: the Politics of Aristotle?

13
Aristotle, Politics, VIII, 3 (1337b35).

67
68
 V

But how does leisure become possible at all, at the deepest, inner-
most level, and what is its ultimate justification?
Let us now pose the question again: is recourse to the ”human”
really enough to preserve and firmly ground the reality of leisure? I
intend to show that such recourse to mere Humanism is simply not
enough.
It could be said that the heart of leisure consists in ”festival.” In
festival, or celebration, all three conceptual elements come together
as one: the relaxation, the effortlessness, the ascendancy of ”being
at leisure” [doing leisure, scholen agein] over mere ”function.”
But if celebration and festival are the heart of leisure, then leisure
would derive its innermost possibility and justification from the very
source whence festival and celebration derive theirs. And this is
worship.

To experience and live out a harmony with the world, in a man-

ner quite different from that of everyday life - this, we have said, is
the meaning of ”festival.” But no more intensive harmony with the
world can be thought of than that of ”Praise of God,” the worship
of the Creator of this world. Now, as I have often experienced, this
statement is often received with a mixture of discomfort and vari-
69
ous other feelings, but its truth cannot be denied. The most festive
festival that can be celebrated is religious worship, or ”cult,”1 and
there is no festival that does not get its life from such worship or
does not actually derive its origin from this. There is no worship
”without the gods,” whether it be mardi gras or a wedding. This is
not intended to be a prescription; rather, it is necessarily so. The
statement is made with certainty: a festival that does not get its life
from worship, even though the connection in human consciousness
be ever so small, is not to be found. To be sure, since the French Rev-
olution, people have tried over and over to create artificial festivals
without any connection with religious worship, or even against such
worship, such as the ”Brutus Festival” or ”Labor Day,” but they all
demonstrate, through the forced and narrow character of their fes-
tivity, what religious worship provides to a festival; scarcely nothing
could be experienced more clearly than that genuine festivity is only
to be seen where there is still some living relationship with religious
”cult.” Clearer than the light of day is the difference between the
living, rooted trees of genuine, cultic festival and our artificial fes-
tivals that resemble those ”maypoles,” cut at the roots, and carted
here and there, to be planted for some definite purpose. Of course,
we may have to prepare ourselves for the possibility that we are only
at the dawn of an age of artificial festivals. Were we [in Germany]
prepared for the possibility that the official forces, and especially the
bearers of political power, would artificially create the appearance
of the festive with so huge an expense in external arrangements?
And that this seductive, scarcely detectable appearance of artificial
”holidays” would be so totally lacking in the essential quality, that

1
Translator’s note: The German word kult is taken from the Latin colere, the origin of English ”cultiva-
tion” and ”culture.” The repetitive, persistent, and loving care of the farmer (cf. agriculture) is not clearly
enough indicated in the English ”worship.”

70
true and ultimate harmony with the world? And that such holidays
would in fact depend on the suppression of that harmony and derive
their dangerous seduction from that very fact?

What holds true of festival also holds true of leisure. Its ultimate,
innermost possibility and justification come from its rootedness in
cultic festival. This is no conceptually abstract construct, but is
simply evidence from the history of religion. What does ”rest from
work” signify for the Bible or for ancient Greece and Rome? The
meaning of a rest from labor is cultic: definite days and times were
designated to the exclusive possession of the gods.2
Worship is to time as the temple is to space.
”Temple” has a certain meaning (reflected also in its etymology, cf.
Greek temenos, from temnein, to cut; Latin templum): a definite
physical space has been ”cut off” by enclosure or fencing from the
rest of the land, whose surface was divided up for farming or other
uses. These sectioned-off spaces were handed over to the possession
of the gods and were not inhabited or planted but were removed
from all practical use. Just so, through religious festival, and for the
sake of religious festival, or ”cult,” from day-to-day time a definite
period was separated off, and this period of time, no otherwise than
the ground-surfaces of the temple and places of sacrifice, would not
be used, and would likewise be kept from use. Every seventh day
was such a time period. It is the ”festival-time” that came to be in
precisely this way. Now there can be no unused space in the total
world of work, neither an unused area of ground nor an unused time;
nor can there be a space for worship or festival: for this is the princi-
ple of rational utility, on which the world of the ”worker” exclusively
2
Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum (Leipzig, 1942 and later), article on ”Arbeitsruhe” [rest from
labor], col. 590.

71
depends. Within the world of total work, the ”festival” is either ”a
break from work” (and thus only there for the sake of work), or it
is a more intensive celebration of the principles of work itself (as in
the ”Labor Days,” and thus belongs, again, to the working world).
There will naturally be ”games” - like the Roman circenses - but
who could dignify the amusements for the masses with the name of
”festival”?
There is nothing, then, to keep the world of the ”worker” from
being a poor, sterile world, even though filled with material goods;
thanks to the principle of utility, in virtue of which the ”world of
work” comes into being, there can be no real wealth, no overflow.
Wherever something is left over, this excess will be subjected again
to the principle of rational utility. ”Work does not make you rich; it
only makes you bent over,” as the old Russian saying goes.
On the other hand, it is in the nature of religious festival to make a
space of abundance and wealth, even in the midst of external poverty
in material things. This is because sacrifice is at the center of the
festival. What is sacrifice? It is voluntary, a gift that is offered, and
certainly not usefulness, but the very opposite of usefulness. Thus
in the very midstream of worship, and only from there, comes a
supply that cannot be consumed by the world of work, a space of
uncountable giving, untouched by the ever-turning wheel of buying
and selling, an overflow released from all purpose, and an authentic
wealth: it is festival-time.
And it is only within such festival–time that the reality of leisure
can unfold and be fully realized.

However, divorced from the realm of worshipful celebration and

its influence, leisure has no more meaning than festival has. When
separated from worship, leisure becomes toilsome, and work becomes
72
inhuman.
This is the origin of secondary forms of leisure, which are as closely
related to the absence of leisure as idleness (in the old metaphysi-
cal/theological sense of acedia). Mere time-killing and boredom gain
ground, which are directly related to the absence of leisure, for only
someone who has lost the spiritual power to be at leisure can be
bored. And then Despair, the sister of Restlessness, rears its hideous
head. A sentence from Charles Baudelaire’s Intimate Journals stirs
us with the cold precision of its cynicism, when he formulates this
very connection: ”One must work, if not from inclination, at least
from despair, since, as I have fully proved, to work is less wearisome
than to amuse oneself.”3
On the other hand, work itself, when deprived of its counterparts
genuine festivity and true leisure, becomes inhuman: it may, whether
endured silently or ”heroically,” become a bare, hopeless effort, re-
semble the labor of Sisyphus, who in fact is the mythical paradigm
of the ”Worker” chained to his labor without rest, and without inner
satisfaction.
In an acute form, an alienation from worship - or even an hostil-
ity to it - can typify the isolated working–intellect to such a degree,
that work itself becomes a cult: ”To work is to pray,” said Carlyle,
in whose writings the following statement can be read: ”Fundamen-
tally speaking, all genuine work is religion, and every religion that
is not work can go and live with the Brahmins, the Antinomians,
and the Whirling Dervishes.”4 Would anyone want to say that this
is merely a marginal opinion from the nineteenth century, expressed
in pathetic terms, and not rather the very state of mind of the total

3
Charles Baudelaire, Intimate Journals [translated by Christopher Isherwood] (New York: Random
House, 1930), p. 67.
4
Thomas Carlyle, ”Work and Do Not Despair,” [supra II, n.16], p. 21.

73
world of work, which our world is preparing to become?

The deepest root, then, from which leisure draws its sustenance -
and leisure implies the realm of everything that, without being use-
ful, nevertheless belongs to a complete human existence - the deepest
root of all this lies in worshipful celebration.
In those eras, when an authentic cultic order exists in undisputed
validity, it is (perhaps!) not as necessary to make the rationale so
explicit; and insofar as, in such times, a justification of leisure may
be required, it may (perhaps!) be sufficient to argue at a merely
”humanistic” level.
But in an epoch of extreme oppositions, where the world of work
lays claim to the whole field of human existence, recourse must be
had to our ”last savings account,” a legitimation that reaches back
to the most remote source.
The merely academic reminiscence of Antiquity becomes practi-
cally meaningless in times like these; against the pressing impetus,
from both within and without, of the total world of work, nothing
can avail, no matter what is thrown into the balance. The reference
to Plato is no longer enough, even if one presses all the way back to
the roots of Plato (and we are not speaking of ”predecessors” here,
but roots). Nor can it help to trace back philosophical education
to the Platonic academy, even though one may take seriously and
affirm the religious character of this earliest ”Academy,” from which
everything ”academic” in the world gets its name, deservedly or no;
the school of Plato, in fact, was a genuine religious organization, one
of whose members, for example, held the office of ”sacrifice maker.”5
Should not then the common meaning of the expression, ”purely
5
Cf. Hermann Usener, ”Organisation der wissenschafthichen Arbeit,” in Vorträge und Aufsätze (Leipzig-
Berlin, 1914), pp. 76 ff.

74
academic,” for this very reason have sunk to the meaning of ”sterile,
ineffectual, unreal,” so that even the fundamental origin of schola in
religious cult was forgotten, and in place of reality, we have a non-
binding world of mannikins and optional illusions, such as a ”Temple
of the Muses,” or a ”Temple of Holy Relics”? In any case, Goethe
appears to have been of such an opinion, when, in an astounding
remark on the classicism of his day, calls all the ”inventa of the An-
cients to be ’matters of belief’ which were only fancifully imitated,
for fancy’s sake.”6
Once again, in our time it has become absurd to attempt to de-
fend the realm of leisure on the basis of the foregoing positions. The
region of leisure, as said, is the region of culture in general, so long as
this word signifies what goes beyond mere means-to-an-end consid-
erations. Culture lives on ”worship.” And we must return to
this original relationship when the question is considered as a whole.
This is likewise the meaning of the great Platonic text placed at
the outset of this essay. In it, the origin of leisure7 in worship, and
the association of ”the Muses” with cultic festival are expressed in a
magnificent image, ”in festive consort with the gods,” man regains
his true worth, and recovers his upright posture.

But now, what are we to do? someone may ask.

Now, the intention of this essay was not to give advice or provide
guidelines for action but only to encourage reflection. The aim was
to shed a little light on a matter which seems very important and
very pressing, but which seems to get lost behind the tasks of the
day so much in the forefront of our attention.

6
Goethe’s Letter to Reimer, March 26, 1814.
7
Translator’s note: The German word for ”leisure” is Musse, or ”the Muse” - that is, it recalls explicitly
the ancient Greek mythological context, whereby ”the Muses” were divine patrons of the liberal arts.

75
 This essay, then, was not designed for an immediately practical
purpose.
And yet, by way of conclusion, a certain hope can be expressed,
for in this field what is decisive is not what is realized through action
but what can give us some cause to hope. In the effort to regain a
space of true leisure, to bring about a fundamentally correct attitude
and ”exercise” of leisure, the real difficulty of this so-often despaired-
of project consists in the fact that the ultimate root of leisure lies
outside the range of our responsible, voluntary action. The fullest
harmony with the world, to be precise, cannot come about on the
basis of a voluntary decision. Above all, one cannot simply ”make”
it happen for some ulterior purpose. There are certain things which
one cannot do ”in order to...” do something else. One either does
not do them at all or one does them because they are meaningful in
themselves. Certainly the doctors are correct in saying that lack of
leisure makes one ill. But at the same time, it is impossible to be
truly at leisure merely for the sake of health. Such logical confusion
is not only unfitting, it simply cannot be work. Leisure cannot be
realized so long as one understands it to be a means, even as a means
to the end of ”rescuing the culture of Christian Europe.” The cele-
bration of God’s praises cannot be realized unless it takes place for
its own sake. But this - the most noble form of harmony with the
world as a whole - is the deepest source of leisure.

And so our hope is directed, in the first place, to this: it is possible

that the many signs both near and far that point to a reawakening
of the sense of worship will not prove deceptive. For, once again, the
beginning of a new, genuine cult cannot be expected from merely
human foundation; it belongs to the nature of worship, to take its
rise from divine establishment (and this aspect is also included in our
76
quotation from Plato). The appeal of the ”already made” and ”al-
ready established” can lose strength, but it can also regain strength.
And this alone (i.e., not the re-establishment of an old cult or the in-
auguration of a new one) is what our hopes are aiming for. Whoever
has kept no possibility of hope in this (and such hopelessness can, to
be sure, in many cases become self-perpetuating) or whoever cannot
see here anything worth hoping for - for someone like that, I could
not make room for any kind of trust at all. It is very important that
there be no doubt about this.
Worship itself is a given - or it does not exist at all. Nothing needs
to be founded or arranged. For Christians, this is self-evident: that,
after Christ, there is only one true and finally valid form of cultic
worship, which is the sacramental Sacrifice of the Christian Church.
(Incidentally, even for the student, Christian or non-Christian, of the
”history of religions,” it is really not possible to meet with any ac-
tually established cult other than the Christian, in the world-wide
European culture.)

It is the peculiarity of this phenomenon of Christian worship that

it is at once sacrifice and sacrament.8 Insofar as the celebration of
Christian worship is sacrifice, taking place in the midst of creation
and reaching its highest affirmation and fulfillment in this sacrifice of
the God–Man, to this extent it is truly an eternally valid celebration
so that even the weekday is called aferia in Latin: the liturgy only
recognizes festival-days.9 But, insofar as this sacrificial ritual is also
a sacrament, it takes place as a bodily visible sign. And only then
can the Christian cultic worship unfold its whole, indwelling, forma-
tive power, when its sacramental character is realized without any
8
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, Q. 79, a. 5.
9
Joseph Pascher, Eucharistia: Gestalt und Volizug (Munster, 1948), p. 266 ff.

77
curtailment, when the sacramental sign is allowed to become fully
visible. For, as I said, in leisure man overcomes the working world
of the work–day – not through his utter most exertion, but as in
withdrawal from such exertion. Now this is exactly the meaning of
sacramental visibility: that the human being is ”rapt” or ”seized”
and ”removed” by it. And this is no private, romantic interpreta-
tion. For it is with like words that the Church Herself expresses the
meaning of the Human Incarnation of the Logos: ut dum visibiliter
Deum cognoscimus, per hunc in invisibilium amorein rapiamur,
that through the ”visible” reality of this Sacrifice we may be ”rapt”
to the love of ”invisible” reality.10
It is our hope, then, that this true meaning of sacramental visibil-
ity maybe met with in the celebration of the cultic worship, in such
a way that it can be realized concretely for the human being ”born
to labor”: to be taken from the toil of the work–day, to an endless
day of celebration; to be rapt from the confines of the working envi-
ronment into the very center of the world.

10
Christmas Preface of the Missale Romanum (also the Preface for Corpus Christi).

78
 Part II

The Philosophical Act

79
The reason why the philosopher can be
compared to the poet is that both are
concerned with wonder...
- St. Thomas Aquinas

81
82
 I

When the physicist poses the question, ”What does it mean to do

physics?” or ”What is research in physics?” – his question is a pre-
liminary question. Clearly, when you ask a question like that, and
try to answer it, you are not ”doing physics.” Or, rather, you are
no longer doing physics. But when you ask yourself, ”What does it
mean to do philosophy?” then you actually are ”doing philosophy”
– this is not at all a ”preliminary” question but a truly philosophical
one: you are right at the heart of the business. To go further: I
can say nothing about the existence of philosophy and philosophiz-
ing without also saying something about the human being, and to
do that is to enter one of the most central regions of philosophy. Our
question, ”What is the philosophical act?” belongs, in fact, to the
field of philosophical anthropology.
Now, because it is a philosophical question, that means it cannot
be answered in a permanent or conclusive way. It pertains to the
very nature of a philosophical question that its answer will not be
a ”perfectly rounded truth” (as Parmenides said it), grasped in the
hand like an apple plucked from a tree. Later, we will have occasion
to discuss the ”hopefulness” built into philosophy and philosophiz-
ing, but for the moment we cannot promise a handy definition, a
comprehensive answer to our question. Indeed, our four brief essays
83
will barely be enough to clarify the problem as a whole.
But, for a first approach, we can venture the following: a philo-
sophical act is an act in which the work–a–day world is transcended.
We must first explain what we mean by ”work-a-day world,” and
second, what we mean by ”transcending” it.
The work–a–day world is the world of the working day, the world
of usefulness, of purposeful action, of accomplishment, of the exer-
cising of functions; it is the world of supply and demand, the world
of hunger and the satisfaction of hunger. It is a world dominated by
one goal: the realization of the ”common utility”; it is the world of
work, to the extent that work is synonymous with ”useful activity”
(a characteristic both of activity and effort). The process of working
is the process of realizing the ”common utility”; this concept is not
equivalent to that of the ”common good” (bonum commune): the
”common utility” is an essential component of the ”common good,”
but the concept of the bonum commune is much more comprehen-
sive. For example, as Thomas puts it1, there are people who devote
themselves to the ”un-useful” life of contemplation; to philosophize
belongs to the common good, whereas one could not say that con-
templation, vision, or philosophizing serve the ”common utility.” Of
course, in the present day bonum commune and the ”common util-
ity” seem to be growing more identical every day; of course (it comes
to the same thing) the world of work begins to become – threatens to
become – our only world, to the exclusion of all else. The demands
of the working world grow ever more total, grasping ever more com-
pletely the whole of human existence.

If it is correct to say that the philosophical act is one which tran-

scends the working world, then our question, ”What does it mean to
1
Commentary on the Sentences IV, d. 26, 1.2.

84
philosophize?” – our so very theoretical, abstract question – becomes
suddenly, and unexpectedly, a question of utmost relevance. We need
only to take a single step, in our thoughts or in physical space, to
find ourselves in a world in which the working process, the process of
realizing the ”common utility,” determines the whole realm of human
existence. Inwardly and outwardly, there is a boundary, very near
and easy to jump across, in order to win entry into the work–a–day
world, in which there is no such thing as genuine philosophy and gen-
uine philosophizing – all this presupposes, of course, that it is correct
to say that ”philosophy transcends the working world” and that it
pertains to the very essence of the philosophical act not to belong
this world of uses and efficiencies, of needs and satisfactions, this
world of ”useful good” (bonum utile), of the ”common utility,” but
is, rather, to be incommensurable to it in principle. Indeed, the more
acute the incommensurability, the more obvious the ”not-belonging.”
It could even be said, perhaps, that this very opposition, this threat
from the world of total work, is what characterizes the situation of
philosophy today more than its own particular content. Philosophy
increasingly adopts necessarily, it seems the character of the alien,
of mere intellectual luxury, of that which seems ever more intolera-
ble and unjustifiable, the more exclusively the demands of the daily
world of work take over the world of man.
And yet, we have something more to say, something very concrete,
about the incommensurability of the philosophical act, of this tran-
scending the world of work, that takes place in the philosophical act.
Let’s recall the things that dominate the contemporary working
day; no special effort of the imagination is needed, for we all stand
right in the middle of it. There is, first of all, the daily running back
and forth to secure our bare physical existence, food, clothing, shel-
ter, heat; then, the anxieties that affect, and absorb, each individual:
85
the necessities of rebuilding our own country, Europe, and the world.
Struggles for power for the exploitation of earth’s commodities, con-
flicts of interest in matters great and small. Everywhere, tensions and
burdens – only superficially eased by hastily arranged pauses and di-
versions: newspapers, movies, cigarettes. I do not need to paint it
in any fuller detail: we all know what this world looks like. And we
need not only direct our attention to the extreme instances of crisis
that show themselves today: I mean simply the everyday working
world, where we must go about our business, where very concrete
goals are advanced and realized: goals that must be sighted with an
eye fixed on the things nearest and closest at hand. Now it is not our
purpose here to condemn this world, from the standpoint of some
”holiday–world” of philosophy. No words need be wasted on saying
that this work–a–day world is very much with us, that in it the foun-
dations of our physical existence are secured, without which nobody
can philosophize at all! Nevertheless, let us also recall, that among
the voices which fill the workplace and the markets (”How do you
get this or that item of daily existence?”, ”Where do you get that?”
etc.) – in the midst of all these voices suddenly one calls out above
the rest: ”Why is there anything at all, and not nothing?” – asking
that age-old question, which Heidegger called the basic question of
all metaphysics!2 Must we explicitly state how unfathomable this
philosopher’s question is, in comparison with that everyday world
of needs and purposefulness? If such a question as this were asked,
without introduction or interpretation, in the company of those peo-
ple of efficiency and success, wouldn’t the questioner be considered
rather... mad? Through such extremely formulated contrasts, how-
2
M. Heidegger, Was ist Metaphysik? (Frankfurt, 1943), p. 22. The formulation, of course, is not new:
it was used by Leibniz: ”Pourquoy il y a plustt quelque chose que rien?” Leibniz, Philosophische Schriften
(Darmstadt, 1965, ff.), vol. I, p. 426. Cf. also Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Why Is There Something Rather
Than Nothing? (Assen, Holland, 1966).

86
ever, the real, underlying distinction comes to the fore: it becomes
clear that even to ask that question constitutes taking a step to-
ward transcending, toward leaving behind, the work–a–day world.
The genuine philosophical question strikes disturbingly against the
canopy that encloses the world of the citizen’s work–day.

But the philosophical act is not the only way to take this ”step
beyond.” No less incommensurable with the working-world than the
philosophical question is the sound of true poetry:

In middle and ending ever stands the tree,

The birds are singing; on God’s breast
The round Creation takes its holy rest ...3

Such a voice sounds utterly strange in the realm of actively real-

ized purpose. And no differently sounds the voice of one who prays:
”We praise you, we glorify you, we give you thanks for your great
glory ...” How can that ever be understood in the categories of ratio-
nal usefulness and efficiency? The lover, too, stands outside the tight
chain of efficiency of this working world, and who ever else approaches
the margin of existence through some deep, existential disturbance
(which always brings a ”shattering” of one’s environment as well),
or through, say, the proximity of death. In such a disturbance (for
the philosophical act, genuine poetry, musical experience in general,
and prayer as well – all these depend on some kind of disturbance) in
such an experience, man senses the non-ultimate nature of this daily,
worrisome world: he transcends it; he takes a step outside it.
3
Konrad Weiss, In Exitu (first verses) - which first appeared in the volume Die cumäische Sibylle (Munich,
1921), more readily accessible now in the collected edition: Konrad Weiss, Gedichte, 19141939 (Munich:
Kösel-Verlag, 1961).

87
 And because of their common power to disturb and transcend, all
these basic behavioral patterns of the human being have a natural
connection among themselves: the philosophical act, the religious
act, the artistic act, and the special relationship with the world that
comes into play with the existential disturbance of Love or Death.
Plato, as most of us know, thought about philosophy and love in sim-
ilar terms. And as for the close connection between philosophy and
poetry, we can refer to a little-known statement by Thomas Aquinas
in his Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics: the Philosopher is
akin to the Poet in this, that both are concerned with the mirandum,
the ”wondrous,” the astonishing, or whatever calls for astonishment
or wonder.4 This statement is not that easy to fathom, since Thomas,
like Aristotle, was a very sober thinker, completely opposed to any
Romantic confusion of properly distinct realms. But on the basis of
their common orientation toward the ”wonderful” (the mirandum
– something not to be found in the world of work!) – on this basis,
then, of this common transcending-power, the philosophical act is
related to the ”wonderful,” is in fact more closely related to it than
to the exact, special sciences; to this point we shall return.
The closeness of this connection is so real that when ever one
member of the system is denied, the others cannot thrive: the result
is that in a world of total work, all the various forms and methods
of transcendence must themselves become sterile (or, rather, would
have to become sterile, if it were possible to destroy human nature
completely); where religion is not allowed to grow, where the arts
can find no place, where the disturbances of love and death lose their
depth and become banal – there too, philosophy and philosophizing
cannot survive. But worse than the mere extinguishing or silencing is
the distortion into false forms of the original; there are such pseudo–
4
Commentary on the Metaphysics I, 3.

88
realizations of those basic experiences, which only appear to pierce
the canopy. There is a way to pray, in which ”this” world is not tran-
scended, in which, instead, one attempts to incorporate the divine as
a functioning component of the work–a–day machinery of purposes.
Religion can be perverted into magic so that instead of self–dedication
to God, it becomes the attempt to gain power over the divine and
make it subservient to one’s own will; prayer can become a technique
for continuing to live life ”under the canopy.” And further: love can
be narrowed so that the powers of self-giving become subservient to
the goals of the confined ego, goals which arise from an anxious self-
defense against the disturbances of the larger, deeper, world, which
only the truly loving person can enter. There are pseudo–forms of
art, a false poetry, which, instead of breaking through the roof over
the work–a–day world, resigns itself, so to speak, to painting deco-
rations on the interior surface of the dome, and puts itself more or
less obviously to the service of the working world as private or public
”fashion poetry”; such ”poetry” never seems to transcend, not even
once (and it is clear, that genuine philosophizing has more in com-
mon with the exact, special sciences than with such pseudo–poetry!).
Finally, there is a pseudo–philosophy, whose essential character is
precisely that it does not transcend the working world. In a dialogue
of Plato, Socrates asks the sophist Protagoras just what he teaches
the youth who flock to see him? And the answer is, ”I teach them
good planning, both in their own affairs, such as how one should
best manage his own household, and in public affairs, how one can
best speak and act in the city-state.”5 That is the classic program of
”Philosophy as Professional Training” – a seeming philosophy only,
with no transcendence.
But even worse still, of course, is that all these pseudo–forms work
5
Protagoras 318 ff.

89
together, not only in failing to transcend the world, but in more and
more surely succeeding in closing off the world ”under the canopy”:
they seal off humanity all the more within the world of work. All
these deceptive forms, and especially such seeming-philosophy, are
something much worse, something much more hopeless, than the
naive self-closing of the worldly man against what is not of daily-life.
Someone who is merely naively confined to the work–a–day may one
day nevertheless be touched by the disturbing power that lies hidden
in a true philosophical question, or in some poem; but a sophist, a
pseudo–philosopher, will never be ”disturbed.”

But let us now return to the path marked out by our initial ques-
tion: when a question is asked in the truly philosophical manner,
one asks about something that transcends the working world. This
shows that such a question, and such a way of calling into question,
possesses a special acuteness today, since the world of total work has
emerged with demands more all-encompassing than ever before in
history. And yet, this is not merely to make a criticism of a period
of history. It is rather to speak of a misunderstanding that is funda-
mentally timeless in nature.
For Plato, the laughter of the Thracian maiden, who saw Thales
of Miletus fall into a well while he was staring at the skies, is the
typical response of feet-on-the-ground, work–a–day reasoning to phi-
losophy. And this anecdote of the Thracian maid6 stands at the
6
In Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus, Socrates criticizes those philosophers who concern themselves with
distant, abstract things but neglect practical affairs closer to hand, and illustrates this with an anecdote
about Thales: ”I will illustrate my meaning ... by the jest which the clever witty Thracian handmaid is said
to have made about Thales, when he fell into a well as he was looking up at the stars. She said that he
was so eager to know what was going on in heaven, that he could not see what was before his feet. This is
a jest which is equally applicable to all philosophers. For the philosopher is wholly unacquainted with his
next-door neighbour; he is ignorant, not only of what he is doing, but he hardly knows whether he is a man
or an animal; he is searching into the essence of man, and busy in enquiring what belongs to such a nature
to do or suffer different from any other.” (Plato, Theaetetus, translated by Benjamin Jowett, Part 1, p. 39)

90
very beginning of Western Philosophy. ”And always,” as Plato says
in the Theaetetus, the philosopher is the butt of humor, ”not only
for Thracian maidens, but for most people, because one who is a
stranger to the world falls into wells, and into many other embar-
rassments too.”7
Plato does not only express himself explicitly, in formal state-
ments: he prefers to use images. There is a certain Apollodoros,
a character of secondary importance (as it seems at first) in the
dialogues Phaedo and Symposium. Apollodoros is one of those un-
critical, enthusiastic youths in Socrates’ circle, who may represent
someone like Plato himself once was. We hear of Apollodoros in the
Phaedo that he alone among the assembled burst into groaning and
tears when Socrates put the cup of hemlock to his lips: ”You know
this man and his manner.”8 In the Symposium9 Apollodoros says of
himself that for years he was eager to know what Socrates said and
did every day. ”I ran around, and thought I was doing something,
but was just as miserable as anyone.” But now, in a wonderful way,
he has given himself over completely to Socrates and philosophy.
In the city now they call him ”crazy Apollodoros”; he rails against
everyone (even himself) but only spares Socrates. In complete naiveté,
he lets it be known everywhere, ”how happy he is, beyond all mea-
sure,” when he talks about philosophy or hears someone else do so;
and then again, how wretched he is, that he has not yet attained to
the real thing, to be like Socrates! One day, this Apollodoros en-
counters some friends of his from earlier days – the very ones, in fact,
who now call him ”crazy”, the ”madman.” As Plato expressly points
out, they are business people, people of money, who know precisely

7
Theaetetus 174.
8
Phaedo 59ab.
9
Symposium 172 f.

91
how someone can succeed, and who ”intend to do something big in
the world.” These friends inquire of Apollodoros, to tell them some-
thing about the speeches about Love that were delivered at a certain
banquet at the house of the poet Agathon. It is clear that these suc-
cessful businessmen really feel no desire to be instructed about the
meaning of life and existence, and certainly not from Apollodoros!
What interests them is only the witty remarks, the well-spoken repar-
tee, the formal elegance of the debate. And on his part, Apollodoros
cherishes no illusions about the ”philosophical” interests of his old
friends. Rather, he says directly to their face, how much he pities
them, ”... because you believe you are accomplishing something,
when you really are not. And maybe now you are thinking, I am not
very well off, and you may be right, but I do not merely think’ the
same about you, I know it for sure!” All the same, he does not refuse
to tell them about the Love-speeches; indeed, he cannot be silent –
”If you really want me to tell you, I will have to do it” – even though
they may take him for a madman. And then Apollodoros narrates...
the Symposium! For the Platonic ”banquet” has the form of in-
direct speech: a report from the mouth of Apollodoros. Too little
attention, in my view, has been paid to the fact that Plato allows
his deepest thoughts to be expressed through this over-enthusiastic,
uncritical youth, this over-eager disciple Apollodoros. And the audi-
ence of the report is a group of moneyed, successful Athenians, who
are not really prepared to listen to such thoughts or even take them
seriously! There is something hopeless in this situation, a temptation
to despair, against which (this is probably what Plato means) only
the youthful, undistracted thirst for wisdom, the true philosophia,
can take a stand. In any case, Plato could not have brought out any
more clearly the incommensurability between philosophizing and the
self–sufficient world of daily work.
92
 And yet the incommensurability of this situation is not merely
negative, for there is another side as well, known as... freedom. For
philosophy is ”useless” in the sense of immediate profit and applica-
tion – that is one thing. Another thing is, that philosophy cannot
allow itself to be used, it is not at the disposal of purposes beyond
itself, for it is itself a goal. Philosophy is not functional–knowing, but
rather, as John Henry Newman put it,10 is gentleman’s knowledge,
not ”useful,” but ”free” knowing. But this freedom means that philo-
sophical knowing does not acquire its legitimacy from its utilitarian
applications, not from its social function, not from its relationship
with the ”common utility.” Freedom in exactly this sense is the free-
dom of the ”liberal arts,” as opposed to the ”servile arts,” which,
according to Thomas, ”are ordered to a use, to be attained through
activity.”11 And philosophy has long been understood as the most
free among the free arts (the medieval ”Arts Faculty” is the forerun-
ner of the ”Philosophical Faculty” of today’s university).
Therefore, it is all the same whether I say that the philosophical
act transcends the working world, or whether I say, philosophical
knowing is useless or whether I say, philosophy is a ”liberal art.”
This freedom belongs to the particular sciences only to the extent
that they are pursued in a philosophical manner. Here likewise is
to be found – both historically and actually – the real meaning of
”academic freedom” (since ”academic” means ”philosophical” if it
means anything!); strictly speaking, a claim for academic freedom
can only exist when the ”academic” itself is realized in a ”philosoph-
ical” way. And this is historically the reason: academic freedom has
been lost, exactly to the extent that the philosophic character of aca-
demic study has been lost, or, to put it another way, to the extent
10
The Idea of a University, V, 5.
11
Commentary on the Metaphysics I, 3.

93
that the totalitarian demands of the working world have conquered
the realm of the university. Here is where the metaphysical roots of
the problem lie: the ”politicization” is only a symptom and conse-
quence. And indeed, it must be admitted here that this is nothing
other than the fruit... of philosophy itself, of modern philosophy! Of
which theme, more will soon have to be said.
But first, something needs to be said on the theme of philosophy’s
”freedom,” in distinction from the special sciences: and this means a
freedom understood as not-being-subordinated-to-purposes. In this
sense, the special sciences are ”free” only insofar as they are pursued
in a philosophical way, insofar, that is to say, as they share in the
freedom of philosophy. As Newman put it, ”Knowledge, I say, is then
especially liberal, or sufficient for itself, apart from every external and
ulterior object, when and so far as it is philosophical.”12 Considered
in themselves, however, the various particular sciences are essentially
”to-be-subordinated-to-purposes”; they are essentially relatable to a
”use that is reached through activity” (as Thomas says of the servile
arts).13
But we can speak still more concretely! The government of a state
can say, ”In order to complete our five-year plan, we need physicists
who can catch up with the progress of foreign nations in this or that
special area,” or ”We need medical doctors, who can develop a more
effective flu vaccine.” In these cases, nothing is being said or done
that is contrary to the nature of these sciences. But, if someone were
to say, ”We need some philosophers, who...” Will do what? There
could only be one possibility: ”... will justify, develop, defend, such
and such an ideology...” To say this and act upon it would be a de-
struction of philosophy! And it would come to the same, if someone
12
Idea of a University, V, 5.
13
Commentary on the Metaphysics I, 3.

94
said, ”We need some poets, who will...” Who will do what? Again,
it could only be one thing: ”who... will [as the expression goes] use
the pen as a sword, on behalf of certain ideals determined by reasons
of state...” And if this was being said, we would likewise see the de-
struction of poetry. In the same moment, poetry would cease to be
poetry, and philosophy would cease to be philosophy.
But this is not to say that no relationship whatsoever can be
found between the realization of the common good of a nation and
any teaching of philosophy that takes place in it! Rather, the point
is that such a relationship cannot be instituted and regulated by the
administrators of the common good; that which has its meaning and
purpose in itself, that which is itself purpose, cannot be made the
means for some other purpose, just as someone can not love a person
”for such and such” or ”in order to do such and such”!
Now, this freedom of philosophy, this quality of not-being-sub-
servient-to some purpose is intimately connected with something else
(a connection which seems extremely important to point out): the
theoretical character of philosophy. Philosophy is the purest form of
theorein, or speculari (to observe, behold, contemplate), consisting
in a purely receptive gaze on reality, whereby things alone are de-
terminative, and the soul is completely receptive of determination.
Whenever some existent is taken up into view in a philosophical way,
the questions are asked in a ”purely theoretical” manner, and that
means a manner untouched by anything practical, by any intention
to change things, and thereby be raised above all serving of further
purposes.
The realization of theoria in this sense is, however, connected with
a presupposition. For what is presumed is a definite relationship with
the world, a relationship that appears to precede all conscious posit-
ing or setting-forth of some intention. For to be ”theoretical” in this
95
full sense (in the sense of a purely receptive contemplation, with-
out the slightest trace of an intention to change things; rather, it is
precisely the opposite, a willingness to make the ”yes” or ”no” of
the will dependent on the actuality of being, which is to be brought
to expression in the knowledge of being) – the vision of man will
only be ”theoretical” in this undiluted sense, when being, the world,
is something other than him and is more than the mere field, the
mere raw material, of human activity. Only that person can view
the world ”theoretically” in the fullest sense, for whom the world
is something worthy of reverence, and ultimately, creation in the
strict sense. On this foundation alone can be realized the ”purely
theoretical” property that is of the essence of philosophy. In this
way, it would be a connection of the deepest and most intimate kind,
whereby the freedom of philosophizing and of philosophy itself is ulti-
mately made possible. And it would not be cause of wonder, that the
removal of such a relationship with the world or such a connection
(i.e., the connection in virtue of which the world is seen as creation,
and not merely raw material) – that the removal of that connection
would progress step by step with the destruction of the genuinely
theoretical character of philosophy, as well as of its freedom and
transcendence-over-function; and even the destruction of philosophy
itself.
There is a direct path from Francis Bacon, who said, ”Knowledge
is Power,” that the value of all knowing lies in the provision of hu-
man life with new discoveries and helps,14 to Descartes, who in his
Discourse on Method explicitly formulated the polemical program
to replace the old ”theoretical” philosophy with a new ”practical”
one, through which we could make ourselves ”the Lords and Masters

14
Novum organum I, 3; I, 81.

96
of nature”15 – from there the road leads directly into the well-known
saying of Karl Marx, that up until his time philosophy saw its task
as one of interpreting the world, but that now its task was to change
the world.
This is the path along which the self-destruction of philosophy
has traveled: through the destruction of its theoretical character, a
destruction which in turn rests upon habitually seeing the world as
the raw material of human activity. When the world is no longer
looked upon as creation, there can no longer be theoria in the full
sense. And with the fall of theoria, the freedom of philosophy falls
as well, and what comes in its place is the functionalizing, the mak-
ing it into something ”practical,” oriented toward a legitimation by
its social function; what comes to the fore is the working charac-
ter of philosophy, or of philosophy so-called. Meanwhile, our thesis
(which can now be more clearly formulated), maintains that it is of
the nature of the philosophical act, to transcend the world of work.
This thesis, which comprehends both the freedom and theoretical
character of philosophy, does not deny the world of work (in fact, it
expressly presumes it as something necessary), but it maintains that
true philosophy rests upon the belief that the real wealth of man lies
not in the satisfaction of his necessities, nor, again, in ”be coming
lords and masters of nature,” but rather in being able to understand
what is – the whole of what is. Ancient philosophy says that this
is the utmost fulfillment to which we can attain: that the whole or-
der of real things be registered in our soul16 – a conception which in
the Christian tradition was taken up into the concept of the beatific
vision: ”What do they not see, who look upon Him, Who sees all?”17

15
Discourse on Method, 6.
16
Cf. Thomas, Quaestiones disputatae de veritate II, 2.
17
Gregory the Great, as quoted by Thomas in the passage just cited.

97
98
 II

So, then: whoever philosophizes, takes a step beyond the work–a–

day world and its daily routine.
The meaning of taking such a step is determined less by where it
starts from as by where it leads to. We must ask a further question:
just where is the philosopher going when he transcends the world of
work? Clearly, he steps over a boundary: what kind of region lies
on the other side of this boundary? And what is the relationship of
the place where the philosophical act happens, to the world that is
transcended and left behind by this same philo sophical act? Is that
the ”authentic” world, and the world of work the ”inauthentic”? Is
it the ”whole” as opposed to the ”part”? Is it the ”true reality” as
opposed to a mere shadow world of appearances?
No matter how such questions could be answered in detail, in any
case, both regions, the world of work and the ”other realm,” where
the philosophical act takes place in its transcending of the working
world – both regions belong to the world of man, which clearly has a
complex structure.
Therefore, our next question is, ”What is the nature of the world
of man?” a question that cannot be answered if the human being is
ignored.
In order to give a clear answer at this point, we must begin again,
99
and start as it were from the very bottom.
It is in the nature of a living thing to have a world: to exist and
live in the world, in ”its” world. To live means to be ”in” a world.
But is not a stone also ”in” a world? Is not everything that exists
”in” a world? If we keep to the lifeless stone, is it not with and
beside other things in the world? Now, ”with,” ”beside,” and ”in”
are prepositions, words of relationship; but the stone does not really
have a relationship with the world ”in” which it is, nor to the other
things ”beside” which and ”with” which it lives. Relationship, in the
true sense, joins the inside with the outside; relationship can only
exist where there is an ”inside,” a dynamic center, from which all
operation has its source and to which all that is received, all that
is experienced, is brought. The ”internal” (only in this qualitative
sense: the ”inside” of a rock would refer only to the spatial location
of parts) – the ”internal” is the ability to have a real relationship,
a relation to the external; to have an ”inside,” means ability to be
related, and to enter into relationship. And ”world”? A world means
the same thing, but considered as a whole field of relationships. Only
a being that has an ability to enter into relationships, only being with
an ”inside,” has a ”world”; only such a being can exist in the midst
of a field of relations. There is a distinctly different kind of proximity
that obtains in the relationships of pebbles, which lie together in a
heap somewhere beside the roadway and are ”related” in that way,
and, on the other hand, in the relationship of a plant to the nutrients
which it finds in the vicinity of its roots. Here we see not merely phys-
ical proximity as an objective fact, but genuine relationship (in the
original, active meaning of relationship): the nutrients are integrated
into the orbit of the plant’s life – by way of the real internality of the
plant, through its power to be related, and to enter into relationship.
And all this – all that can be taken in by the relating-power of that
100
plant – all this makes up the field of relationships, or the world, of
that plant. The plant has a world, but not the pebble.
This, then, is the first point: ”world” is a field of relations. To
have a world means to be in the midst of, and to be the bearer of, a
field of relations. The second point is, the higher the level of the in-
wardness or, that is to say, the more comprehensive and penetrative
the ability to enter into relations, so the wider and deeper are the
dimensions of the field of relations that belongs to that being; to put
it differently: the higher a being stands in the hierarchy of reality,
the wider and more profound is the standing of its world.
The lowest world is that of the plant, which does not reach be-
yond what it touches in its own vicinity. The higher-ranking, spa-
tially wider realm of the animal corresponds to its greater ability to
enter into relationships. The relation-ability of the animal is greater,
insofar as the animal has sense-perception. To perceive something
is quite extraordinary, compared with what the plant can do: it is a
completely new mode of entering into relationship with one’s envi-
ronment.
But not everything that an animal, as such, can perceive (because
it has ears to hear and eyes to see) really belongs to the world of
such an animal: it is not true that all the visible things in the en-
vironment of an animal with vision are in fact seen, or even can be
seen. For ”environment” as such, the perceivable environment, is still
not a ”world.” That was the typical belief, until the environmental
researches of the biologist Jakob von Uexküll; until that time, as
Uexküll puts it, ”it was generally held, that all eye-equipped animals
could see the same things.”1 But Uexküll’s discovery was that, on the
contrary, ”the environments of animals are not at all the whole ex-

1
Der unsterbliche Geist in der Natur (Hamburg, 1938), p. 63.

101
panse of nature, but resemble a narrow, furnished apartment.”2 For
example, one could well imagine that a crow could see a grasshopper
(a very desirable object for a crow) whenever the grasshopper came
across its path, or to be more precise, whenever in came into view
of its eyes. But that is not the case! Instead, to cite Uexküll, ”the
crow is completely incapable of seeing a grasshopper sitting still...
we would first assume that the form of a resting grasshopper would
be very well known to a crow, but because of the blade of grass in
the way, it cannot be made out as a unit, just as we have difficulty
seeing an image hidden in a picture-puzzle. Only when it jumps does
its form release’ itself from the neighboring shapes or so we would
think. But after further investigation, it can be shown that the crow
does not even recognize the form of a resting grasshopper, but is
only prepared to sense moving things. This would explain the play-
ing dead’ behavior of many insects. Since their resting-form does not
at all appear in the sense–world of their predators, they escape that
world completely and securely simply by lying still, and cannot be
found, even if they are actively sought.”3
This selective milieu, then, to which the animal is completely
suited, but in which the animal is also enclosed (so much so that the
boundary cannot be crossed – since ”not even if it looks for some-
thing” – even if equipped with an excellent searching-organ, could it
find something that does not correspond to the selective principle of
this partial world); this selective reality, determined and bounded by
the biological life-purpose of the individual or the species, is called
an ”environment” [Umvelt ] by Uexküll (in distinction from a ”sur-
rounding” [Umgebung ], and in distinction also, as we will later see,
from a ”world” [Welt ]). The field of relations of the animal is not
2
Ibid., p. 76.
3
Von Uexküll-Kriszat, Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen (Berlin, 1934), p. 40.

102
its ”surroundings,” nor the ”world,” but is its ”environment,” in this
special sense: a world from which something has been left out, a
selected milieu, to which its dweller is at once perfectly suited and
confined.

Someone will perhaps ask at this point, what has this to do with
our theme, ”What is it to philosophize?” Now the connection is not
as distant or indirect as it may seem. We last inquired about the
world of the human being, and this was the immediate interest in
Uexküll’s concept of environment – namely, that our human world
”can in no way claim to be more real than the sense–world of the
animal” (so he says4); that, consequently, the human being is in prin-
ciple confined to his world in the same way as the animal; that is,
to a biologically selected partial environment, and that man cannot
perceive anything that lies outside this environment, ”not even if it
was actively sought” (no more, then, than the crow could find the
resting grasshopper). One might well ask how a being so enclosed in
its own environment, so closed in on itself, could be able to perform
scientific research on the nature of environments!
But we don’t want to engage in controversy on this point; rather,
we can leave the point aside and ask another question instead, since
our attention is directed to man and the human world to which he
belongs: what is the relating-power of the human being? What is
its nature? What power does it have? We said that the perceptive-
ability of the animal, when compared with what is in plants, is a
more far-reaching way of relating to things. Would not, then, the pe-
culiarly human manner of knowing – for ages past, termed a spiritual
or intellective knowing – in fact be another, further mode of putting-
oneself-into-relation, a mode which transcends in principle any thing
4
Die Lebenslehre (Potsdam-Zurich, 1930), p. 131.

103
which can be realized in the plant and animal worlds? And further,
would this fundamentally different kind of relating power go together
with a different field of relations, i.e., a world of fundamentally dif-
ferent dimensions? The answer to such questions can be found in
the Western philosophical tradition, which has understood and even
defined spiritual knowing as the power to place oneself into relation
with the sum–total of existing things. And this is not meant as only
one characteristic among others, but as the very essence and defini-
tion of the power. By its nature, spirit (or intellection) is not so much
distinguished by its immateriality, as by something more primary: its
ability to be in relation to the totality of being. ”Spirit” means a re-
lating power that is so far-reaching and comprehensive, that the field
of relations to which it corresponds, transcends in principle the very
boundaries of its surroundings. It is the nature of spirit to have as
its field of relations not just ”surroundings” [ Umvelt ] but a ”world”
[ Welt ]. It is of the nature of the spiritual being to go past the im-
mediate surroundings and to go beyond both its ”confinement” and
its ”close fit” to those surroundings (and of course herein is revealed
both the freedom and danger to which the spiritual being is naturally
heir).
In Aristotle’s treatise on the soul, the De Anima5, we can read
the following: ”Now, in order to sum up every thing said up until this
point about the soul, we can say again that, the soul, basically, is all
that exists.” This sentence became a constant point of reference for
the anthropology of the High Middle Ages: anima est quodammodo
omnia [”The soul, in a certain way, is all things”]. ”In a certain way”:
that is to say, the soul is ”all” insofar as it sets itself in relation to
the whole of existence through knowing (and ”to know” means to
become identical with the known reality – although we cannot go
5
De Anima III, 8 (431b).

104
into any further detail about this as yet). As Thomas says in the
treatise De Veritate (”On Truth”), the spiritual soul is essentially
structured ”to encounter all being” (convenire cum omni ente6) to
put itself into relation with everything that has being. ”Every other
being possesses only a partial participation in being,” whereas the
being endowed with spirit ”can grasp being as a whole.”7 As long as
there is spirit, ”it is possible for the completeness of all being to be
present in a single nature.”8 And this is also the position of the West-
ern tradition: to have spirit [ Geist ], to be a spirit, to be spiritual –
all this means to be in the middle of the sum–total of reality, to be
in relation with the totality of being, to be vis–à–vis de l’univers.
The spirit does not live in ”a” world, or in ”its” world, but in the
world: world in the sense of ”everything seen and unseen” (omnia
visibilia et invisibilia).
Spirit, or intellection, and the sum–total of reality: these are in-
terchangeable terms, that correspond to one another. You cannot
”have” the one without the other. An attempt to do just this (we
mention only it in passing) – to grant the human being superior-
ity to his surroundings, to say that man has ”world” [ Welt ] (and
not merely ”environment” [ Umwelt ]), without speaking of man’s
spiritual nature, or rather (what is more extreme), to maintain that
this fact (that man has ”world” and not only ”environment”) has
nothing whatever to do with this ”other” fact, that the human be-
ing is equipped with intellection or spirit – this attempt has been
made by Arnold Gehlen in a very comprehensive book which has
received a great deal of attention: Man: His Nature and Place in
the World 9. In opposition to Uexküll, Gehlen rightly says that the
6
Quaestiones disputatae de veritate I, 1.
7
Summa contra gentiles III, 112.
8
Quaestiones disputatae de veritate II, 2.
9
Berlin, 1940.

105
human being is not closed within an environment but is free of his
surroundings and open to the world; and yet, Gehien goes on to say,
this difference between the animal as environmentally limited and
the human being as open to the world–as–a–whole does not depend
”on the characteristic of ... spirit.” Instead, this very power to ”have
the world” is spirit! Spirit by definition is ability to comprehend
the world!
For the older philosophy – that is, for Plato, Aristotle, Augustine,
and Thomas – the connection of the two terms ”spirit” (or ”intellec-
tion” [ Geist ]) and ”world” (in the sense of total–relatedness) is so
intimately and profoundly anchored in both directions that not only
is it true to say that ”spirit is relatedness to the sum–total of ex-
isting beings”; for the earlier philosophers, the other truth, asserting
that all things are essentially in relation to spirit, is just as valid, and
in a very precise sense, which we do not dare to formulate in words
as yet. For not only is it the property of the spirit that its field of re-
lations includes the sum–total of existing things; rather, it is also the
property of existing things that they lie within the field of relations
of the spirit. And to go further: for the older philosophy, it is all the
same to say that ”things have being” as to say that ”things lie in the
field of relations of the spirit, are related to spirit,” whereby is meant,
of course, no mere ”free-floating” spirituality in some abstract sense
but rather personal spirit, a relating power that is well grounded,
but then again, not only God, but the created, finite, human spirit
as well. For the old ontology, it belonged to the nature of existing
things to be within the field, within the reach of the spiritual soul;
”to have being” means the same as ”to lie within the field of relations
of the spiritual soul”; both statements refer to one and the same situ-
ation. This and nothing else is the meaning of the old doctrine which
has become so removed from us: ”All being is true” (omne ens est
106
verum), and the other doctrine with the same meaning: ”being” and
”true” are convertible expressions. For what does ”true” mean, in
the sense of ”the truth of things”? To say that something is true is to
say that it is understood and intelligible, both for the absolute spirit
as well as for the non–absolute spirit (I need to ask for your patience
in simply accepting this for the moment, since it is not possible to
justify these things in any detail at this point10). ”Intelligibility” is
nothing other than being related to a spirit that has understanding.
So when the old philosophy states that it belongs to the nature of
existing things, that they are intelligible and are understood, there
could not be any being which is not known and knowable (since all
being is true); when it is the said that the concepts ”being” on the
one hand, and ”intelligibility” on the other, are convertible, so that
the one could stand in the other’s place, so that it is the same for
me to say that ”things have existence” as to say that ”things are
known and intelligible”; in saying this the old philosophy also taught
that it lies in the nature of things to be related to the mind (and
this – the concept of the ”truth of things” – is what matters in the
context of our present inquiry). To summarize, then, what we have
been saying: the world that is related to the spiritual being is the
sum–total of existing things; this is so much the case that this set of
relations belongs as well to the nature of spirit; the spirit is the power
of comprehending the totality of being, as it belongs to the nature
of existing beings themselves: ”to be” means ”to be related to spirit.”

What stands revealed to us, then, is a series of ”worlds”: at the

lowest, the world of plants, already locally limited to the surround-
ings they touch. Beyond this is the realm of the animals; and finally,
transcending all these partial worlds, is the world related to spirit,
10
Cf. Josef Pieper, Living the Truth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989).

107
the world as the totality of being. And to this ranking of worlds
and fields-of-relations correspond, as we have seen, the ranking of
the powers that relate: the more comprehensive the power, the more
highly dimensioned is the corresponding field of relations, or ”world.”
Now a third structural element is to be added to this twofold struc-
ture. For the stronger power of relating corresponds to a higher
degree of inwardness; the power to relate is greater to the same de-
gree as the bearer of that relation has ”inwardness”; the lowest power
of relating not only corresponds to the lowest form of being in the
world but also to the lowest grade of ”inwardness,” whereas the spirit,
which directs its relating-power to the sum–total of being, must like-
wise have a corresponding inwardness. The more comprehensive the
power of relating oneself to the world of objective being, so the more
deeply anchored must be the ”ballast” in the inwardness of the sub-
ject. And when a distinctively different level of ”world” is reached,
namely, the orientation toward the whole, there too can be found
the highest stage of being-established in one’s inwardness, which is
proper to the spirit. Thus both of these comprise the nature of spirit:
not only the relation to the ”whole” of the world and ”reality,” but
also the highest power of living-with-oneself, of being in oneself, of
independence, of autonomy – which is exactly what has always been
the ”person,” or ”personality” in the Western tradition: to have a
world, to be related to the totality of existing things – that can occur
only in a being that is ”established in itself”: not a ”what,” but a
”who” – an ”I,” a person.

But now it is time to look back over the path we have taken and
return to the questions from which we began. There were two ques-
tions, one more immediate, the other more remote. The first was,
”What kind of world is the world of man?” and the second was,
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”What does it mean to philosophize?”
Before we begin again with our formal discussion, a brief remark is
in order about the structure of the world that is related to the spirit.
It is not, of course, by a greater spatial compass that the world that is
spirit-related differs from the world that is related to the non-spiritual
(a point that was not addressed when I distinguished ”environment”
from ”world”). It is not only the sum–total of things; but it is also
the ”nature of the things,” with which the world related to the spirit
is constituted. The reason why the animal lives in a partial world
is because the nature of things is hidden from it. And it is only
because the spirit is able to attain to the essence of things that it
has the ability to understand the totality of things. This connection
was made by the old doctrine of being, whereby ”the universe,” as
well as the nature of things, is ”universal.” Thomas says, ”Because
the intellectual [or spiritual] soul is able to grasp universals, it has
a capacity for the infinite.”11 Whoever attains to an understanding
of the universal, whole essence of things is thereby able to win a
perspective from which the totality of being, of all existing things,
are present and ascertainable; in intellectual understanding, an ”out-
post” is reached, or can be reached, whence the whole landscape of
the universe can be taken in. We have reached a context into which
we can take only a brief glimpse but which will also lead us into the
very center of a philosophical understanding of being, knowing, and
spirit.
But now, let us return to the questions which we set out to answer.
The first step to take is to the more immediate question, ”What kind
of world is the world of man?” Is the world of man the world that
is related to the spirit? The answer would have to be that man’s
world is the whole reality, in the midst of which the human being
11
Summa theologiae I, Q. 76, a. 5, ad 4um.

109
lives, face-to-face with the entirety of existing things – vis-à-vis de
l’univers – but only insofar as man is spirit! But man is not pure
spirit; he is a finite spirit so that both the nature of things and the
totality of things are not given in the perfection of a total under-
standing, but only in ”expectation” or ”hope.” And we will speak of
this in the third lecture.
But first, let us consider the fact that man is not pure spirit. This
statement, of course, could be spoken in a variety of tones. Not sel-
dom, it is said with a feeling of regret, an accentuation that is usually
understood as something specifically Christian, by both Christians
and non-Christians alike. The sentence can also be said in such a
way as to imply that ”certainly, man is not pure spirit,” but that the
”true human being” is nevertheless the intellectual soul. Now these
doctrines have no basis in the classical tradition of the West. Thomas
Aquinas used a very pointed formula on this matter which is not as
well known as it should be. The objection he raises is the following:
”The goal of the human being is to attain complete likeness to God.
But the soul, when separated from the body — which is immaterial,
would be more like God than the soul with the body. And therefore
the souls will be separated from their bodies in their final state.” This
is the objection, that the real human being is the soul, dressed out
in all the tempting glamor of theological argumentation. And how
does Thomas reply to the objection? ”The soul that is united to the
body is more like God than the soul that has been separated from its
body because the former more perfectly possesses its own nature.”12
This is no easily digested statement, considering how it implies not
only that the human being is bodily, but that the soul itself is also
bodily.
If this is the case, if man essentially is ”not only spirit,” if man
12
Quaestiones disputatae de potentia Dei 5, 10, ad 5.

110
is not in virtue of a denial, or on the basis of a departure from his
authentic being, but really and in a positive sense a being in whom
the various realms of plant-, animal-, and spiritual beings are bound
into a unity – then man lives essentially, not exclusively, in the face
of the totality of things, the whole universe of beings. Rather, his
field of relations is an overlapping of ”world” and ”environment,”
and necessarily so, in correspondence to human nature. Because
man is not purely spirit, he cannot only live ”under the stars,” not
only vis-à-vis de l’univers; instead, he needs a roof over his head,
he needs the trusted neighborhood of daily reality, the sensuously
concrete world, he needs to ”fit in” with his customary surroundings
– in a word: a truly human life also needs to have an ”environment”
( Umwelt ), as distinct from a ”world.”
But at the same time, it pertains to the nature of body/soul being
that man is, that the spirit shapes and penetrates the vegetative and
sense-perceived regions in which he exists. So much so, that the act
of eating by a human being is something different from that of the
animal (even apart from the fact that the human realm includes the
”meal,” something thoroughly spiritual!). The spiritual soul so pro-
foundly influences all the other regions that even when the human
being ”vegetates,” this is only possible because of the spirit (neither
the plant nor the animal ”vegetates”). Consequently, this very non-
human phenomenon, this self-inclusion of man in the environment
(and that means, in that selective world determined solely by life’s
immediate needs), even this confinement is possible only on the ba-
sis of a spiritual confinement. On the contrary, to be human is: to
know things beyond the ”roof” of the stars, to go beyond the trusted
enclosures of the normal, customary day-to-day reality of the whole
of existing things, to go beyond the ”environment” to the ”world” in
which that environment is enclosed.
111
 But now, we have unwittingly taken a step closer to answering our
original question: What is it to philosophize? Philosophy means just
this: to experience that the nearby world, determined by the imme-
diate demands of life, can be shaken, or indeed, must be shaken, over
and over again, by the unsettling call of the ”world,” or by the total
reality that mirrors back the eternal natures of things. To philoso-
phize (we have already asked, What empowers the philosophical act
to transcend the working–world?) – to philosophize means to take a
step outside of the work–a–day world into the vis-à-vis de l’univers.
It is a step which leads to a kind of ”homeless”-ness: the stars are no
roof over the head. It is a step, however, that constantly keeps open
its own retreat, for the human being cannot live long in this way.
He who seriously intends to wander finally and definitively outside
the world of the Thracian maiden is wandering outside the realm of
human reality. What Thomas said about the vita contemplativa ap-
plies here also: it is really something more than human (non proprie
humana, sed superhumana).13 Of course, man himself is something
more than human: man transcends man himself for the sake of the
eternal, Pascal said; an easy definition does not go far enough to
reach the human being.
But instead of developing these considerations, which may lead us
too near to babbling nonsense, let us return to the question, ”What
does it mean to philosophize?” and attempt another approach to
it, in more concrete fashion, and on the basis established by the
foregoing. How is the philosophical question different from the non-
philosophical question? To philosophize means, we said, to direct
one’s view toward the totality of the world. So is that a philosoph-
ical question (and that alone) which has for its explicit and formal
theme this sum–total of all existing things? No! What is peculiar
13
Quaestio disputata de virtutibus cardinalibus I.

112
and distinctive about a philosophical question is that it cannot be
posed, considered, or answered (so far at least as an answer is possi-
ble), without ”God and the World” also coming into consideration,
that is, the whole of what exists.
Once again, let us speak quite concretely. The question, ”What
are we doing, here and now?” can clearly be intended in various
ways. It can be meant philosophically. Let us attempt it, then! The
question can be asked in such a way as to anticipate a technical-
organizational answer. ”What is happening now?” ”Well, a lecture
is being delivered during the Bonn Week of Higher Education.” That
is a straightforward, informative sentence, standing there in a clearly
lit world or rather, ”environment.” It is an answer spoken with one’s
attention directed to what is immediately at hand. But the question
could also be meant in another sense so that the questioner would
not be content with the answer just now given. ”What are we doing
right now?” One person is speaking; others are listening to what he
is saying, and the listeners ”understand” what is being said; approxi-
mately the same process is taking place within the minds of the many
listeners: the statements are grasped, thought about, weighed, ac-
cepted, denied, or accepted with some hesitation, and then integrated
with each person’s own fabric of thought. This question expects an
answer coming from the special sciences; it can be meant so as to
call on the psychology of sense perception, cognition, learning, men-
tal states, and so on, and these sciences would provide the adequate
answer. An answer of this kind, then, would exist in a world of higher
and deeper dimensions than the first answer, with its merely orga-
nizational interest. But the answers of the special sciences have still
not reached the horizon of total reality; this answer could be given
without having to speak at the same time of ”God and the World.”
But if the question, ”What are we doing right now?” was meant as a
113
philosophical question, such an exclusion would not be possible; for
if the question is meant philosophically, then the question is about
the nature of knowing, of truth, or even of the nature of teaching
itself. What, in the last analysis, is it ”to teach”? Now someone will
come along and say, ”A man cannot really teach; just as when some-
one is healed from illness, it is not the doctor who has healed him,
but nature, whose healing powers the doctor has, perhaps, allowed to
operate.” Someone else will come up and say, ”It is God who really
teaches, within, on the occasion of human teaching.” Then Socrates
will stand up and say that the teacher only makes it possible for the
one who learns ”to acquire knowledge from himself” through remi-
niscence; ”there is no learning, only recollection.”14 And still another
one will say, ”All human beings are confronted by the same reality;
the teacher points it out, and the learner, or the listener, sees for
himself.”
What are we doing here? What kind of phenomenon is taking
place? Is it something of a socially organized nature, a part of a lec-
ture series? Is it something that can be analyzed and researched in
terms of psychological science? Is it something taking place between
God and the World?
This, then, is what is peculiar and distinctive about a philosophi-
cal question, that something comes to the fore in it, touching the very
nature of the soul: to ”come together with every being” (convenire
cum omni ente) – with everything that exists. You cannot ask and
think philosophically without allowing the totality of existing things
to come into play: God and the World.

14
Plato, Meno 85; 81.

114
 III

We said that it was the property of the human being to need to

belong both to the ”environment” and to be oriented toward the
”world,” or the totality of being; we further maintained that it was
of the nature of the philosophical act to transcend the ”environment”
and to encounter the ”world.”
But this cannot mean, of course, that there are two so–to–speak
divorced worlds and that man must depart from the one in order to
enter the other; it is not as if there were some things which are charac-
terized by having their place in the ”surrounding environment,” and
other things which do not appear there at all, but only in that other
place we call the ”World.” ”Environment” and ”World” [ Umwelt
and Welt ], as we are using the terms here at least, are not two
separated areas of reality so that someone who asks a philosophical
question would have to remove himself from the one region and move
to the other! The one who philosophizes does not turn his head in a
different direction, when he transcends the work–a–day world in the
philosophical act; he does not take his eye off the things of the work-
ing world – away, that is, from the concrete, purposeful, manageable
items of the working day – he does not need to look in a different
direction in order to behold the universal world of essences.
No, it is rather this visible world, the one before our very eyes
115
which we touch with our hands, upon which the philosopher gazes.
But this world, and all these things in it, are investigated in a pecu-
liar way: what one inquires into, in regard to them, is their ultimate
nature, and the horizon of the question becomes the horizon of the
sum–total of reality. The philosophical question concerns itself pre-
cisely with ”this” or ”that,” lying before one’s eyes, and not with
something ”outside the world,” or something ”in another world,”
outside the world of daily experience. But the philosophical question
asks, ”What is this, ultimately, and in the last analysis?” As Plato
says, ”It is not whether I am doing an injustice to you somehow, or
you are doing an injustice to me: that is not what philosophy wants
to get at, but rather, what is justice or injustice in itself; not, whether
a king who has a lot of money is happy or not, but rather, just what
kingship is, what happiness is, what misery is what they are as such,
and in the last analysis.”1
Philosophical questioning is entirely directed toward the day–to–
day world that lies before our eyes. However, what lies before our
eyes becomes all at once ”transparent” to the question-asker; it loses
its compactness, its apparent completeness, its self-explanatory, ob-
vious nature. Things appear, but with a strange, unfamiliar, uncer-
tain, deeper appearance. When Socrates asks questions, aware that
he is suddenly taking the obviousness away from things, he compares
himself to a sting-ray, whose sting makes its victims numb. People
are always saying, this is ”my” friend, or this is ”my” wife, or ”my”
house, that we ”have” or ”own” such things. But suddenly we are
startled: do we really ”have” all these ”possessions”? Can they really
be ”had”? What is it, as such, and in the last analysis, to ”have”
something?
To philosophize means to remove oneself, not from the things of
1
Theaetetus 175.

116
the everyday world, but from the usual meanings, the accustomed
evaluations of these things. And this is not motivated from some
decision to think ”differently” from the way most people think, but
rather for the purpose of seeing everything in a new light. This is
just how it is: in the everyday things (not in some separated sphere
of an ”essential” world, or what have you) to be able to see the
deeper visage of the real so that the attention directed to the things
encountered in everyday experience comes up against what is not so
obvious in these things – it is exactly here, in this inner experience,
that philosophy has its beginning: in the experience of wonder.
”Indeed, by the gods, my dear Socrates, I cannot keep from be-
ing astounded at the meaning of all this, and at times I even get
dizzy,” exclaims the young mathematician Theaetetus after Socrates
has succeeded in taking him far enough to see and accept his own ig-
norance – Socrates, at once so deceptive and helpful, who could make
someone so confounded, even numb, with wonder, by his question-
ing. And then, in Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus,2 comes the ironical
answer of Socrates: ”Yes, this very condition is characteristic of the
philosopher; this, and nothing else, is the very beginning of philoso-
phy.” Here for the first time, in the bright morning of our history, and
almost in passing, with no ceremony, is the thought first expressed,
which will then become almost a commonplace through the entire
history of philosophy: that philosophy begins in wonder.

And in this, that philosophy begins in wonder, lies the, so to speak,

non-bourgeois character of philosophy; for to feel astonishment and
wonder is something non-bourgeois (if we can be allowed, for a mo-
ment, to use this all-too-easy terminology). For what does it mean
to be come bourgeois in the intellectual sense? More than anything
2
Theaetetus 155.

117
else, it means that someone takes one’s immediate surroundings (the
world determined by the immediate purposes of life) so ”tightly” and
”densely,” as if bearing an ultimate value, that the things of experi-
ence no longer become transparent. The greater, deeper, more real,
and (at first) invisible world of essences is no longer even suspected to
exist; the ”wonder” is no longer there, it has no place to come from;
the human being can no longer feel wonder. The commonplace mind,
rendered deaf-mute, finds everything self-explanatory. But what re-
ally is self-explanatory? Is it self-explanatory, then, that we exist?
Is it self-explanatory that there is such a thing as ”seeing”? These
are questions that someone who is locked into the daily world cannot
ask; and that is so because such a person has not succeeded, as any-
one whose senses (like a deaf person) are simply not functioning –
has not managed even for once to forget the immediate needs of life,
whereas the one who experiences wonder is one who, astounded by
the deeper aspect of the world, cannot hear the immediate demands
of life – if even for a moment, that moment when he gazes on the
astounding vision of the world.

Thus the one who experiences wonder is one who realizes in an un-
mixed form that ancient attitude toward being, which has been called
theoria since the time of Plato: the purely receptive stance toward
reality, undisturbed by any interruption by the will (to recall what
we said in the first lecture). Theoria can only exist to the extent that
man has not become blind to the wondrous the wonderful fact that
something exists. No, it is not what has ”never been there before,”
the abnormal, the sensational, that kindles philosophical wonder the
”numbing of the senses” would be a mere substitute for genuine won-
der. If someone needs the ”unusual” to be moved to astonishment,
118
that person has lost the ability to respond rightly to the wondrous,
the mirandum, of being. The hunger for the sensational, posing, as
it may, in ”bohemian garb,” is an unmistakable sign of the loss of
the true power of wonder, for a bourgeois-ized humanity.
To find the truly unusual and extraordinary, the real mirandum,
within the usual and the ordinary, is the beginning of philosophy.
And here is where, according to Aristotle and Thomas, the philo-
sophical act is related to the poetical: both the philosopher and the
poet are concerned with ”astonishment,” with what causes it and
what advances it. In regard to the poet, the seventy-year-old Goethe
concluded a short poem (”Parabase”) with the following verse: Zum
Erstaunen bin ich da (”I exist for wonder”) and the eighty-year-old
Goethe said to Eckermann: ”The highest state to which humanity
can aspire is wonder.”3
This ”non-bourgeois” character of the philosopher and the poet –
that they try to keep the ”wondrous” in such pure and strong forms
– contains within it, of course, the danger of being uprooted from
the work–a–day world. Being alien to the world and to life is, so
to speak, the ”professional hazard” of philosophers and poets (and
yet one cannot really be a philosopher or a poet ”by profession,” for
one could not live that way permanently, as has already been pointed
out). Wonder does not make one in dustrious, for to feel astonished is
to be disturbed. Whoever undertakes to live under the ”astrological
sign” of astonishment and wonder at ”why anything exists at all?”
must be prepared to find his way back into the daily working world.
Someone who is astonished at everything he encounters may forget,
at times, how to handle the same things in terms of everyday life.

But it still remains true that the ability to experience wonder is

3
Conversations with Eckermann, Feb. 18, 1829.

119
one of the highest possibilities of human nature. Thomas Aquinas
sees this as a proof that the human being can only be satisfied by
the vision of God and, vice versa, that this orientation toward the
absolute ground of the world provides the very reason why man can
feel astonishment. Thomas is of the opinion that the first wonder one
feels forms the first step on the path that leads to the beatific vision,
the state of blessedness resulting from reaching the ultimate Cause.
But that human nature is designed for nothing less, for nothing less
than such an end, is proved by the ability of the human being to
experience the wonder of the creation.

Now, the disturbance experienced by the one who feels wonder –

the disturbance, that is, of suddenly losing, in a flash, the compact,
comfortable sense of obviousness – this disturbance, I said, can uproot
someone who feels it. But not only in such a way as to cause a loss
of certainty in the everyday surroundings (for there is really nothing
harmful about that), but in a more dangerous way, so that he loses
his footing because he is no longer a ”doer” but only a ”knower.”
Now, it is curious that in modern philosophy, especially, the as-
pect of the wonderful has taken on a different appearance so that the
old doctrine of wonder as the beginning of philosophy has acquired
the meaning, ”Doubt is the beginning of philosophy.” That is what
Hegel said in his essay on the history of philosophy, when speaking
about Socrates and his method of bringing his partner to a state of
astonishment: that the state of doubt was the main point: ”This
merely negative situation is the principal point.” ”Philosophy must
begin with confusion, and depends on maintaining it; one must doubt
everything, give up all one’s preconceptions, in order to regain it all
again through the creation of a concept.”4 In the same (basically,
4
Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, Sämtliche Werke (Stuttgart, 1927 ed.), vol. 18, p. 69.

120
Cartesian) spirit is Windelband’s translation, in his famous Intro-
duction to Philosophy, of the Greek thaumazein (”to wonder”) as
”to become confused in one’s own thinking.”5 (In response to this
”removal of all pre-conceptions,” Chesterton coined a fitting remark:
”There is a special kind of nonsense that consists in losing everything
but your mind.”)
But should the true meaning of ”wonder” really lie, in the ”up-
rooting” itself, in the encouragement of doubt? Should it not rather
consist in making possible a new, deeper ”rootedness”? Certainly,
something is ”lost” for the one who wonders (the experience is like a
”dis-illusion,” considered as fundamentally something positive: one
is ”freed” from a certain ”illusion”). Certainly, for the one who expe-
riences the astonishment that things that had seemed obvious before,
have now lost their certainty and validity: it becomes quite clear that
those ”obvious” things have lost their ultimate value. But the sense
of wonder is nevertheless the sense that the world is a deeper, wider,
more mysterious thing than appeared to the day-to-day understand-
ing. The inner wealth of wonder is fulfilled in a sense for mystery.
The inner orientation of wonder does not aim for the stirring up of
doubt, but rather for the recognition that being as being is incom-
prehensible and full of mystery: that being itself is a mystery, a
mystery in the real meaning of the word: not merely disorientation,
or irrationality, or even darkness. Mystery implies much more: that
a reality is in comprehensible for this reason, that the light that it
sheds is unfathomable, unquenchable, inexhaustible. This is what
the one who feels wonder really feels.

It should now be clear that ”wonder” and philosophizing are con-

nected with each other in a more essential sense than may at first
5
W. Windelband, Einleitung in die Philosophie (Tübingen, 1923), p. 6.

121
appear in the statement, ”Philosophy begins in wonder.” For wonder
is not merely the beginning, in the sense of initium, the first stage
or phase of philosophy. Rather, wonder is the beginning in the sense
of the ”principle” (principium), the abiding, ever-intrinsic origin of
philosophizing. It is not true to say that the philosopher, insofar as
he philosophizes, ever ”emerges from his wonder” – if he does de-
part from his state of wonder, he has ceased to philosophize. The
inner form of philosophizing is identical with the inner form of ”be-
ing astounded.” Therefore, since we posed the question to ourselves,
”What is it to philosophize?” we must take a closer look at the inner
form of ”being astounded.”
In wonder, there is something negative and something positive.
The negative aspect is that the person who feels wonder does not
know something, does not grasp something – he does not know,
”What is behind it all”; as Thomas put it, ”The cause of our wonder
is hidden to us.”6 He who feels wonder, does not know, or does not
know completely, does not comprehend. He who knows, does not
feel wonder. It could not be said that God experiences wonder, for
God knows in the most absolute and perfect way. And, further: the
one who wonders not only does not know, he is intimately sure that
he does not know, and he understands himself as being in a position
of not-knowing. But this un-knowing is not the kind that brings
resignation. The one who wonders is one who sets out on a journey,
and this journey goes along with the wonder: not only that he stops
short for a moment, and is silent, but also that he persists in search-
ing. Wonder is defined by Thomas in the Summa Theologiae7, as
the desiderium sciendi, the desire for knowledge, active longing to
know.
6
Quaestio disputata de potentia Dei 6, 2.
7
I-II, Q. 32, a. 8.

122
 But along with not-knowing, and not-giving-up, wonder is also...
joy, as Aristotle said,8 and the Middle Ages agreed with him: omnia
admirabilia sunt delectabilia9 – the source of joy and the source
of wonder are the same thing. One might even venture to say that
wherever spiritual joy is to be met with, the wonderful is also there,
and wherever there is a capacity to feel joy, there is also a capacity
to feel wonder. The joy of one who is astounded is the joy of a soul
that is beginning something, of a soul that is always ready and alert
for something new, for something unheard of.
In this juncture of Yes and No is revealed the ”built-in” hope-
fulness of wonder, the very structure of hope, which is peculiar to
the philosopher and to human existence in general. We are essen-
tially viatores, travelers, pilgrims, ”on the way,” we are ”not-yet”
there. Who can say that he possesses all the being that is meant
for him! ”We are not, but we hope to be,” as Pascal wrote.10 And
in this, that wonder also has the structure of hope built into it, can
be seen how much it is a part of human nature. Ancient philosophy
understood wonder as in fact the distinguishing feature of human
existence. Absolute spirit does not experience wonder because the
negative does not enter, because in God there is no ignorance. Only
the one who cannot grasp something can feel wonder. The animal
also cannot feel wonder because, as Thomas Aquinas says, ”it is not
a property of the sense-perceiving soul to feel distress about the un-
derstanding of causes.”11 In the case of an animal, what is positive
in the structure of hope does not come into play: the orientation to
knowing. Only he can feel wonder who does ”not yet” know. In-
deed, the ancients considered wonder so distinctively human that in
8
Rhetoric 1, 2.
9
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II, Q. 32, a. 8.
10
Pensées, no. 172.
11
Summa contra gentiles 4, 33.

123
the Christological controversies there was an ”argument from won-
der,” to show that Christ was truly human. Arius denied the divinity
of Christ, and against this view, Apollinaris maintained the Eternal
Logos had taken the place of the spiritual soul in Christ and was
directly joined to his body (of course, our concern here is not with
the theological issue as such – it is simply that in such theological
contexts, we can discern the ancient doctrines of being, spoken ”un-
der oath” as it were!).
Now Thomas Aquinas, in turn, used the ”argument from wonder,”
along with other arguments, against this position of Apollinaris, ac-
cording to which Christ would not have had a fully human, body–soul
nature. Thomas wrote: In the Scriptures (Luke 7,9) it is said that
Christ felt wonder (in the story of the centurion from Capernaum,
the centurion said, ”Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst come
under my roof,” and then it is written that ”Jesus heard this and
was astounded” [ ´θαύµασν, or ethaumasen ]. But if Jesus could
be astounded, then, there must have been something in Him, ”apart
from the Divine logos and the sense-perceiving soul” (both of which
are incapable of feeling wonder) by means of which He was able
to feel wonder, and this is the mens humana, the human spiritual
soul.12 Only a spiritual knowing-power, which does not understand
everything at once, to which everything is not immediately appar-
ent, is capable of making the surrounding, sense–perceptible world
of reality gradually more and more transparent, so more and more
depths of reality are revealed... to the astonishment of the knower!
But the philosopher also possesses this distinctively human capac-
ity. ”None of the gods philosophizes,” Plato has Diotima say in the
Symposium: ”nor do fools; for that is what is so bad about ignorance
– that you think you know enough.” ”Who, then, 0 Diotima, I asked,
12
Ibid.

124
are the philosophers, since they are neither those who know nor those
who don’t know?” Then she answered me: ”It’s so obvious, Socrates,
that a child could understand: the philosophers are the ones in be-
tween.”13 This ”in-between” is the realm of the truly human. It is
truly human, on the one hand, not to understand (as God), and on
the other hand, not to become hardened; not to include oneself in
the supposedly completely illuminated world of day–to–day life; not
to let oneself stay in ignorance; not to lose that childlike, flowing
looseness, which only the hopeful person has.
Thus the one who does philosophy, like the one who feels wonder,
is superior to the confused confinement of dullness – he has hope!
But he is still inferior to one who finally knows, who understands.
But he is hopeful, he feels wonder, he . . . philosophizes.

Now this structure of hope (among other things) is also what dis-
tinguishes philosophy from the special sciences. There is a relation-
ship with the object that is different in principle in the two cases.
The question of the special sciences is in principle ultimately answer-
able, or, at least, it is not un-answerable. It can be said, in a final
way (or some day, one will be able to say in a final way) what is
the cause, say, of this particular infectious disease. It is in princi-
ple possible that one day someone will say, ”It is now scientifically
proven that such and such is the case, and no otherwise.” But when
it comes to a philosophical question – (”What does it mean to say
ultimately’ ?” ”What is a disease?” ”What is it to know something?”
”What is the human being?”) – a philosophical question can never
be finally, conclusively answered. ”No philosopher has ever been able
completely to know the essence of even a single fly.” That was said

13
Symposium 204.

125
by Thomas Aquinas14 (who, of course, also said that ”the knowing
soul penetrates to the essence of things”).15 The object of philoso-
phy is given to the philosopher on the basis of a hope. This is where
Dilthey’s words make sense: ”The demands on the philosophizing
person cannot be satisfied. A physicist is an agreeable entity, useful
for himself and others; a philosopher, like the saint, only exists as
an ideal.”16 It is in the nature of the special sciences to emerge from
a state of wonder to the extent that they reach ”results.” But the
philosopher does not emerge from wonder.
Here is at once the limit and the measure of science, as well as
the great value, and great doubtfulness, of philosophy. Certainly, in
itself it is a ”greater” thing to dwell ”under the stars.” But man is
not made to live ”out there” permanently! Certainly, it is a more
valuable question, as such, to ask about the whole world and the ul-
timate nature of things. But the answer is not as easily forthcoming
as for the special sciences!

Now, the negative aspect of this structure of hopefulness is some-

thing that has become associated with the very idea of philosophizing
from its very start. Ever since it began, philosophy has never been
understood as a special, superior form of knowing, but rather, as a
form of knowing one’s own’s limits. The words ”philosophy” and
”philosopher” were coined, according to legend, by Pythagoras. And
they were intended to stand in an emphatic contrast with ”sophia”
and ”sophos”: no man is wise and knowing, only God. And so the
most that man can do is call someone a loving searcher of the truth,

14
Commentary on the Apostles’ Creed, Introduction.
15
Summa theologiae I-II, Q. 31, a. 5.
16
Briefwechsel zwischen Wilhelm Dilthey und dem Grafen Paul Yorck v. Wartenburg, 1877-1897
(Hall/Saale, 1923), p. 39.

126
philo–sophos. In just this way, Plato in the dialogue Phaedrus17
proposes the question, what to call Solon and what to call Homer,
and Socrates decides the matter as follows: ”To call him wise, 0
Phaedrus, seems going too far, something that only really applies to
a god; but to call him a philosopher, or lover of wisdom, or some-
thing of that sort – that seems more fitting.”
These stories are well known. But we tend to take them as some-
thing anecdotal, something that belongs to the art of rhetoric. Nev-
ertheless, it seems to me reason enough to be very precise here and
to take the words seriously, in their original meaning.
And what, exactly, is being said? Two things. First, that we do
not ”have” the knowledge to which philosophy aspires; and second,
that we do not just ”happen” not to have it, or only ”provisionally”
do not have it; rather we cannot have it, in principle. We are in the
presence here of an eternal not–yet.
The quest for essence really implies a claim on comprehension.
And comprehension (as Thomas says) is to know something in such
a way as it is possible for it be known. It is to transform all ”knowa-
bility” into the known, to know something through and through,
”completely.”18 But there is nothing that the human being can know
in this way or comprehend in this strict sense. So it is of the nature of
the quest for essence, that is, of the philosophical question (insofar as
it can be formulated by a human being), that it cannot be answered
in the same way it is asked. It is a property of philosophy that it
reaches toward a wisdom that nevertheless remains un reachable by
it; but this is not to say that there is no relationship at all between
the question and the answer. This wisdom is the object of philosophy
but as something lovingly sought, not as something ”possessed.”
17
Phaedrus 278.
18
Commentary on the Gospel of John I, 11.

127
 This, then, is the first point that is made by the Pythagorean and
Socratic-Platonic interpretation of the word philosophia. This point
is then taken up and further refined in the Metaphysics of Aristo-
tle. It was also adopted by the great thinkers of the Middle Ages,
partly through Aristotle. For example, in the commentary written
by Thomas Aquinas on this passage of the Metaphysics of Aristotle
can be found some remarkable and quite penetrating variations on
the theme: such as, that wisdom, because it is sought for its own
sake, cannot become the full possession of any man. The results of
the special sciences we can completely ”have” and ”possess”; but it
belongs to the nature of these results that they are ”means”: they
can never be so satisfying to us that we would seek them out fully for
their own sakes. But what can satisfy us can also be sought for its
own sake, and even that is only given on the basis of a hope: ”Only
that wisdom is sought for its own sake (says Thomas) which does
not come to man as a possession; much more so, would this lovingly
sought-for wisdom be such as to be granted to man as a loan (aliquid
mutuatum).19

It therefore belongs to the nature of philosophy that it only ”has”

its object in the manner of a loving search. And something quite
important is implied by this: something controversial, in fact. For
example, Hegel appears to have expressly opposed this definition of
philosophy, in the preface to his Phenomenology of Spirit, where
he writes, ”What I have intended is to labor to arrive at the goal of
being able to remove philosophy’s name of love of knowing’ and have
real knowing instead.” With this, a claim was formulated that goes in
principle beyond all human possibility: a claim which led Goethe to
speak in an ironic manner about Hegel and other philosophers of his
19
Commentary on the Metaphysics I, 3.

128
day as ”these gentlemen who believe they can control God, the soul,
and the world (and all the other things nobody can understand).”20
But there is yet a second teaching in that ancient name ”philos-
ophy,” which is only rarely expressed. Not only in the legendary
statements of Pythagoras, but also in Plato’s Phaedrus and in Aris-
totle, the human philosopher is contrasted with the divine wise man.
Philosophy, that is, is not a loving search of the human being for ”just
any” wisdom but is oriented toward the wisdom that God has. Aris-
totle even calls philosophy a ”divine wisdom” be cause it seeks to
attain a knowledge such as God alone would be able fully to pos-
sess.21
This second doctrine, contained in the original definition of phi-
losophy, has several aspects. First, it brings more sharply into focus
the first doctrine (that philosophy cannot fully attain its object); the
boundary set here is more specific than the boundary between man
and God: man can possess that wisdom only to the extent that he
can cease to be man. Further, it belongs to the very concept of philos-
ophy to include an orientation to theology. An openness to theology
in stated here, in philosophy’s earliest definition. Something, in other
words, is being said that is thoroughly opposed by the meaning of
philosophy that has gained currency in more recent times. This new
concept of philosophy says that its peculiar characteristic is to be
distinguished from theology, belief, and tradition. And yet a third
point is made clear by the ancient word ”philosophy”: the refusal of
philosophy to take itself for a doctrine of salvation.
But what, now, is meant by speaking of ”wisdom, such as God
would possess”? The understanding of wisdom that lies at the basis
of this is as follows: ”That one is really wise, who knows the ultimate
20
In a letter to Zelter, Oct. 27, 1827.
21
Metaphysics 983a.

129
cause”22 (”cause” being meant here not only in the sense of efficient
cause but also in the sense of final cause, or purpose). Now, to know
”the ultimate cause” – not the cause of something definite or specific
but ”in general,” to know the ultimate cause of the sum–total of all
things – this means to know the why and the wherefore, the origin
and goal, the basic structure and foundation, the meaning and the
systematic order of reality as a whole, to know the ”world” in its
ultimate sense. Such a knowledge, however, in the sense of a com-
prehensive knowledge, could only be said to belong to the absolute
spirit, or God. Only God understands the world ”from a single point
of view”; that is, by itself and in terms of its one, final cause. ”He
alone is wise, who knows the highest cause” – in such a sense, God
alone is meant.
So this is the goal, to which philosophy is directed: understand-
ing of reality in terms of an ultimate principle of unity. But it is of
the nature of philosophy, of course, to be only ”on the way” (loving,
searching, hoping) to this goal, and yet, it is in principle incapable of
reaching this goal. Both aspects belong to the concept of philosophy,
as understood and explicated by antiquity.
With this, the crucial point is made: it is impossible, working
within the concept of philosophy, and in a philosophical manner, to
reach a rational interpretation of the world from knowledge of the
”highest cause.” It means that there is no such thing as a ”closed
system” of philosophy. A claim to have ”a formula for the world” is
by definition ”un-philosophy” or ”pseudo–philosophy”!
And nevertheless, Aristotle23 saw in philosophy, and in meta-
physics in particular, the highest of the sciences, precisely because of
this goal (to know the ultimate cause), even if it is only reachable in
22
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, Q. 9, a. 2.
23
Metaphysics 983a.

130
hope and as something given ”on loan” to man. In his Commentary
on the Metaphysics, Thomas adds: ”This little, that can be reached
by it [ i.e., by metaphysics] is more important than anything else that
can otherwise be known by science.”24
And so it is just in this twofold, two-layered structure of philoso-
phy – in the fact that we travel a road which nevertheless has no end –
in the fact that philosophy has a built-in structure of hope – precisely
herein is philosophy shown to be something completely human – and
indeed, in a certain sense, as the fulfillment of human existence it self.

24
I, 3.

131
132
 IV

In the philosophical act, the human being’s related-ness to the to-

tality of being is realized; philosophy is oriented toward the world as a
whole. This is what we maintained. And yet, prior to all philosophy,
always preliminary to it, an interpretation of reality has ”already”
been given ”a long time before.” And this is an interpretation of real-
ity, a tradition (by way of teaching and historical development) that
grasps the whole of the world and speaks of that whole.
Man is ”already” within a religious teaching tradition which offers
a picture of the world as a whole. And it is of the essence of such a
tradition to be there ”already,” to have its validity prior to all philos-
ophy, to all interpretation of the world that builds upon experience.
There is a theological doctrine which is derived from this archaic
tradition and this ”primeval” revelation; in other words, a commu-
nication that took place at the beginning of human history, an ”un-
veiling” [re-velatio, from velum, veil] of the meaning of the world,
and of the meaning of human history as a whole; an announcement,
rather overgrown and corroded with decay, but which lives again in
popular myths and folkways. We cannot speak about this in any
further detail at present.
For the present context, it is important to observe that the great
founders of Western philosophy, upon whose achievements philoso-
133
phy today still depends for its life, above all, Plato and Aristotle,
not only discovered and confirmed the existence of such an ”already
given” view of the world, they also philosophized about it. ”The an-
cients knew the truth; if we could only find it, why would we have to
investigate the opinions of men?” So wrote Plato.1 And how often,
otherwise, does he say that this or that doctrine ”is handed down
by the ancients” and is not only an honorable teaching but is true
in an extraordinarily unquestionable way: ”As the old teaching says,
God holds the beginning, middle and end of all things, and guides
them according to what is best according to their nature,” wrote the
aged Plato in the Laws.2 And it is the same with Aristotle: ”It has
been handed down to us, the later generations, by our very ancient
forefathers, that the whole of nature is surrounded by the divine” –
so reads the Metaphysics.3
It is important to see this: to see that the great, paradigmatic
figures of Western philosophy were ”believers” in a previously given,
previously handed-down interpretation of the world. Afterwards,
modern historians of philosophy, dominated by the rationalist’s faith
in progress, have located the beginning of philosophy in the de-
parture of thinkers from tradition: philosophy is founded on the
”coming-of-age” of reason, in rebellion against tradition; and above
all, the denial of religious tradition is supposed to be of the essence
of philosophy: the pre-Socratic, and pre-Athenian philosophers are
understood as ”Enlightened” thinkers – whereas, the most recent
scholarship has spoken for the probability that the Homeric version
of the gods (against which the Pre-Socratics from Thales to Empedo-
cles opposed their own teachings), that this ”Homeric” theology was

1
Phaedrus 274.
2
Laws 715.
3
Metaphysics 1074b.

134
in fact a kind of ”Enlightenment theology,” which the Pre-Socratic
philosophers wanted to replace with a more ancient, restored, ”pre–
Homeric” theology.
So, then, what the history of philosophy reveals – both at the
beginning and during the first great flowering of Western philosophy
(i.e., with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle – a flowering that will never
be repeated) – is this: that a previously handed-down interpretation
of the world stands before all philosophizing, as a kind of doctrine
”always already” spoken, from which philosophy gets a spark.
And Plato goes still farther. Not only does he say that there is a
tradition handed down by the ”ancients,” which the philosopher must
respect; Plato is also convinced, that this ”wisdom of the ancients”
was ultimately of divine origin, ”It is a gift of the gods, which, as it
seems to me, came down to us, thanks to some unknown Prometheus,
along with shining fire, and the ancients, who were better than we
are, and who lived closer to the Gods, handed down to us this revela-
tion [this ”report” or ”spoken word,” φήµη or phéme].” This is from
the Philebus, made with reference to the doctrine of the Ideas.4
According to the teaching of Plato, then, ”a wisdom, such as God
has,” has become available to us, before our loving search for this
very wisdom – in other words, before philosophy itself. Without the
contrast with this strangely illuminating gift, proffered to mankind
by the gods, before any human effort of thinking was accomplished
– without such an implied contrast, philosophy as a loving search
for the ”wisdom, such as God has” is simply unthinkable, and yet
precisely herein can be seen a justification of philosophy’s autonomy
as well. The autonomy of philosophy with respect to the ”always
already” given fund of tradition that results from divine revelation
consists in the fact that the philosophical act begins with the investi-
4
Philebus 16c.

135
gation of the visible, concrete world of experience lying before one’s
eyes; that philosophy begins ”from below,” in questioning the expe-
rience of things encountered every day, a questioning which opens
up ever newer, more ”astounding” depths to the one who searches.
And in contrast, it is the property of the ”always already,” previously
given tradition, to precede all experience and all rational investiga-
tion of experience; it is its nature not an ”accomplishment” won
”from below” but is rather ”given” beforehand, already formulated,
and revealed.

What we are dealing with, now, is the basic relationship between

philosophy and theology — with theology being understood in a
general sense as interpretation of the fund of revelation. If someone
wants, then (and if this is a simplification, I believe it a permissible
one) to sum up in a few principles the essential relationship between
philosophy and theology as Plato and ancient philosophy as a whole
understood it, one could say something like this: theology ”always al-
ready” precedes philosophy, and not only in the chronological sense,
but also in the sense of an inner, original relationship; a previously
given interpretation of the world that sees the world as a whole, out
of which philosophical questions spring forth; philosophy, then, is es-
sentially bound up with theology; no philosophy is in existence which
does not receive its first impulse and impetus from some previously
existing, uncritically accepted interpretation of the world. In the the-
ological realm, the paradigm of a ”wisdom, such as God possesses,”
independent of all experience, would be conceivable, from which the
loving-searching movement of philosophical questioning takes its mo-
mentum and finds its orientation.
Now this is not to imply that theology really ”has” what philoso-
phy ”wants.” The theologian has what he has as a theologian, as the
136
custodian and expounder of the fund of revelation, but not the gen-
uine philosopher’s knowledge of being. Certainly, the revealed Word
as the logos, through which all things were made, is exactly a state-
ment about the structure of reality as a whole; but the theologian,
whose business it is to make clear, to preserve, to defend the mean-
ing of this Word on the basis of the whole fund of traditional truth
– the theologian does not possess the wisdom of the philosopher,
which accrues to the latter ”from below.” On the other hand, the
philosopher, in his questioning of things, is able on his own part to
reach a knowledge by the light of such a Word, that would otherwise
remain hidden to him — and yet his knowing is not a theological way
of knowing, but a philosophical one, that is demonstrated in things
themselves.
The hallmark of Platonic philosophy is its openness to theology.
Plato would have stared in puzzlement if someone had pointed out
to him that he had overstepped the bounds of ”pure” philosophical
thinking by passing over into the field of theology... such as when,
in the Symposium5 he lets Aristophanes tell that tale – that almost
grotesque farce – in which the first human beings were shaped like
spheres, with four arms and legs, and being of both sexes at once,
then were later split into two halves (”as one slices pears, to put
them up for canning”), with each half then seeking its ”lost half”;
and this is love (eros): ”the desiring and hunting for wholeness.”
And yet, behind all the comic details of the story, the following basic
narrative can be made out: previously, at the very beginning, our
nature was whole and sound; but man was driven by his hubris6, by
the consciousness of his own power and ”great thoughts,” to aspire to

5
Symposium 189c-193d.
6
hubris: (noun) 1. pride: excessive pride or arrogance 2. excessive ambition: the excessive pride and
ambition that usually leads to the downfall of a hero in classical tragedy. [Late 19th century, Greek].

137
the level of the gods; and as punishment for this over-reaching wish
to be as the gods, man lost his original wholeness; there was left
only the hope, that eros (which is the desire to return to the original
and ”whole” state of being) would really find this fulfillment ”if we
revere the gods.” Of course, this is not ”philosophy”; of course, this
could not be logically thought out as a conclusion, attained through
reasoning on the basis of real experience! However, is it not really
here, in the asking of the question, ”What is love, anyway, in the last
analysis?” and (along with that) in the consideration of an answer
coming from a religious tradition – does not this binding-together
of philosophy and theology give the Platonic dialogue that special
element, which lets us experience it as something so pertinent to our
human life? At the same time, is not this also the very source of
the dialogue’s power to completely transcend the sphere of human
existence itself?
It would be impossible, then, to try to pursue a philosophy that
is radically and consciously opposed to theology, and call on Plato to
justify such an undertaking! If you want to philosophize in a Platonic
way and with Platonic aspirations, you must philosophize before a
theological backdrop. If one is seriously inquiring into the roots of
things (which is what happens in the philosophical act), then one
cannot, at one and the same time, reject (for the sake of some kind
of ”methodological purity”) that previously given religious tradition
and its teaching, which concerns expressly the very roots of things
– even if you no longer accept that teaching! And yet, to accept it,
to ”believe” in it, and at the same time, in your philosophizing, to
reject it – that is what someone cannot do in any seriousness.
And now, the question naturally arises, where is to be found,
today, this authentic pre–philosophical tradition. What is the con-

138
temporary form of knowledge ”given to us,” as Plato said,7 ”as a gift
of the gods, by some unknown Prometheus”? To this, one can only
answer: since the fall of the Roman Empire, there has not been any
pre–philosophical tradition apart from the Christian tradition. In
the Western world, there is no theology but the Christian. Where is
a non–Christian theology to be found, in the full sense of the word?8
This means, that, if one intends to philosophize in such a way
as to satisfy the claims for philosophy Plato made, in the Christian
era, one can only do this before the backdrop of the Christian in-
terpretation of life. ”How is Christian philosophy possible?” – this
question appears less difficult to answer than another question, ”How
is a non-Christian philosophy possible?” – so long as it is assumed
that we are understanding philosophy to be what Plato understood
it to be.
Of course, it should not be said that it is enough to be a Chris-
tian, or to accept the Christian revelation as true, in order to realize
philosophy in the larger sense – that is, as a questioning of the world,
a penetration into being, a path followed ”from below,” all accom-
panied by a natural, genial attitude toward the world – no, it cannot
be said that only Christian philosophy can be a living philosophy.
Philosophy can also live in ”opposition” to the Christian view. Then,
of course, one opposes Christianity through a set of ”articles of be-
lief” – even though these articles may appear to be fully ”rational,”
Rationalism still has its own articles of faith – and then the authen-
tic structure of philosophy is still present, as a certain response to a
7
Philebus 16.
8
In the course of the Bonn ”Week for Higher Education” in 1947, it was brought to my attention, that in
the works of Walter F. Otto, a renewal of the life of ancient theology can be ascertained so that one no longer
can say that the single available theology is the Christian. In reply, I would say, that ”admiration” is not
the same thing as ”faith.” Does someone seriously want to maintain that in this new Hellenism, the ancient
theology is precisely ”taken as the truth,” is so ”fully believed in” that in the extremity of an existentially
threatening situation (such as the approach of death), one would really pray to Apollo or Dionysus? If this
is not the case, then one cannot be speaking of theology ”in the full sense of the word.”

139
set of beliefs (where the religious tradition is completely atrophied
so that one can no longer know the meaning of the words ”god,”
”revelation,” ”logos,” only then would philosophy no longer live and
grow).
Philosophy gets its life and inward stimulus from its counterpoint
relationship with theology. That is where it gets its spice, its exis-
tential ”salt.” And it was just because of this decline — that, once
philosophy shrank to a specialized academic discipline, it became so
”flat” as to avoid with anxiety any contact with theological themes
(which could also be said, in part, for so-called ”Christian philoso-
phy”) – and this is probably why the philosophy of Heidegger had
such a stirring, dazzling effect. Its explosive character consisted in
nothing other than the radical way it posed questions of theological
origin (which demanded theological answers), while radically deny-
ing the very possibility of such answers. Suddenly the taste of the-
ology was traced on the tongue! And in France today, apart from
what is merely fashionable, the situation is similar: this ”existential”
atheism is by no means a ”purely philosophical” or even ”scientific”
position, but is theological in nature, and that is why it lends philos-
ophy a certain theological dimension. This philosophy, however, as a
pseudo–theology or even an anti–theology, is no closer to the truth,
but is at least more ”alive.” It is truly relevant to the human person,
because it deals with the All, with which philosophy by definition has
to deal. So that, if Jean-Paul Sartre says, ”Atheistic existentialism
concludes from the non–existence of God that there is a being that
exists without being determined by any higher will, and that being
is man...,” nobody would take this for a philosophical thesis rather
than a theological one, for an article of faith. And yet such a state-
ment almost forces thought to the level of theology! And in relation

140
to that opposing ”pole,” philosophy can live again.
Of course, a living philosophy that is also true would only be
possible in counterpoint with a true theology, and after the birth of
Christ, that means with a Christian theology. But, again: it is not
as if all actual philosophy that calls upon Christian theology is able,
just with that, to realize such a unity of truth and life. Instead, a
philosophy that is both living and true will either not be realized at
all (and it is quite possible that we will wait in vain for it to come),
or if it is realized, then it will only be as a ”Christian philosophy” in
that sense.
And this is no longer a ”purely” philosophical statement. But it
is of the nature of philosophy, which has been understood from its
beginning as a loving search for ”wisdom, such as God possesses” –
it is, by the nature of the philosophical act, unavoidable for one who
philosophizes to pass over to the realm of theology – a realm that
is theoretically and methodically, but not existentially, separate and
distinct; a field that is conceptually, but not really distinct – and
take up a theological position. For otherwise, one cannot philoso-
phize! And this is so because philosophy, as a basic human attitude
toward reality, is only possible on the basis of the totality of human
existence, to which belong its ultimate positions, as well as its first
principles!
A few remarks need to be made on the concept ”Christian philos-
ophy” as a conclusion to our efforts to answer the question, ”What
does it mean to do philosophy?” At the same time, I do not want
to raise the expectation that this many-sided problem of Christian
philosophy will be exhaustively treated, or even illuminated in its
essential features.
To begin with, it is necessary to counter a current opinion, which
holds that Christian philosophy (or: any Christian philosophy would
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be distinguished from a non-Christian one by the Christian philoso-
phy having simple answers to problems. This is not the case. Even
though Christian philosophy thinks with reference to completely un-
doubted certainties; nevertheless, it is still true that Christian philos-
ophy can more purely realize the true sense of philosophical wonder,
or astonishment, which is based on not-knowing. One of the greatest
of those thinkers in our day, who have taken Thomas Aquinas as a
guide, has said that the characteristic mark of Christian philosophy
is not that it has easy solutions at its disposal, but rather that it
possesses the sense of mystery to a higher degree than any other
philosophy.”9 And even in the realm of faith and theology (despite all
the certainty faith brings), it is by no means true to say that every-
thing becomes ”clear” for the believing person, that every problem
is solved. Indeed, as Matthias Joseph Scheeben said, the truths of
Christianity are inconceivable in a very peculiar way; inconceivable
too, of course, are the very truths of reason, but what is distinctive
about the truths of Christendom are that, ”despite the revelation,
they remain hidden nevertheless.”10
Now, one may ask, How could a Christian philosophy have some-
thing over a non-Christian philosophy, if it does not reach to a higher
level of solutions, if it cannot get handy answers, if the problems and
questions are still there? Well, perhaps a greater truth could be
present in its ability to see the world in its truly mysterious charac-
ter, in its inexhaustability. It could even be the case that here, in the
very experience of being as a mystery, that it is not to be grasped in
the hand as a ”well-rounded truth” – herein is reality more deeply
and truly grasped than in any transparent system that may charm
9
Garrigou-Lagrange, Der Sinn für das Geheimnis und das Hell-Dunkel des Gestes (Paderborn, 1937),
pp. 112 f.
10
M. J. Scheeben, Die Mysterien des Christentums, ed. Josef Höfer, final edition (Freiburg, 1941), pp. 8
f.

142
the mind of the student with its clarity and simplicity. And this is
the claim of Christian philosophy: to be truer, precisely because of
its recognition of the mysterious character of the world.
In no way, then, does philosophy become easier. Plato appears
to have discovered and felt that too – if a certain interpretation of
Plato is correct,11 maintaining that Plato understood philosophy to
be something tragic for this reason, that it must constantly have
recourse to mythos, since the teaching of philosophy can never close
itself into a system.
Nor is Christian philosophy ”easier” for thinkers, as one may be
inclined to think, because faith ”illuminates” reason. No, the ex-
plicit reference to theological arguments (in the philosophy of Thomas
Aquinas, for example) is not for the purpose of getting answers more
easily, but rather for the purpose of breaking through the methodical
narrowness of ”pure” philosophizing, to give rein to the real philo-
sophical impulse, the loving search for wisdom, to open and broaden
a space for mystery – a space which, by definition, is characterized by
being ”without borders” so that one can go into the infinite without
being ”finished.” On the other hand, the rationale for these theo-
logical truths about the world as a whole, and about the meaning
of human existence, is a ”saving” function of theology, that it pro-
vides a ”No!” to the soul that naturally pushes forward to clarity,
transparency, and systematic closure (and this is the meaning of the
famous saying that the truth of faith is the ”negative norm” for philo-
sophical thinking).
But this would not make philosophy any ”easier”! On the con-
trary, it is ”thought” to be precisely the opposite, and how could
one otherwise expect, than that Christian philosophy would be more
11
The interpretation is that of Gerhard Krüger, Einsicht und Leidenschaft: Das Wesen des Platonischen
Denkens — Insight and passion: the nature of Platonic thinking (Frankfurt, 1939), p. 301.

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difficult for a thinker than a philosophy that would not feel itself
bound to traditional truths of faith? In Hölderlin’s Hyperion are the
following lines:

The heart’s wave would never have splashed and

frothed so beautifully,
and become Spirit –
Had not the grim, old cliff of Destiny stubbornly
opposed...

It is the old, silent, unyielding, irrevocable ”cliff” of revealed truth

that hinders philosophical thinking from flowing into a smooth, well-
channeled stream. It is through the complication of thought that
arises from this opposition, wherein Christian philosophy differs from
the non-Christian. It is a kind of philosophy of history, which must
deal with the coming of the Antichrist at the end-point, and that
means, with accepting that human history, in human terms, must
end in a catastrophe – such a philosophy of history, which neverthe-
less does not be come a philosophy of despair – such a Christian
philosophy of history cannot possibly turn into a simple historical
schema, whereas the philosophy of progress (to be sure, it is reveal-
ing how little one speaks of it any more!) is a simpler philosophy
because it refuses to see any ”apocalypse”! But philosophy does
not become simpler by embracing the norm of Christian revelation.
Instead – and this is an obvious claim on the part of a Christian
– it becomes truer, more faithful to reality. What revealed truth
brings to philosophical thinking is a creative and fruitful opposition.
Christian philosophy sets a higher task for itself. Christian philoso-
phizing differs, by having to withstand a force exceeding the realm of
mere rational difficulties. Christian philosophy is more complicated
144
because it does not permit itself to arrive at ”illuminating” formula-
tions through ignoring, selecting, or dropping certain areas of reality;
and this is because, placed in a fruitful state of unease through its
glimpse of revealed truth, it is compelled to think more spaciously
and, above all, not to be content with the superficiality of any ra-
tionalistic harmony. Christian philosophy is different because of this
splashing and foaming of the soul’s breakers against the cliff of the
divine Truth.
By its fidelity to the counterpoint of Christ’s truth, Christian phi-
losophizing gains an enrichment of its content. And it must be un-
derstood, of course, that not only its Christian character is thereby
made stronger and more authentic, but its philosophical character as
well (this needs to be repeated over and over because it is not at all
obvious!). A famous book on the history of medieval philosophy by
Maurice de Wulf closes with this sentence: ”Scholasticism collapsed,
not from a lack of ideas, but from a lack of brains!”
And so, the ”No” of theology, as a norma negativa opposed
to philosophical thinking, is anything but ”negative.” For someone
would not consider something negative that hinders thinking from
falling into certain errors. It is really something positive for the hu-
man mind to be strengthened through its believing acceptance of
revealed truth, to accept in a much more certain way certain philo-
sophical truths, which ”in themselves” are attainable by reason in a
natural way. ”A state without justice is nothing other than a giant
den of thieves.” This statement is naturally intelligible, but it is not
by chance that it is not to be found in a textbook of legal philosophy,
but in a theological work, the City of God, by Saint Augustine.
Now, one can also pose the question, Is not philosophy superflu-
ous for the Christian? Wouldn’t theology be enough, or faith alone?
In his Introduction to Philosophy, Windelband wrote, ”He who al-
145
ready has a world–view, and is determined to continue to hold to
his belief in all circumstances [and this would in fact be true of the
genuine Christian], has no personal need whatsoever for philosophy.”
In fact, for salvation, philosophy is not necessary; only one thing is
needful, and that one thing is not philosophy. The Christian can-
not expect from philosophy an answer to the question about human
salvation, or even about salvation itself. He cannot philosophize in
order to satisfy such expectations; he cannot philosophize in such a
way as if his salvation depended on research into the structure of the
universe. To ”lose oneself” in problems (for this is the mark of a phi-
losophy that is completely self-dependent, and all the more so, the
more seriously it is taken), this so-called ”existential” identification
with the problems of thought is foreign to the believer. In Thomas
Aquinas you can see a certain cheerfulness about ”not–being–able–
to–understand,” an attitude very closely related to a sense of humor.
Philosophy is just as necessary, and just as superfluous, as the natu-
ral fulfillment of the human being is necessary or (even) unnecessary.
To do philosophy is to realize the naturally essential in-
clination of the human mind toward totality. Who would
want to determine (in a concrete fashion) the degree of necessity that
is present, for this potentia, this essential capacity, to find its natural
realization?

One last point remains. Hitherto, we have spoken as if the ”Chris-

tian” was exclusively, or at least predominantly, a matter of teaching,
doctrinal propositions, and truth. And we have spoken of a ”Chris-
tian philosopher” in a similar fashion, in the way one is accustomed to
speak of a ”Kantian philosopher,” whereby is meant someone whose
philosophical opinions are in agreement with the teaching of Kant.
But when it is said that someone is a Christian in his philosophy,
146
that cannot only mean that his view of the world is in agreement
with Christian teaching. For Christianity is a reality, and not just a
teaching! The problem of a Christian philosophy is not only to figure
out whether, and in what manner, natural knowledge of the world
can be joined in theory to supernatural faith; rather, what it concerns
is whether, and in what manner, the philosophizing of someone who
roots his thinking in Christian reality can become a truly Christian
philosophizing.
It was Fichte who said, ”The kind of philosophy a man chooses
depends on the kind of man he is ” – which is not so happy a saying
because it is not as if one simply ”chooses” a philosophy! Even so, the
point is clear and appropriate. For even in the realm of the natural
sciences, it is not the case that one simply needs to apply his brain
with more or less energy in order to arrive at a certain truth; and
this is true above all, if the truth in question concerns the meaning
of the universe and life itself; and then, it is not enough merely to be
”bright”: you also have to have certain qualities as a human being
and as a person. Now Christianity is a reality that will form and
mold the person the more completely in all his abilities, the more he
opens himself up to it. But this is not the time, nor is it my present
task, to speak in any more detail about such matters. What I have
said may be enough to suffice, to indicate the existential structure of
Christian philosophy.
St. Thomas12 employs a distinction, which would seem to be a
very modern one, between two ways of knowing: between purely the-
oretical knowing (per cognitionem), on the one hand, and knowing
on the basis of an essential related-ness (per connaturalitatem), on
the other. In the first way, one knows something that does not belong
to one; in the second way, one knows what is peculiar to oneself. In
12
Summa theologiae I, Q. 1, 6; II-II, Q. 45, a. 2.

147
the first way, a moralist or ethical philosopher can judge what is good
without himself necessarily being a good human being; in the second
way, per connaturalitatem, the good man knows what is good on
the basis of his immediate sharing and partaking of it, on the basis
of an inner correspondence, thanks to the unerring sense of someone
who loves (for love is that whereby the foreign becomes one’s own,
whereby connaturalitas comes into being, as Thomas also says!).13
And that person may judge of divine things on the basis of an es-
sential related-ness, as if he were judging what is personally his own;
who, according to Dionysius the Areopagite, is not only ”learning
the divine, but suffering it as well.”14
In this way, then, that person will realize in his philosophizing the
complete form of Christian philosophy, who not only ”learns” and
knows what is Christian, for whom it is not merely a ”doctrine,”
to which he can coordinate his conclusions in some purely concep-
tual union, some theoretical unity or harmony; rather, the Christian
philosopher is one who allows the Christian faith to be real in him-
self; on the basis of this essential related-ness, then, and not merely
knowing and learning, but ”suffering” and experiencing reality, will
he win Christian truth for his own and go on to philosophize about
the natural principles of the world’s reality and the meaning of hu-
man life.

13
Summa theologiae II-II, Q. 45, a. 2.
14
De divinis nominibus 2,4. (Quoted by Thomas, ibid.).

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Part III

Appendix

149
 Appendix
A Retrospective of Reviews from the First English
Edition

Times Literary Supplement 15

The philosophy taught in universities was never perhaps more remote from the experi-
ences and preoccupations of ordinary life than it is in England to-day. In The Philosophical
Predicament, Professor Winston Barnes, for example, has shown that English philosophy
is not unconscious of being at odds with itself. But there is as well the world of men and
women. Notwithstanding the recent abatement of extreme poverty and the recent multipli-
cation of means of popular entertainment, the general mood, whether in town or country,
cannot be called happy. Notwithstanding a superficial cheeriness, a generous give and take,
there is restlessness and fret, and they seem to betoken an underlying emptiness which bor-
ders on despair. But that this has anything to do with philosophy, or with the teaching
of philosophy, is a suggestion which to many ears will sound preposterous. That, too, the
trouble is primarily one of education may be regarded as paradoxical at a time when schools
are lavishly equipped and the road to the highest education is without obstruction to any.
In an era of five-day weeks, paid holidays for everybody, and the intensive organization of
leisure, few will conceal incredulity on being told that the twentieth century has forgotten
what leisure really is.
Accordingly, whoever picks up unwarned a little book just published is likely to have a
shock. The book is the first work to be offered in translation of Dr. Josef Pieper, who has
been making his mark as a philosopher in Germany since the war and who teaches in the
University of Westphalia. It consists of two essays which are complementary, and of which
the first thing to be said is that their joint argument lies athwart the current of contemporary
habit and purposes and appears as a challenge to certain assumptions by which we allow
– perhaps too easily – the course of our daily lives to be steered. The second thing to be
said is that they are written with a winning simplicity and clarity which Mr. Dru has ably
reproduced, so that, by the unprejudiced at least, they will not be denied a hearing.
What will be an obstacle to some, an incitement to others, should also be mentioned
without delay. The theme of each of the two essays is announced in an epigraph. Over the
first are the striking words of the Psalmist: ”Be still and know that I am God.” Over the
second the quotation is from Aquinas: ”The reason why the philosopher may be likened to
the poet is this: both are concerned with the marvellous.” The import of the two epigraphs
will be considered later. The immediate point is that their sources are not fortuitous. West-
phalia is a predominantly Catholic province, and Dr. Pieper is a religious. He belongs, that
is, to a species which flourishes on the Continent in greater number apparently than in this

15
”Be Still and Know” (February 1, 1952), p. 85. Copyright
c 1952 by the Times Literary Supplement.
Used with permission.

151
country. But its rarity among us cannot be due to want of encouragement, for we welcome
warmly the work of such religious philosophers as comes to us from abroad. Apart from the
already well known – Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, Gabriel Marcel, for example – we
have lately come to know of Simone Weil and Gustave Thibon. Each has received attention
in these columns, and the posthumous writings of Simone Weil have begun to appear in
translation, while the first book of Gustave Thibon to be issued in English here – another
came out in America six years ago – is now in the press. All those religious philosophers,
however, belong to France. It was time to hear of one out of Germany, and especially of one
who promises to arouse at least an equal interest.
Nor need the vigour and extent of that interest surprise the native academic philosopher
absorbed in his linguistic exercises and the pursuit of ”category-mistakes.” The immediate
appeal of the religious philosopher offers no puzzle. It is attributed to the obligation imposed
on him of keeping philosophy in juxtaposition to ordinary life. His readers may find that
they are confronted with abstract thought, but they can be sure that they will be shown
its bearing on their own problems and aspirations. Moreover, his writings may be expected
to have not only appeal but substance also; for he embarks upon his inquiries already fully
equipped. That is an advantage in the philosopher which is not always appreciated. Profes-
sor Michael Oakeshott, in his brilliant introduction to the Leviathan, repeatedly emphasizes
how Thomas Hobbes did not formulate a political philosophy till he had elaborated a com-
plete metaphysic; and possibly we have there the reason why Hobbes is so difficult to refute.
The philosopher who is a Catholic and who, like Gustave Thibon, writes of political matters
and on moral questions has the same implicit support for his statements. His metaphysics
can, like the metaphysics of Hobbes, be personal, even though, unlike Hobbes, he has had to
make them follow an age-old pattern; in any event, the metaphysics will be there. Simone
Weil during her short life remained only on the brink of the Church, but in her writings,
too, it is the depth and majesty of her religious themes which invest the expressions of her
political insight with both cogency and poignancy.
Admittedly the philosophy of a religious philosopher can seem old-fashioned. Yet not
only is that not necessarily a defect but also it would be foolish to imagine that the philos-
ophy thereby somehow loses status or is any the less real philosophy. Dr. Pieper does not
compose vast, massive volumes. His normal literary form is the essay that can be read at
a sitting. On the present occasion eight of his booklets in German have been submitted for
notice, and only one exceeds 120 pages. No doubt in some the theological element may be
felt to preponderate. In Wahrheit der Dinge he propounds an ontological theory of truth to
which, although it is grounded in the teaching of the medieval Schoolmen, a philosopher who
is not also a Christian may refuse intelligibility. In Über das Ende der Zeit he is, as the title
indicates, being eschatological, and if the views he develops in it seem more sound to some
than those contained in a much-trumpeted little book published a year ago, In the End,
God... , by the chaplain of Wells Theological College, the Rev. John A. T. Robinson, it may
well be owing to qualities as a theologian which rival, if they do not surpass, his qualities as
a philosopher. Let so much, and more, be freely admitted. It remains that with the religious
philosopher who is a Christian we can be confident that his theology and his philosophy are
distinct. For this there is a very good reason. It is in the first place, as Etienne Gilson has
shown in a book unfortunately not published in this country, that philosophy in Ancient
Greece was not religious and, in the second place, that this Greek philosophy – originally

152
non-religious – has been the official philosophy of the Christian Church ever since Augustine
brought it into harmony with the Church’s teaching. Thus Dr. Pieper’s oldest inspiration
is pagan, in Über das Schweigen Goethes he deals with a tradition according to which, if
we live and watch in profound stillness, we can win from the world ”that which it cannot
bring to us with fire and sword,” and traces that tradition back from one pagan, Goethe,
to another pagan, Pythagoras. Very properly, in order to introduce to English readers the
writings of one so full of challenge, two essays dealing with the fundamental subject of epis-
temology have been chosen for translation (the first is called in German Musse und Kult and
the second Was heisst philosophieren, and for that subject, too, Dr. Pieper goes back first
of all to the Grove and the Lyceum.
”Be still and know that I am God.” The view of the nature of knowledge which Dr.
Pieper attacks is, he says, the view held by Kant. For Kant, knowledge was exclusively
discursive. Man’s knowledge is, he taught, realized in the act of comparing, examining,
relating, distinguishing, abstracting, deducing, demonstrating – ”all of which,” according to
Dr. Pieper, ”are forms of active intellectual effort.” It is, he declares, that view held by
Kant which has come to be taken as the simple truth, so that no other kind of knowledge
is imaginable. But it is only needful to go back far enough before Kant to find that a wider
view was then generally entertained. Dr. Pieper says:

The Philosophers of antiquity thought otherwise ... The Greeks – Aristotle no less than
Plato – as well as the great medieval thinkers, held that not only physical, sensuous
perception, but equally man’s spiritual and intellectual knowledge, included an element
of pure, receptive contemplation, or, as Heraclitus says, of ”listening to the essence of
things.”

Among the Schoolmen of the Middle Ages a distinction was drawn between two equal
faculties of the mind, ratio and intellectus. Dr. Pieper continues:

Ratio is the power of discursive, logical thought, of searching and of examination, of

abstraction, of definition and drawing conclusions. Intellectus, on the other hand, is
the name for the understanding in so far as it is the capacity of simples intuitus, of
that simple vision to which truth offers itself like a landscape to the eye.

Upon this distinction Dr. Pieper bases his view of the double nature of knowledge and
his view of the nature of philosophy. Although he reminds his readers of Chesterton’s quip,
that there is a kind of madness in which a man loses everything except his reason, he betrays
no sign of despising the achievements of discursive thought. But for him it is not in those
achievements that we are to seek philosophy. He regards philosophy as being altogether
in the province of the intellectus. In Mr. Eliot’s introduction, one of his merits is said to
be that he equates philosophy with wisdom, and this wisdom turns out to be that which
puts us at peace with ourselves and in harmony with the world around us. He shares the
medieval belief that this wisdom is vouchsafed to us in a grasp of the things that exist
and an unveiling of reality. Whereas Kant may be taken as having established the
assumption that knowledge is essentially the result of effort, of work, of activity,
Dr. Pieper would revive the conviction of the Ancients and the Schoolmen, that

153
the highest knowledge is attained without effort, while we are at rest, while we
are passive, in a flash of insight, a stroke of genius, a sudden illumination, in
true contemplation. For knowledge, he says, is like grace: it is a gift.
”Be still and know.” To receive the gift we need to be at rest. It is not only a discarded
notion of the nature of knowledge that we are bidden to recover; it is also a discarded notion
of the nature of leisure. In Dr. Pieper’s indictment of the contemporary world, no charge is
meant to be more grave than that it is a world in bondage, a world that has succumbed to
the idolatry of work, of activity for its own sake. He says:

Work is the process of satisfying the ”common need” – an expression that is by no

means synonymous with the notion of ”common good.” The ”common need” is an
essential part of the ”common good”; but the notion of ”common good” is far more
comprehensive ... More and more, at the present time, ”common good” and ”common
need” are identified; and (what comes to the same thing) the world of work is becoming
our entire world; it threatens to engulf us completely, and the demands of the world
of work become greater and greater, till at last they make a ”total” claim upon the
whole of human nature.

The charge can hardly be denied, and its accuracy is reflected in the degradation of the
notion of leisure. For leisure is now treated as being for the sake of work, as required simply
in order to fit the worker to resume his task, and, in addition, so great apparently is the fear
that leisure may turn into idleness and sloth, leisure is now organized, every moment of it
filled with activity, no matter how trivial. In the Middle Ages, on the contrary, the notions
of idleness and sloth were closely associated with the inability to put oneself at leisure, and
for Aristotle and his fellow-countrymen work was for the sake of leisure and not the other
way round, so that an Athenian could say, ”We are unleisurely so that we may be at leisure.”
If, then, a man is to be a philosopher, if he is to undertake the philosophical act, the
indispensable preliminary, according to Dr. Pieper, is that he shall step clean outside the
everyday world in which the notion of work dominates; for it is only if he escapes from the
”total” claims of that world and makes himself free that he can put off its restlessness and
fret, and enter into the stillness where he may wait to be visited by the intuitions and insights
of philosophical knowledge. Dr. Pieper does not mean that philosophy is only of value if it
is, so to speak, up in the clouds or else is nourished on whimsical fancies issuing from an
oracle in one’s own breast. He means, he says, that the philosophical act should be like the
effect of love or death, or like the aesthetic act or the religious act, and convulse and shake a
man’s relation to the world around him. ”To see things as they are” is how H. W. B. Joseph,
in his posthumous book on Leibniz, defines the philosopher’s task, and, oddly enough, the
definition would be likely to win Dr. Pieper’s approval. He declares that if the philosopher
aims at embracing the whole of reality he does best to set out from the concrete, from the
significant detail of the tangible, visible world. But also he insists that philosophy must be
objective. We cannot see things as they are unless we stand back from them and unless, too,
we are at peace with them.
That is, of course, impossible so long as a stream of solicitations condemns us to rest-
lessness and fret, and we are under the strain of striving and effort. Leisure does not have to
be filled with activity. There is no danger that it will degenerate into laziness and vacancy
if it is true leisure; for it is then simply inward calm and being silent, silent with the silence

154
that allows things to happen. Echoing his essay, Über das Schweigen Goethes, Dr. Pieper
says that only the silent hear and that it is solely in silence that the human soul is able to
respond to the reality of its whole environment. He quotes Newman, and it is apposite16 ;
for his understanding of both the nature of philosophy and the nature of leisure are akin to
Newman’s. Like Aristotle he looks upon leisure as the basis of culture, and, like Plato, he
considers that philosophical receptivity is best gained during an education, it being under-
stood that the term ”education” is to be contrasted with the term ”training,” as culture is
to be opposed to instruction. There are accordingly a number of passages in Newman’s The
Idea of a University which may be said to anticipate Dr. Pieper’s thought. For Newman,
education ”implies an action upon our mental nature, and the formation of a character ... is
something individual and permanent, and is commonly spoken of in connexion with religion
and virtue.” The university of which Newman dreamed would have been a place of leisure
in the sense of a place of rest and stillness, where young men could be receptive. Only so
could the ”liberal knowledge” which was Newman’s other name for philosophy be acquired.
And Newman’s description of philosophy chimes with Dr. Pieper’s:

I consider, then, that I am chargeable with no paradox, when I speak of a Knowledge

which is its own end, when I call it liberal knowledge, or a gentleman’s knowledge,
when I educate for it and make it the scope of a University. And still less am I incur
ring such a charge, when I make this acquisition consist, not in knowledge in a vague
and ordinary sense, but in that Knowledge which I have especially called Philosophy.

Newman says again that some philosophy is ”desirable, though nothing come of it, as
being of itself a treasure, and a sufficient remuneration of years of labour.” In short, as
Newman wanted a leisure class that had been made worthy of its leisure, so Dr. Pieper calls
for the revival of a leisure class, provided it is as signed definite responsibilities. Naturally
he does not imagine that the men and women who are now the most restless and who yield
to every distracting call upon their attention would ever be transformed into people who sat
still in contemplation and waited for aeolian visitation. It was Plato’s opinion that only the
exceptionally gifted man could become a true lover of wisdom, and Dr. Pieper would not
dream of dissent. But he believes that for even no more than a few to revive the quest for
wisdom in silence and patience would be for the ultimate good of the whole community.
But if Dr. Pieper is at one with Newman on education and leisure and on the scope of
philosophy, he goes beyond him in developing the meaning of the second of the epigraphs,
the words of Aquinas, ”The reason why the philosopher may be likened to the poet is this:
both are concerned with the marvellous.” There has long been a restless anxiousness to leave
nothing unexplained, and now in every sphere and to every age explanations are ever forth-
coming glibly. They have one defect: nothing is thereby made intelligible. Explanation turns
out to be a game of synonyms. A problem is merely restated in another form, and all that
happens is that we lose the capacity of wondering, the power to marvel. Dr. Pieper believes
that we should be the better for regaining that capacity and power. The irrational at the
far end of every scientific inquiry has now become familiar, and we should know that little
16
apposite: (adjective ) particularly appropriate: especially well suited to the circumstances [Early
17th century, from Latin appositus, past participle of apponere ”add to, put near” — ponere ”put” (see
position)]

155
in the world can be penetrated to the heart. It is more simple and less effort to marvel,
to possess ourselves of that spirit in which Sir Thomas Browne found his own life to be a
continuous ”miracle” and in which Dr. Johnson, after him, was brought to reflect that, in
one sense, ”all life is miraculous.” Dr. Pieper declares that when truly at leisure, we may
perceive how mysterious are the workings of the universe.
Why Kant refused to recognize any knowledge that was not discursive, and why there
should be the irrepressible impulse to explain things instead of wondering at them, are ques-
tions which Dr. Pieper does not examine. But the two matters are surely connected with the
rise of modern science, and the fact gives direction to his argument. It was entirely thanks
to philosophy that science, as an independent activity and study won its present-day impor-
tance. One consequence was to make a few scientists pose as philosophers, but another has
been to taint all post-Renaissance philosophy. Science suffers less, because, once indepen-
dent, science should forgo all support from philosophy, whereas philosophy did not throw off,
and has not thrown off yet, the unintended thrall of science. If at the Renaissance primary
and secondary qualities were distinguished, it was mainly in order to enable astronomers
and physicists to measure and number the objects of their attention. Once science was on
its own there was no need for philosophers to go on worrying over the distinction. Instead,
however, they allowed it to lead them into an excessive preoccupation with questions of
knowledge and perception, and whenever they offered tentative solutions to those questions
it was invariably in terms that suited science. As Professor Gilbert Ryle remarks in The
Concept of Mind, ”The great epistemologists, Locke, Hume, and Kant, were in the main ad-
vancing the Grammar of Science, when they thought that they were discussing parts of the
occult life-story of persons acquiring knowledge.” That is how Kant, for instance, came to
hold that knowledge was exclusively discursive, and how for Hegel the real could be rational
and the rational real. That is also how academic philosophers today came to concentrate on
matters of language and meaning. Against these views Dr. Pieper is bold enough to contend,
appealing for a return in philosophy to a pre-scientific wisdom and humility. After all, the
great modern philosophers do leave something out. As Johann Georg Hamann, Kant’s friend
and fellow-citizen, remarked, they were heathen and although they may have recognized the
almighty power, grandeur, holiness, and goodness of God, ”of the humility of God’s love for
man they knew nothing.”

156
 The Spectator (London) 17

These two short essays by a contemporary German philosopher go a long way towards a
lucid explanation of the present crisis in civilisation. In criticising our attitude to work, and
particularly to intellectual work, which has become increasingly identified with wage-earning
by intellectual means, he shows that by our constant preoccupation with rewards and with
social utility we have cut away the roots on which our culture rests. These roots grew in the
leisure of the Greek philosophical schools, in the monasteries and the universities; and this
leisure was not identical with idleness but with a freedom from subservience to immediate
and tangible aims. Leisure, therefore, is the prerequisite for any cultural revival, which can
only originate from a leisured and dedicated caste. As Professor Pieper sees it, much of
our most strenuous activity is in fact carefully organised and heavily publicised idleness, for
it is activity to no purpose; even the rewards it gains us bring us none of this vital and
refreshing leisure. His attitude is that of a Thomist more conscious of Christianity’s debt
to Plato and Aristotle than of its Hebrew origins, and seemingly unaware of the support
he might gain from his argument from the earliest Hindu caste laws. He has, however,
worked back sufficiently close to essentials to be able to argue simply and without the use
of philosophical jargon. The first essay in this little book should be read by anyone – and
young people in particular – anxious to come to some conclusions about the nature of society.

The New Statesman and Nation 18

Dr. Pieper’s short book contains the title essay and one other on ”The Philosophical
Act”: the latter is reviewed by Mr. Eliot in his preface, and it is here only necessary to give
a brief indication of its theme. With refreshing clarity and directness, Dr. Pieper opposes
the rationalist tradition of most professional philosophers of the last two hundred years, who
have felt it necessary for the freedom of philosophy to insist on complete independence from
theology. ”There is no such thing as a philosophy which does not receive its impulse and im-
petus from a prior and uncritically accepted interpretation of the world as a whole,” says Dr.
Pieper. ”It is in the field of theology, and quite independently of experience and previously
to it, that the object of man’s desire – ’wisdom as possessed by God’ – becomes visible, and
it is this aim which provides the impulse and guides the course of philosophical enquiry in
its loving search as it moves through the field of experience.” The argument leading to this
statement is lucid and humane; it fulfills the requirement which, Mr. Eliot says, common
sense demands – that philosophy must deal with insight and wisdom; and it would lead us
forward to positive interpretations of personal and social action. If we ask whether it is ac-
ceptable we can first call to mind the difficulty which scientists and ”scientific” philosophers
17
J.M.C., review, vol. 188 (May 30, 1952), p. 726. Copyright c 1952 by The Spectator. Used with
permission.
18
Guy Hunter, ”The Sabbath Made for Man,” vol. 43 (April 5, 1952), p.410. Copyright
c New Statesman,
1998. Used with permission.

157
are having with first principles and the insistence of, for example, Professor Polanyi on the
faith which must underlie science; but we can also remember that a belief in the ”given-ness”
of first knowledge was almost universally held by the philosophers of antiquity, by poets and
prophets, by Jung today.
The essay on leisure is in some ways more immediately stimulating, though of less fun-
damental importance. Protestant culture in particular seems today to have a morality (of
a sort) almost wholly detached from theology, and a theology which stops short, in general
practice, with a kind of organisational chart of the Trinity, or a historical morality play
in which history and myth are inextricably confused. What it lacks, and what Catholics
occasionally get from an Encyclical, is a searching analysis of social function in terms of
religious philosophy. This is just what Dr. Pieper has done for the concept of leisure. Per-
haps his most striking point is that leisure exists on a different plane from ”the world of
work” (utility) – it is a state and activity of the soul which is concerned with the divine,
and this gives meaning to the words ”cult,” ”culture,” ”celebration,” ”feast.” The success
of Dr. Pieper’s analysis is proved in the new illumination he gives to concepts of work and
the worker state, wages, the proletariat; it explains with precision how the CommunistCom-
munist slogan slogan – ”From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”
becomes in Stalin’s mouth (1933): ”It is not correct that the worker should be rewarded
according to his needs,” and in the 1936 Constitution ”... to each according to his work”;
while the Catholic statement is ”The primary right of the worker is to a wage which will
enable him to support a family.” Just as the conception of a temple – a piece of land set
aside to God which is not used for utilitarian purposes – is foreign to the factory-state, so
the idea of a piece of time set aside neither for work nor for recovery in order to work, but
for another purpose in its own right, is foreign to utilitarian planning. Ruskin, seeing wealth
and value in that which avails for life, would have raised a cheer for this argument which
provides the theological basis for what he saw intuitively. At the present moment, when the
air is thick with sociological studies of leisure and educational pronouncements on its use, it
is of extreme value to have some tight and principled analysis. I believe that I shall be only
one of many for whom Dr. Pieper has done that invaluable service – the rear rangement of
whole groups of thought both into a wider consistency and on deeper support.

158
 New York Times Book Review 19

Josef Pieper, a German Catholic philosopher, is unknown to the American layman, and
the career of his small but profound book in this country can teach us something about our
capacity to receive criticism from a point of view to which most of us are hostile. Our failure
to reach a thorough understanding of the rapid totalitarian drift of Western culture, says
Pieper, is the result of an earlier failure of thought which occurred when philosophy was
completely divorced (at the time of Kant) from theology. This looks at first like a compar-
atively useless academic distinction, but its consequences in Pieper’s profound insight are
impressive and even formidable.
The ”emancipation” of philosophy left it vulnerable to the modern mystique of ”work,”
which has eliminated from philosophy the ancient pursuit of wisdom based upon a just notion
of ”leisure.” The result is that philosophy has become either the errand boy of the natural
sciences or the playboy of linguistic shell-games whose name at present is logical positivism.
On this point T. S. Eliot in his introduction observes: ”For as surrealism seemed to
provide a method of producing works of art without imagination, so logical positivism seems
to provide a method of philosophizing without insight and wisdom.” The force of this obser-
vation may well be lost on us, who as a people have not had a vigorous theology since the
eighteenth century. Largely because of this lack we take for granted a long chain of inevitable
”separations” – not only of theology from philosophy, but of church from state, religion from
education, work from play, morality from business, art from society, leisure from work, love
from sex, the individual from the community.
The difference between work and leisure which we take for granted today follows the
pre-supposition that leisure is merely compensatory – an empty compulsive escape from de-
humanizing labor. This is precisely the theme of Josef Pieper’s book. His ultimate purpose is
to restore the identity of leisure and the contemplative life which has a tradition, even older
than Christianity, in Plato and Aristotle. Although contemplative leisure is ”listening” and
receptive, it is not passive and slothful. It is rather a quality that the social man, when his
being is properly ordered toward a certain end, may achieve in his ordinary activity, which
may be quite as strenuous as the compulsive escape.
From this point of view the end of man is not labor, for the end of labor must be the end
of man himself. This end cannot be the ”loving search for any kind of wisdom,” but rather
the ”wisdom which is possessed by God.” We must look sharply at the word ”search.” It
distinguishes philosophy, whose search is never done, from Christian theology, or the order-
ing of revelation, which its final but which we never fully understand.
We never ”understand” it because ratio, or pure reason, is only operative and empty,
and without wisdom. And this kind of reason, the servile work of the mind has suppressed
the liberal and receptive leisure of intellectus, the spiritual activity of the free man. Thus,
though philosophy and theology are distinct modes of the mind, philosophy has no end with-
out theology: it doesn’t know where it is going.
Pieper then proceeds to a comprehensive indictment of a decaying civilization. The mod-

19
Allen Tate, ”In Search of the ’Wisdom Possessed by God’” (February 24, 1952), p. 12. Copyright
c
1998 by the New York Times Company. Reprinted by Permission.

159
ern reduction of all human action, including philosophy, to servile labor is daily creating a
proletarian society from top to bottom, from executive to machine tender. This society uses
men for ends that defy definition beyond the latest ”project” or ”plan,” economic, social or
political. Pieper’s message for us is plain. The American democracy is not blissfully immune
to the Western blight; we have in fact done our part in generating the totalitarian epidemic.
The idolatry of the machine, the worship of mindless know–how, the infantile cult of youth
and the common man – all this points to our peculiar leader ship in the drift toward the
slave society. ”Leisure the Basis of Culture” may help to show us that we had not known
all this as well as we had supposed.

20
Commonweal

The popular notion of leisure as opportunity for ”escape” leaves many deeply puzzled
by the words of the psalmist: ”Have leisure and know that I am God.” In order to under-
stand the words we must recover a loftier, more classical concept of leisure as an affirmative
condition (the very opposite of idleness) by which man transcends the world of work and,
having transcended it, is enabled to contemplate those things which lie beyond it – himself,
the universe, and God.
This concept of leisure is one of the foundations of Western culture, more, one of the
indispensable conditions without which man is something less than man – a mere worker, a
functionary, a thing. It is the subject of a brilliant examination in two essays by the German
philosopher Josef Pieper, now published under the title Leisure, the Basis of Culture.
The first and title essay is a profound investigation, historically and sociologically, into
the nature of leisure itself. The second essay, ”The Philosophical Act,” studies philosophy
as leisure’s highest good, the human act par excellence. This essay is a logical extension of
the first because, as Dr. Pieper observes, philosophy, which is the eternal search for wisdom,
presupposes ”silence, a contemplative attention to things, in which man begins to see how
worthy of reverence they really are.”
The basis for both essays is the author’s thesis: ”Culture depends for its very foundation
on leisure, and leisure, in its turn, is not possible unless it has a durable and living link
with the cultus, with divine worship.” A quotation from Plato, which introduces the essays,
remarkably illustrates the antique origins and classical importance of this thesis:

But the gods, taking pity on mankind, born to work, laid down the succession of
recurring Feasts to restore them from their fatigues ... so that nourishing themselves
in festive companionship with the gods, they should again stand upright and erect.

The nature of leisure is thus basically united to contemplation in the great tradition of
[W]estern culture, and both are dependent on a real awareness of the transcendent and the
20
William P. Clancy, review, vol. 56 (April 11, 1952), p. 18. Commonweal Foundation, reprinted with
permission.

160
Divine. Here lies the secret of freedom.
The difficulty is that modern civilization has placed the idea of leisure in double jeop-
ardy: the triumph of a purely utilitarian social idealism has left little room and less regard
for a concept which produces nothing immediate and concrete toward ”progress”; the very
idea of a ”leisure class” has fallen into disrepute as an aristocratic anachronism, something
incompatible with egalitarianism. And the growing externalization of life, the almost uni-
versal phenomenon of an activist mass-culture, has emptied the virtue of contemplation of
any meaning for the majority of modern men, and left them dismally unprepared to cope
with leisure in the few moments when they may still have an opportunity for it.
Boredom and ennui21 , a frantic search for diversion, are the common reactions to an
hour, or a day, of quiet. The modern Cleopatra in Eliot’s Waste Land desperately asking
”What shall I do now? What shall I do? ... What shall we do tomorrow? What shall we
ever do?” undoubtedly gives voice to one of contemporary man’s most pathetic problems.
Manufacturers of television sets and producers of endless third–rate movies have made their
fortunes providing an answer, an answer itself symptomatic of the problem.
It does not seem far-fetched to speculate that future historians may mark down this
disappearance of any popular regard for or understanding of the nature of leisure, and, at
the same time, the near-hysterical search for external diversion, as one of the major culture
crises of modern civilization. And there can be little doubt that it followed upon the victory
of the bourgeois spirit (with all that this implies) over the older Hellenistic-Judeo-Christian
tradition of [W]estern culture. For leisure, and its highest goal, contemplation, lie at the
heart of this tradition, but they are eternal strangers to bourgeois value. In his memorable
essay, ”The Bourgeois Mind,” Nicholas Berdyaev has defined the state of being bourgeois as
a state distinguished by its particular ”soullessness,” its constitutional inability to compre-
hend the heroic and the transcendent. Consequently, the genuine bourgeois, to the extent
that he is a bourgeois, is at heart the enemy of Christ. Berdyaev quotes Leon Bloy’s bitter
aside of bourgeois religiosity: ”The Lord Jesus is very decorative in shop windows.”
When the bourgeois is a social reformer, when he occupies himself with building a ”bet-
ter world,” he reduces man to a functionary, a thing, and robs him of that unique dignity
and freedom which consist in his transcending the realm of ”things.” The totality of reality
is thus something to be used rather than something to be reverenced, and concepts such as
leisure and contemplation lose all meaning, become, indeed, a scandal. Both God and man
are exiles from a bourgeois world.
So complete has been the triumph of the bourgeois spirit in the modern world that,
in Christopher Dawson’s words, ”we are all more or less bourgeois, and our civilization is
bourgeois from top to bottom.” To look for the bourgeois, then, in one economic group or
in some particular ideological faction is to mistake the nature of the bourgeois spirit, which
is a universal one. (It is ironic that the ”bourgeois” is the favorite whipping boy of Marxist
propaganda, but, once the true nature of the bourgeois spirit is understood, Marxism must
appear as its terrible, but final and logical reductio ad absurdum.) The bourgeois spirit is ev-
erywhere, in the schools, in the press, in the legislatures, in the churches. It is found among

21
ennui: [noun] 1. Etymology: French, from Old French enui — annoyance, from enuier — to vex, from
Late Latin inodiare — to make loathsome (Date: 1732); 2. a feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction —
boredom.

161
rich and poor, among capitalistscapitalism!capitalists and Communists, among Catholics
and Protestants and Jews.
This triumph of the bourgeois spirit has witnessed the almost universal acceptance of the
bourgeois virtues – the virtues of the practical and immediately useful, of work for work’s
own sake, of the ”rational.” We need only consult our own experience to realize the extent
of this triumph in our world and the extreme difficulty of rejecting its implications.
We live in a world which has come under the control of a ”mystique of work,” and we
are all, more or less, wedded to the practical. A ”good” education is one which prepares one
for a ”good” job, and a ”good” job is one which pay lots of money. A ”successful” man is
one who has accumulated a significant amount of the world’s goods, and ”used” them in a
practical way.
Josef Pieper defines the proletarian as ”the man who is fettered to the process of work.”
Every man whose life is completely filled by his work, he tells us, ”is a proletarian because
his life has shrunk inwardly, and contracted, with the result that he can no longer act sig-
nificantly outside his work, and perhaps can no longer even conceive of such a thing.”
Thus defined, the great majority of modern men are proletarians; the mystique of work
controls more and more of life. Leisure itself, in this world, becomes a mere necessary stop
between rounds of work and its value is seen as preparing us to work more efficiently on the
morrow22 . It is at once an escape from work and a prelude to more work. Civilization thus
progresses toward the level of the bee-hive.
”It is necessary for the perfection of human society,” Aquinas wrote, ”that there should
be men who devote their lives to contemplation.” Bourgeois civilization, in failing to un-
derstand and value the true meaning and lofty dignity of leisure, has lost the concept of
contemplation, and, in so doing, has lost the concept of man. For it is in leisure, genuinely
understood, that man rises above the level of a thing to be used and enters the realm where
he can be at home with the potentialities of his own nature, where, with no concern for
doing, no ties to the immediate, the particular, and the practical, he can attend to the love
of wisdom, can begin leading a truly human life. Thus, transcending the world of work, man
ceases to be a proletarian. He begins to function as man.
”There is one institution in the world,” Pieper reminds us, ”which forbids useful activity
and servile work on particular days, and in this way prepares, as it were, a sphere for a non-
proletarian existence.” The Church, through her liturgy and cycles of feasts, invites man to
that leisure and contemplation where he can again ”stand upright and erect.” It provides
one of the last remaining refuges from a work–a–day bourgeois world.
Leisure the Basis of Culture is a profound and rich book. It should remind us that if
we become so engaged in the activities connected with ”saving” Western civilization that,
in the process, we lose what capacity for leisure is left us, then we can never ”save” Western
civilization at all, but only that dreary counterfeit, the world of the bourgeois functionary.
We will have prepared the way for the final and universal reign of the sub-human.

22
morrow (noun) 1. The following day: resolved to set out on the morrow. 2. The time immediately
subsequent to a particular event. 3. Archaic The morning. [Middle English morwe, morow, variant of
morwen, from Old English morgen, morning]

162
 23
The Nation

The two essays contained in this small volume are the first works of the German philoso-
pher Josef Pieper to be published in English. Professor Pieper is a Catholic, and his largest
purpose is to show that divine worship is the foundation of culture and that genuine philos-
ophy is inseparable from theology.
The book leaves the reader both stimulated and unsatisfied, for while the author is often
an excellent critic when pointing out the cultural failures of modern society in the West, he
is less happy in his ideas about the dependence of culture and philosophy upon religion and
theology – at least to a reader who does not share his religious convictions.
In the first essay, which gives the book its title, Pieper discusses the relation between
leisure and work, saying, quite rightly, that the doctrine of work – of practical industry both
physical and intellectual – has assumed an importance out of proportion to its place in life.
Western culture is endangered by this emphasis upon the immediately useful to the detri-
ment of the good – the good being those values dealt with by disciplines having no proper
use in economic gain or in propaganda. Pieper clarifies this distinction between the useful
and the good by contrasting ”wage” and ”honorarium,” ”servile arts” and ”liberal arts.” He
points to the Soviet Union as the worst example of the modern tendency to judge everything
by its immediate utilitarian value.
But the seeds of this tyranny of the useful, he argues, are found in all Western countries,
and the emphasis upon work, or the practical, is found not only in physical production but
also in intellectual matters. To discuss the emphasis on the practical in matters of the mind,
the author takes two terms from the scholastic theory of knowledge, maintaining that ratio
– the power of logical thought — has been stressed in modern philosophy to the detriment
of intellectus, which is ”that simple vision to which truth offers itself like a landscape to
the eyes.” To think by ratio is work, and hard work at that, but it is the unique quality of
intellectus that it is effortless; thus in all true knowledge there is a combination of effort and
ease, of work and vision.
Leisure is impossible when the doctrine of work becomes dominant over passive recep-
tiveness and the wonder that things exist, the wonder which is the source of all philosophy.
And leisure is not simply spare time for pleasure; it is the opposite of acedia in the old sense
of fretfulness, of disharmony in the soul. The author quotes Baudelaire to illustrate this.
”One must work, if not from taste then at least from despair. For, to reduce everything to
a single truth: work is less boring than pleasure.” (But Baudelaire was more complicated
than this, for he also said that one of the most terrible things he could imagine was to be a
useful person. He meant this precisely in the sense discussed in this book.)
Leisure, then, is an attitude of mind and a condition of the soul. It is a form
of silence in which the soul’s capacity to ”answer” to the reality of the world is left undi-
minished. And this leisure, insists Pieper, has its origin in ”celebration,” which is the point
at which the qualities leisure – effortlessness, calm, and relaxation – fuse and become one.
”But if celebration is the cause of leisure, then leisure can only be made possible ... upon

23
Carl Houde, ”The Useful and the Good,” vol. 175 (October 18, 1952), p.362. Reprinted with permission
from the October 18, 1952, issue of The Nation magazine.

163
the same basis as the celebration of a feast: and that formation is divine worship.”

24
Chicago Tribune

Ever feel that you were being swallowed up by your job or activities? Ever wonder if you
were being selfish or lazy in resisting or resenting being swallowed up? A German professor
has provided a powerful argument that it is a person’s duty to self and others not to be
swallowed.
Most readers will expect little excitement from an academic philosopher, and they have
reason. Pieper is exceptional. He has subjects involved in everyone’s life: he has theses that
are so counter to the prevailing trends as to be sensational, and he has a style (and/or his
translator has a style) that is memorably clear and direct.
The extent and quality of leisure and philosofising in a man’s life are of tremendous
importance – not only to the man but also to society. How tremendously important the
readers of Pieper are in the best position to know.
His theses are, in part, that leisure is prerequisite to culture and full humanity, that won-
der (”the beginning of philosofy”) and joy go together, and that neither leisure nor philosofy
can be fully realized in the absence of religious experience. These propositions are not widely
held. The man who urges them with persuasiveness and power is challenging the way we
live now at basic points.
Pieper champions an old and honorable philosofical tradition though one now largely in
eclipse. It is that the best things in life are freely given, not won with effort. Contem-
plation, it is alleged, can yield a more precious knowledge than can rigorous
reasoning.
”The gift of self-reliance and independence,” say Pieper, ”has always been regarded as
the decisive element in personality in the philosofical tradition of Europe.” This gift is char-
acteristically a fruit of the philosofical act, performed at leisure, by a worshipful man in a
meaningful religious context, says Pieper. It is a gift repudiated in the ”workers utopias” in
which humanity is sacrificed to social functions. And it is a gift forfeited in the West when
we justify bits of leisure for the sake of greater on-the-job output, when we spend our free
time in idleness and distractions instead of in genuinely contemplative leisure.
These essays, in their author’s own words, ”were not designed to give advice and draw
up a line of action; they were meant to make men think.” They attain their objective. They
make their readers think about fundamental, personal issues, and to highly rewarding effect.

24
A. C. Ames, ”Helpful Book on Leisure Its Use, Value” (April 13, 1952), p. 6. Copyright
c 1952 by
the Chicago Tribune. Used with permission.

164
 25
San Francisco Chronicle

Pieper, a German philosopher, is a Catholic grounded on Plato, Aristotle and the Scholas-
tics. This is his first book to be translated into English. His concept of leisure is not idleness
”but freedom and detachment of the human spirit which enables a man to contemplate and
be at peace in those worlds of ideals from which he draws strength and nourishes his soul.”
The book is made up of two essays, the one used as title and one called ”The Philosophical
Act.” In the introduction T. S. Eliot claims for Pieper that he restores insight and wisdom
to philosophy.

25
J.V., review (March 16, 1952), p. 22. Copyright
c 1952 by the San Francisco Chronicle. Used with
permission.

165
166
 Index26
The passage from Plato, quoted at the beginning of the book, was taken from The
Laws (653c-d). The line from the Psalm (45,11) was taken from the Septuagint Greek
version, which uses the aorist imperative form of the verb scholazein: scholasate (”be at
leisure”). Joseph Bernhart said that during the Middle Ages, this sentence acquired ”the
status of an axiom of mystical knowledge-doctrine” (Die philosophische Mystik des Mittelal-
ters [München, 1922], p. 83).

Academic, 23-25, 38-39, 56, 75, 125 Comprehension, 112

Academic freedom, 75 Contemplation, 25-26, 29, 32-34, 64, 77
Acedia. See Idleness. Contemplative life, 5
Angel, 12, 120
Animal, 82-85, 87, 89, 91, 93, 107 Death, 68-69, 124
Antiquity, 56, 115 Deproletarization, 41
Antisthenes, 16 Descartes, R., 78
Anxiety, 36, 125 Despair, 28, 30, 54, 58, 74, 130
Apollinaris, 108 Dilthey, W, 110
Apollodoros, 72-73 Doubt, 37, 59, 104-5, 111, 127
Aquinas, Thomas, 19-20, 26, 28-29, 34, 59,
62, 92, 107, 114, 127-28 Empedocles, 119
Aristotle, 3-6, 21, 36, 49, 86-87, 102, 107, Environment, 60, 68, 82, 84, 87
112, 114-15, 118-119 Eros, 122
Arius, 108 Existentialism, 125
Augustine, 88, 131
Festival, 2, 33-34, 5054, 57, 59
Bacon, Francis, 78 Fichte, J. C., 132
Banausic, 40 Field of relations, 81-82, 84-86, 88, 93
Baudelaire, Charles Pierre, 54 Freedom, 22, 36-37, 40, 74-75, 77-79, 86
Body, 8, 21, 35, 66, 9293, 108, 113, 125 Functionary, 2125, 35, 37, 43
Boredom, 54
Break from work, 53 Gehlen, A., 87
Gentleman, 25, 35, 74
Carlyle, Thomas, 16, 55 Gift, 20, 35, 53, 119-20, 123
Christ, 5, 18-20, 28–29, 35, 40, 46, 52, 54, Goethe, J. W., 25, 57, 102, 113
58-60, 79, 92, 108, 124, 127-134 Grace, 19
Christian philosophy, 124-30, 132-34
Common good, 25, 42, 64, 76 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 104, 113
Common utility, 20, 64-65, 74 Heidegger, M., 67, 125
26
Pagination in this PDF document does not correspond with the book pagination, this Index was included
here just for conformity. Please see the PDF document Index at the very end.

167
Heraclitus, 11, 32 Philosophical education, 22, 56
Hercules, 16 Philosophy, 8, 10-11, 13, 15-16, 22-24, 46, 63,
Hölderlin, F., 33, 129 65-66, 68-72, 74-79, 87-89, 99-102, 104, 106-7,
Homer, 17, 111, 119 109-34
Honorarium, 45-46 Philosophy of progress, 130
Hope, 54, 57-60, 63, 71, 73, 92, 107-11, 113, Plants, 85, 89
116, 122 Plato, 2, 10-11, 16, 40, 56-58, 68, 70-73, 97,
Humor, 72 99-100, 102, 109, 111-12, 114, 118-24, 128
Play, 13, 18, 33, 68, 83, 97, 108
Idleness, 27-30, 32-33, 54 Poetry, 17, 46, 67-68, 70, 76
Intellect, 3, 8-15, 19-22, 24-26, 29, 34, 39, 46, Prayer, 68, 70
55, 65, 85, 87-88, 91-92, 101 Professional training, 24
Intellection, 85, 87-88 Progress, 76, 78, 118, 130
Intellectual vision, 9, 12-13, 15 Proletariat, 39, 41, 43
Intellectual work, 8-9, 13-15, 19-22, 24–26, 39 Proudhon, P. J., 47–48
Intellectual worker, 8, 20-22, 24–26, 39
Inwardness, 82, 90 Ratio, 1114, 16, 27, 31, 34-35, 38, 44, 47, 50,
53-55, 57-60, 68, 70, 81, 95, 105, 115, 118,
Joy, 12, 33, 107 124, 129-30
Jünger, E., 6, 9, 19, 24, 31 Refreshment, 2, 34-35
Rest from labor, 52
Kant, I., 10, 14-17, 132
Kerenyi, K., 33 Sacrament, 59-60
Kierkegaard, S., 28 Sacrifice, 19, 53, 56, 59
Krüger, G., 128 Sartre, J.-P., 46, 125
Kult, 51 Scheeben, M. J., 127
Scheler, M., 29
Leibniz, G. W., 67 Schiller, F., 15
Liberal arts, 21-22, 24-25, 45, 47, 57, 74 School, 4, 38, 56
Love, 17-18, 33, 60, 68-69, 77, 111, 113, 122 Science, 19, 23-25, 70, 75-76, 96-97, 110, 113,
116, 133
Magic, 70 Servile arts, 21-22, 44-45, 47, 74, 76
Marx, K., 47, 78 Servile work, 5
Mystery, 32, 105, 127-28 Sisyphus, 55
Myth, 57, 117, 128 Sleep, 32,35
Socrates, 16, 70, 72, 99-100, 104, 109, 111,
Newman, J. H., 22-23, 25, 35, 74-75 119
Sombart, W., 28-29
Otto, W. F., 123 Soret, Fr., 25
Specialist, 21, 41
Parmenides, 63 Suffering, 134
Pascal, B., 95, 107 Surroundings, 85, 87, 89, 93, 101, 104
Person, 6-7, 12-13, 25, 31, 33, 43, 45, 48, 70,
77, 88, 90, 96, 101-2, 106, 109-10, 125, 127, Temple, 52-53
131, 133-34 Thales, 71, 119

168
Theology, 114, 12327, 129, 131 Weiss, K., 31-32, 68
Theoria, 77, 79, 102 Windelband, W., 104, 131
Theory, 132 Withdrawal, 60
Tradition, 79, 85-86, 90, 92, 114, 117-23, 125, Wonder, 10, 62, 72, 78, 100-110, 127
129 Work, 4-9, 16-17, 19-29, 35-37, 39-48, 52-56,
Truth of things, 88-89 58, 60, 64-71, 74-75, 79-80, 94, 98, 103, 115,
123, 131
Uexküll, J. V., 83-84, 87 Worker, 6-8, 14, 16, 19-22, 24-28, 31, 37, 39-
University, 38, 74-75 40, 45-47, 53
Usener, H., 56 Working world, 8, 24, 35-36, 53, 60, 65-66,
68, 70-71, 74-75, 80, 98, 103
Virtue, 12, 17-18, 53, 78, 93 World of work, 4, 21, 24, 36-37, 39, 44, 5356,
64-66, 71, 79-80
Wages, 44-46 Worship, 35, 50-51, 53-55, 57-60
Weber, M., 4

169
 $12.00

One of the most important philosophy titles ... published in the twentieth century,
Josef Pieper’s ”Leisure, the Basis of Culture” is more significant, even more crucial, today
than it was when it first appeared fifty years ago. This special edition, commemorating the
50th anniversay of the work’s first appearance in Germany, has a new introduction by the
eminent British philosopher, Roger Scruton, and a new translation by Gerald Malsbary, and
contains a retrospective of past reviews from the first English edition in 1952.
Leisure is an attitude of mind and a condition of the soul that fosters a ca-
pacity to perceive the reality of the world. With a series of philosophic, religious, and
historical examples, Pieper shows that the Greeks understood and valued leisure, as did the
medieval Europeans. He points out that religion can be born only in leisure – a 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.
Further, 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; Josef Pieper demolishes the twentieth-century cult of ”work” as he predicts
its destructive consequences.

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less know–how, the infantile cult of youth and the common mind – all this points to our
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’Be still and know.’ To receive the gift we need to be at rest. It is not only a discarded
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”[Piper] has subjects involved in everyone’s life; he has theses that are so counter to
the prevailing trends as to be sensational; and he has a style that is memorably clear
and direct.” Chicago Tribune

Cover photo of the Rotunda of the National Gallery of Art by William Schleisner, Gottscho
Schleisner Collection (Library of Congress). Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 1-890318-35-3
St. Augustine’s Press
South Bend, Indiana

170
171
172
Index

academic, 42–44, 58, 59, 74, 75, 93, 159 Bloy, Leon, 161
academic discipline, 140 body, 110, 111, 124
academic freedom, 93 Bonn, 17
academic philosopher, 152, 156, 164 boredom, 73, 161
Academy in Athens, 18 Bosanquet, Bernard, 9
acedia, 47–50, 73, 163 bourgeois, 48, 117, 119, 161, 162
American politics, 13 bourgeois civilization, 162
angel, 33 bourgeois mind, 161
animal, 14, 90, 101–103, 106, 107, 109, 111, bourgeois religiosity, 161
123 bourgeois spirit, 161, 162
world of the animal, 104 bourgeois value, 161
Antichrist, 144 bourgeois virutes, 162
antiquity, 17, 27, 63, 74, 130, 153, 158 bourgeois world, 161, 162, 170
Antisthenes, 36 genuine bourgeois, 161
anxiety, 54, 140 non-bourgeois, 117, 119
Apollinaris, 124 petit–bourgeois, 66
Apollodoros, 91, 92 Bradley, Francis Herbert, 11
Aquinas, Thomas, 18, 33, 37, 39, 41, 45, 48, break, 50, 53, 59
49, 53, 77, 81, 88, 94, 106, 110, 119, break from work, 53, 72
120, 123, 124, 126–128, 130, 142, 143, Browne, Thomas, 156
146, 151, 155, 162 Brutus, 70
Aristotle, 10, 18, 25–27, 31, 32, 41, 55, 67,
88, 104, 106, 119, 123, 128–130, 134, capitalism, 26
135, 153–155, 157, 159, 165 Spirit of Capitalism, 26
Arius, 124 Carlyle, Thomas, 36, 73
atheism, 140 Catholic, 152, 158, 159, 162, 163, 165
atheistic existentialism, 140 Catholic philosopher, 10
atheistic existentialists, 58 Catholic province, 151
existential atheism, 140 Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, 121, 153
Augustine, 18, 106, 153 Christ, 77, 124, 141, 145
St. Augustine, 145 Christendom, 142
Christian, 10, 27, 38, 39, 54, 60, 77, 110, 139,
Bacon, Francis, 96 144–146, 148, 152
banausic, 60 Christian character, 145
Barnes, Winston, 151 Christian Church, 153
Baudelaire, Charles Pierre, 73, 163 Christian Europe, 40, 65, 76
Berdyaev, Nicholas, 161 Christian philosophy, 139–148
Bergson, Henri-Louis, 7 Christian reality, 147

173
 Christian revelation, 144 Eros, 37, 137, 138
Christian teaching, 48, 147 Europe, 86, 164
Christian theology, 139, 141, 159 European culture, 25, 77
Christian tradition, 97, 139, 161 European thought, 12
Christian view, 139 Europeans, medieval, 170
Christianity, 10, 139, 142, 147, 157, 159 existentialism, 10, 140
genuine Christian, 146
faith, 15
Christmas, 78
feast, 15, 158, 160, 162, 164
Christological, 124
festival, 14, 15, 23, 52, 53, 69–72, 75, 77
common good, 44, 61, 84, 95, 154
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 147
common utility, 40, 84, 85, 93
field of relations, 100–102, 104, 106, 108, 111
Communist, 162
freedom, 10, 17, 18, 41, 54, 57, 59, 93–97,
comprehension, 127 104, 157, 161, 165
contemplation, 33, 38, 44, 45, 49, 51, 53, 54, French, 66, 161
84, 96, 153–155, 160–162, 164, 170 French Revolution, 70
contemplative life, 27, 159 functionary, 40, 42–44, 54, 57, 62, 160–162
cult, 75–77, 170
infantile cult of youth and the common, Garrigou-Lagrange, Reginald Marie, 142
160, 170 Gehlen, Arnold, 105
culture, 17 gentleman, 44, 54, 93, 155
cultus, 17–19, 160 German, 6, 26, 36, 52, 59, 66, 70, 152, 153,
157, 159, 160, 163–165
death, 48, 87, 88, 139, 154 German word for leisure, 75
Descartes, Rene, 96 Germany, 17, 25, 42, 70, 151, 152, 170
despair, 151, 163 East Germany, 58
Despair (vice), 50 gift, 18, 38, 39, 54, 72, 154, 164, 170
Dilthey, Wilhelm, 126 gifted, 155
discursive, 30, 32, 34, 40, 153, 156 Gilson, Etienne, 152
non–discursive, 33 God, 6, 23, 48, 49, 51, 52, 54, 76, 87, 106, 110,
discursive reasoning, 32–34 114, 120, 122, 123, 125–127, 129, 130,
discursive thinking, 33, 35 134–136, 140, 141, 151–153, 156–161,
discursive thought, 32, 153 170
dispair, 92 City of God, 145
doubt, 57, 77, 120, 121, 126, 152, 161 goodness of God, 156
Justice of God, 39
East, 58 non–existence of God, 140
Eastern culture, 160, 161 Praise of God, 69
Eckermann, Johann Peter, 44, 119 self–dedication to God, 89
Elijah, 15 worship of God, 54
Empedocles, 134 God and the World, 113, 114
Encyclical, 158 God–Man, 77
English, 6, 17, 26, 70, 151–153, 163, 165, 170 Gods, 23, 60, 70, 71, 75, 117, 124, 134, 135,
ennui, 161 138, 139, 160
environment, 78, 87, 101–103, 105, 106, 109, Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 35, 44, 75,
111, 113, 115, 155 119, 128, 153, 155

174
grace, 38, 39, 154 intellectual matters, 163
Gymnasium, 58 intellectual means, 157
intellectual sense, 117
Hölderlin, Fridrich, 52 intellectual soul, 109, 110
Hölderlin, Friedrich, 144 intellectual understanding, 109
Hamann, Johann Georg, 156 intellectual vision, 30, 33, 35
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 11, 44, 120, intellectual work, 29, 30, 34, 35, 39, 40, 42,
128, 156 59, 157
Heidegger, Martin, 86, 140 intellectual worker, 29, 40, 42, 44, 45, 59
Heraclitus, 32, 51, 153 intellectus, 32, 33, 49, 53, 153, 159, 163
Herculean, 35, 36 Intimate Journals, 73
Hercules, 36 inwardness, 101, 108
Hercules, Labors of, 36
historian of philosophy, 10 Jünger, Ernst, 28, 30, 39, 43, 51
history of philosophy, 10 Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, 31
Hitler, Adolf, 35 Jews, 162
Hobbes, Thomas, 152 joy, 123, 164
Homer, 37, 127, 134, 135 spiritual joy, 123
honorarium, 64, 65, 163 Kant, Immanuel, 30, 31, 34–37, 146, 153, 156,
hope, 76–78, 110, 123, 125, 126, 128, 131, 138 159
hopeful, 125 Kantian epistemology, 31
hopefulness, 83, 123, 126 Kantian philosopher, 146
hopeless, 73, 90, 92 Kerényi, Karl, 52, 53
hopelessness, 77 Kierkegaard, Søren, 15, 48
Hume, David, 156 Krüger, Gerhard, 143
humor, 91, 146 Kult, 6, 70, 153
Idea of a University, 41 labor, 23, 31, 33, 34, 36, 52, 59, 65, 71, 73,
idleness, 13–15, 47–52, 73, 154, 157, 160, 164, 128, 159, 160, 170
165 Herculean labor, 35
intellect, 32, 73 labor improbus, 34
intellection, 104–106 nuisance of labor, 34
intellective knowing, 103 total labor, 170
intellective vision, 35 Labor Day, 70, 72
intellectual, 13, 40, 163 labor, born to, 78
intellectual action, 29 labor, distribution of, 40
intellectual activity, 40, 60 laborious, 35
intellectual being, 33 Latin, 26, 32, 49, 70, 71, 77, 155
intellectual effort, 153 Late Latin, 161
intellectual enterprise, 29 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 86, 154
intellectual heritage, 25 leisure, 13, 14, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25–28, 47, 50–
intellectual knowing, 31, 32 55, 57, 59, 66, 67, 69, 71–76, 78, 151,
intellectual knowledge, 153 154–165, 167, 170
intellectual labor, 40, 65 σχoλή – scole/leisure, 25
intellectual luxury, 85 a place of leisure, 155

175
 ability to be at leisure, 54 Artes Liberales, 41, 44, 63
absence of leisure, 73 liberal knowledge, 155
Aristotelian concept of leisure, 27 liberality, 41
attainment of leisure, 55 life
authentic leisure, 54 vita activa, 54
be–at–leisure, 26, 28, 67 Linnaean Botany, 9
being at leisure, 69 Locke, John, 156
concept of leisure, 158 logical positivism, 8
conception of leisure, 57 love, 6, 14, 37–39, 49, 78, 88, 89, 92, 95, 128,
deepest source of leisure, 76 137, 138, 148, 154, 156, 159, 162
degradation of the notion of leisure, 154
heart of leisure, 69 machine
idea of leisure, 15 idolatry of the machine, 160, 170
inability to be at leisure, 47 machine tender, 160
inability to put oneself at leisure, 154 machinery, 42
Inability–for–Leisure (vice), 50 machinery of purposes, 89
intensive organization of leisure, 151 magic, 89
justification of leisure, 74 Marcel, Gabriel, 152
lack of leisure, 47, 50, 76 Maritain, Jacques, 152
leisure as a condition of the soul, 50 Marx, Karl, 66, 97
leisure as non–activity, 50 Marxism, 161
leisure class, 155, 161 Marxist, 13, 161
leisure of contemplation, 38 mathematician, 8, 117
leisure of the Greek, 157 Principia Mathematica, 8
leisure–less, 26 mathematics, 8
leisured caste, 157 meal, 14, 111
man at leisure, 51 meal-times, 14
nature of leisure, 154, 155, 161, 170 mental laborer, 44
non–leisure, 50 Metaphysics, 25, 41, 88, 128
not–at–leisure, 26, 27 Musse, 6, 52, 75, 153
not–leisure, 26 mystery, 51, 121, 142, 143
origin of leisure, 53, 75 myth, 133, 143, 158
otium contemplationis, 38 mythical, 73
real understanding of leisure, 26 mythological, 75
region of leisure, 75
Newman, John Henry, 41, 42, 44, 54, 93, 94,
scholasate – be at leisure, 167
155
scholen agein, 69
not–being–able–to–grasp, 51
scholen agein - to do leisure, 67
not–being–able–to–receive, 35
secondary forms of leisure, 73
not–being–able–to–understand, 146
sphere of leisure, 19
true leisure, 67, 154 Oakeshott, Michael, 152
ultimate root of leisure, 76 omniscience, 9
unleisurely, 154 Otto, Walter Friedrich, 139
liberal, 41, 42, 64, 94, 159
Liberal Arts, 27, 41–44, 64–66, 75, 93, 163 Parmenides, 83

176
Pascal, Blaise, 15, 112, 123 Philosophical school, 18, 157
person, 11, 13, 14, 28, 33, 45, 50, 52, 62, 64, Philosophical statement, 141
67, 89, 95, 96, 108, 113, 118, 119, 122, Philosophical studies, 7
125, 126, 140, 142, 147, 148, 156, 163, Philosophical thesis, 140
164 Philosophical thinking, 137, 143–145
Phaedo, 91 Philosophical truth, 145
Phaedrus, 129 Philosophical understanding, 109
Philosopher, 7–12, 30, 31, 33, 36, 59, 81, 88, Philosophical way, 93–95, 137
90, 91, 94, 99, 106, 116, 117, 119, Philosophical wonder, 118, 142
122–129, 134, 135, 137, 146, 148, 151– philosophize, 8, 9, 18, 83, 84, 86, 88, 92, 99,
160, 163–165, 170 112, 115, 116, 121, 122, 124–126, 134,
pseudo–Philosopher, 90 135, 138, 139, 141, 143–148, 159
religious Philosopher, 152 freedom of philosophizing, 96
scientific Philosophers, 157 genuine philosophizing, 85, 89
Philosopher’s question, 86 Philosophy, 6–12, 15, 18, 29, 31–36, 41–43,
philosophic, 58, 170 65, 83, 85, 86, 88–97, 106, 107, 112,
Philosophic character, 93 116, 117, 119–123, 125–131, 133–136,
Philosophical, 7, 18, 28, 34, 42, 81, 92–94, 138–148, 151–157, 159, 160, 163, 165,
113, 114, 140 170
non-philosophical question, 112 Catholic philosopher, 10
Philosophical act, 18, 84, 85, 87, 88, 93, English Philosophy, 151
97, 99, 112, 115, 119, 133, 135, 138, freedom of Philosophy, 95, 97
141, 154, 157, 160, 165 genuine Philosophy, 10, 35, 43, 85, 96,
What is the philosophical act?, 83 137, 163
Philosophical anthropology, 83 historian of philosophy, 10
Philosophical argument, 9 history of philosophy, 10, 120
Philosophical aspect, 18 How is a non–Christian philosophy possi-
Philosophical character, 145 ble?, 139
Philosophical culture, 29 How is Christian philosophy possible?, 139
Philosophical education, 42, 74 idea of philosophizing, 126
Philosophical enquiry, 157 non-Christian philosophy, 142, 144
Philosophical Faculty, 42, 93 one–man philosophy, 11
Philosophical impulse, 143 Philosophy of despair, 144
Philosophical jargon, 157 Philosophy of history, 144
Philosophical knowing, 93 Philosophy of philosophy, 15
Philosophical knowledge, 42, 154 Philosophy of progress, 9, 144
Philosophical manner, 42, 43, 90, 93, 130 Philosophy of work, 31
Philosophical mind, 7 Platonic philosophy, 137
Philosophical opinion, 146 Platonic way, 138
Philosophical pedagogues, 9 political Philosophy, 152
Philosophical Predicament, The, 151 pre–philosophical tradition, 138, 139
Philosophical question, 83, 87, 90, 112– pseudo–philosophy, 31, 89, 130
116, 125, 127, 136 religious Philosophy, 158
Philosophical questioning, 116 Romantic Philosophy, 31
Philosophical receptivity, 155 seeming philosophy, 89, 90

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 un-philosophy, 130 proletarian worker, 28
Western Philosophical tradition, 104 proletarianism, 61–63
Western philosophy, 91, 133–135 proletarianization, 66
What does it mean to do philosophy?, 83, proletarianization of everyone, 64
141 proletarianize, 61
What does it mean to philosophize?, 85, proletarianizing, 60
109, 112 proletarianness, 61
What is it to philosophize?, 103, 112, 122 Protagoras, 89
plant, 100, 101, 103, 111 Protestant, 162
internality of the plant, 100 Proudhon, Pierre Joseph, 66
world of the plant, 101, 104, 107 puritan, 13
plant life, 100 Pythagoras, 126, 129, 153
planted, 70, 71 Pythagorean, 128
Plato, 10, 18, 23, 31, 32, 36, 59, 60, 74, 77,
88–92, 106, 114, 116–118, 124, 127, ratio, 18, 32–34, 53, 153, 159, 163
129, 134–139, 143, 153, 155, 157, 159, Rauschning, Hermann, 35
160, 165, 167 refresh, 23, 53, 157
school of Plato, 74 refreshment, 23, 53, 54
Platonic, 74, 75, 92, 138 religion, 10, 14, 17, 52, 53, 71, 73, 77, 88, 89,
Platonic academy, 74 155, 159, 163, 170
Platonic philosophy, 137 religion of Work, 36
play, 38, 52, 88, 114, 123, 158, 159 religiosity, 161
inter-play, 33 religious, 10, 14, 70–72, 74, 75, 88, 133,
playboy, 159 134, 138, 140, 151, 152, 154, 163, 164,
playing dead, 102 170
poetry, 37, 65, 87–89, 95 non-religious, 153
destruction of poetry, 95 religious Philosopher, 152
false poetry, 89 religious Philosophy, 158
fashion poetry, 89 rest, 36, 49, 52, 54, 57, 73, 97, 154, 155, 157,
genuine poetry, 87 170
pseudo–poetry, 89 holy rest, 27, 87
Polanyi, Mihaly, 158 rest from labor, 71
Politics, 27, 67 rest from work, 71
pray, 54, 87, 89, 139 resting form, 102
prayer, 87, 89 resting grasshopper, 102, 103
To work is to pray, 73 restless, 155
profession, 10, 119 restlessness, 47, 51, 73, 151, 154
professional hazard, 119 Restlessness (vice), 50
professional philosopher, 157 theory of rest, 66
Professional Training, 43, 89 Ryle, Gilbert, 156
progress, 9, 94, 96, 134, 144, 161, 162
proletariat, 58–62, 158 sacrament, 14, 77
de–proletarianization, 58–61, 63–67 sacramental character, 77
proletarian, 40, 59–62, 66, 67, 160, 162 sacramental Sacrifice, 77
non-proletarian, 162 sacramental sign, 78

178
 sacramental visibility, 78 Sombart, Werner, 48
sacrifice, 14, 17, 72, 77, 78, 164 Soret, Friedrich, 44
places of sacrifice, 71 soul, 49, 50, 52, 54, 95, 97, 104–106, 109–111,
sacrifice maker, 74 114, 123, 124, 126, 129, 143, 145, 155,
self–sacrifice, 39 158, 163, 165, 170
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 10, 64, 140 condition of the soul, 50
Scheeben, Matthias Joseph, 142 soullessness, 161
Scheler, Max, 48 specialist, 10, 40, 61
Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von, 36 Spinoza, Baruch, 11
Schlosser, Johann Georg, 31 spirit, 54, 104–111, 144, 156, 161, 162, 165
Scholastics, 165 absolue spirit, 130
school, 8, 10, 18, 26, 151, 157, 161 absolute spirit, 107, 123
Gymnasium, 58 Cartesian spirit, 121
high school, 58 celebrating spirit, 52
medieval Schoolmen, 152 finite spirit, 110
schola, 58 Holy Spirit, 39
school of Plato, 74 industrious spirit, 49
Schoolmen, 153 non–absolute spirit, 107
Schoolmen of the Middle Ages, 153 non–spiritual, 109
Schule, 26 Phenomenology od Spirit, 128
scola, 26 pure spirit, 110, 111
science, 9–11, 15, 42, 43, 94, 113, 126, 130, spiritual joy, 123
131, 156, 158 Western spirit, 25
functionary sciences, 44 Spirit of Capitalism, 26
Grammar of Science, 156 spiritual, 14, 32, 60, 73, 103–105, 109, 111,
medical science, 42 124, 153
modern science, 156 spiritual activity, 159
natural sciences, 42, 147, 159 spiritual being, 107, 111
particular sciences, 93, 94 spiritual poverty, 63
psychological science, 114 spiritual soul, 106, 111, 124
special sciences, 88, 89, 94, 113, 125, 126, spirituality, 106
128 spiritually impoverished, 62
Servile Arts, 27, 41, 63–66, 93, 94, 163 Stalin, Iosif Vissarionovich, 65, 158
Artes Serviles, 63 Stolberg, Friedrich Leopold, 31
servile labor, 160 suffer, 8, 90, 156
servile work, 27, 63, 159, 162 aimless readiness to suffer pain, 47
Sisyphus, 73 readiness to suffer, 39
sleep, 51, 52, 54 ready to suffer pain, 39
asleep, 51 suffering, 148
sleeping child, 51 surrealism, 8
sleeplessness, 51 surrounding, 102, 124, 134
sloth, 154, 159 environment, 115
Socrates, 36, 89–91, 114, 116, 117, 120, 125, surroundings, 103–107, 111, 118, 120
127, 135 Umgebung, 102
Socratic-Platonic interpretation, 128 Umvelt, 104

179
Symbolic Ethics, 8 total world of work, 40, 43, 57, 58, 63, 71,
Symposium, 91 73, 74
total–relatedness, 106
temple, 71, 158 total-work state, 61, 66
Temple of Holy Relics, 75 total-working state, 62
Temple of the Muses, 75 totalitarian, 59
Thales of Miletus, 90, 134 totalitarian demands, 94
Theaetetus, 60, 90, 91, 116, 117 totalitarian dictator, 65
theology, 10, 11, 15, 129, 136–143, 145, 152, totalitarian drift, 159
157–159, 163 totalitarian epidemic, 160
ancient theology, 139 totality, 146
anti–theology, 140 totality of being, 104, 105, 107–109, 115,
Christian theology, 139, 141, 159 133
dogmatic theology, 12 totality of existing things, 108, 114
Enlightenment theology, 135 totality of human existence, 141
Homeric theology, 134 totality of reality, 161
non–Christian theology, 139 totality of the world, 112
pre–Homeric theology, 135 totality of things, 109–111
pseudo–theology, 140 world of total work, 26, 29, 72, 85, 88, 90
theological, 152 tradition, 18, 58, 129, 133–136, 153, 159, 161
theoria, 95, 97, 118 Christian tradition, 97, 139
theory, 147 classical tradition of the West, 110
philosophical theoria, 18 great tradition of [W]estern culture, 160
pure theory, 18 main tradition of European thought, 12
theory, 19 philosofical tradition of Europe, 164
theory of culture, 15 philosophical tradition, 164
theory of knowledge, 163 pre–philosophical tradition, 138, 139
theory of rest, 66 rationalist tradition, 157
theory of truth, 152 religious tradition, 138, 140
Thibon, Gustave, 152 tradition of [W]estern culture, 161
Thracian maiden, 112 traditional, 18, 137, 144
total, 43, 47, 62, 70, 84 traditionalism, 58
sum–total of all existing things, 112 Western philosophical tradition, 104
sum–total of all things, 130 Western tradition, 105, 108
sum–total of being, 108 truth, 13, 32, 35, 40, 70, 106, 134, 139, 140,
sum–total of existing beings, 106 146, 147, 153, 163
sum–total of existing things, 104, 106, 107 Christ’s truth, 145
sum–total of reality, 105, 116 Christian truth, 148
sum–total of things, 109 Disputed Questions on Truth, 33
total claim, 154 Divine truth, 145
total education, 63 greater truth, 142
total labor, 170 Living the Truth, 107
total reality, 112, 113 loving searcher of the truth, 126
total understanding, 110 nature of truth, 114
total work, 26, 29 On Truth, 105

180
 ontological theory of truth, 152 Westphalia, 151
perfectly rounded truth, 83 University of Westphalia, 151
philosophical truths, 145 Windelband, Wilhelm, 121, 145
revealed truth, 144, 145 withdrawal, 78
the truth of things, 107 wonder, 31, 81, 88, 96, 117–126, 142, 156,
theological truths about the world as a 163, 164
whole, 143 capacity of wondering, 155
traditional truth, 137 genuine wonder, 118
traditional truths of faith, 144 old doctrine of wonder, 120
truth of faith, 143 thaumazein, 121
truths of Christendom, 142 wonder of the creation, 120
truths of Christianity, 142 wonderful, 88, 91, 118, 120, 123
truths of reason, 142 mirandum, 88
unity of truth and life, 141 work, 9, 11, 13, 14, 59–67, 72, 73, 76, 84, 89,
well rounded truth, 142 130, 151–154, 157–159, 162, 163, 170
Uexküll, Jakob Johann von, 101–103, 105 banausos – hand worker, 59
University, 8, 43, 93, 94, 155 break from work, 72
Idea of a University, 44, 93, 94, 155 cessation of work, 14
medieval University, 42 collective working–state, 62
university education, 58 concept of the worker state, 158
University of Westphalia, 151 concept of work, 158
Usener, Hermann, 74 contemporary working day, 85
doctrine of work, 163
virtue, 33, 37, 38, 72, 96, 111, 155, 161, 162 frenzied need to work, 13
genuine work, 73
wage, 63–65, 158, 163
idolatry of work, 154, 170
wage earner, 40, 62, 157
intellectual work, 59, 157
war, 151
First World War, 57, 63 intellectual worker, 59
post–World War II era, 58 isolated working intellect, 73
Second World War, 25, 63 life–work, 66
Weber, Max, 26 modern mystique of work, 159
Weil, Simone, 152 mystique of work, 162
Weiss, Konrad, 51, 87 nationalization of the workplace, 66
West, 110, 163, 164 principles of work, 72
Western, 104 process of work, 162
Western blight, 160 process of working, 84
Western civilization, 162 rest from work, 71
Western countries, 163 self–sufficient world of daily work, 92
Western culture, 159–161, 163 servile work, 63, 159, 162
Western European culture, 25 the sake of work, 72
Western philosophy, 91, 133–135 theological work, 145
Western spirit, 25 total work, 26, 29
Western tradition, 105, 108 total work state, 61, 66
Western world, 139 total working state, 62

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 total world of work, 40, 43, 57, 58, 63, 71, basic meaning of the world, 53
74 bonum utile, 85
Work and Do Not Despair, 73 bourgeois world, 170
work for work’s one sake, 162 daily world, 118
work–a–day, 90 day–to–day world, 116
work–a–day bourgeois world, 162 divorced world, 115
work–a–day machinery of purpose, 89 essential world, 117
work–a–day reasoning, 90 everyday world, 117, 154
work–a–day world, 84–87, 89, 99, 112, formula for the world, 130
115, 119 God and the World, 113, 114
work–day, 78, 87 goods of the world, 18
work–process, 67 holiday–world of philosophy, 86
worker, 57, 65, 73, 154, 158, 160 human world, 103
worker ideal, 64 interpretation of the world, 136
workers, 11 invisible world of essences, 118
workers utopias, 164 knowledge of the world, 147
working character of Philosophy, 97 partial world, 109
working day, 115 partial worlds, 107
working environment, 78 rational interpretation of the world, 130
working human, 62 sadness of the world, 48
working man, 63 selective world, 111
working person, 64, 67 sense–world, 102
working process, 62, 85 sense–world of the animal, 103
working world, 29, 43, 54, 55, 72, 84–87, sensuously concrete world, 111
89, 90, 93, 94, 99, 112, 115, 119 series of worlds, 107
working world of the work–day, 78 to have a world, 101
working–power, 62 totality of the world, 112
working–process, 61, 62 tristitia saeculi, 48
workings of the universe, 156 universal world of essences, 115
workplace, 86 unsettling call of the world, 112
works of, 139, 163 view of the world, 147
works of art, 8, 159 visible world, 115
worl of the worker, 72 Welt, 102, 104, 105, 115
world of everyday work, 26 world as a whole, 133, 136, 143, 157
world of the Worker, 57 world of day–to–day life, 125
world of the worker, 43, 71 world of hunger, 84
world of the working day, 84 world of man, 99, 108, 109
world of total work, 29, 72, 85, 88, 90 world of objective being, 108
world of work, 14, 26, 54, 59, 72, 74, 84, world of plants, 107
85, 88, 90, 97, 99, 154, 158, 160, 162 world of reality, 124
world, 14, 15, 26, 38, 43, 49, 51–54, 58, 60, 66, world of supply and demand, 84
69, 71, 72, 74–78, 84–92, 95–97, 99– world of the citizen’s work–day, 87
109, 111–113, 115, 116, 118–121, 126, world of the human being, 103
129, 130, 133–136, 139, 142, 143, 148, world of the plant, 101
151, 153, 154, 156, 161–163, 165, 170 world of the Thracian maiden, 112

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 world of useful good, 85
world view, 11
world–as–a–whole, 57, 106
world–view, 146
worldly man, 90
worship, 6, 17, 19, 69, 70, 72, 75–77
alienation from worship, 73
Christian worship, 77
cultic worship, 77, 78
Culture lives on worship, 75
divine worship, 160, 163, 164
midstream of worship, 72
religious worship, 70
space for worship, 71
worship is to time, 71
worship of God, 54
worship of mindless know–how, 160, 170
worship of the Creator, 69
worship without the Gods, 70
worshipful celebration, 72, 74
worshipful man, 164
Wulf, Maurice de, 145

Zinzendorf und Pottendorf, Nikolaus Ludwig

von, 26

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