Austin Hall Library

Did I Accomplish Anything Significant Today?

I have worked with my mind my entire career. It is what I had at hand and I have enjoyed it. But, I cannot build my own furniture, overhaul my tractor's engine, or do the electrical wiring in my storage building. In short, I have limited manual competence, and I regret that fact.

Matthew B. Crawford, in his intriguing Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, examines what we may have lost by failing to work with our hands. I, for one, think he has a point. There was a time when the intellectual life was not inconsistent with manual competence, and even active craftsmanship.

Crawford, a PhD in political philosophy from the University of Chicago who runs a motorcycle repair shop, laments the fact that an entire generation of American "thinkers" cannot do anything. And, he sees this as a threat to American economic development. It is a fascinating thesis given the exaltation of formal education so prevalent today.

As for me, I think there is an argument to be made that working with one's hands is good for the mind and the soul. I don't have much in the way of manual competence, but I spend hours thinking about the best use of a problematical tract of land unfit for pasture or crop due to topography and the destructive effects of years of topsoil erosion. On occasion, when I should be thinking of statutes and caselaw, my mind wanders to how I might restore the exhausted and scarred hillside in the back meadow with my own hands. Do I remove more trees and plant grass, or do I give up on grass, make a trip to the quarry for rocks and "go primitive" on the landscape? I vacillate, but one's vision of one's place--and the desire to make something with one's hands--is fundamental and primal.

Property: The Material Condition of Freedom

“The choice lies between property on the one hand and slavery, public or private, on the other. There is no third issue.” (Hilaire Belloc)

Be satisfied with what you have. Own enough of the means of production to support yourself. Get out of debt. Own your own property. Be free. These are things Hilaire Belloc likely would have affirmed (more on Belloc here).

A staunch critic of the early twentieth century spirit of reform known as progressivism, Belloc did not believe that the latest point in time is the highest and best point in time, and that all has been tending toward this, our moment. This was the general idea of progressivism and has essentially been the implicit assumption of our times. In such a world, the drama of contingency, personal responsibility, and human choice are removed. Evil is not a permanent force in the world, and human nature does not remain the same in all times. Rather, as Clyde Wilson notes, "enlightened policies and proper education will eradicate evils and mould the plastic human world into proper shape."

In The Servile State, Belloc challenges progressivism (as he did in virtually all his writings) and promotes  the idea of "distributivism." Belloc was of the opinion that the current progressivist/capitalist society was likely to give way to something new--the servile state. He defines this state as, "That arrangement of society in which so considerable a number of the families and individuals are constrained by positive law to labor for the advantage of other families and individuals as to stamp the whole community with the mark of such labor we call the servile state." Belloc prefers for society to return to a distributivist system in which all individuals own property and the means of production. His ideas (and those of G.K. Chesterton and others) found traction with the American Agrarians. 

Dignity and Work

Early morning readings this week have focused on the topic of the dignity of the human being as the only criterion by which to judge the real progress of society, of work, of science, etc., and not the reverse. "Man's dignity is expressed by the whole of his personal and social activity: particularly in the field of work." (Francis Fernandez). Doing our work well is a means of expressing our human dignity.

These readings reminded me, however, of the works of Josef Pieper, particularly his excellent book Leisure: The Basis of Culture. This is a very important book, but be cautioned that Pieper does not use the term "leisure" in the contemporary sense. For example, leisure is understood within the philosophical-theological context of divine play and its impact on the intellect. This is the way the term was used from the pre-Christian Greek philosophers through St. Thomas Aquinas, who developed it and laid the groundwork for Pieper.

I recommend Pieper's Leisure, and all his works. He is a deep thinker and his thought on this important topic has never been more relevant than in the 21st century--a time when we seem to have completely lost the understanding that work is a means of expressing human dignity, and that a proper understanding of, and practice of, leisure is the foundation of good work.