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by: Josef Pieper
List Price: $12.00Amazon.com's Price: $10.80 You Save: $1.20 (10%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 175
EAN: 9781890318352
ISBN: 1890318353
Label: St. Augustines Press
Manufacturer: St. Augustines Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 176
Publication Date: November 15, 1998
Publisher: St. Augustines Press
Sales Rank: 59222
Studio: St. Augustines Press
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Product Description:
One of the most important philosophy titles published in the twentieth century, Joseph Pieper's Leisure, the Basis of Culture is more significant, even more crucial than it was when it first appeared fifty years ago.
Pieper shows that 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. He maintains that our bourgeois world of total labor has vanquished leisure, and issues a startling warning: Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for nonactivity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture-and ourselves. These astonishing essays contradict all our pragmatic and puritanical conceptions about labor and leisure; Joseph Pieper demolishes the twentieth-century cult of 'work' as he predicts its destructive consequences.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - An Important Book
I read this book for the first time about ten years ago, and have just re-read it. Both readings were delightful and edifying. The first reading was like a slap in the face. It was a shock to have a writer attack the pre-eminence of utility. For nearly a half-century, it was pressed into my mind that usefulness was a virtue-- and not just a garden-variety virtue, but the foundation of all civic virtues. I dare say that practically everyone brought up in the West in the Twentieth Century was ... Read More
Rating: - Killing the false Idol "Work" (Dru translation)
Pieper makes the argument that freedom and philosophy are closely related; bad philosophy can lead to enslavement of oneself or of societies as a whole. The Greeks (whom we take most of our higher level concepts from and who had perfected the ideals of freedom to their greatest level) viewed philosophy as closely linked to wonder, hope, and the marvelous; an open system that never doubted the presence of mystery even in one's ultimate thoughts, as opposed to some modern attempts that have created a ... Read More
Rating: - An antitode for post-modern man and his scepticism
I am no philosopher, but I have always loved Plato and have with Pieper's help learned to appreciate Aristotle again. This little book is the most influential for me besides perhaps Plato. I have been rereading it for 14 years, and wish I had read it more often. Until recently I don't think I understood the second piece, and every time I read it again there are gems of insight, undiscovered before.
Read it with friends, preferably. If you are the skeptic or cynic, Pieper has an antitode. He did ... Read More
Rating:  - Useful Leisure Time Vs. Wasting Time
Josef Pieper's LEISURE: THE BASIS OF CULTURE is a short but poignant commentary on the difference between joy and idleness. This book is not for those who have an aversion to serious reading and thought. Nor is this book recommended for those who are addicted to the Idiot Box (TV). Those who carefully think of "Ultimate Values," serious religious convictions, etc. would benefit from this book.
Piefer distingushes between "practicle learning" and the joy of learning. In an age of "practicle" ... Read More
Rating:  - An inadequate analysis of the human condition.
This work places supreme value on the contemplative silence , the deep receptive mode which comes according to Pieper in 'true leisure'.
I do not deny the importance of contemplation, of stillness, of allowing ourselves to be open and receptive to the Divine Presence.
But I think the criticism of work, and of human activity which Pieper makes undermines what is most great and good in us. After all we are creatures of creation, created in the image of God to walk in God's way. This means that at ... Read More
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