On Workified Education and the Possibility of Leisure

Abstract

The article is concerned with the difficulty of providing leisure today with a positive definition that goes beyond merely being a negation of work. I argue that the vague boundaries between work and leisure play into the hands of work – a highly praised activity that is dominant in today’s society. I argue that in such a situation, education as leisure and as good in itself is hard to conceive and sustain. First, I present the concept of leisure in ancient Greece (scholé) as time dedicated to autotelic activities – activities taken for their own good – a definition that remains paradigmatic despite its later impossibility. I then show that once work has transformed from hated to bearable to eventually understood as good from a moral perspective, the concept of leisure has also changed – so much so that its positive definition is no longer available to us. After showing how education is affected by The article is concerned with the difficulty of providing leisure today with a positive definition that goes beyond merely being a negation of work. I argue that the vague boundaries between work and leisure play into the hands of work – a highly praised activity that is dominant in today’s society. I argue that in such a situation, education as leisure and as good in itself is hard to conceive and sustain. First, I present the concept of leisure in ancient Greece (scholé) as time dedicated to autotelic activities – activities taken for their own good – a definition that remains paradigmatic despite its later impossibility. I then show that once work has transformed from hated to bearable to eventually understood as good from a moral perspective, the concept of leisure has also changed – so much so that its positive definition is no longer available to us. After showing how education is affected by the diffusion of the boundaries between work and leisure, I suggest three possible ways to counter this process: (1) focusing on leisure as resistance to the dominance of work, (2) appealing to the deep connection between leisure and religious worship, and (3) a radical rejection of the concept of “leisurely work” or any other kind of work that is presumed good in itself.