This volume offers a historical overview of philosophical thinking about work in a Western context.
While philosophy has for a long time been interested in the liberative aspects of politics, including justice, liberty or equality, and there are also major philosophical works on the culture of play, the topic of work seems to have escaped philosophy’s primary focus. This is surprising as since the middle of the 19th century the world of work has been at the centre of political struggle and social conflict. This collection of essays on how major European thinkers have conceptualised work aims to fill this gap and provides the first concise, yet substantial history of philosophical ideas about work.
The Concept of Work in the History of European Philosophy is essential reading for all scholars, researchers and advanced students of the history of philosophy. It is also ideal for scholars in related fields such as organisational theory and the history of economic thought.
1: Introduction.- 2: Plato and Aristotle on Work.- 3: The Greeks Cynics
on Work and Wealth.-
4. Work in the New Testament.- 5: Aquinas on Work.- 6:
Luther on Vocation.- 7: Francis Bacon: Science Relieving the Burden of
Labor.-
8. Locke: Ownership from Labor.- 9: Adam Smith and the Division of
Labor.- 10: Hegel on Works Two-Sidedness.- 11: Tocqueville.- 12: Marxs
Theory of Work.- 13: Kierkegaard on the Laborer.- 14: Durkheim on Anomie.-
15:Giovanni Gentile on the Humanism of Labor, Spartaco Pupo.- 16: Webers
Work Ethic.- 17: Mises: The Disutility of Labor.- 18: Hannah Arendt on Homo
Faber and the Fragility of Human Action.- 19: The Womans Soul as Shelter:
Edith Stein on the Work of Women.- 20: Michael Oakeshott on The Deadliness
of Doing.- 21: Leisure and Work in Josef Piepers Philosophy of Human Nature
and Culture of Public Service.- 22: Work in New Natural Law Theory.- 23: Work
and Its Discontents: Geuss and Graber, Gülen Seven.
Gene Callahan is Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at New York University. He is the author of Economics for Real People (2004), and Oakeshott on Rome and America (2012).
