Culture and Education in Josef Pieper’s Thought (Part I)

Josef Pieper is best known in this country for his work, Leisure as the Basis of Culture, and its companion essay, The Philosophical Act, published as one book in 1952. In this book, Pieper’s argument is seemingly straight-forward: culture depends upon leisure, and leisure, in its turn, depends upon the cult of divine worship. For Pieper, the cult is the ritual of public sacrifice that acts as the primary source of our independence and freedom, while culture is the natural goods of the world which belong to us but are beyond our immediate needs and wants. Leisure, as the basis of culture, is our fundamental relationship to reality as a type of “philosophical act” where we learn to see how worthy certain aspects of reality are and therefore require a celebration of them in divine worship. For Pieper, the highest relationship we can have with reality is one that is free of practical considerations, a philosophical theoria, and that can only be preserved within the sphere of leisure.

During Pieper’s time this understanding of leisure remains unchanged and has been pushed aside for one that sees it as a type of recuperation or revitalization in the service of work, whether in its manual or intellectual form. Prior to Kant, intellectual activity was conceived as superior and different from manual labor, but now, because of the influence of Kant, it is seen like its manual counterpart as a type of work. Intellectual activity is a form of ratio: discursive, logical thought in search of abstractions, definitions, and conclusions. The receptive aspect of intellectual activity—contemplation, intuition, intellectus—has become lost in this reconeputalization of intellectual activity. While recognizing the role that ratio played in our understanding of reality, the ancients and medievals, such as Aristotle and Aquinas, also knew the importance that intellectus had in our comprehension of it.[i]

What these classical and Christian thinkers required for proper human flourishing was both ratio and intellectus. Knowledge is not possible without work (ratio) but it does not reside exclusively within the world of work: the fruits of ratio are a philosophical or spiritual knowledge of intellectual contemplation (intellectus). According to Pieper, the moderns make two mistakes in their conception of knowledge. On the one hand, some think of knowledge only as the product of ratio (e.g., Kant, Marx, Weber); while those, on the other hand, believe knowledge is simply passive and receptive in nature (e.g., romantics like Jacobi, Schlosser, and Stolberg). Genuine knowledge demands both ratio and intellectus, work and contemplation, in our understanding of reality.[ii]

Contrary to modern philosophers like Kant, Pieper assumes that our natural inclinations are ethical and moral. The good is not defined by difficulty itself. Although some work is required, the good will naturally reveals itself to us via. intellectus. “The essence of virtue consists in the good rather than in the difficult,” Pieper quotes Aquinas.[iii] For Pieper, “the essence of thought does not consist in the effort for which it calls, but in grasping existing things and in unveiling reality.”[iv] Instead of residing in a world of work, knowledge lies in a “world of play and grace.” This latter notion is particularly important to Christians (as Pieper was), for they conceive of reality as a gift given to us by God for our enjoyment and worship of Him.[v]

Thus Pieper rejects the epistemology claims of the moderns that knowledge is exclusively discursive thought and effort is the criterion of its truth: knowledge is both a product of discursive and contemplative thought and its criterion of truth is natural as opposed to effort or difficulty. Unfortunately for Pieper the claims of the moderns hold sway and have even spilled over into the social and political, where intellectual activity has become specialized and subordinated to the social and political demands of society. This new place of the intellectual life in society has particularly terrible consequences for education. Liberal education—an education concerned with knowledge apart from utilitarian ends—becomes transformed into a servile one. The idea that a sphere of human activity is allowed to exist and not justified by utilitarian goals becomes banished from the academy. All that is left is training and professionalization.[vi]

Now Pieper is not claiming that there is something inherently wrong with training and professionalization as a form of education; rather, he is arguing that such a servile education should not be the only one. He recognizes the place and importance that servile education plays in the world, unlike some who advocate liberal education as the only worthwhile education.[vii] Like ratio and intellectus with respect to knowledge, both servile and liberal educations are valuable to human and societal flourishing. What Pieper is concerned with is the privileging of the world of work and its servile education over all other forms of human activity. He wants to carve out a place for liberal education and intellectus in this world of work—a place of leisure.

Notes

[i] Pieper, Josef. Leisure as the Basis of Culture (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1952), 6-10.

[ii] Ibid., 8, 11.

[iii] Ibid., 14.

[iv] Ibid., 15.

[v] Ibid., 16-17.

[vi] Ibid., 17-20, 31.