Investigating the meaning of work: From allusive images to paradoxes

Abstract

In this article I wish to shed light on the meaning of work, which contributes to a deep understanding of ourselves, our identity, our dignity, and our desire for happiness, by specifying some intrinsic virtues: industriousness, professionalism (both technical and moral), and the spirit of service. Two opposing interpretations are to be avoided: the merely functional, minimalist interpretation (Aristotelian in origin); and the emphatic, excessive interpretation of ‘workism’ (connected to the scientific revolution and scientism, as human dominance over nature through work). In the conclusion, I instead emphasize Aristotle, pointing out that, in work, all three dynamic dimensions of the human being that he theorized are included: alongside the productive dimension (poiesis), we in fact find the moral dimension (praxis) and the speculative dimension (theoria), which Aristotle (but not his successors) believed were implicated in every activity. This makes it possible to highlight the multifaceted semantics of work. I anticipate that I will often turn to fiction and to the extreme experiences of the gulags and concentration camps to make this essay more compelling.

Keywords:

• Work
• dignity
• identity
• virtues
• meaning
• transcendence

1. Professionalism, dignity, and identity

Work is multidisciplinary. It is addressed in politics, economics, sociology, medicine, psychology, jurisprudence, ecology, and fiction itself. The question of meaning, however, is typical of philosophy, which uses reason alone, and of theology, which uses faith as well as reason.

How does one introduce this topic?

I shall begin with a provocation. Let us think of all those who have made life impossible for others and themselves, by evaluating work only from the obsessive standpoint of its outcome. If there is the punishment of contrapasso in hell, as Dante envisages in his Divine Comedy, then I imagine that they will be forced into very hard, painful, and uninterrupted work, with no utility or purpose—an infernal work. The twentieth century has provided examples of antechambers to this hell.

In Tito’s Yugoslavia, Goli Otòk, a rocky and barren island in Dalmatia (referred to as ‘Bare Island’ by the Slavs and ‘Isola Calva’, or Bald Island, by the Italians), was freezing cold when battered by the wind known as the ‘bora’ in winter, then becoming an oven in the summer; it was the ideal place to establish a prison camp, starting in 1949, to reeducate Slavic and Italian communists (those who remained in Yugoslavia to collaborate in the building of a new communist state) out of their dangerous pro-Stalinist deviations. Tito actually sought an autonomous and national path to communism and consequently did not tolerate the existence of pro-Soviet dissidents.

Now, one way to erode the human dignity of the condemned was to force them to carry large stone blocks from one end of the island to the other, with no goal or purpose: exhausting labor, befitting Sisyphys’ torture. Only when the person’s spirit was crushed (if they did not end up suicidal first) were they thought to be ‘reeducated’. This style of useless work was already known in Stalin’s gulags.

In Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s debut novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich ([1962] 1991), the protagonist, who surrendered to the Germans in the war and then escaped, is sentenced to ten years in Siberia for being a defeatist: he was supposed to die for Stalin instead of surrendering. Ivan is part of a squad that has to rebuild the wall of an old ruin from the ground up. It is one of many meaningless jobs that turned convicts into human worms, undermining their personalities. They therefore made efforts to survive any way possible. So as soon as the guards diverted their attention, the technique was to pretend to work: the only way not to waste energy unnecessarily.

However, this is not the style of Ivan, who was a mason by profession—for him, it is a point of absolute honor to erect simply perfect walls, as he had done in his regular life. At the end of the day, the muster for the prisoner count sounds, and everyone has to hurry. In fact, latecomers will end up in a punitive cell with no heating that, in the Siberian night, means experiencing temperatures 30 degrees below zero; that is, spending a sleepless night stamping one’s feet and staying in constant motion so as not to freeze. The work is now almost finished, but Ivan senses that if he were to stop right then, the lime for the bricks will harden in the night frost and it will then be necessary to use the jackhammer the next day, continuing a longer and more thankless job. Ivan therefore decides to go on, until he finishes that wall perfectly. Two of his comrades—won over by his quest for perfection in his work—decide not to abandon him, sharing the risk.

Seneca reminds Lucilius: ‘See to it that you never do anything unwillingly’ (Epistulae morales ad Lucilium, 61,2). You may be treated as a slave, but you will never be a slave if you put love into and take responsibility for what you do. Thus, Ivan manages not only to finish and contemplate a perfect work, a wall erected to perfection, to a plumb line, but he also manages to arrive just in time with his companions so that they are not punished. He never would have been able to do it alone, without their help. The pursuit of perfection in work, which rubs off on his two comrades, keeps him alive amid the tragedy of the gulag. And it is precisely that professionalism which preserves the human dignity of Ivan and his inner freedom, which also works a further and singular magic: that totally useless and vain work turns out to be useful and valuable. Indeed, the guards—admiring the perfection of the work—from then on will treat Ivan and the members of his squad as model prisoners, using them with greater regard and consideration than all the other inmates.

In work, therefore, a double responsibility is imposed: the technical responsibility to achieve the intended objective (objective work); and the even more relevant ethical responsibility that concerns how one achieves it, which implies the perfecting of the working subject (subjective work) through the virtues and competence necessary to complete the work to perfection. The supremacy of subjective work, theorized by John Paul II in his encyclical Laborem exercens (1981, no. 6), was already anticipated by Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer (1902–1975) and by Simone Weil (1909–1943). When speaking about the sanctification of work, the former states, ‘I measure the efficacy and value of works by the level of holiness reached by the men who perform them’ (quoted from Sanguineti 1992, 274). Weil writes, ‘manual labor does not attain its highest value by its relationship with what it produces, but by its relationship with the person who performs it’ ([1934] 1956, 148, our translations).

The Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad (1857–1924), who has a view of work that is both negative and positive, offers us other interesting insights. In Heart of Darkness the author has the protagonist say, ‘I don’t like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work—the chance to find yourself’ ([1899] 2007, 35). Conrad grasps at least one essential point: it is work itself that contributes to the perfecting of our identity, helps us better understand ourselves, and often sets in motion potentialities and resources that we did not even think we had, under the impetus of those necessities that every profession or trade entails. Unlike what Karl Marx thought, necessity and freedom cooperate in work and can, rather, constitute a positive polarity: a virtuous circle.

2. Work: end or means?

Aristotle seems to speak of two kinds of slavery: natural and economic. The first is that of the barbarian, who is incapable of mastering his instincts, as he is not educated in virtue; but a good master who welcomes him as part of the family can inculcate virtues in him, and if that slave manages to acquire these virtues, then the master will proceed to give him his freedom (see Bodéüs 2010, 47). It follows from this that natural slavery is not a closed class. Learning to judge well of one’s labor, exercising virtues, is the means by which the slave can hope to emancipate himself, so that ‘he who is a slave by nature ceases to be so through learning’. Aristotle himself, who freed his slaves, employs the metaphor, ‘the right hand [the guide of reason, which orients desires and tendencies according to virtue] is naturally the stronger, though in any man the left [slave to instincts and tendencies] may become equally strong’ (Nicomachean Ethics V, 10 1134b 33–35).

The second slavery is economic slavery, to which even Greek men can succumb: that of those who must work every day just to exist. Weil, who wanted to experience in her own skin as an intellectual the hard labor in factories (first at the Alsthom blast furnaces, then in the Renault automobile industry), where the maddening rhythms of an iron Taylorism were in force, shares with Marx the weight of manual labor: ‘one is compelled to struggle for so many long hours just to exist’ (Weil [1947] 1985, 182); thus, ‘the slave is the one to whom no good is proposed as the purpose of his efforts, save for bare existence’ (183, our translations). And remember that Calvinist Frederick Winslow Taylor taught working faster, not working better. Consequently, the economic slave is no longer even allowed to use his (or her) intellect, which deprives him of his dignity. It is no accident that Taylor, in his great work Principles of Scientific Management, writes, ‘one of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type’ (1911, 56).

Aristotle, however, limited the meaning of work to mere self-subsistence: that is, something that could then be surpassed. In fact, one who surpassed such limits—guaranteeing a decent and dignified standard of living for himself and his family—could then entrust a good slave or a skillful steward with the conduct of labor and could, only then, call himself free. If he possessed a beautiful mind, then he could dedicate his best efforts to philosophy or science; or he could use his virtues to serve his fellow citizens, in view of the common political good: political engagement. Aristotle denied the possibility of entering politics to those who had not overcome self-subsistence. Indeed, they would enter politics not for the common good, but only for the purpose of enriching themselves; thus, he had a negative view of democracy: the government of the poor who take power only to solve their own existential problems. The Neo-Aristotelian Hannah Arendt would also consider that human beings can truly actualize themselves only in political activity and in the sciences (in which she includes philosophy): this is the thesis of one of her famous works (1959). It should be added that Aristotle lacked the awareness of the contribution to social progress and innovation of work: a cognition that would overpoweringly enter the world, but only after the scientific revolution, which we will touch on shortly.

The young Marx, who had followed the lessons of the Aristotelian Friedrich A. Trendelenburg, seems to align himself with this same view when he, along with Friedrick Engels, writes: ‘it is not a matter of liberating work, but of suppressing it by overcoming it’ (Marx and Engels [1931] 1975, book 3, 187, our translation). And, in his most famous work, Das Kapital, he decisively states: ‘the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases’ (Marx [1867] 2001, 1097). Even the Nazis seem to have shared this conclusion, since they hung—at the entrance to the camp—the inscription ‘work sets you free’ (alluding to the death of the detainees): an ironic invitation to hope.

In the face of Aristotle’s and the Greek’s deficient view of the meaning of work, Simone Weil—who was in love with the creative genius of the Greek world—confessed with extreme clarity: ‘the notion of work considered as a human value is undoubtedly the only spiritual achievement of human thought since the Greek miracle; this was perhaps the only lacuna in the ideal of human life, which Greece developed’ (Weil 1988–2002a, 92, our translation). Therefore, the reductive value that Aristotle attaches to work leads him to highlight only its functional aspect, denying that work can become πρᾶξις τελεία, that is, the higher action that has its own end in its exercise; distinguishing it from πρᾶξις ατελής, that is, the imperfect action, which cannot coexist with the end at which it aims: for if the action is in progress, it means that the end is not yet achieved; if it is achieved, then the action is terminated.

I propose here a simple example. I might run for two different reasons: to catch a train that is about to leave, or because I go for a run every day before work, for the pleasure of running. In the first case, as soon as I reach (or miss) the train, I stop running. In the second, after having run, I return home in order to go (after a shower) to work: but it is evident that the purpose of my run is not to go back home, but rather the action in itself, which generates its own pleasure. A pleasure that could, however, also be interpreted as a duty: the duty to stay in good mental and physical shape. In fact, the perfection of the action lies not so much in the action itself, but in perfecting the subject who performs it.

Now, three intellectuals in the late 1800s seem to want to contradict Aristotle. They are Émile Zola (1840–1902), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), and Charles Péguy (1873–1914). According to Zola, an atheist journalist and writer, work is the only purpose of life. An exponent of the ideology of workism and its pervasive rhetoric, Zola writes:

I had one faith, one strength: work. I sustained myself only by the tremendous work imposed on me […]. The work I speak of is normal labor, a lesson, a duty, which I set myself to progress every day in my work, even if by just one step. Work! Remember, gentlemen, that it constitutes the only law of the world. Life has no other purpose, there is no other reason for existence: all of us are born only to contribute in our share of work, and then to disappear (quoted from Löwith [1941] 1972, 430, our translation).

Where does this pernicious ideology originate? It springs from the scientific and technological revolution that took place between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which put all the emphasis on work. There are undoubtably positive values: for the first time the human being feels that he or she is the protagonist, thanks to work, of a social progression that not only leads to changes in the existing world, but even to changes to the image of the human being in the world. However, there are also disturbing trends: nature can be seen as our ally, but also as our enemy. While animals are under the influence of the environment, human beings are the only living beings capable of adapting the environment to their own needs: capable of humanizing nature. True social progress is a humanization of nature. However, if first the human being was subject to nature, against which he had to struggle to survive, then now—dominating the laws of nature—he can impose his own superiority over creation in a hostile and almost vindictive way, opening himself up to an inordinate will to power, precisely through labor. Thus, for Marx, it is the human being who is generated in labor; and it is through labor that the human being can self-redeem by moving—through revolution—from alienated labor to liberated labor. There is no need for a Creator or a Redeemer: the workers’ religion is one without God, because it wants to make the human being rediscover his (or her) original divinity.

Thomas Aquinas helps us understand the reason for workism, when he writes ‘A natural thing, therefore, being placed between two intellects is called true in so far as it conforms to either’ (Quaestiones disputatae de Veritate q.1, a2, resp.) (Aquinas 1952–1954). The two intellects are that of God, who measures things; and that of man, who is measured by them. In the process of knowledge, it is our intellect that must adapt itself to things, in order to understand their truth (adaequatio rei et intellectus); but in production the opposite happens: it is the things we make that must adapt themselves to the idea, the project, that is in our intellect. So that Aquinas points out ‘In another way, things are compared to thought as measured to the measure, as is evident in the practical intellect, which is a cause of [artificial] things’ (Expositio libri Peryermeneias, l. 3) (Aquinas 1962).

If applied to work, here is where the famous fragment of the sophist Protagoras, salvaged by Plato, appears to fit like a glove: ‘For he says somewhere that man is “the measure of all things, of the existence of the things that are and the non-existence of the things that are not.”’ (Plato, Theaetetus, 152a). What’s more, if Hannah Arendt doubts the relativistic translation of Protagoras, since ‘all things’ is not used only in the neuter πάντα, or πρᾶγματα, but ‘πάντα χρήματα’; in the strict sense: ‘all the riches’, which Arendt relates back to the useful things produced, ‘which already are’, or designed by labor: ‘which are not yet’ (see 1959, 157).

Natural realities are therefore measured by divine intelligence; artificial realities are measured by human intelligence. As José María Galván jokingly argued before his students, for human beings it is natural to be artificial, in the sense of producing artificial things (the person who works is Artifex: artificer). Moreover, work demands transformation. Indeed, it requires infusing a new form in a prior material, to give life to something new, and thus, ‘completes what nature cannot bring to a finish’ (Aristotle, Physics, II, 8 199a 15). There follows the intoxication of man to feel like God: dator formarum. This intoxication of the divine no longer allows man to act as a steward of creation, as Genesis invites (Gen: 2:15), but rather urges him to become ‘maître et possesseur de la nature’ (master and owner of nature), which is the goal of the radical program enunciated by Descartes in Part VI of the Discours sur la Méthode (1637), and which seems here to merge with Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’. If, therefore, the conception of work in Aristotle seems reductive, Zola’s emphatic conception now seems excessive.

More interesting, however, are the theses held by Friedrich Nietzsche and by the Catholic writer Charles Péguy. Nietzsche does not absolutely reject Aristotle; on the contrary, he agrees with him. He denies only that his judgment—work is always and only means—has universal value. Indeed, he writes:

Looking for work in order to be paid: in civilized countries today almost all men are at one in doing that. For all of them work is a means and not an end in itself. […] But there are, if only rarely, men who would rather perish than work without any pleasure in their work. They are choosy, hard to satisfy, and do not care for ample rewards, if the work itself is not the reward of rewards. (Nietzsche [1882] 1974, 108)

Nietzsche seems to suggest that working well—even for a narrow élite—can become a πρᾶξις τελεία: one works well for the pleasure of working well. Aristotle recalls that pleasure is the consequence of an activity. Péguy seems to intervene from another standpoint:

There was a time when workers were not servants. They worked. They cultivated an honor, an absolute, as befits honor. The leg of a chair had to be well made […]. It did not have to be well made for a wage or made with a quality that was proportionate to the wages. It did not have to be well made for the master, the connoisseurs, or the master’s customers, but it had to be well made in and of itself, in its very nature […]. An absolute, honor, demanded that the chair leg be well made. And any part of the chair that could not be seen had to be crafted with the same precision as the visible parts. ([1913] 1990, 57, our translation)

Péguy observes that working well is a duty and a responsibility. One works well because of the internal imperative to work well (the same motive that compels Ivan Denisovich to erect perfect walls in his woeful gulag). It therefore seems that the two intellectuals—Nietzsche and Péguy—are in contrast not only with Aristotle, but also with each other. The former seems to advocate a hedonist perspective: the pleasure of working well; the second, a stoic perspective: the duty to work well. As a matter of fact, I believe that both are speaking the same language.

3. Working for love

In fact, working well—with human perfection—requires infusing that love which Thomas Aquinas already defined ‘radix, mater, motor, finis et forma virtutum’: root, mother, motor, end, and form of all virtues (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-IIae, q. 62, a. 4; q. 65, a. 2 e a. 3; e q. 68, a. 5 (Aquinas 1947); Quaestio disputata de caritate, 3). Now, there are three motives of human action—and therefore of professional action. One can work exclusively for pleasure; exclusively for duty; or for love, which in itself is not opposed to the other two motives, but includes them and absorbs them without, however, absolutizing them.

Aristotle’s theory of friendship offers an interesting analogy (see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VIII,5). Friendship can be based only on the pleasant feelings that the friend’s company produces in me; or on common interest, with a view toward mutual interest. Finally, the love of friendship implies desiring the good of the friend—considered another self—and urges us to facilitate his or her path toward happiness with virtues. The first two friendships are fragile: they fade away if the motive of pleasure or usefulness is extinguished; while, on the contrary, the love of friendship is stable and enduring. However, spending time with a true friend is also pleasurable: and the true friend just happens to be among the few who will also prove useful in difficult times. However, pleasure and usefulness here are not the foundational motive of this type of friendship, which for Aristotle is the genuine one.

Let us return to the topic of work. Every job, even the most glamorous and engaging, always involves some repetitive, sometimes tedious, undesirable, thankless, or bureaucratic thing, beyond the toil. Thus, a person who is committed to working well only if he finds pleasure in what he does, does not seem reliable to us. Nor does one who works out of strict duty for justice. For it is not a matter of striving to fulfill according to contract, but of loving: that is, joyfully surpassing the limits of duty and of sacrifice, which are also present in all work. Those who work for love also work for the pleasure and duty of working well.

Victor Frankl (1905–1997) takes us back to existential and tragic experience, this time of the Nazi concentration camps. He clarifies the reason why work evokes love. A Jewish psychiatrist interned at Auschwitz (where he lost his wife and brother), he decided to investigate professionally who—among the detainees—turned out to best resist that regime of brutal oppression. The result is paradoxical: not the physically strongest, as one would presume, but those who were endowed with a stronger motive of love to survive. The motivations he gave were 2-fold: to survive out of love for loved ones, in order to be reunited; and to survive out of love for one’s work, called ‘my mission in the world’. He writes:

This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual and gives meaning to his existence has a bearing on creative work as much as it does on human love […]. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. (Frankl [1946] 1985, 101)

Note the term mission that Frankl applies to work. Together with the terms profession and vocation (we also hear professional vocation), they all reveal a religious and theological matrix. These terms evoke the profession of faith, the mission of the Redemption, or the vocation of the one race of God’s children. It follows that to feel one’s professional vocation become something committed to one’s whole life, as Edith Stein (1881–1942) reveals, ‘those who consider their work only as a source of income or as a way to occupy time will do it quite differently than those who consider it a true vocation’ (Stein [1930] 2010a, 25, our translation). Not only philosophy, therefore, but theology too appears twinned when it comes to investigating the meaning of work. Josemaría Escrivá, from a perspective that is certainly more theological, does not hesitate to proclaim that ‘work is born of love; it is a manifestation of love and is directed toward love’ (Escrivá de Balaguer 1974, no. 48). Indeed, such appears to be the work of God, which is Creation: motivated, from beginning to end, by love. Primo Levi (1919–1987), another survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, has Tino Faussone (a highly skilled worker of international renown, the protagonist of a series of short stories about work), say these words: ‘but I put my heart and soul into all my jobs, you know that, even the dumbest; or rather, the dumber they are, the more I give to them. For me, every job I undertake is like a first love’ (1986, 42).

Finally, what Frankl means by work to the point of considering it my mission in the world, or what the impetus of one who feels the urgency of the work ahead alludes to, is revealed very well by an artist. This is the famous Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890), who—at thirty years old—in August 1883 wrote to his brother Theo these prophetic words, almost his spiritual testament (only seven years before his tragic death):

as to the length of time in which to work that lies ahead of me […] a certain number, say between 6 and 10 […] That’s the period that I count on for sure […]. [I want] to leave a certain souvenir in the form of drawings or paintings in gratitude. Not done to please some movement or other, but in which an honest human feeling is expressed. […]. I see myself in a similar way — as having to do something with heart and love in it within a few years, and do it with willpower. (Van Gogh 2009)

I take this opportunity to remind the reader that even those who do not work in the art world but seek perfection in their work—if they work with love—will never limit themselves to producing only a good work, but they will ensure that it is—also and always—a beautiful work. The Greeks combined goodness and beauty in perfection, so that, in the Platonic Symposium, the invitation to ‘begetting upon the beautiful’ emerges (Plato, Symposium, 206e).

To seek perfection is also, at the same time, a way of taking ourselves seriously as people, as well as taking seriously the recipients of our work or our colleagues, and perhaps it even alludes to something higher. Upon the news of Edmund Husserl’s death, E. Stein confides in a letter: ‘I do not worry about my dear teacher. I never liked to think that God’s mercy stops at the confines of the visible Church. God is truth. Those who seek the truth seek God, whether they know it or not’ (1973, our translation).

Now, paraphrasing Stein’s statement, I would venture to say that anybody who seeks perfection in his (or her) work—whether he knows it or not and whether he is a believer or not—is seeking God. In the human being is the instinct to seek God in perfection: a thought, in its way, that was already expressed by Plato.

Of course, we can seek perfection out of a disordered love for ourselves and our own success, pinning all our hopes on it. In this case, however, we move away from our happiness rather than drawing nearer to it. In fact, we always end up using people instead of serving them; and this then backfires to our detriment, degrading our dignity. On the contrary, the unselfish pursuit of perfection in work sets into motion our best energies in the service of others and, through the power of love, contributes to the ultimate goal of happiness, as I shall try to highlight in the next section.

4. Work as propensity for happiness and its characteristic virtues

I believe that everyone agrees that failure, in the sphere of affection (familial, friendship) or work (professional), has important repercussions for our pursuit of happiness. It is necessary in this regard, to remind ourselves of the paradox of happiness: the one who is most distant from it is precisely the one who most pursues it as the direct goal of his life. On the contrary, the one who comes closest to it is the one who spends his time and effort facilitating the way to others’ happiness: that is, the one who pursues it indirectly. Cicero reminds us that ‘men, too, are born for the sake of men, that they may be able mutually to help one another’ (De Officiis, I,7,22) (Cicero 1913). And this is precisely so also in work, which is one road to happiness because—to work well—it is necessary to have recourse to virtues, which perfect the subject who works in the service of others. Therefore, Aquinas—glossing Aristotle—already specifies that ‘Now all the sciences and arts are ordained to one thing, namely, to man’s perfection, which is happiness’ (Aquinas, In Met. exp, Prologus).

There are at least three virtues that are intrinsic to work as such: industriousness; professionalism, which presupposes both technical and ethical competence; and the spirit of service. The latter, if not exclusive to work, certainly characterizes it in an essential way. We have seen how frustrating it is to force a man into useless, purposeless work, even if it is compensated. Van Gogh confides to Theo, in July 1881: ‘Not that I’ll become something extraordinary but something very “ordinary” indeed, and by “ordinary” I mean that my work will be sound and reasonable and will have a reason to exist and will be able to serve some purpose’ (van Gogh 2009). A job without purpose is devoid of utility. For this reason, in work done with love and a spirit of service, we must forget ourselves and our personal affairs in order to focus diligently on what we have to do for others. Stein, again, explains this very well:

Work, whatever kind it may be, domestic, handicraft, industrial, requires one to submit oneself to the law of the object one is dealing with; that one set aside one’s own person, thoughts, moods, and feelings to do it. Those who manage to learn this become ‘objective’, lose something of the excessively personal, gain a certain freedom from self; and, at the same time, manage to reach from the surface into the depths. (Stein [1928] 2010b, 9, our translation)

The author who wanted to connect work with happiness, perhaps more than any other, was the aforementioned Levi, who combined his literary passion as a writer with his profession as a chemist (he would go on to manage a chemical plant in Turin, eventually becoming general manager of his company, SIVA). In the 1960s he wrote the following words, which are affected by the strong ideological and cultural conflict of the time, that between capitalism and Marxism:

If we except those miraculous and isolated moments fate can bestow on a man, loving your work (unfortunately, the privilege of a few) represents the best, most concrete approximation of happiness on earth. But this is a truth not many know. This boundless region, the region of le bout, the job, il rusco […] is less known than the Antarctic, and through a sad and mysterious phenomenon it happens that the people who talk most, and loudest, about it are the very ones who have never traveled through it. To exalt labor, in official ceremonies an insidious rhetoric is displayed, based on the consideration that a eulogy or a medal costs much less than a pay raise, and they are also more fruitful. There also exists a rhetoric on the opposite side, however, not cynical, but profoundly stupid, which tends to denigrate labor, to depict it as base, as if labor, our own or others', were something we could do without, not only in Utopia, but here, today; as if anyone who knows how to work were, by definition, a servant, and as if, on the contrary, someone who doesn't know how to work, or knows little, or doesn't want to, were for that very reason a free man. It is sadly true that many jobs are not lovable, but it is harmful to come on to the field charged with preconceived hatred. He who does this sentences himself, for life, to hating not only work, but also himself and the world. (Levi 1986, 80)

5. Spirit of service and professionalism: obedience, loyalty, and disobedience

The search for happiness should not lead us to forget, however, that in work everyone has a superior to serve. Even so-called freelancers have their clients as their superiors. If for a shopkeeper the customer is always right, then for anyone who works, the superior is always right. In turn, an executive administrator serves the business owner. And the President of the United States is subordinate to the law. And every individual is subordinate to his or her conscience.

Now, part of professionalism is conforming to the decisions of those higher up, even if we do not agree with them. And part of professionalism is executing those decisions faithfully, as if we were not conflicted. And it is part of professional secrecy to remain silent about our reason for disagreement: not to express to anyone that we think differently from our superior. This requirement is part of the loyalty of professional service. Obviously, if our superior or client requests our opinion, then it is right to say—in good conscience—how we think; but then we conform to the final decision of those we serve, who might even opt for a different solution from the one we proposed. However, obedience has limits.

Indeed, professionalism does not only imply technical competence, but also ethical competence. For that reason, as early as the first century, the stoic Musonius Rufus affirmed the licitness of disobeying one’s parent, magistrates, and emperor when they command immoral actions (Diatribe, XVI). Robert Spaemann cites, as an example, the behavior of a Prussian official who refused to carry out an immoral order. Ready to die for his refusal to obey, he gave this testimony: ‘my life belongs to the king, but my honor as a soldier belongs to me’ (2002, 14, our translation).

Thomas More (1478–1535), a practitioner of law and politics, as well as a humanist, refused to sign the Act of Succession of 1534—which King Henry VIII imposed on all Englishmen by oath—for two good reasons: that law, in fact, by proclaiming in the preamble the king as one supreme authority of England already implied schism from the Church of Rome, which was made more explicit by the subsequent Act of Supremacy, by which Henry became head of the Anglican Church. Moreover, both were unconstitutional acts, having been voted on by Parliament, which—while certainly having full authority in the political sphere—could not, however, arrogate to itself the right to establish who should hold religious authority over England. Thus, it violated the Magna Carta, which sanctioned—two full times—the freedom of the Anglican Church. If that were not enough, it was very clear to More that the schism from Rome was being artfully provoked by Henry VIII so that he could marry Anne Boleyn, having realized that the Pope was unlikely to declare his previous marriage to Catherine of Aragon null and void, as in fact Parliament would declare it on 23 March 1534.

Concealing the reasons for his silence within the sanctum of his conscience, which he did not intend to reveal to anyone, drove More to heroically resist the interrogation and pressure exerted even on his family. And this was for two good reasons. The first was to not be so reckless as to seek that martyrdom, which he would, however, accept if God compelled him to. Secondly, having been the king’s faithful adviser for so many years and ultimately Chancellor of England, he wanted to continue to be his loyal subject until the end. This was another reason why he did not want to reveal in public the reasons for his quarrel with his king. In this regard, he had stated that he was prepared to reveal—as a loyal servant—the reasons for his conscientious refusal if Henry VIII asked him to do so in a direct, one-on-one relationship; and to do so also in writing, if the sovereign so desired, but always in private, between the two of them (More 1947, no. 200). If, however, this was not permitted by a law that required all the subjects to take a public position, his silence could not be considered malicious (the indictment charged him with ‘malicious silence’): in fact, it is the right of a defendant to keep silent if he fears that his words may later be twisted to his detriment.

A skillful defense on the part of a legal practitioner: nobody can be condemned to death for silence, but only for what he or she says or does. Moreover, More wanted to remind his accusers that he had never criticized those who had signed the Act of Succession and the subsequent Act of Supremacy, thinking that they had done so according to their conscience; and he certainly did not want to meddle in the consciences of others, whose judgment was God’s alone (the choice of not taking the oath, however, meant being indicted for high treason…). Moreover, he had never invited anyone to follow his refusal to sign. If, therefore, he respected the conscience of others, he demanded—with good reason—that his own be respected, and his conscience prevented him from signing those laws (More 1947, no. 200). In a letter, he confided the following to his daughter Margaret:

as for the law of the land, though every man being born and inhabiting therein, is bound to the keeping in every case upon some temporal pain, and in many cases upon pain of God’s displeasure too, yet is there no man bound to swear that every law is well made, nor bound upon the pain of God’s displeasure, to perform any such point of the law, as were indeed unlawful. (More 1947, no. 206)

Seneca, if he could have known Thomas More, would have made him one of his favorite heroes. He certainly would have dedicated to More the words he entrusts to Lucilius: ‘No one, I think, rates virtue higher or is more consecrated to virtue than he who has lost his reputation for being a good man in order to keep from losing the approval of his conscience’ (Epistulae morales ad Lucilium 81,20) (Seneca 1917–1925). And here we are dealing not only with an honest man, but also with a truly extraordinary professional, who—in the umpteenth interrogation to extort the secret of his silence—proved ready to die, like the Prussian officer quoted above, with these words:

I am, quoth I, the King’s true faithful subject and daily beadsman and pray for his Highness and all his and all the realm. I do nobody harm, I say none harm, I think none harm, but wish everybody good. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive in good faith I long not to live. […] And therefore my poor body is at the King’s pleasure, would God my death might do him good (More 1947, no. 214).

Ready to die so as not to betray his honor as a loyal subject of the king, but first and foremost not to betray his conscience, for which he had to answer to God. A false testimony would be decisive in provoking his death sentence (commuted only later to beheading: traitors were hanged and quartered). More—finally taking the floor—would reveal his thinking to everyone, having nothing more to lose. And he would write to his daughter: ‘a case in which a man may leese his head and have no harm’ (More 1947, no. 216).

We cannot, however, forget that work can also sometimes present itself as a cross. Not only because it is tiring, but because of discrimination, exploitation, or injustice: moral evil. We have to admit that in this world one must also live with evils that no utopia will ever be able to eradicate from history. This, however, will be one more reason to fight—by all lawful means, and not by that alone—for the dignity of every human being, not just our own. Christ eschews utopias: ‘the poor you will always have with you’ (Mk 14:7). This does not mean, however, that it is then not worthwhile to fight to alleviate poverty, injustice, or discrimination in any way. On the contrary.

6. The contemplative dimension of work

I would like to briefly focus on the Aristotelian trinomial concerning the main human dynamics: ϑεωρία, πρᾶξις, and ποίησις (contemplation, moral action, and work). Aristotle phenomenologically distinguishes them, but he has always retained that all three dynamics are found in every human activity and, moreover, refer to one another. As Enrico Berti has pointed out very well, it was—case in point—the successors of Aristotle who began to set them in opposition to one another, creating a conflicting divide that became entrenched over time, in turn generating pernicious dualisms (Berti 2004–2020, vol. 3,14).

Now, in philosophy (and thus in the sciences), one does not limit oneself to contemplating truths already possessed but identifies new ones. In this sense, as work, speculation also appears to be an end-directed action. It is not by accident that Ludwig Wittgenstein asserts that ‘philosophy is not a theory but an activity’ ([1921] 2015, no. 4.112). However, every end-directed action evokes ethics. Even in the face of truth there is only one alternative: manipulate it for certain ends; or respect it and love it in itself, at the cost of not only adapting the intellect to it, but adapting our own conduct to it. Moreover, what does contemplation have in common with production? The use of technique. The thinker’s technique is logic, which enables one to argue correctly, moving from premises to conclusions, in order to arrive at new truths, or to better clarify those already acquired.

Moral action also accompanies work, another end-directed action. So ethics cautions us that it is not so important what a man does in the world, but rather, what he makes of himself when he does something. An old Pirelli tire advertisement comes to mind: ‘non importa quanta strada hai fatto, ma come l’hai fatta’ (it doesn’t matter how far you’ve come, but how you’ve come). Therefore, deciding about what to do is equivalent to deciding about oneself.

However, it seems to me even more intriguing to discover, now, where one finds contemplation in work. It appears, quite connaturally, in two specific phases: in the project and in the finished work. To Aristotle, the τέχνη (from which comes ‘technique’), the creative virtue of design, an intellectual (dianoetic) virtue, allows us first of all to preconceive and contemplate in our minds the finished product (see Aristotle, Metaphysics, VII 1032b 15) (Aristotle 1933); and then, also the necessary means to carry it out (hence our more limited meaning of technique). Thus, even the Platonic demiurge—before setting to work—must first contemplate Ideas. Arendt deduces the following: ‘contemplation and fabrication (theoria and poiesis) have an inner affinity’, for the reason that ‘the work of the craftsman was guided by the “idea”, the model beheld by him before the fabrication process’ (1959, 224).

The second contemplative moment emerges when the work is completed, provided it has been done properly. God Himself contemplates the goodness and beauty of creation, of which He is the Architect, and rejoices in it (cf. Gn 1:1–31). In man, then, there is not only a visual contemplation, or dare I say a physical contemplation: but also an inner contemplation. One rejoices in how the initial idea has now been embodied in reality.

There is, however, a third possibility for contemplation: in the very exercise of professional activity. It is permitted, however, only to those who open themselves up to faith. St. Gregory the Great wrote ‘the grace of contemplation […] the great and the small receive it. Those who live withdrawn from the world, as well as married people. None among the faithful is excluded from the grace of contemplation’ (In Ezechielem homiliae 2,V,19, our translation). Here, therefore, appears the ‘transcendent’ dimension of work. Those who discussed it most in the twentieth century are Simone Weil and Josemaría Escrivá. Weil notes that if a church is full of symbols that bring us back to God, then this is also true for the panorama of human labor, which—in turn—evokes God: the symbols are there, we just need to pay attention to them (1988–2002b, 424). Fatigue in work may paralyze the discursive faculties, but it does not interrupt contemplation; so that for her, ‘the place where manual labor meets intellectual labor is contemplation, which is not labor’ (1988–2002b, 427, our translation); it also does not break the concentration of those who forget themselves in order to serve others with love. What does Weil mean by ‘contemplation’ (for which she also uses the term: ‘religious’ or ‘supernatural’ attention)?

It means intuiting in God the ultimate end of our work. She explains it like so:

A happy young woman, expecting her first child, and busy sewing a layette, thinks about sewing it properly. But she never forgets for an instant the child she is carrying inside her. At precisely the same moment, somewhere in a prison workshop, a female convict is also sewing, thinking, too, about sewing properly, for she is afraid of being punished. One might imagine both women to be doing the same work at the same time, and having their attention absorbed by the same technical difficulties. And yet a whole gulf of difference lies between one occupation and the other […]. What is required is that this world and the world beyond, in their double beauty, should be present and associated in the act of work, like the child about to be born in the making of the layette. (Weil [1949] 2002, 92–93)

Escrivá writes: ‘there comes a time when it is impossible for us to distinguish where prayer ends and work begins, because our work is also prayer and contemplation’ (quoted from López Díaz 2017, 32, our translation), so that the work itself can and should be transformed into contemplative prayer (see Escrivá de Balaguer 1987, no. 497) in sacrifice pleasing to God: work can be sanctified. Sanctifying means removing a finite reality (including work) from transience and finitude to elevate it to God; and thus to make it—in some way—a participant in eternity.

Our Neolithic ancestors erected menhirs. These are stone slabs, raised like fingers pointing to the sky, which cease to be just stones among many: pointing to the sky, they become sacred; not in themselves, but as references to the divine. To sanctify something means to consecrate the profane, orienting it toward heaven.

Escrivá de Balaguer (1987, no. 498) helps us to grasp the difference: ‘You are writing to me in the kitchen, by the stove. It is early afternoon. It is cold. By your side, your younger sister—the last one to discover the divine folly of living her Christian vocation to the full—is peeling potatoes. To all appearances—you think—her work is the same as before. And yet, what a difference there is!—It is true: before she only peeled potatoes, now, she is sanctifying herself peeling potatoes’.

Ultimately, God will judge us also by our work, as emerges at the beginning and at the end of sacred history. Indeed, God shows appreciation for Abel’s work, but rejects that of Cain (Gen 4:3–5). In the Revelation prophecy, the last day of humanity will surprise ‘two women grinding meal together; one will be taken, the other left’ (Lk 17:35). Van Gogh’s words in his 25 September 1875 letter sent from Paris to his brother Theo, are significant: ‘Let us do our daily work, whatever the hand finds to do, with all our might, and let us believe that God will give good gifts, a part that shall not be taken away’. Later in his letter dated 30 May 1877, faced with the harsh reality that his paintings were still not sold, he confided to his brother, ‘in spite of everything that seems to be against me I shall attain that thing that I desire, and, God willing, shall find grace in the eyes of some whom I love, and in the eyes of those who shall come after me’ (van Gogh 2009).

7. Conclusions: the multifaceted meaning of work

And now we come to the conclusion of our investigation, to discover that work reveals a multifaceted, nuanced sense:

1. It implies, as an immediate end, the perfection of work. It demands making oneself one with object to be produced, putting one’s I and personal problems in brackets.

2. It implies serving the other person: the one who uses our work, but also our colleagues, by our example and solidarity—how valuable, knowing how to be a team! (Think of the two companions of Ivan Denisovich who did not abandon him, grateful to have discovered the value of a job well done.)

3. It implies supporting one’s familial or relational project of happiness.

4. It implies contributing to social progress: not as dominance over nature, but as humanization of nature (so far, all transitive senses).

5. It implies perfecting the working subject and his or her identity, with the exercise of virtues, and specifically those intrinsic to work: industriousness, a spirit of service, and professionalism (both technical and moral), sustained and crowned by love (immanent sense). Antonio Malo, describing work as ‘self-perfection, perfecting’ (2004, 153, our translation), manages to unite the transitive senses and the immanent sense.

6. Finally, for the believer it implies sanctifying and self-sanctifying: drawing God into one’s work, transforming it into prayer and sacrifice to Him (transcendent and contemplative sense).

Acknowledgements

Translated from the original Italian by Kira Howes.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Giorgio Faro

Giorgio Faro, Professor of Applied Ethics (Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome), was born in Milan, Italy in 1954. He holds a degree in Political Science from LUISS and a degree in Moral Philosophy from Tor Vergata University in Rome. He published La filosofia del lavoro e i suoi sentieri (Rome: Edusc, 2014). He edited vol. no. 2 (Pensando il lavoro, philosophical contributions, Rome: Edusc 2018), which was published after the conference ‘The Heart of Work’ (19–20 October 2017, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome). In addition to his publications on philosophy of work, he has also written several essays on political ethics regarding the historical figure of Thomas More, including a foreword to William Roper’s biography of More (Rome: Fontana di Trevi, 2013). He has published in this Journal, A Criminal Confession: Comparing Rival Ethics in Crime and Punishment (F. Dostoevski), vol. 2, n°3 (2017) pp. 272–283.