Plato and Aristotle both express contempt for manual labor and for all commercial activities: the first debases the body and the second debases the mind. Plato expressly forbids citizens from participating in gainful employment whereas Aristotle only discourages citizens from such activity. For Greek aristocratic culture, leisure (schole) was the norm while work was the absence of leisure (ascholia); by contrast in our society, work is the norm and “free time” is the absence of work. For the Greeks, work is a necessary evil for the sake of leisure; for our culture, by contrast, leisure is dominated by the habits forged in work: hence, we “work out” at the gym, “work” on our basketball game, and even “work” on our marriages. For Plato and Aristotle only freely chosen activities pursued for their own sake lead us to happiness. Aristotle concedes that if manual labor were approached in a spirit of the love of skill and learning, it could become an activity worthy of a freeman. Winston Churchill, after all, was a unionized bricklayer. The challenge Plato and Aristotle pose to us is how to structure ordinary work so that it offers opportunities for liberal learning: that is, how to educate people to become “reflective practitioners.”
Chapter 2 · Abstract