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Idleness - A Philosophical Essay (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R562
Discovery Miles 5 620
You Save: R119
(17%)
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Idleness - A Philosophical Essay (Hardcover)
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List price R681
Loot Price R562
Discovery Miles 5 620
You Save R119 (17%)
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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The first book to challenge modern philosophy's case against
idleness, revealing why the idle state is one of true freedom For
millennia, idleness and laziness have been regarded as vices. We're
all expected to work to survive and get ahead, and devoting energy
to anything but labor and self-improvement can seem like a luxury
or a moral failure. Far from questioning this conventional wisdom,
modern philosophers have worked hard to develop new reasons to
denigrate idleness. In Idleness, the first book to challenge modern
philosophy's portrayal of inactivity, Brian O'Connor argues that
the case against an indifference to work and effort is flawed--and
that idle aimlessness may instead allow for the highest form of
freedom. Idleness explores how some of the most influential modern
philosophers drew a direct connection between making the most of
our humanity and avoiding laziness. Idleness was dismissed as
contrary to the need people have to become autonomous and make
whole, integrated beings of themselves (Kant); to be useful (Kant
and Hegel); to accept communal norms (Hegel); to contribute to the
social good by working (Marx); and to avoid boredom (Schopenhauer
and de Beauvoir). O'Connor throws doubt on all these arguments,
presenting a sympathetic vision of the inactive and unserious that
draws on more productive ideas about idleness, from ancient Greece
through Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Schiller and
Marcuse's thoughts about the importance of play, and recent
critiques of the cult of work. A thought-provoking reconsideration
of productivity for the twenty-first century, Idleness shows that,
from now on, no theory of what it means to have a free mind can
exclude idleness from the conversation.
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