J.
-ee Trepanier 119
CHAPTER 6 had in our comprehension of it.'
Culture and Education in
Josef Pieper's Thought
Lee Trepanier
J osef Pieper is best known in this country for his work, Leisure as the
Basz~ oj Culture, and it.s 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 tbeoria, 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
f~rm. Prior to Kant, intellectual activity was conceived as superior and
different from manual labor, but now, because of the influence of Kant
~tis seen like its man~al co~nterpart as a type of work. Intellectual activi~
1S a form of ratio: discursive, logical thought in search of abstractions
de~~itions, and conclusions. The receptive aspect of intellectual
actlVlty-contemplation, intuition, intel/eetus-has become lost in this
118
reconceputalization 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
What these classicaland Christian thinkers required for proper human
Aourishingwas both ratio and intel/eetus. 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 (intel/eetus). 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 intel/eetus, work and contemplation, in
our understanding of reality,"
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. intel/eetus. "The essence of virtue consists in the
good rather than in the difficult," Pieper quotes Aquinas.' 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.'" 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.s
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
activityhas 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 utilitarianends-becomes
transformed into a servile one. The idea that a sphere of human activity
120 Cllltllre and Educatiol1 ill Josef Pieper} Tbollgbt
is allowed to exist and not justified by utilitarian goals becomes banished
from the academy. All that is left is training and professionalization.?
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.' 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.
Leisure is our ontological relationship to reality where we are at home
with it physically, mentally, and spiritually. It is a receptive and silent attitude
towards reality where we are content for reality to reveal itself to us; and
it is a recognition of our incapacity to understand all of reality while, at
the same time, we are confident in its the ebbs and flows. We are content
participating in the mystery of reality without ever knowing it entirely.
However, this is not to mistake leisure as merely a passive attitude towards
reality, as we find in the Romantic thinkers; rather, it is a paradoxical
relationship that is both active and passive simultaneously. We participate
in reality as both active subjects and acted upon objects and use both our
ratio and intellectus in our pursuit of genuine knowledge."
Pieper strikes a third path in approaching reality that avoids the
subject-object approach of the world of work as well as the passive and
receptive approach of the Romantics. In these two other approaches
Pieper refers to them as acedia: a refusal to acquiesce in your own being
and the world around you that manifests itself as restlessness and idleness.
By contrast, leisure is celebratory in nature where our fundamental accord
with the world is affirmed in a non-utilitarian way. For Pieper, religion is
. it
the great example where leisure takes place. Human values are preserved
in religion because paradoxically the specifically human is left behind for
celebration of the divine. The full enjoyment of leisure is both human
and divine, as Pieper quotes Aristotle: "A man will live thus, not to the
extent that he is a man, but to the extent that a divine principle dwells
within him.""
Lee Trepanier 121
The challenges to this conception of leisure during Pieper's time
were many, ranging from the ideas of humanism to the proletarian.
What they have in common was their attachment to a process of work
for simply utilitarian and often public ends. Pieper specialJy focuses on
the communist states as illustrations of this world of work, but we could
equally make the same charge against capitalist and free-market societies
where all values are reduced to commodities and consumption. In both
cases the individual and society becomes spiritually impoverished at the
expense of either the state or the market. All conversations, thought, and
discussion become aimed at utility as defined by the totalitarian forms of
the state and marketplace."
This "proletarianization" of society and its individual has its
most adverse effect in education where the distinction between liberal
education and servile education is abolished in favor of the latter. From
the perspective of liberal education, work is to support leisure, such that
a worker should receive a wage sufficient to support himself and his
family, whereas, from the perspective of servile education, a worker is
paid according to the work done and not according to his or her needs.
The assumptions of the proponents of servile education make are that
humans are only working creatures in the servile sense and that they will
only become free by purely political (state) and/or economic (the market)
measures. I I
This claim on humans by humans is flatly rejected by Pieper: humans
are creatures built primarily for leisure and can only become truly free
in the celebration of culture. This counter claim by Pieper is rooted in
the classical-Christian tradition of western civilization where celebration
is at the core of leisure and is a form of divine worship (at least until
the French Revolution and its advent of secular holidays). The act of
divine transcendent to human existence and demands a sacrifice of
something that is freely-given to be used for a non-utilitarian end. By
active participation in the sacrifice of the cult, members create a surplus
of wealth that renews and bonds its members with themselves and the
divine. This sphere of sacrifice is delineated by the sacred space and time
what we now call holidays.'?
Leisure is impossible without the celebration of the cult. Cut off from
this sphere, leisure becomes a type of aeedia--a series of amusement to fill
up the space of boredom-and work becomes inhumane and meaningless.
 122 Cllltllre and Education ill.fos~/ Pieper's Thollght
A about liberal education as a remedy to counteract the prevailing thought
of the world as work. What has transpired in education is that it has been
cut off from its celebratory roots of divine worship, thereby becoming
sterile, empty, and a plaything of intellectuals in their parlor games.
Detached from its experiential origins, liberal education has transformed
itself into matter of good form with appeals that fall upon the deaf ears
of both students and teachers and thus lacks the capacity to renew both
individuals and sociery,"
Instead of revitalizing liberal education, Pieper seems to call for
a return to religion as the way to rejuvenate society; or, to put it more
broadly, a new understanding and approach to reality that recognizes the
need of celebratory worship of the divine in our culture (of course, the
revitalization of religion, or more broadly culture, does not mean we
cannot return a liberal education at the same time, too). It is important to
note that Pieper is not calling for a conservative sentimentality that seeks
to revive some antiquated cult or the liberal eagerness in creating a new
religion. Because divine worship is fore-ordained in the sense that we are
heirs of a civilization, whether we wish it or not, we must use the tradition
that we have inherited to renew our culture. For those who live in the West,
divine worship has been traditionally in the form of Christianity and, to
a lesser extent, Judaism. This is a historical given that one must accept
regardless of his or her religious beliefs or lack thereof."
For Pieper, the Christian cult is unique in that it is both "a sacrifice
and a sacrament": it is a sacrifice of the God-man in the feast days, which
is every day, and it is a sacrament because it is celebrated in visible signs. IS
Both of these components of Christianity permit humans to access
transcendental reality through a visible medium, such as the Incarnation.
The Christian celebration therefore draws us out of the world of work
into the world of culture where we are no longer at the center of creation.
The cult re-orients our attitudes toward the world where we learn about
a reality that is apart from us but is inherently worthwhile and therefore
demands celebration. Such is the life of philosophy.
II
Philosophy and work, therefore, are incommensurable acts: the former
is for freedom; the latter is for the satisfaction of physical needs. Like
religion or aesthetics, philosophy is an approach to reality that seeks to step
I.ee Trepanier 12.3
outside the world of work in order to understand and enjoy reality as it
reveals itself to US.16 For Pieper, this act is characterized by the enthusiasm
of the quest, especially found among the young, and the freedom of
the liberal art. In fact, philosophy has been regarded as the freest of the
liberal arts because it is the farthest removed from utilitarian concerns.
As the most theoretical of disciplines, philosophy looks at reality purely
receptively, i.e., completely untouched by practical concerns, and becomes
integrated into the common good of society as one that contemplates tbe
truth, the beautiful, and the good.17
But prior to the practice of philosophy is an approach or attitude
towards reality that assumes a certain ontology. For Pieper, these
assumptions were that reality was transcendent as well as material and
created by God. Without these assumptions, the freedom to philosophize
and philosophy itself cannot exist. Once reality is perceived merely as
the raw, uncreated material of human activity, theory becomes loss, and
with it, the loss of the freedom to philosophize: it becomes merely one
function among many in society. We see this occur in modern philosophy,
where knowledge is equated with power in its desire to replace theory and
contemplation with mastery and ownership of reality. The transformation
of philosophy into its spurious form is fundamentally a change in attitude
towards reality where we no longer wish to participate in it but rather
dominate and master it for our rational and utilitarian ends."
It is important to note that for Pieper, philosophy still belongs to
the world of work in the sense that it does not abolish this reality and
becomes a type of philosophical abstraction, such as we see in idealism.
Reality is both the world of work and the world of theory. But of what
does this world consist? For Pieper, this world is first characterized by a
field of relations among the objects that sit within it. The world has "a
dynamic center from which all activity proceed and to which everything
in the nature of experience is referred."!" In other words, reality is not
a piece of objective datum that can be observed from a vantage point
outside of reality; rather, reality is a participatory or relational process in
which living beings exist."
The second characteristic of the world that Pieper notes is "the
higher the order of a being, the more embracing and wider its power of
establishing relations-the greater the field of relations within its power ...
the higher a being stands in the order of reality, in the hierarchic order of
124 Cllltllre and Education ill Jos~l Pieper's Thought
being, the wider and deeper its world."?' Beginning at the bottom of this
hierarchic order, Pieper lists the physical (no relations) and then moves
on to the vegetative (nutrition, growth, and touch), the animal (senses
and awareness), and the human (spiritual knowledge). What Pieper means
by spiritual knowledge is our capacity for establishing relations with the
whole of reality and being able to transcend all these relations such that
we can relate or identify with the totality of being itself. With our capacity
of both ratio and intelleetus, we are able to know ourselves in relation to
every aspect of reality and to the whole of reality itself."
The third characteristic of our relationship to reality is the greater
capacity to establish relations with the world, the greater the degree of
"inwardness" of the participant. The more power we have to establish
relations with the world, the more rooted within ourselves we must be
in order to counterbalance our steps outside ourselves. This dynamic
relationship between the external relations with the world and internal
subjectivity constitutes spiritual knowledge where we can know the whole
of reality while, at the same time, maintaining our independence and
freedom from it. Our relationship with reality neither reduces itself to a
subjectivity of its own nor becomes simply a type of materialism apart
from us: we are both a part and apart from the reality in which we exist
and understand.P
For Pieper, human nature is one that constitutes of all aspects of
reality, from the physical to the spiritual, with every aspect important to
the constitution of the person. It is a mistake to think of the spirit as the
essential aspect of humankind, for, as Pieper quotes Aquinas again, "The
soul united to the body is more like God than the soul separated from
the body because it possesses its own nature more perfectly.'l" We are
both body and soul that exists as an integral whole. Although the spiritual
informs the physical aspects of our existence, we require both in order
to participate and to understand a multi-faceted reality. In order for us to
know the physical, the vegetative, the animal, and the spiritual in reality,
we, too, must be all of these, for only like can only know ontological like."
Because of our capacity to know reality both in its parts and as a
whole, we come to the recognition that it is a created entity. This notion
of creation is critical for Pieper: both we and reality are created by an
omnipotent, omniscient, and morally-good God. We do not exist in an
abstract reality but in one that is created--concrete, and specific-with
Lee Trepanier 125
our teleological end to become similar to the divine. We have a specific
relationship with reality, whether it is with a plant or our Creator. And
because the Creator is morally good, the reality in which He created is
likewise as good as it is true; thus, making reality a type of gift from God.
We and our existence are a form of Grace that is both good and true.26
Philosophy, therefore, is the contemplation of the essence of reality.
It is to withdraw from currently accepted meaning attached to everyday
life and question the value placed upon it. Reality itself does not change,
only our relationship to it does, where we now perceive reality as something
strange, new, or wondrous. It is this sense of wonder that dislocates us
in our place in reality and becomes the starting point of philosophy.
For Pieper, wonder has two components that guide us towards the
philosophical life: our recognition of our own ignorance within the world
in which we live, and our desire to remedy this condition in our search for
knowledge. Wonder is the lasting source of philosophy that propels us to
step outside of ourselves and into the world of the good and the true."
It is this second aspect of wonder, hope, which distinguishes
philosophy from science. The latter assumes in principle that all questions
will eventually be answered; the former does not. Philosophy demands
we know the essence of things which ultimately cannot be known. This
quest can become one of despair unless we have the virtues of hope and
humility to accompany us, since philosophy, when compared to science,
cannot claim to be a superior form of knowledge. In fact, this is the
error of modern philosophy which has abandoned hope and humility for
the pursuit of scientific certainty. By modeling itself after the sciences,
modern philosophy seeks answers to questions that in principle can never
be answered. The result is a morose mood of doubt and despair instead
of joy and delight in its quest for answers. It is the pride of the modern
philosopher who banishes wonder from his realm as he or she transforms
philosophy from the search for wisdom to the mastery of knowledge."
For classical and medieval philosophers, neither wisdom nor
knowledge was something we could ever possess, for both wisdom
and knowledge, as the complete comprehension of an entity's essence,
are impossible. The result of this incomplete condition is that we seek
knowledge and wisdom for their own sakes; and because we will never
be satisfied in our quest, we paradoxically will continue to find a reason
to live. It is our inability to become satisfied that makes the virtues of
126 Culture and Education in Josef Piepers Tbollgbt
hope and humility possible in the Erst place. As creatures constructed on
the condition of hope, we seek things for their own sake but, by never
reaching them, we continue to have a reason to exist in our search for
knowledge and wisdom."
According to Pieper, philosophy is the search not for anyone type of
wisdom but one that is possessed by God. Contrary to modern philosophy,
Pieper argues that the direction of philosophy is toward theology as we
find in the classical and Christian tradition, although philosophy should
never become a theology itself. We seek the wisdom of God because, as
the Creator of reality, His knowledge is comprehensive of all of reality's
essence. Philosophy seeks to understand reality from this single principle
even though it will never succeed (unless humans are turned into gods).
This does not mean that we will not be able to glean any wisdom or
knowledge from philosophy-some of it may be on loan to us from the
divine-but we will never believe, as some modern philosophers claim,
that we will possess a comprehensive account of all of reality. Instead
of pride and despair, we should follow the tradition of the ancients in
humility and hope in our philosophical quest."
This tradition started from time immemorial and was first articulated
in the West by Plato and Aristotle. Both of these thinkers spoke of ideas
and doctrines handed down to them from their forebears as part of
tradition. Unlike modern philosophy, with its narrative of progress and
rationality, classical and medieval philosophy was part of and was preceded
by a tradition of divine origins. Philosophy emerged from this tradition
of theology and consequently came after theology: it seeks to understand
the reality created by a God as accounted for and by theology. Although
the two disciplines are intimately bound with each other, they are separate
and different in function. The theologian is to preserve, defend, and clarify
tradition; the philosopher seeks knowledge that will be demonstrable of
things in and of themselves. One is concerned with the preservation of
the given; the other with how we experience and understand it."
To be a philosopher does not mean one has to be a Christian, accept
the Christian tradition, or believe that Christian philosophy is the only
philosophy; but, it does mean that "Christianity can only be replaced or
supplanted, in this respect, by another belief"?" In this sense, theology
must still be recognized whether one works within that tradition or against
it, as we find in modern philosophy. When philosophy is cut off entirely
Lee Trepanier 127
from theology, it becomes specialized and shriveled-up, even among
those who are purportedly Christian philosophers. The popularity of
postmodern thinkers like Heidegger and Derrida is that their challenging
questions come from a theological source: What is purpose of existence?
What is the nature of reality? What something as opposed to nothing?
Theology for Pieper, therefore, is not a tradition passed down that is
studied dispassionately but it is how we encounter reality in a meaningful
and experiential way. It is the questioning of who we are, our place in
the world, and the world itself as related to divinity itself. All philosophy,
Christian or otherwise, is characterized by this constant questioning as
started from wonder and as shaped by hope."
The only possible advantage that Christian philosophy possesses over
its rivals is the possibility that it sees a greater truth about reality-that the
real character of reality is mysterious: ''And this is the claim of Christian
philosophy: to be truer-in its very recognition of the mysterious character
of the world."34 For the Christian, the role of faith hinders the desire for a
clear and transparent account of reality because it widens the horizons of
reality of which he or she studies. To account for a reality with the divine is
a more difficult task than to account for a reality without one. Philosophy
is more complicated for the Christian because its range of study is wider.
For the Christian, this does not make philosophy a tragic enterprise but
rather a comedic one because philosophy is structured by the virtue of
hope rather than certainty in its quest to understand the world."
Christian philosophy is enriched by incorporating both reason and
revelation into its account. Its power resides in its willing to expand and
complicate the horizon of study as something ultimately mysterious;
and its attraction rests in the fact that it is not necessary for Christian
salvation. Philosophy is a type of gift given to us: it "is as necessary and
as superfluous as the natural perfection of the human being,':" Although
we have a natural inclination to philosophize, we are not required to do
so for Christian salvation. Philosophy is a type of gift or loan to us from
tradition and the divine. The fact that we need it for human perfection
but not for Christian salvation is one of the great paradoxes and mysteries
of Christian reality.
According to Pieper, Christian philosophy rejects the doctrines,
dogmas, and ready-made answers of theology, for Christianity is essentially
a rea~ty. The problem of a Christian philosophy therefore does not:
128 Cllilllre and Edncatiou iIlJOJI!/ Pieper's Tbollc~bl
... Iie in harmonizing natural and supernatural knowledge
theoretically; nor does it consist in the choice of method to be
adopted to that end. The point is that a man's existence should be
so deeply rooted in the Christian reality, that his philosophy, too,
should become, as a result, Christian."
To become a Christian is to change ontologically in the sense we are open
to more aspects of reality than before. The Incarnation, Crucifixion, and
Resurrection of Jesus Christ are not dogma to be learned and recited
but are part of an existential reality to which we become and relate. It is
knowledge per connaturalitatem (participatory knowledge) as opposed to
per cogniti01lem (conceptual knowledge). It is to accept the mysteries and
paradoxes and reality as they reveal themselves to us.
Pieper's conception of Christian philosophy is one that recognizes
philosophy as a type of gift from God to us in order to perfect but
necessarily to save our nature. By expanding the horizons of our study, to
incorporate the divine into our account of reality, we have complicated our
task to know the world; and, yet, we are hopeful that we will succeed. To
practice Christian philosophy therefore is first to recognize our relationship
to reality as both participatory and conceptual and allow reality to reveal
itself to us in all of its aspects: human, divine, and other. Once we see
reality in all its features, we will realize that Christian philosophy provides
us a way to understand it and our place within it.
III
This particular conception of Christian philosophy leads to a particular
conception of the education that is liberal in nature. By liberal, we mean
an education with a view to the whole of life that is non-utilitarian so that
we realize our intellectual and spiritual nature. Unlike vocational education,
which seeks to fit students into a particular function in the economy, liberal
education lasts an entire person's lifetime. The liberally educated person
does not become obsolete as certain training and technology becomes less
valuable over time. The benefits of liberal education continue to accrue
throughout one's lifetime as long as one lives a life of leisure.
Leisure is the philosophical act that provides us the opportunity to
learn. As Aristotle states:
Nature herself, as has often been said, requires that we should be
able not only to work well, but to use leisure well; for, as I must
T .re Trepanier 129
repeat once and again, the first principle of all action is leisure ...
It is clear, then, that there are branches of learning and education
which we must study with a view to the enjoyment of leisure, and
these are to be valued for their own sake."
To enjoy leisure properly is to become liberally educated: to study things
for their own sake. Liberal education therefore is not definable in terms
of a particular subject; rather, it is an approach to learning-and more
broadly an approach to reality-that defines liberal education. Whether
we study something for its own sake or for utilitarian ends, whether we
begin from a place of wonder or from doubt, whether we end in hope or
despair determines the character of the education we pursue.
Now to study something for its own sake means to study something
as it reveals itself to us as we participate in the process of learning.
The end of liberal education is not utility, be it economic, political, or
even pedagogical. The purpose of liberal education is to engage in the
philosophical act as we participate in a reality about which we contemplate.
It is not the mastery and transmission of particular bodies of knowledge.
Knowledge is a by-product rather than the objective of liberal education.
Learning becomes derailed when pedantic know-it-alls are produced rather
than eager students open to the mysteries of reality or when the outcomes
of education are to be assessed mathematically rather than evaluated
prudentially. The pedantic approach to education seeks a mastery of
material instead of an openness to an unending process.
The aim of liberal education is to transform the mind and character
of the student so he or she will become a different type of individual
who will be able to bring insight that draws from various disciplines to
particular complex issues and exercise prudential judgment as a person
and as a citizen. However, a liberal education is not enough to transform
the entire person, as Pieper recognizes. Education by itself cannot be the
means for moral improvement; rather, culture, of which education is a
part, is the mode to improve our character. For Pieper, culture as rooted
in divine worship was not only the foundation of western civilization but
the means by which we cultivate and educate our young. To change our
culture is to change our children's education.
There are several obstacles in contemporary culture that impede the
cultivation of character and liberal education. I only want to sketch out a
few of them which I think are the most important. The first is the political
130 Cllltllre and Edacation ill.Jo.ref Piepers Thought
community. Although Aristotle argued for an education that studies things
for their own ends, he also recognized the demands of the state:
Of all things I have mentioned, that which most contributes to the
permanence of constitutions is the adaptation of education to the
form of government. .. No one will doubt that the legislator should
direct his attention above all to the education of youth, or that the
neglect of education does harm to the states. The citizen should
be shaped to suit the form of government under which he lives."
Education has a two-folded purpose: the pursuit of learning and the
pursuit of political ends. The desire to know and the call of citizenship
are not necessarily identical. Citizenship education is not necessarily the
same as liberal education.
This matter becomes even more complicated when the state involves
itself in the education of its young. On the one hand, the state has a
legitimate concern to make sure its children are suited for its political
life, otherwise chaos and strife will result; on the other hand, a state
educational system may churn out loyal but illiberal citizens. The demands
of the political community are inexorable, but so are the demands of
liberal education. It is important to recognize the tension between the
exigencies of the state and the self-sustaining life of liberal education.
Both sides have legitimate claims to the life of the person: the existence
of the state with its citizens is as important as a commitment to a life of
leisure. Whether and how this conflict can be resolved is one of the great
themes and obstacles in liberal education.
If the political demands of the state are as old as classical antiquity,
then the lure of the marketplace is as new as mass education. Although
servile education has always existed as a competitor to its liberal counterpart
since time immemorial, it has acquired a novel form that makes it more
insidious and dangerous. As universities have expanded into small city-
states to meet the demands of the marketplace and politics, the conditions
for liberal learning have become lost. The ideal setting for learning is the
seminar, with a few students and a teacher where spontaneous questions
and answers can arise. This environment has been replaced with the
mass lecture hall or online technology because these are most efficient
and effective methods to reach students, i.e., profitable to the university.
The notion that a university would deliberatively downsize is probably
unthinkable to most people in higher education.
J .ce Trepal/ier 131
To compound this problem, teachers at some institutions are not
encouraged to teach but instead are instructed and incentivized to engage
in scholarship and grant-seeking. The result is that students are no longer
seen as people to whom a tradition is passed down but, at best, consumers
of courses and, at worst, nuisances that gobble up valuable research time.
The research ideal has become the preeminent paradigm of the leisurely
life because the production of scholarship is akin to the production of
work from other professions in the marketplace. Whereas the evaluation
of teaching is ultimately subjective and therefore one can never come to
agreement about it, scholarship gives the appearance of objectivity because
it is quantifiable. Like hours billed, scholarship becomes the justification
of teachers' existence.
The need for universities to justify themselves not only to the state but
to society requires the implementation of the marketplace ideology in the
university. Activities that once had a human dimension are reduced to cost-
benefit and efficiency-production analyses in order to justify themselves
to various administrators and eventually to society itself. Teaching is no
longer conceived as a mentors hip and initiation into a tradition but as
a process that can be measured and manipulated for certain outcomes
that are mathematically-defined; and scholarship, as previously said,
becomes a form of productive work instead of contemplative assent.
The institutionalization of the marketplace ideology in the university has
redirected the life of leisure to the world of work.
This is not to deny the importance of institutionalization, for learning
itself requires a discipline and orderly procedure. Human beings, by nature
social and rational, require the order of rules and regulations, such as class
schedule, curriculum changes, and the conferring of degrees. But when the
institutional character of learning prevails, especially when paired with an
ideology of the market, then the aims of liberal education become loss
even if those other objectives are worthwhile. When the university arranges
itself for the production of research, the highest student enrollment, and
the mathematical and uniform assessment of learning outcomes, we know
that the spontaneity of wonderment, which is the starting point of all
genuine learning, is shoved aside and subordinated to these other concerns.
Part of the impetus to institutionalize education is that we are heirs
to a long and deep intellectual tradition. We are often rightly proud of
this tradition, even when there are aspects of it that we are opposed to,
132 e"/t,,re and Edncatiou ill .1osif Piepers Tbollgbt I.Le Trepanier 133

13 Ibid., 48-50.
but we must learn it anew in the form of a tradition handed down to
" Ibid., 50-52.
us. Unlike other animals with their instinctual knowledge, we must learn
" Ibid., 52.
from the beginning, This tradition, therefore, has to be classified and 1(, Ibid., 63-66.

17 Ibid., 72-77.
organized to make learning it more effective and efficient. Although this
18 Ibid., 77-80; 78-79, 69-71.
is required for learning, it can also lead to a fossilization of our knowledge
19 Ibid., 82.

where we can know a tradition but not learn it. We see this happen in 20 Ibid., 82-83.

the great intellectual revolutions in the West, where medieval philosophy, 21 Ibid., 83.

22 Ibid., 83-87.
becoming petrified to the point of talking about angels on a pin head,
2J Ibid., 90-91.

is replaced with the Enlightenment and its then contemporary concerns 2< Quoted in Ibid., 93.

of tolerance, representation, and commerce. As we should guard against 25 Ibid., 93-94.

2(, Ibid., 88-89.
the over-institutionalized university life, we should also be wary of the
27 Ibid., 95-97, 100-107.
fossilization of our tradition. 2' Ibid., 109-111, 104-105.

These are the obstacles that confront us in reclaiming the life of 29 Ibid., 110-113.

)0 Ibid., 113-116.
leisure and, more specifically, a renewal in Christian philosophy. For Pieper
)1 Ibid., 118-123.
during his time, Christian philosophy was not a tradition known but not )2 Ibid., 124.

learned: it was not a collection of doctrines, dogma, and ready-made )) Ibid., 124-126.
answers (although these things have a role in the Christian life). Christian )' Ibid., 128.
)5 Ibid., 128-130.
philosophy was a specific reality rooted in a specific culture-a culture ). Ibid., 132.
that was characterized by leisure. What we see in Pieper is the attempt to )7 Ibid., 133; also see 128.
renew our culture that blows away the fossilization and institutionalization )R Aristotle, Politics, VII 1.3.
)9 Ibid., V.9; VIII.J.
of learning and challenges the marketplace and state in defining what it
means to be human. Pieper in essence is calling us to renew the world as
it is: to readjust our relationship to reality so we know how to live the life
of leisure. It is simply to see the world both liberally and philosophically
such that we can participate in the divine wisdom of reality as started by
wonder and ended by hope.
Notes
1 Pieper, Josef. Leisure as the Basis of Culture (Indianapolis: Liberry Fund, 1952), 6-10.
2 Ibid., 8, 11.
J Ibid., 14.

4 Ibid., 15.

5 Ibid., 16-17.
(,Ibid., 17-20, 31.
7 An example of this rype of thinking, with an argument opposed to it, can be found

in Crawford. Shop Class as Sou/craft (New York: Penguin Groups, 2009).

8 Pieper. Leisure, 26-30.

9 Ibid., 32; 23-26, 29-32.

10 Ibid., 33-40.

11 Ibid, 41-44.

12 Ibid., 44-47.