The summer months can put one's impulses into slow gear. And
although I'm perfectly fine with kicking back to recharge the battery, I find
the battery can be regenerative if one affirms reality on a regular basis. We
really don't need a summer holiday if we're resting in God, because that's one
heck of a permanent vacation. Not to mention all the grief you avoid by not
having to deal with the Route 95 or the TSA.
Josef Pieper wrote much about the topic of
leisure. But he was not thinking about the idea of kicking back at all. His
take is we all need leisure to contemplate significant matters. “Ratio as the
decisively human activity was contrasted with the intellectus, which had to do
with what surpasses human limits.” And its this intellectus that needs to
be cultivated in man. Obviously our weekly and annual holy days are ultimately
designed for this purpose, although so few engage them as such.
I recall attending a philosophy meetup dominated by secular-minded
people who actually covered the topic of leisure, and brought in Josef Pieper’s
work. Sadly, few understood Pieper’s premise at all. I suppose how could they,
seeing that they did not believe anything surpasses human limits.
Instead, many advocated this for more lefty pursuits around social
justice or educational systems that would support such thinking. One Sanders
supporter even said something about how free college and more free time would
create a new Marxist revival. Doh!
Pieper says, “now leisure is not there for
the sake of work, no matter how much new strength the one who resumes working
may gain from it; leisure in our sense is not justified by providing bodily
renewal or even mental refreshment to lend new vigor to further work - although
it does indeed bring such things!”
So ultimately, it is an end to itself. Because “that which has its
meaning and purpose in itself, that which is itself purpose, cannot be made the
means for some other purpose, just as someone cannot love a person “for
such and such” or “in order to do such and such!”
Thomas Aquinas once said the reason why the philosopher can be
compared to the poet is that both are concerned with wonder. Our wonder, like
the innocence of a child, offers us an appreciation for things in themselves,
rather than aiming for practicality or an agenda.
And to truly “philosophize means… to direct one's view toward the
totality of the world.” And this includes all things seen and unseen, meaning
it is directed to the source of all things. Hence, philosophy becomes a
relationship to spirit and all its creation. Otherwise, you are just giving life
short shrift.
So leisure is the starting place and the
ending place, where your entire being is orientated to your source without
being given all the answers. And somehow that’s okay. Pieper really nails it
when he says:
“But philosophy does not become simpler by embracing the norm of Christian revelation. Instead...it becomes truer, more faithful to reality. What revealed truth brings to philosophical thinking is a creative and fruitful opposition. Christian philosophy sets a higher task for itself. Christian philosophizing differs, by having to withstand a force exceeding the realm of mere rational difficulties. Christian philosophy is more complicated because it does not permit itself to arrive at "illuminating" formulations through ignoring, selecting, or dropping certain areas of reality; and this is because, placed in a fruitful state of unease through its glimpse of revealed truth, it is compelled to think more spaciously and, above all, not to be content with the superficiality of any rationalistic harmony. Christian philosophy is different because of this splashing and foaming of the soul's breakers against the cliff of the divine Truth.”
And so here’s your summer mantra:
