Looking for Good Work: From Matthew Crawford to Pope Francis via Wittgenstein

Abstract

In Catholic Social Teaching, work is a meaningful arena of human life. Yet while work can uplift the human personality, poorly imagined work does damage to the soul. While this fact is represented in one way by empirical studies, here I take a different approach, one grounded in Wittgenstein’s insight that conceptual confusions arise from a failure to attend adequately to the variety of uses of language. Specifically, I use Wittgenstein in tandem with the writing of Matthew Crawford to display how fantasies regarding work are generated, leading to degrading jobs. These fantasies have a close relationship to what Pope Francis has called “the technocratic paradigm.” I claim that this alternative form of inquiry about work is best understood as an example of the study of ‘ethics’ and specifically an ethics of character.