The Dualities of Work

Abstract

For it is still probable that the enormous changes of the industrial revolution behind us and the even greater changes of the atomic revolution before us will remain changes of the world, and not changes in the basic condition of human life on earth. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition1 Work is not a topic about which philosophers have traditionally had very much to say.2 Moreover, one might expect that philosophers, at least those who earn their living by philosophy, might themselves have a somewhat one-sided or idealized view of work. Certainly the experience of philosophical and academic is likely to consist much more in an experience of as a form of creative activity than simple labor-for the academic, work is often not so much that by which one must support oneself and one's family (though it is that also), as a body of writing or research, a form of self-expression, a part of oneself (which is undoubtedly one factor in the enormous difficulty many academics feel in the face of the changing character of the academic environment that has occurred in recent years). Yet, of course, for a great many, perhaps the majority of people, is experienced much more as labor than as involving any form of creativity. For instance, in his Introduction to his book Working-a collection of interviews with Americans about their experience of work-Studs Terkel writes: This book, being about is, by its very nature, about violence-to the spirit as well as to the body. It is about ulcers as well as accidents, about shouting matches as well as fistfights, about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around. It is, above all (or beneath all), about daily humiliations. To survive the day is triumph enough for the working wounded among the great many of us. ... It is about a search, too, for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for daily recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than topor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying. Perhaps immortality, too, is part of the quest. To be remembered was the wish, spoken and unspoken, of the heroes and heroines of this book.3 Here seems to present itself as having a truly dual face: it is experienced as something to be avoided, as a burden we would rather not bear, as oppressive and sometimes exploitative, as a cause of illness, stress and even despair; it is also something that many of us find to be an absolutely essential part of our livesand not merely for financial reasons, but rather something that is a source of self-definition and self-fulfillment, that dignifies and empowers. This seems well-expressed in terms of the way in which encompasses both labor and self-creativity. The former is understood as an activity that enables what is necessary for the sustaining of one's life; the latter is understood as it contributes to self-creation and articulation, as well as to one's sense of self-worth and self-esteem. While is what enables us to hold body and soul together, as the saying has it, we seek more from than just the means for physical subsistence. Work is also that by means of which we establish a world, and a place for ourselves within that world-it is that by means of which we gain a sense of who and what we are (hence the Marxist emphasis on as the primary mode of human interaction with the world). The duality of consists in the fact that all work-even the service-oriented that is characteristic of post-industrial economies-is, to some extent, a matter of labor, as well as being a means of creation and self-creation. Work as labor involves, one might say, a using up, a consuming, of self-indeed, to a certain extent, the more demanding and dangerous the in question, the more one might say one is consumed by it -while as creative activity involves a form of self-creation or self-formation. All might be said to have some element of both consumption and creation, although, in very many cases (certainly in the cases to which Terkel draws our attention and in those that will be of most interest here), it is the character of as labor that dominates-so much so that the possibility for such to provide a means of creation or self-creation is minimal or almost non-existent. …