Leisure As the Basis of Democratic Culture?
“The County Election” - George Caleb Bingham, 1854
Democratic culture appears in decline.
Despite the media’s attention to student activism since 2015, “disillusionment and despair” characterize young Americans’ outlook on politics and society.[1] Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote Demons in a similar social milieu, imagining the consequences of political and moral nihilism in 1860s Russia.
More risk-averse than previous generations, graduates today are thoroughly careerist. Personal goals and ambitions increasingly trump political ones.[2] If you were to ask members of Gen X or Millennials why they are not joining their parent’s organizations, or why they are not getting involved in politics, the answers range from ‘What would be the point?’ to ‘I don't need any more on my plate.’
The answers hold a common underlying view; that participation in democracy, in politics, is work, which Americans already have far too much of. To Josef Pieper, the extension of work into our political life would be troubling.
Josef Pieper, the philosopher who wrote Leisure: The Basis of Culture, spoke of the coming world of total work. Industriousness becomes the crowning virtue. Publicly and often, meritocrats, celebrities, and athletes (social elites) profess their commitment to the ‘grind’. All activities become justifiable as work; we work on ourselves, on our relationships, on our tans.
Invited by a regnant bourgeois culture which cultishly esteems ‘work’ or ‘effort’, this was the American future Pieper foresaw. Pieper argues that without an understanding of leisure and its place in relation to work in our lives, we cannot properly work. Work becomes tiresome in its totality. When instead of working to live (to have moments of leisure as Pieper would say), we begin living to work, we have lost our concept of leisure.
Unlike work, the goal of leisure is best left ill-, if at all, defined. In the age of technocratic governance, with its emphasis on results, on ‘deliverables’ and ‘value propositions’, this seems impracticable. For members of a generation whose lives are over scheduled, for many since birth, this principle for leisure is near impossible to wrap one’s head around.
“Be at leisure- and know that I am God”
Why is a proper conception of leisure so important? Pieper declares that “leisure has been, and always will be, the first foundation of any culture.” It is the capacity for receiving which “effortlessly” invites “the highest realizations of moral goodness.” [3] Without the spirit of leisure, the authenticity, the virality that animates society in the form of culture is lost.
But is work not required for the maintenance of democracy, for societal advancement?
At first glance, the “incessant activity” de Tocqueville describes in Democracy in America does sound like work. In a democracy, stability and order are maintained only when “the bulwarks of influence” are being constantly “ground down to the fine and shifting sand which is the basis of democracy.” [4]
Yet the zeal for public administration de Tocqueville describes in the New England towns does not make political activity seem like work. The townspeoples’ participation in politics was voluntary and a source of joy. It was considered neither self-flagellant nor tiresome to be on committees, to serve as a ‘selectman’. Put differently, political engagement was activity born from a spirit of leisure. It follows naturally that the municipal bodies were “alive and supported by public spirit.”
Pieper’s concept of leisure, as an attitude of the mind and condition of the soul, endorses this disposition, or ‘way of doing’ which de Tocqueville describes. Leisure is “a space of freedom, of learning,” as the practice of democratic politics should be.[5]
De Tocqueville emphasizes that “freedom and stability” are the keys that enable citizens to have active political lives. Put differently, ‘active citizens’ are those who have leisure time to be politically engaged. In our increasingly competitive world of total work, there is scant time for personal (inwardly focused) leisure, and even less time for proper (leisurely) political activity.
By undermining our understanding and ability to be at leisure, work has undermined democratic culture. De Tocqueville says succinctly; “Although a democratic government is founded upon a very simple and natural principle, it always presupposes the existence of a high degree of culture.”
To reinvigorate democratic culture in America, we must revisit our understanding and practice of leisure, before it is annihilated by the world of total work. Besides an increase in overall happiness, a rebirth of civil society, of local administration; of federalism, of democracy, will result.
[1] Jonathan Zimmerman, Campus Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know®, (Oxford University Press, 2016): 111.
[2] Jonathan Zimmerman, Campus Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know®, (Oxford University Press, 2016): 21.
[3] Pieper, Josef. Leisure: The basis of culture. Ignatius Press, 2009. 59.
[4] Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America: The Striking Characteristic of the Social Condition of the Anglo-Americans in Its Essential Democracy.
[5] Pieper, Josef. Leisure: The basis of culture. Ignatius Press, 2009. 57.