Time, Leisure and Well-Being

Jiri Zuzanek

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367522834
• eBook ISBN: 9781317213147
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Time Management

The significance of work and leisure as elements of our social fabric have puzzled philosophers and social scientists for generations. This ambitious new study considers historical views of work and leisure alongside contemporary survey evidence about time-use and well-being.

Combining sophisticated theoretical analysis with empirical research, the book presents a contrarian argument that defines leisure as a serious and stimulating challenge rather than an unqualified benefit or good.

This is vital reading for anyone with an interest in the concept of time in the social sciences, work-life balance, organisational studies, or the history, philosophy, or sociology of work and leisure.

Part I
Leisure, work, and well-being through a historical lens

1 Leisure that never existed before: a historical perspective

According to Sebastian De Grazia, the notion of leisure owes its beginning to Ancient Greece. Leisure, he wrote, never existed before and only rarely afterward. The concept of leisure was given birth by Greek philosophers – Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus.

It is not just leisure which owes its origins to Greece. The history of Ancient Greece and Athens is part of the intellectual legacy, which forms Western civilization. It is surprising how social concerns, which troubled Plato and Aristotle, correspond with some of the problems which, under different circumstances, we face today.

A few words are, therefore, due about the historical context, in which the thought of Plato and Aristotle evolved and outside of which it cannot be fully understood.

Plato and Aristotle’s social and political views were formed in response to the deepening crisis of the Athenian polis at the end of the 5th century BC. This crisis followed a period of Athens’ political and social ascendance, which began with Solon’s democratic reforms (594 BC), was heightened by the victory of the Greek city-states in their war against Persia, and was crowned by the intellectual glory of the Golden Age of Athens (462–429 BC).

Solon’s reforms

In the beginning, power in Athens was held by the aristocracy. Solon’s reforms (639–559 BC) allowed Athens’ citizens to hold public office based on merit rather than heredity. Common people were given the power not only to elect officials but also to call them off. Free-born citizens were allowed to be part of the popular Assembly, to serve as jurors, and to file appeals to a popular court. Solon abolished the laws that allowed wealthy landowners to sell debtors as slaves. According to Plutarch, Solon admitted that his laws may not have been ideal, but they were the best the Athenians would accept.

Solon implemented changes, for which he could master consensus; his seemingly restrictive regulations were founded on a desire to protect the polis from extremes. In short, Solon was a realist. By introducing what we would call today limited democracy, he was able to lay ground to a relatively safe social system that sustained Athens’ economic well-being and political stability at the time of its greatest trial – the war against Persia.

Greco-Persian Wars

The period between 492 and 449 BC was critical in the history of Greek city-states. Their existence was threatened by Persia, which reached the apex of military and political power under Darius the Great (522–486 BC). The defence mounted by the Greek city-states overcame seemingly impossible odds. The battles of Marathon (490 BC), Thermopylae (480 BC), Salamis (480 BC), and Plataea (479 BC) became symbols of Greeks’ unparalleled courage and sacrifice in defending their independence and freedom. For centuries, students in Greece and around the world learned about the messenger, who brought to Athenians the news of Greeks’ victory at the plains of Marathon, or of the 300 Spartans, who fell in the pass of Thermopylae and are honoured by the famous epitaph: “Stranger, go tell the Spartans that we lie here – obedient to our duty”. It is no accident that Aeschylus, the great Greek tragedian, said that his accomplishments as a writer were nothing compared to being a veteran of Marathon.

One of the main factors contributing to Greece’s victory over Persia was the unity of the Greek city-states in the face of ominous danger. The truce between the two principal and most powerful city-states – Athens, whose strength lay in her fleet, and Sparta, which had the best-trained foot soldiers – assured Greeks’ triumph.

Victory in the Greco-Persian War allowed Athens to maintain its independence and protect its democratic institutions.

The Golden Age of Pericles

The Golden Age of Athens, which followed the victory of the Greek city-states over Persia (479 BC), encompasses the years when Pericles, perhaps the most accomplished statesman of Ancient Greece, was in power (462–429 BC). Pericles, who was born into an aristocratic family, identified early with the ideals of democracy. He stripped Areopagus, controlled by the aristocracy, of most of its powers, transferring them to the popular Assembly. The Assembly was given unprecedented power over the selections of officials. Thetes (Athenians without wealth) were allowed to occupy public office. To encourage citizens’ involvement in public affairs, a special salary was paid to jurors attending the courts.

Pericles was a man of immense persuasiveness and an orator of great power. His main accomplishments, apart from the democratic reforms, lay in strengthening Athens’ military power, increasing its wealth, and securing an unparalleled burst of cultural and intellectual activity. Under Pericles, Athens became the leading Greek city-state, both politically and culturally. It blossomed as a centre of education, arts, and culture. The greatest accomplishments in the areas of culture and philosophy were squeezed into half a century.

Artists and sculptors, playwrights and poets, architects and philosophers flocked to Athens. The greatest playwrights of Ancient Greece – Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes – wrote their tragedies and comedies at this time. Hippocrates, after whom the Hippocratic Oath is named, practiced medicine in Athens. Great philosophers – Socrates, Plato, Protagoras, and Anaxagoras – lived and taught in Athens. This was true of historians as well. Herodotus (484–425 BC) wrote in Athens his account of the Greco-Persian Wars. Thucydides (460–395 BC) completed here his masterpiece The History of the Peloponnesian War.

In short, Pericles brought to Athens the intellectual splendour and the standards of living that were never previously experienced. But the accomplishments of the Pericles’ rule were greatly marred by brewing tensions with Athens’ allies and an impeding conflict with its main rival – Sparta – which resulted, at the end of the Pericles’ rule, in an open conflict, known as the Peloponnesian War.

Peloponnesian War

According to the historian Thucydides, the expansion of Athens’ power was the main cause of the conflict that eventually swelled into the Peloponnesian War. By dominating and subjugating the rest of Greece, Athens became an empire. Foreign policies, adopted by Athens, antagonized its allies. Athens was interfering in the internal policies of her allies by siding with and supporting democratic parties. Athenian settlements were established on the territories of the ‘allied’ states. The use of Athenian currency was mandatory. Finally, in 447–446, the storm erupted, with many regions rising up against Athens. The war continued with varied success and ended in 404 with the destruction of the Athenian navy.

Athens’ pride and optimism were shattered. The new situation called for a political and intellectual response. Plato and Aristotle’s attempts to identify the causes of the deepening crisis and their suggestions how to address it aimed at maintaining Athens’ strength and protecting its values. Without the understanding of the challenges faced by the Athens from the end of the 6th century until the end of the Peloponnesian War, it might be difficult to understand Plato and Aristotle’s philosophical and political views, including their views of work and leisure.

Athens’ social strains

Apart from political and military wears inflicted by the Peloponnesian War, Athens faced mounting social challenges. Most of Athens’ problems grew, paradoxically, from the rise of its political, military, and economic power. Rising use of slave labour and cheap food imports from Greek colonies ruined small farmers. Military conflicts forced peasants to abandon their fields and seek refuge behind the city walls. The number of people who were unoccupied rose rapidly. They needed to be fed and entertained. The state had to find means to satisfy their needs, because “a mob of fed yet idle lumpen-proletarians, who did not know how to kill their free time, was no less dangerous than a crowd of simply hungry people” (Davydov, 1968: 145).

To maintain the support of the lower classes, Pericles instituted a system of subsidies, including food handouts and free entry to festivals and spectacles. Salaries were paid to citizens serving as jurors (according to some estimates there were over 6,000 of them in Athens). Paid jurors were thriving in an atmosphere obsessed with libel suits, denunciations, and trials, a situation that was mocked by Aristophanes in his play The Wasps. The value of equality was deprecated by the appointees’ ignorance.

The historian Thucydides, who praised Pericles for his personal integrity and judiciousness, pointed out that Pericles’ rule “was in name a democracy, but in reality, a government in the hands of the first man” (Book I, chapter V). Although Pericles’ legacy is praised and his name is associated with the Golden Age of Athens, one cannot overlook the fact that the end of his rule was marked by the decline of Athens’ strength. In spite of Pericles’ apology of Athens’ democratic values in his famous eulogy at the ceremonial burial of Athenians killed in the war with Spartans, Athens was defeated in the military conflict with Sparta.

Post-mortem of Athenian democracy

After Athens’ defeat in 404 BC, Thirty Tyrants, supported by Sparta, took control over Athens. In 401 BC, democracy was re-established. The next half a century (from 401 to 338 BC) was marked by continuing conflicts between Greek city-states, which often switched alliances and sought Persian help in fighting each other. The struggle between democrats and oligarchs continued, and both Athens and Sparta’s power declined. In one of his letters, Plato commented that this never-ending circle of strife was likely to destroy both factions – the tyranny and the democracy.

The disaccord between the city-states opened doors to Macedonia, which under the rule of Philip, father of Alexander the Great, subjugated Athens and other Greek city-states. Philip’s victory at Chaeronea (338 BC) was, sadly, the final blow to the weakened Athenian democracy, handed by an authoritarian king, whose son was tutored by Plato’s student and follower – Aristotle.

References

1. Aristotle (2009) The Politics and the Constitution of Athens. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
2. Davydov, Y. N. (1968) Iskusstvo kak sotsiologicheskij fenomen: K kharakteristike estetiko-politicheskikh vzgliadov Platona i Aristotelja. (Arts as a Sociological Phenomenon: Aesthetic and Political Views of Plato and Aristotle). Moscow: Nauka.
3. De Grazia, S. (1962) Of Time, Work, and Leisure. New York: Twentieth Century Fund.
4. Plutarch (110 AD) Parallel Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans. www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu.
5. Thucydides (2013) The History of the Peloponnesian War. Gutenberg eBook.

2 Was Plato a friend or a foe of leisure?

Discussion of major philosophical and social issues takes us usually back to Plato. In a UK survey of more than 1,000 philosophers, academics, and students, initiated by the Philosophers’ Magazine, Plato’s Republic was rate...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Leisure, work, and well-being through a historical lens
• Part II Leisure, work, and well-being today
• Conclusion
• Author Index
• Subject Index