The Concept of Work in the History of European Philosophy

By the Sweat of Your Brow

Gene Callahan

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9783031965463
• eBook ISBN: 9783031965470
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Economics

This volume offers a historical overview of philosophical thinking about work in a Western context.

While philosophy has for a long time been interested in the liberative aspects of politics, including justice, liberty or equality, and there are also major philosophical works on the culture of play, the topic of work seems to have escaped philosophy’s primary focus. This is surprising as since the middle of the 19th century the world of work has been at the centre of political struggle and social conflict.  This collection of essays on how major European thinkers have conceptualised work aims to fill this gap and provides the first concise, yet substantial history of philosophical ideas about work.

The Concept of Work in the History of European Philosophy is essential reading for all scholars, researchers and advanced students of the history of philosophy. It is also ideal for scholars in related fields such as organisational theory and the history of economic thought.

Table of contents

• Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism
• The Concept of Work in the History of European Philosophy
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Plato and Aristotle on Craft and Craftsmen
• 3. New Testament
• 4. Thomas Aquinas on Work
• 5. The Spiritualization of Work: Luther and the Dual Vocation
• 6. Creation, Fall, and (Technological) Redemption: Francis Bacon on Work and Man’s Right over Nature
• 7. John Locke: Ownership from Labor
• 8. Adam Smith and the Division of Labor
• 9. Hegel on Labor
• 10. Labor of Love: Kierkegaard on Vocation
• 11. The Abolition of the Division of Labor in the Work of Karl Marx
• 12. The Protestant Hypothesis and the Spirit of Weber
• 13. Giovanni Gentile and the “Humanism of Labor”
• 14. Mises: The Disutility of Labor
• 15. The Woman’s Soul as “Shelter”: Edith Stein on the Work of Women
• 16. Michael Oakeshott and the “Deadliness of Doing”
• 17. Leisure and Work in Josef Pieper’s Philosophical Anthropology
• 18. Hannah Arendt on the Triumph of homo faber and the Fragility of Human Action
• 19. MacIntyre on Work as a Practice
• 20. Some Contemporary Issues in the Philosophy of Work
• 21. The New Natural Law Theory and the Basic Human Good of Work
• Index1