Idleness as Play and Leisure
A Reflection on
Idleness: A Philosophical Essay
by Brian O’Connor•
J. S. Russell

Using Brian O’Connor’s Idleness: A Philosophical Essay as a point of departure, the author defends a conception of idleness as an expression of play andleisure. The author agrees with O’Connor that idleness constitutes an important and unduly denigrated human good, but not that it is best understoodas a distinctive sphere of human freedom. Instead, he argues, idleness would
be better considered a form of play and leisure, which he claims both offers
further support for the value of idleness and recognizes a neglected sphereof play and leisure. Key words: idleness, leisure; play; recreation

Idleness as such is by no means a root of evil; on the contrary it is truly adivine life, if one is not bored.
—Søren Kierkegaard

Although many among us are undoubtedly familiar with the practiceof idleness, very few will have thought systematically about it in any theoreticalor philosophical sense. It may be useful then to start with a couple of anecdotesthat underscore its worthiness as a subject of inquiry, one to be taken seriously
alongside such acknowledged weighty topics as play and leisure.
When I have mentioned to others that I was preparing a paper on idleness,a common, though not at all universal, reaction has been to assume I would be
writing about a vice, a sort of generally unhealthy state or condition that humans
need to avoid. When I point out how much being idle is actually a valued partof their own lives, say enjoying an unhurried coffee and a pleasurable read or aconversation over breakfast—or listening to music, hanging out with friends,
pottering in the garden, noodling on a musical instrument, going on walkabouts,
relaxing with a drink, watching TV, reading in bed, getting up slowly in themorning, taking in the autumn leaves or spring flowers, enjoying a long bath or
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American Journal of Play, volume 14, number 3 © 2022 by The Strong
Contact J. S. Russell at jrussell@langara.ca

Idleness as Play and Leisureshower, relaxing quietly at a friend’s cottage—the penny immediately drops. Still
the reactions often remain guarded: “Well, yes, but in moderation of course.” Ithen respond that, as a recently retired person, I am quite happily testing thelimits of the idleness-in-moderation hypothesis in all the aforementioned ways,
and in others besides. And this leads to another common response to my reports
of writing about idleness, which is that idleness is something to be sought andcelebrated, difficult to get enough of, and may be the ultimate good for humans.
Into these conjectures con and pro comes Brian O’Connor’s acute andrefreshingly succinct book, Idleness: A Philosophical Essay (O’Connor 2018),
timed just about perfectly to offer a philosophical guide for the enforced idleness of COVID pandemic living. His book contains, to my knowledge, the firstserious conceptual philosophical analysis of the phenomenon of idleness. Partof that analysis involves distinguishing it from concepts like play and leisure.
But O’Connor’s main purpose is not conceptual clarification. It is to defend
idleness as an important and unduly denigrated human good. He spends mostof his book responding to the many philosophical critics of idleness, focusing
mainly on likely targets among eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German
philosophers. Ultimately, O’Connor argues that idleness is a distinctive “formof freedom,” an expression of autonomy in which the “idle self is at home withitself,” though he does not endorse idleness as a way of life (2, 171–73, 186). As
such, idleness as a type of freedom is more authentically human in important
respects than more muscular versions of freedom found in philosophers like
Kant, Hegel, Schiller, and Marx.
In the interest of full disclosure, it may seem that I am part of the philosophical problem to which O’Connor responds. In a recent paper defending
human striving as a virtue, I stated in passing that idleness was one of the vices
opposed to it (Russell 2020). This loose speaking was an error I now mean tocorrect. (“Sloth” or “laziness” would have been better and more traditional terms
for a vice connected to failures of striving.) However, I left for later consideration
how prominent striving should be in human lives and noted that its ubiquity
and often unseen presence serve to underscore the importance of breaks fromit. This leads to a consideration of idleness. And, although I want to push backon some of O’Connor’s ideas, I am very much in agreement with him about thevalue of idleness and its importance in day-to-day life.
Contrary to O’Connor’s view, I doubt idleness is well described as a distinctive or special form of freedom or autonomy, although it requires freedom
and engages autonomy. Idleness as a human good is best characterized as an

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aspect of play and leisure. Each is characterized by its disengagement from work
and worldly affairs generally, although idleness is not concerned with worldly
achievement or status whereas some aspects of leisure and play can be. The goodof idleness is reflected in modest- or minimal-effort engagements whose value
lies in pleasures and delights associated with a heterogenous range of activities that are, broadly speaking, nonproductive in worldly terms. We might say
idleness is comprised, roughly speaking, of what an individual experiences as
simple and easy pleasures found commonly in amusements, entertainments,
some aesthetic experiences, bodily comforts and pleasures, companionship,
solitude, and fun in general.
I have no trouble recognizing idleness as a meaningful, indeed sometimes
enviable, way of life for some, although this is not to say it is a completely goodand self-sufficient way of life. This is no indictment of idleness, since it is notclear what, if anything, counts as a complete and self-sufficient way of life. But
the lives of certain social dropouts living in Walden-esque simplicity and the idle
rich living in places like Palm Springs and whose days are filled with golf, walks,reading, conversation, and good food arguably all have idleness as a meaningful
way of life.
Idleness is well described as a view of what is important that is different
than that held by many philosophers and nonphilosophers who place labor,
duty, and pursuit of excellence at the center of meaningful lives. Nevertheless,we shall see that idleness as play and leisure is not unconnected to more robust
philosophical prescriptions for meaningful lives and can presuppose them to adegree. Idleness can also be richer and more diverse than is sometimes thought.
My discussion, then, extends O’Connor’s treatment of idleness in ways thatfurther clarify its practice and role in human lives. O’Connor (2018) recognizes
that his defense of idleness has important practical and normative implications. He notes that the dominating forces of work and pursuit of status in our“idleness-excluding-world” often have tragic social costs for mental and physicalhealth and social stability (2–3). However, these issues are not explored in any
detail. Most of his book is a scholarly philosophical response to modern critics of idleness. It is useful for showing errors in treatments of idleness and forhighlighting intellectual sources of cultural resistance to it. Those discussions
are supported by an important attempt to clarify the concept of idleness itself.
O’Connor sees idleness as a distinctive phenomenon involving a relaxing or letting go of human personality characterized by the absence of guiding purposesand disciplined goal-directed activity (5–8, 175). This qualifies idleness as a form

Idleness as Play and Leisureor sphere of freedom to be contrasted with more robust exercises and conceptions of human personality and autonomy. Very few examples of idleness are
mentioned, however, and none is discussed systematically.
By contrast, I see idleness as a more life affirming and diverse phenomenon that is characteristically an expression of human personality and freedom
in familiar ways, even if it is a more subdued exercise of them that can include
the sort of de-escalation of the self that O’Connor has in mind. This position
emerges from a consideration of how idleness is practiced in human lives, often
as an accepted, if also underappreciated, source of value and meaning.
My point of departure is also conceptual. I begin by looking at the relationship between idleness and philosophical treatments of play and leisure, and I
argue that O’Connor passes over too quickly how idleness can be an aspect ofeach. The conceptual connections between idleness and play and leisure clarify
the nature and range of idle activities and show more clearly why idleness should
be—and indeed often is—valued as an important element in individual lives.
This analysis also shows how political conversations about making space foridleness in everyday life can be framed and how research into it can be undertaken in an informed way.

Making Sense of Idleness as a Human Good
Idleness should be regarded as a familiar aspect of play. O’Connor (2018) resists
any straightforward equation of idleness and play because of “an ambiguity”
about play. He acknowledges that play’s opposition to work and to being governed by necessity give it idle-like qualities (138). But he argues that there is an
ambiguity about play that “takes on the quality of higher necessity” associatedwith worldly achievements and productivity that is contrary to idleness (138–39).
A logical point needs to be made here. Assuming there is this specific ambiguity (which I shall challenge), the very notion of an ambiguity leaves open thepossibility of a meaningful conception of play under which idleness as a humangood falls. Rather than conclude that high-minded conceptions of play “voidthe very meaning of idleness” (139), O’Connor might have concluded that they
void or are at odds with a familiar and much more common conception of playthat includes idleness. As such, idleness properly understood can help us clarify
an important and not well-recognized aspect of play.
O’Connor is certainly right that play has been associated with higher neces-

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ends, so that humans can “live out their lives as what they really are” (804b).
O’Connor’s focus is on modern philosophers, and he chooses two others who
happily adopt similarly moralistic, virtue-driven accounts of play in ways thatare at least as peculiar as Plato’s. He argues that the purported aspect of play as ahigher necessity is contained in Fredrich Schiller’s account of play as the ultimate
realization of a unity in action of our physical and rational selves (O’Connor
2018, 143–45). It is also contained in Herbert Marcuse’s neo-Marxist argumentthat unalienated work is properly characterized as play. However, one clearly
open response to such discussions of play is that they represent misunderstandings and misuses of the concept. They tell us nothing about the ambiguity of playor any tension with the notion of idleness. Indeed, Plato’s own acknowledgmentthat his view of play is contrary to commonly held views (“the complete inversion of current theory”) suggests that it is question begging. That goes just as
strongly for Schiller’s and Marcuse’s views.
I have recently argued that play is frequently characterized by its cognitive,
practical, emotional, and moral disengagement from moral and perfectionist
ends and worldly pursuits in general, often in ways that are challenging to andsubversive of them (Russell 2018). In developing this position, I drew on Susan
Wolf ’s (1982) discussion of humor in her essay “Moral Saints” and the philosopher of humor John Morreall (2009) who explicitly associates humor with playin this sense.
Think of a comedy roast where the object is to embarrass the roastee withremarks designed first for laughs and not to say anything particularly true. Or
think of puns. Often regarded as the lowest form of humor, they challenge orsubvert the meanings and conventions of language and grammar for playful fun(Beck 2015). Cognitive, practical, emotional, and moral disengagement can also
be found commonly in children’s play, for example, in role playing and celebrating the actions of “bad guys.” See Mark Twain’s description of the bloodthirsty
posturings of Tom Sawyer’s band of robbers, to give one famous literary example.
Twain’s fictional episode is not a case of art exaggerating to make a point. Theorists and sociologists have extensively chronicled similar humorously gruesome
and hair-raising disengagement in children’s play. See in particular Brian SuttonSmith’s extensive career-long collection of children’s playground doggerel andIdleness as Play and Leisurestories. My favorite example from Sutton-Smith’s (2008) collection is from a
New Zealand schoolyard. It does not take second place to Tom Sawyer’s band.
On top of Mt. Egmont, all covered in sandI shot my poor teacher, with a grey rubber band
I shot her with pleasure
I shot her with pride
I couldn’t have missed her
She was 40–feet wide.
I went to her funeral
I went to her grave
Some people threw flowers
I threw a grenade
Her coffin went up, her coffin went down
Her coffin went splat all over the groundI looked in her coffin, she still wasn’t deadSo I got my bazooka and blew off her head (120).

Playful disengagement from moral and perfectionist ends is also common in sporting play where players and fans often take part in what I term“competitive shenanigans,” or behavior that is morally suspect but tolerated
and sometimes embraced, like some instances of gamesmanship or bendingor breaking the rules or deceiving umpires in ways that fall short of outrightcheating (Russell 2018, 213–19).
Philosophically, these examples all reflect Johan Huizinga’s (2014) classic
account of play as constituting a separate sphere of activity that “lies outside
morals” and falls outside worldly norms of “good and evil” (6). I do not offer
this here as a full account of play. Theorists and sociologists of play today widely
accept that play is a plural phenomenon (Sutton-Smith 1997; Feezell 2010). However, I have yet to discover among these authors any discussion acknowledging
Schiller’s or Marcuse’s accounts (or facsimiles) as one of them. More commonly,
they warn against accounts of play as progress that place its value in its use as
an instrument for realizing progressive ideals and overlook it as something alsovaluable in itself, for example, justifying participation in youth sports solely topromote social virtues and individual health (Sutton-Smith 1997, 2009). By
contrast, idleness as playful disengagement reflects familiar tensions of eachwith morality, personal well-being, and excellence. Idleness and play are values
that do not always align with progressive or worldly purposes.
Disengagement from worldly conventions, morality, pursuit of excellence,

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Thus, he says idleness is not geared toward productivity or achievement andexpresses a “freedom from . . . norms that are taken to gear us toward effective
action,” including moral constraints (181, 183). As such, idleness can sometimes
appear to subvert ways of life that prize “usefulness, competitive social identities,
or long-term discipline” (186).
O’Connor is on the right track about this, but these characteristics of idleness put it clearly in the sphere of play as disengagement. Play also helps explain
how idleness can serve as an engine for more worldly creativity, which is commonly claimed for it as an attribute (Hodgkinson 2004; Russell 1935). This isalso suggested by Sutton-Smith’s (1997) claim that the “quirkiness, flexibility,
and redundancy” of play is an analogue of biological variation and adaptation(221–31). Sutton-Smith calls this “adaptive variability.” He later argued that playincludes the genres of humor, skill, pretense, fantasy, risk, contest, and celebration (Sutton-Smith 1999). I would add idleness to the list.
Idleness is an extension of adaptive variation. It is quirky and redundantin relation to worldly pursuits. Its diverse—arguably indefinite—manifestations
illustrate its flexibility. As with play, the disengagement of idleness from worldly
constraints and pursuits allows a freedom to pursue self-discovery, novel experiences, and new perspectives, frequently in unstructured or open-ended activities
comparable to many games and other examples of play and leisure that can bewindows to creativity. As with the items in Sutton-Smith’s genres of play, idlenessas an aspect of play clarifies when it counts as a human good valued for its own
sake, since play is unalienated activity chosen for its own sake (Huizinga 2014,6). But idleness is alienated activity and not a human good when it is unwanted,
for example, when it comes from being bored with nothing to do, being forced
into prison, or simply not wanting to be idle and preferring to exercise one’s skills
but having no opportunity to do so. Call this “alienated idleness.”
This is all substantial evidence that idleness as a human good can be unambiguously an expression of one familiar, nonquestion-begging conceptionof play, roughly, play as unalienated disengagement from worldly norms andpursuits. I develop this argument further later in this article. Defenders of idleness as a human good should take up this association with play to improve its
reputation. Few will gainsay the value of play in this sense except prudes andmoralists, perhaps with Plato leading the way. Just as Plato, Schiller, and Marcuse
arguably enlist play to make worldly norms and ideals appear more palatable,
indeed as a sort of emancipation or ideal freedom, defenders of idleness canIdleness as Play and Leisurecharacterize its worth and attractiveness as an aspect of play qua emancipation
or freedom from worldly demands but without a question-begging use of theconcept of play.
Idleness also fits within Scott G. Eberle’s (2014) insightful attempt todevelop a unified definition of play. I am not sure Eberle accounts well for“primitive play,” discussed later, or for some subversive uses of play that arevalued for their own sake, and his is arguably a version of play as progress. But
his six elements of play are well taken and are familiar features of idleness inthe sense described here. Idleness in its nonalienated form is looked forward to(anticipated); involves novelty (surprises); can lead to discovery (curiosity); is
enjoyed for its own sake (pleasure); is a useful instrument for promoting insight(understanding). It can contribute to physical and mental health (strength) andcontribute to a sense of balance in life (poise). Most of these connections are evident or implied already, and they will become clearer in the ensuing discussion.
Idleness’s relationship with leisure deserves similarly critical consideration.
A discussion of Aristotle on leisure and play proves instructive because he helps
us draw out the issues clearly. Infamously for moderns, Aristotle argues that play
is not valuable in itself. Play is for the sake of work. In the Nicomachean Ethics
he says: “To exert oneself and work for the sake of amusement seems silly andutterly childish. But to amuse oneself in order that one may exert oneself seems
right” (Aristotle 2019, 1176b30). For Aristotle, play is a type of activity, a manner of relaxation undoubtedly including idleness, that restores us physically andmentally so we can get back to work and be productive.
Moderns see this as an embarrassing blunder by Aristotle. The philosopher
of games and play, Bernard Suits (2018), expresses this view when he says that
Aristotle gets it exactly wrong. We work to have the time and resources to play
and amuse ourselves for their own sake. But Aristotle’s views are interestingfor other reasons. For Aristotle, work and play are both means. We play for thesake of being able to work productively, and we work to have the wherewithal toengage in leisure activities that are ultimate ends for humans. Leisure is where
we have the opportunity to realize ourselves and become most fully human.
We should reject Aristotle’s purely instrumental view of play. Play can, ofcourse, have important instrumental value (as can idleness). But it is activity thatis rightly valued for its own sake and deserves to be regarded as a part of leisure.
If I am right that idleness as a human good is best understood as an aspect ofplay, then idleness, too, should be regarded as part of leisure and a place where
we can realize goods that are part of being fully human. Philosophical argument

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But O’Connor (2018) resists this association on the grounds that leisure
is best thought of as “an instrument, allowing us to cede temporarily from lifeshaping demands . . . [and] renew our capacity to perform” (7–8, emphasis
added). This view of leisure comes very close to Aristotle’s instrumental accountof play and faces the same objections. It is too narrow a conception of leisure.
The widely accepted modern view of philosophers and sociologists of play andleisure is that these are activities for which work is merely an instrument, that is,they are goods that are intrinsically valuable or that give meaning to human lives.
To be sure, “leisure” is used differently in different contexts by different leisure theorists. But I am not aware of it being used by them in the way O’Connor
describes. He arguably confuses leisure with what leisure theorists often term
“recreation,” which is valuable instrumentally for its socially recognized uses
either through self-improvement or its contribution to society (Cooper 1991).
More substantively for our purposes, further recent developments in leisuretheory, although they do not discuss idleness per se, arguably point to it within
the much discussed notion of “casual leisure,” which Robert A. Stebbins (1997)
has defined as “immediately, intrinsically rewarding, relatively short-lived pleasurable activity requiring little or no special training to enjoy it” (18–19; seealso Stebbins 2017). Stebbins recognizes that casual leisure can encompass play
activities, so his account is open to recognizing idleness as play and leisure.
O’Connor’s (2018) separation of idleness from play and leisure seems to bepart of an effort to identify idleness as a distinctive, maybe sui generis, sphere of
freedom from human institutions, including play and leisure, and more obviously work, politics, and seeking excellence. It is a sphere where we are not a sortof self that is the product of personal striving and social and moral demands.
Idleness is thus purportedly an implicit disavowal of the modern self. As such,
idleness is a special form of freedom or liberation from “the task of making
ourselves into integrated moral beings” (16). It “experiences no inner tension or
self-alienation . . . [and] feels no urgency to have a personality” (19).
A more plausible view of idleness is suggested in the division between workand leisure that emerges from a critical consideration of Aristotle’s view. Leisure
is freedom from work. It is having the opportunity and means to do things foroneself that one wants to do. It can involve serious pursuits, like knowledge,
fine arts, or athletic excellence (Stebbins 2017), or it can involve play, including

Idleness as Play and Leisurecasual types of leisure and play like playing games for fun or choosing to be idle.
These choices are free and the activities are chosen for their own sake, at leastin part, or they are not truly leisure. As such, they are unalienated expressionsof freedom and autonomy.
Idleness is better regarded as an expression of freedom when it is part ofleisure and play and chosen or experienced for its own sake and not as a standalone type of freedom and autonomy. O’Connor is right that idleness is treatedbadly and is at odds with certain conceptions of the self found in some modern philosophers and in a culture focused on productivity and moral progress.
However, his characterization of idleness discounts familiar features of the selfthat are not so demanding or oppressive and fit within modern conceptions ofleisure and play also found readily both in philosophy and our culture. Neither
is as at odds with idleness, as a reading of O’Connor suggests.
Perhaps a main reason O’Connor resists the association of idleness andleisure is that leisure in my sense (and in Aristotle’s) is a goal-directed activity.
Climbing a mountain or learning a musical instrument are commonly usesof leisure, but they are goal-directed activities that typically involve too much
effort to be idle. O’Connor (2018) uses what he calls “cultural tourism” as ameans of self-improvement as another example (7–8). He significantly rejects
goal-directed action as an aspect of idleness. Thus, he begins his descriptionof idleness by saying it is “experienced activity that operates according to no
guiding purpose” (5). This needs qualification. It can often seem as if idlenesshas no guiding purpose, especially to others who find its activities meaningless or nonproductive or both. But if the examples I gave at the outset describe
idleness, it is not difficult to find guiding purposes present. Idleness aims at
pleasure, entertainment, fun, serendipity, solitude, aesthetic experience, andcompanionship, all of which might be found spending the day lounging at thebeach with friends or just sitting “watching the wheels go round and round,”which was given as a guiding purpose by John Lennon in one of his many odes
to idleness. In my own case, I have a ritual that I look forward to each evening ofsitting up in bed before going to sleep just to be quiet for a time. Solitude can bea related type of idleness that has as its guiding purpose quietly being alone andengaged with oneself or one’s surroundings. Great idlers like Lennon generallyfind guiding purposes in pursuing what I described earlier as simple and easy
pleasures. These can all count as leisured time or play. It is easy to miss theseguiding purposes given their lack of connection to worldly aims and pursuits
and their principally internal nature, but they exist nevertheless.

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namely, that the activity is not aimed at productivity, does not involve “disciplined self-monitoring,” and so is not involved with performance or achievement
or gaining social status (6, 8). But even these conditions need some qualificationand clarification.
Consider self-monitoring. Experiencing idleness fully arguably requires
a sense of freedom from an awareness of internal and external pressures. Thisis apparently what O’Connor means when he says that idleness “is a feeling of
non-compulsion and drift” (5). This is an astute observation. Daydreaming is
like this, and so is reading a book where readers just let the printed page takethem wherever it goes. Even so, idleness can involve an important degree ofself-monitoring. My candidate for the best description in verse of idleness asplay and leisure makes exactly this point. It is expressed in the lyrics from Paul
Simon’s 1966 “59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovey)” where Simon admonishes himself “slow down, you move too fast” so he can have a carefree morning“just kickin’ down” New York streets.
Idlers need to take care—to self-monitor—to take their time and not feelpressures impinging on their activities. Idleness can involve effort and evenpractice. It can also include self-monitoring to create circumstances where there
are no evident external pressures either. As Simon puts it in the final verse of
his song, he has “no deeds to do, no promises to keep,” so that he can enjoy
the experience of “feelin’ groovy.” Feelin’ groovy is regrettably an anachronism
today, but I suspect it aptly picks out a main psychological marker of idleness.
The word “carefree” is perhaps the prosaic expression of the same.
Self-monitoring by slowing down to be in the moment and being able
to “let it go,” as Lennon says in the song mentioned earlier, suggest that idling
contains modest elements of striving qua effort to respond to challenges to its
goals and even to require resilience as a response to the setbacks idling faces
from a mind cluttered with internal or external pressures. Striving and resilience
neatly fit the model of Aristotelian character virtues (Russell 2015, 2020), so
there is an interesting connection that exists between idleness and virtue as ameans of realizing it.
Lennon’s and Simon’s songs thus also make a case for idleness as an achievement, as does master idler Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 injunctions in his fabledaccount of living off the grid on Walden Pond : “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity”
and “simplify, simplify.” But even where there is no evident striving, idleness isarguably an achievement. Take someone who is enjoying some moments of easy

Idleness as Play and Leisurecompanionship, say, just silently sitting together or holding hands or listening
to music with a friend or spouse, compared with someone who has severe cognitive loss and is sitting idly with the same spouse or friend. The person withcognitive loss can lack the sort of self that can be aware of and enjoy these sorts
of moments of idleness.
Such examples show that even the simplest, apparently effortless instancesof idleness are important achievements of a self that are denied to some. They
are also productive activities in the sense that they are uses of time and resourcesto achieve valued ends, even if they are not worldly ends. It is an anti-idling
prejudice and a question-begging assumption to define productivity exclusively
in worldly terms. This needs emphasizing to support idleness as a good andto help answer its detractors. Again, a closer analysis of the circumstances of
idleness reveals stronger connections to leisure and play that can be associatedwith achievement and grounded in a familiar idea of selfhood as a more or lesscognitively intact person. An idle person rather than “feeling no urgency about
having a personality,” as O’Connor (2018, 19) says, may in part be explicitly or
implicitly rejoicing or meditating about having a personality. It is noteworthy
that these moments are often heightened by being shared with others which isitself a sort of social achievement that reflects valuing of relations with others,
our social capacities, and who we are more generally. The social aspect of idleness is also characteristic of play (Eberle 2014). We might then revise O’Connor’s
account to say that idleness is properly an achievement but one that has no
guiding worldly purposes.
Perhaps the claim that idleness can be an achievement will be resisted
because it involves little difficulty or effort. My response is twofold. First, as thereferences to Simon, Lennon, and Thoreau show, achieving idleness frequently
involves effort and difficulty. Second, it takes significant time and resources—money, and planning in our culture—to produce and maintain a healthy self
and to create the circumstances in which one can enjoy being idle in a sustainable way even if there is no striving in the moment of idleness. As with many
human goods, idleness also requires a measure of luck—for example, favorablesocial circumstances and a healthy physical and mental constitution—that canbe challenging to sustain.
Perhaps some will also answer that a number of these examples of idlenessare too inactive to count as play (though they would still be exercises of leisure).
But play in itself often involves minimal activity and effort, for example, whenchildren watch handfuls of sand slip through their fingers at the beach or when

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someone aimlessly twists a lock of hair. If these count as play, it is no stretch to
say that experiencing moments lazing quietly at the beach or elsewhere alone orwith friends constitutes play, too. Watching the wheels is an adult analogue ofchildren watching sand slip through their fingers. These all seem to be examplesof what Suits (1988) usefully refers to as primitive play, specifically play that
does not require exercise or pursuit of any significant skill. It is done just for thesake of enjoyable experience or stimulation. Suits offers the example of a baby
playing with water in a bath. Sutton-Smith (1970) makes a similar point about
what he terms “exploratory” and “testing” play for children, using splashing andpouring sand as examples.
A more common and familiar example of primitive play among older individuals would be enjoying “doing nothing.” Doing nothing should be understoodas a type of disengagement from worldly pursuits. It is characterized by a wide
range of primitive play activities—relaxing in bed or with a drink or with one’s
thoughts or without thoughts, sitting in the sun, kickin’ down the cobblestones,
quietly hanging out with friends on the deck at a summer cottage, and so on. No
significant skill is involved; it is the experience that matters. Idleness as primitiveplay arguably clarifies the idea of play in ways that are not widely recognized but
fit well within common understandings of play. It is unalienated disengagementfrom worldly pursuits and has all the characteristics of quirkiness, redundancy,and flexibility. It may seem unusual at first to describe some of these activities asplay, but we should expect analysis of concepts to clarify classes of phenomena
in unanticipated ways. Perhaps, too, it is pejorative attitudes toward idlenessthat have obscured these connections.
A good deal of idleness is primitive play but not all of it. Idleness often presupposes and is supported by more traditionally recognized virtues than striving and resilience. Conversation is a good example, by which I mean informal,
open-ended talk or chatting outside of work and other serious pursuits. Tom
Hodgkinson (2004), the British social critic and author of a popular manifesto
on idleness (cleverly organized into twenty-four chapters—an idle pastime foreach hour of the day), argues that the value of conversation has been “demonized” today because of its idle character “by a society that prizes action above all
else” (214). He observes that great idlers, like Samuel Johnson, Thomas Paine,and Oscar Wilde, uniformly praise the delights of conversation for its sharingof ideas, stories, entertainment, and companionship.
It should not be overlooked, however, that enjoyable conversation is anachievement, one that arguably presupposes and is made possible by intellec-

Idleness as Play and Leisuretual virtues—an inquisitive attitude, an ability to reason, a readiness to listen
and to learn and to be fair. It also requires character virtues like patience, adegree of courage in explaining and defending ideas, empathy, and of course
wittiness. And idlers like Johnson, Paine, and Wilde were not know-nothings.
Conversation for them was the product of being well informed, educated, andhaving a well-developed intelligence. Conversations with them undoubtedly had
the intended purpose of traveling on some uncharted serendipitous journey towherever the conversation led—a conversational road trip, as it were. It might
have productive results, an idea for a play or an essay, for example, but that neednot be its purpose, even if such outcomes are hoped for. Virtue and education
can be good preparation for some types of idleness.
Much more can be said about the often unrecognized relationship between
idling and virtue. In particular, the connections between idleness and virtue
draw it more closely to play, since many forms of play require virtue and exerciseof human excellence generally, for example, games and sports. Some forms of
idleness do not require any virtues or skill. Often bodily pleasures do not requirethem. This is primitive play again. But sex is probably different, at least when it
involves others. It cannot require too much effort or striving, of course, or it is
no longer idling. But assuming sex with others can be a simple and easy pleasure,it does require perception of and sensitivity to how others want to be treated,in short, a measure of care for others. And companionship or love, endorsed by
O’Connor as idle activity, according to Artistotle (2019), “is a virtue, or involves
virtue” (1155a). So, it seems O’Connor should be open to connections between
idleness and virtue and a virtuous self generally that is not quite as much a suspension of human personality as his formal description of idleness envisages.
Putting idleness clearly in the context of play and leisure and marking its
association with human virtues make it less exceptional as an expression ofhuman agency and freedom than in O’Connor’s account. It shows that idlenessencompasses a wide range of familiar human capacities. It can engage in therelaxed exercise of a variety of skills and virtues that give it a sophistication
beyond primitive play—what Suits (1988) calls “sophisticated play”—albeit still
well within the range of simple and easy pleasures of a relaxed self disengaged
from worldly concerns and from the busyness of modern life. The familiarity
of idleness and its connections with virtue and achievements and goal-directedbehavior found in play and leisure all mean it is not so extraordinary, or even
weird, an expression of personhood and autonomy as in the account that
O’Connor (2009) gives. He overstates things when he says, “the experiences of

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The exceptional conceptions of autonomy and the self are found in theworks of certain philosophers and others besides. They can make the agency of
idleness appear meager by contrast, but this is not evidently the correct comparison. Idleness sometimes involves what can be described as a meagre exercise ofagency or feeling a minimal sense of personality, but to think of all idleness inthis way overlooks the diversity and attractions of simple and easy idle pleasuresand much of the attraction of idleness for those in a position to enjoy them.

Moral and Aesthetic Dimensions of IdlenessIdleness as play and leisure means it is entitled to consideration as part of basic
human rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child(1989) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) recognition ofrights to play and leisure. Idleness as a human good fits so well within familiar
analyses of play and leisure that it deserves to be part of conversations aboutsocial justice where individuals live without or with limited opportunities forplay and leisure. Everyone should have opportunities for idleness as part ofbeing fully human. By contrast, idleness for many is frequently obtained at theexpense of others’ work that prevents workers’ access to idleness (Russell 1935).
As I have noted, many great achievers who have lived rich personal lives
have enjoyed abundant opportunities for idleness that have apparently also contributed to their social well-being and creativity. This is predicted by the analysesof play outlined earlier. The argument about idleness given here is also implicitly
another ground for critique of the “hustle culture” in which careers and the
pursuit of status exclude important aspects of being human, including idlenessas play and leisure (Griffith 2019). It is also noteworthy that the activities of idleness generally do not require many external goods to realize. This makes themboth accessible and a limited burden on the environment and, thus, worthy ofcultivation and praise (although this is not an argument for restricting accessto the resources needed for more active forms of play and leisure). The simple
and easy pleasures of a relaxed idle self must also eschew any significant interpersonal conflict, and this can add to and be instructive for personal well-being.
Idleness as an aspect of protected human rights, human well-being, andsocial justice pointedly raises topics for ethical and social science research. But
research into idleness needs to be developed that properly characterizes it toIdleness as Play and Leisurebetter assess its extent, the attitudes toward it, and its value in human lives
and communities. O’Connor’s and my efforts at conceptual clarification andexplaining how idleness should be valued are starting points for such productive research. As far as I can tell, almost nothing has been done on this topic bysocial psychologists or by applied ethicists.
An instructive exception is a widely cited study that purports to show people prefer being busy over being idle (Hsee, Yang, and Wang 2010). In this study,
two experiments tested attitudes toward idleness by taking away the participants’
distractions—cell phones and books and other personal belongings—as they
were offered the option, in effect, to do nothing or undertake menial activity tofill their time. More participants chose being busy with a menial task over doing
nothing. The researchers concluded their results demonstrated a psychologicalprinciple of “idleness aversion” (search this term for the influence of this researchon public discourse) and, just as remarkably, ended up advocating “futile busyness” over idleness when one has nothing to do.
But, of course, this research badly misconceives idleness. Idleness is notproperly characterized as an option for enforced inactivity without distractions.
What needs to be compared are the types of activities or engagements that
constitute idleness as play. Arguably taking away books and cell phones andother belongings biased the results by taking away many options for idleness.
The study participants may well have rejected the option they perceived to bealienated idleness. What the researchers needed was a richer, more accurate
conception of idleness against which to compare being menially busy against. It
could include choosing to do nothing at all, but that is not the limit of idleness.
Research would also need to be devised that tries to filter out cultural biases
against idleness, including the researchers’ own biases. There is rich, unturned
ground for further investigation about idleness as an activity and value.
A useful complement to the current discussion that suggests other avenues for research is Richard Adelman’s (2011) Idleness, Contemplation, and the
Aesthetic, 1750–1830. Adelman shows how early works of political economy
in Great Britain, like Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, ignore idleness as asphere of human life in favor of defending labor as fundamental to humanprogress and happiness. Later English-speaking intellectuals, such as William
Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jeremy Bentham,and John Stuart Mill, address this omission by considering a role in human lives
for what Adelman terms “idle contemplation.” These thinkers’ attitudes towardidleness as described here are generally critical and cautionary even though they

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understanding and sensibilities. I have argued that such uses of idleness ignore
its value independently of serving progressive ends. But I have also noted many
important connections between idleness and exercise and the development of
human virtue, aesthetic experience, and creativity. These connections deserve
further investigation for how they might extend our understanding of the socialand personal value of idleness. This plausibly extends beyond moral and aesthetic
development to human agency in general. It would follow that these aspects of
idleness will figure within a rhetoric of play as progress. Adelman’s work provides
an important starting point for such inquiries.
An extension of such discussions would consider more fully the aesthetic
dimensions of idleness. Although I cannot consider the topic here in the detail it
deserves, the attraction of idleness often seems to lie importantly in its aesthetic
qualities. The experiences of simplicity, repose, stillness, contemplation, passive
engagement, fellowship, and “feelin’ groovy” found in idleness seem to mark it
as a richly aesthetic category of human life to the extent that idleness itself could
be described as a category of aesthetic experience. It seems to fit well into therecently established field of “everyday aesthetics” (Saito 2001).

Objections: Guilt and Boredom
John Locke should be added to the catalogue of anti-idling philosophers. Locke
thought that humans feel naturally guilty or anxious about being idle, which is
purportedly evidence that they understand that idleness is a vice (Snyder 2021).
However, this seems flatly wrong as a matter of psychology, since many humans
do not feel misgivings about being idle. And the discussion in O’Connor’s bookshows that negative attitudes toward idleness hardly demonstrate that it is always
a vice. Locke’s outlook plausibly reflects a certain Protestant capitalist work ethicthat had emerged in his time. The position advanced here and in O’Connor’sbook is that there exists no reason ever to be shamefaced about being idle per
se. The same goes for play, of course. Any guilt from being idle seems due to asense of responsibility toward internal or external demands that are in tension
with being idle. These demands can be reasonable or unreasonable. What theseboundaries are requires discussion. We have not had that discussion yet, arguably
because of the bad notice idleness has often received in our culture.

Idleness as Play and Leisure

Another concern about idleness is that its relative inactivity will make it aready source of boredom, and so it is of limited, if any, human value. This seems
to be Suits’s (1978) position. In The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia, heargues that a utopia in which there is no need to work, and thus one that presents endless opportunities for play, nevertheless threatens to be a boring anddeeply unhappy place, since humans will have nothing to strive for. According toSuits, the only solution to this predicament is to create games of sufficient challenge and complexity to occupy utopians. But this presumes without argumentthat humans can only find lives meaningful that require “as much energy as is
expended today in serving institutions of scarcity” (176). The example of idlenesssuggests an alternative vision of play that many humans in Suits’s utopia could be
happy with (Russell 2022). After all, it is a sort of life that many aspire to today
and that many who are in favorable positions apparently find rewarding enough.
The heterogeneity of idleness also suggests that its many avenues of activity and opportunities for novelty can stave off concerns about boredom easily
settling in. Also, as we have seen, it is not as if idleness involves no striving or
challenges, though perhaps not the demanding ones that Suits has in mind. And
we can raise a similar concern to the one raised about Locke. Perhaps a sense of
the importance of having difficult challenges to strive to overcome is partly orlargely a cultural artifact. If so, those who feel the need for more in the way ofexertion in Suits’s utopia could look to the idlers there for advice about how toaddress at least some of their sense of alienation and unhappiness. Nevertheless,idleness as play and leisure can undoubtedly flow into (and out of) boredom, as
can any human activity (Svendsen 2005). This is a topic that I cannot address
here, but one that probably deserves careful attention for how it might bettercharacterize both idleness as a good and alienated idleness.
There is a deep empirical question about human psychology underlying
Suits’s vision of play in utopia and this response to it. My sense is that Suits is
at least partly right about the presence and meaningfulness of striving in ourlives. Following Suits, I have defended the value of striving, drawing on evidence
from biology, psychology, philosophy, and even physics (Russell 2020). But I also
have acknowledged the importance of breaks from the inevitable needs to strivein our nonutopian lives. What a healthy balance would look like is a matter for
further investigation. For now, we might say provisionally that Suits describes
something that reflects a common or perhaps a species typical trait. But this does
not mean that engaging in idleness or idleness as a dominant way of life could
not be rewarding for many. Just as idlers might be brought through evidence

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among us may have important things to learn from the idlers. It seems highlyplausible that a flourishing human life would include recognition of both thevalue of idleness and of engagements and achievements requiring more strenuous efforts. It is instructive in this respect that the great idlers mentioned in ths
essay were also great achievers. We might equally say that these great achievers
were also devoted idlers. There is no necessary exclusionary opposition between
idleness and achievement, and my discussion has suggested ways in which they
can be mutually reinforcing. A key conclusion of this discussion is that idlenessas play and leisure can be part of a balanced, meaningful life.

Summary of the Phenomenon of idlenessI finish with a brief review of the phenomenon of idleness as it has emerged inthis discussion. Idleness as a human good is:Experienced activity. As such, it can involve goals and even guiding
purposes. It may seem odd to think of idleness in some cases as an activity,
but this is a misunderstanding or prejudice. Sitting and relaxing for a time is
not doing nothing at all. It is sitting and relaxing. Its activity consists in being
engaged with enjoying the experience of rest or repose. Merely being at rest or
inactive is thus not yet idleness (for example, simply taking a break or sleeping).
Idle activity encompasses both primitive and more sophisticated play activities.
Disengaged from worldly ends. It is not productive in the senseof getting on in life, or pursuing work, politics, excellence, money, status, andthe like. Idle activities do not have worldly ambitions in themselves. As such,
idleness can appear, as play sometimes can, to be subversive of worldly pursuits
and moral and perfectionist goals.
Productive. But not in the worldly terms just described. It is characterized, roughly speaking, as a heterogenous class of activities aimed at realizing
and experiencing simple and easy pleasures found commonly in some aesthetic
experiences, amusements, entertainments, bodily comforts and pleasures, companionship, solitude, and fun generally. Idleness is not a simple hedonism, since
its pleasures may be obtained as a result of valuing certain experiences, states,
activities, and relationships for their own sake. This extends the notion of the
productivity of idleness beyond pleasurable experience alone.
An achievement involving modest or minimal effort in itself.

Idleness as Play and Leisure

Too much effort spoils idleness. Although idleness can include self-monitoring,
too much effort in self-monitoring, or failures of it, qualify or undermine what
it is to be idle until those efforts can be put aside. What idleness uncovers is just
how much enjoyment and reward activities involving modest or minimal effort
or ambition can find outside worldly engagements. Creating or sustaining conditions where idleness can take place can, and often does, require substantial effort.
Not necessary. Many activities involving little effort can in practicehave the feeling of idleness—washing the dishes, raking the leaves, or folding
laundry, for example. But they are necessary activities in most life circumstances
and as such cannot properly be regarded as idleness. Anything that is a task to
be done is not idleness. Work, moral obligations, required religious practices,and the like, are not idleness. This is an extension of the idea of disengagement.
Planned or serendipitous. One can plan idle time (e.g., relaxing inbed), or it can be come upon and enjoyed by accident (e.g., daydreaming).
Properly regarded as an aspect of play and leisure. It fits a common understanding of a familiar aspect of play. It is not work and can be valued
for its own sake, and so is an aspect of leisure. Just as more strenuous exercisesof play and leisure can amount to a way of life, idleness can be a way of life as aless demanding expression of play and leisure. Idleness should be acknowledged
and investigated as an important aspect of play and leisure.
Reflects and does not undermine human dignity. Idle engagements presuppose a personality or self, including capacities for choice. Thesefeatures of idleness align broadly with connections philosophers have drawn
to sources of a sense of human dignity and personhood. If idleness had noconnection at all to choice or effort or an awareness of self, it would not be acharacteristically human activity. It would be a “vegetating” conception of idleness that is a caricature some of its critics use to denounce it (O’Connor 2018).
Most of these conditions agree with or clarify positions that O’Connor
takes. The main exceptions are the remarks about play, leisure, achievement,
and productivity. The boundaries of these conditions are admittedly vague, butthat does not undermine their usefulness as general guides. Climbing a tenthousand–foot mountain from sea level in a day does not count as idleness,though it could be a use of leisure and play. Playing golf just for fun and companionship and not keeping a handicap probably does count as idle activity. Playing
games just for fun or what Kretchmar (2019) calls “gentle pursuits of a modest
competence,” is probably idleness, at least sometimes (380). Playing games fora living or to achieve excellence or status is not idleness. Ballet is not idleness.

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But simple, easy bodily movements just for the sake of the aesthetic experienceand fun of them is arguably a type of dancing that counts as idleness. Where
these boundaries are crossed is for further discussion, but it is also likely thatvagueness about idleness is just a fact. It is something that can come in degrees
and that it is possible to wander in and out of.
The frequent mention of solitude invites consideration about where meditation fits into idleness. The term “meditation,” however, covers such a wide
range of activities and purposes, often directed at worldly objectives like selfimprovement and enlightenment (perhaps including learning to be more idle),that its relationship to idleness is not straightforward, and I leave discussion of
it aside. Nevertheless, it is a topic worth pursuing.
This leads to a closing thought about idleness as a way of life. Many philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to today have thought of philosophical contemplation as the ideal way of life, in part because it seems to be a stable and endlesssource of fascination over a lifetime (Aristotle 2019; Plato 1989), in contrast withother types of pursuits and achievements, for example, athletic achievement or
raising a family. It has struck many, including myself, that this is special pleadingby philosophers for philosophers. But I am sure the philosophers are right that
contemplation has these enduring qualities for those (perhaps the relatively few)
with the right talents and dispositions. For them, the contemplative life need
never be uninteresting or boring. But the goods found in idleness are similarly
stable and enduring and include other types of contemplation. Idleness as playand leisure is more catholic in this respect than the philosophers’ life of contemplation. I doubt that we need to rank order these ways of life, and we cancertainly choose to live in both realms and in others besides.

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