Source: https://oikonomia.it/index.php/it/2018/giugno/109-2018/giugno/1042-the-virtues-and-the-subjective-meaning-of-work
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 02:24:42+00:00

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With Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio, we see a mention of the virtues of the worker himself: “Bent over a material that resists his efforts, the worker leaves his imprint on it, at the same time developing his own powers of persistence, inventiveness and concentration.”4 In this passage we also see a contrast between the effect of work on the world surrounding the worker and its effect on the worker himself. St. John Paul II expands this contrast into an explicit distinction between the objective and subjective meanings of work in Laborem Exercens. The objective meaning of work is external to the worker: “Man’s dominion over the earth is achieved in and by means of work.”5 The subjective meaning of work is internal: “Man has to subdue the earth and dominate it, because as the ‘image of God’ he is a person, that is to say, a subjective being capable of acting in a planned and rational way, capable of deciding about himself, and with a tendency to self-realization.”6 Given our common human nature, to realize oneself is to become virtuous.
When Leo XIII wrote about “the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class”7 in 1891, work was understood primarily as manual or physical labor: “To misuse men as though they were things in the pursuit of gain, or to value them solely for their physical powers – that is truly shameful and inhuman.”8 Similarly, the Russian revolutionaries symbolized labor with the hammer and sickle, representing factory workers and peasant farmers. But economic and technological developments of the past century have brought about changes in the way we work. Most workers today are not performing manual work. At the same time, our understanding of the nature of work has developed since the time of Rerum Novarum and the Bolshevik Revolution.
Newman and Pieper are mistaken in defending a dichotomy of the liberal and servile arts, and Pieper is mistaken in rejecting the concept of intellectual work. Several authors, including some Dominicans, also find the concept of intellectual work to be unproblematic.
Rather than distinguishing various kinds of work with dichotomies such as intellectual and manual, or liberal and servile, it would be more helpful to distinguish them in terms of the different intellectual virtues. Wisdom, understanding, and science are virtues of the speculative intellect. The liberal arts involve these virtues. Art and prudence are virtues of the practical intellect. Workers who make things exercise the virtue of art. Public servants, lawyers, and administrators exercise the virtue of prudence. Different kinds of work involve different intellectual virtues. But all work involves the intellect.
Smith and McBrien explain that, because manual labor is both intellectual and manual, it has both subjective and objective meaning: “In manual labor there is a twofold activity: the immanent action of the mind and the transient action of the body directed by the mind. Man is perfected through the intellectual operation. The object is perfected through the transient activity of the worker.”25 Because work is intellectual, we can become virtuous through our work.
Although performing surgery and practicing dentistry are more intellectual than repairing an automobile and preparing a meal, all involve both the intellect and the hands. They all require intellectual virtues and all contribute to the common good.
Work involves not only the intellectual virtues, but also the moral virtues. All human persons desire happiness and should pursue it by striving to attain the moral virtues. Most adults spend one-third to one-half of their waking hours working. The process of becoming morally virtuous cannot be separated from one’s work.
Sertillanges, in his book about intellectual work, provides an account of the moral virtues that is also relevant to what we call “manual work.” He tells us, contrary to our materialistic cultures, that the purpose of work is not to earn money: “The priest has the right to live by the altar and the man of study by his work; but one does not say Mass for money and one must not think and write for money.”28 This is true of all professions, including business. We require a supply of material goods in order to live virtuous lives. But the purpose of work is to promote one’s own good and the common good by simultaneously growing in the virtues and providing goods and services that benefit other persons. In exchange for these goods and services, we should receive remuneration sufficient to meet our needs and those of our families. But financial and material wealth should always be understood as means to ends more important than financial and material wealth. To convert the means into the end is to live a disordered life.
Virtuous work cultivates both the intellectual and the moral virtues. All of the moral virtues are connected to prudence, which is an intellectual virtue: “One cannot have prudence unless one has the moral virtues.”38 To become virtuous through work is to become both intellectually and morally virtuous.
Our lives should be directed toward true happiness, both in this life and in the next. The only way to pursue true happiness is to live a virtuous life. Because work is a large part of our lives, we cannot separate our work from the endeavor to become more virtuous. Benedict XVI emphasizes the relationship between our work and our sanctification, and the role of the human person as the subject of work: “It is necessary to live a spirituality that helps believers to sanctify themselves through their work, imitating St. Joseph, who had to provide with his own hands for the daily needs of the Holy Family and whom, consequently, the Church holds up as patron of workers. His witness shows that man is the subject and protagonist of work.”39 Similarly, Chenu writes of our responsibility to promote our own development through our work: “As labour becomes less dehumanized and more socialized, it shakes off the yoke of formal contract imposed on it by economics, and is promoted to becoming a part of life in general as lived by free men, conscious of their responsibilities and working towards the achievement of their development.”40 This is the subjective meaning of work.
1 Leo XIII, Encyclical Rerum Novarum (15 May 1891), § 45.
2 Pius XI, Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (15 May 1931), § 51.
3 John XXIII, Encyclical Mater et Magistra (15 May 1961), § 82.
4 Paul VI, Encyclical Populorum Progressio (26 March 1967), § 27.
5 John Paul II, Encyclical Laborem Exercens (14 September 1981), § 5.
6 John Paul II, Encyclical Laborem Exercens, § 6.
7 Leo XIII, Encyclical Rerum Novarum, § 3.
8 Leo XIII, Encyclical Rerum Novarum, § 20.
9 John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University: Defined and Illustrated (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1852), 106.
10 Newman, The Idea of a University, 107-8.
11 Josef Pieper, Muße und Kult (Munich: Kösel, 1948); trans. Alexander Dru, Leisure: The Basis of Culture (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), 36.
12 Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, 40-41.
13 Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges, La Vie Intellectuelle, son Esprit, ses Conditions, ses Méthodes (Paris: Éditions de la Revue des Jeunes, 1921); trans. Mary Ryan, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods (Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1960), 3.
14 Sertillanges, La Vie Intellectuelle, 8.
15 Sertillanges, La Vie Intellectuelle, 8.
16 Pius XI, Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, § 53; as cited by Raymond Smith & Hugh McBrien, “The Catholic Philosopher Looks at Work,” Dominicana, 29:2 (Summer 1944), 91.
17 Raymond Smith & Hugh McBrien, “The Catholic Philosopher Looks at Work,” Dominicana, 29:2 (Summer 1944), 91.
18 Smith & McBrien, “The Catholic Philosopher Looks at Work,” 91.
19 John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, § 27.
20 Jacques Maritain, “On Some Typical Aspects of Christian Education,” in The Education of Man: The Educational Philosophy of Jacques Maritain, ed. Donald & Idella Gallagher (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1962), 149-50.
21 Smith & McBrien, “The Catholic Philosopher Looks at Work,” 96.
22 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 2nd & Rev. Ed. (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1911), IIa IIæ, q. 179, a. 1.
23 Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, IIa IIæ, q. 181, a. 3.
24 Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, IIa IIæ, q. 182, a. 3.
25 Raymond Smith & Hugh McBrien, “The Nature of Work,” Dominicana, 29:4 (Winter 1944), 259.
26 Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work (New York: Penguin, 2009), 5.
27 Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft, 21.
28 Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life, 43.
29 Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life, 131.
30 Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life, 215.
31 Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life, 226.
32 Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life, 227.
33 Vincent McNabb, The Church and the Land (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1925; Norfolk, Virginia: IHS Press, 2003), 138.
34 Vincent McNabb, Nazareth or Social Chaos (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1933; Norfolk, Virginia: IHS Press, 2009), 41.
35 McNabb, Nazareth or Social Chaos, 41.
36 Marie-Dominique Chenu, Pour une Théologie du Travail (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1955); trans. Lilian Soiron, The Theology of Work (Dublin: Gill & Son, 1963), 2.
37 Chenu, The Theology of Work, 65.
38 Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, Ia IIæ, q. 65, a. 1.
39 Benedict XVI, “Homily on the Solemnity of Saint Joseph,” 19 March 2006.
40 Chenu, The Theology of Work, 38.

References: § 45
 § 51
 § 82
 § 27
 § 5
 § 6
 § 3
 § 20
 § 53
 § 27