1. Gift and Knowledge in Josef Pieper – Philosopher of Leisure

2. The Idol of Our Age - Work
The culture of 'total work'
"one does not work only in order to live, but one lives for the sake of one's work" - Max Weber
The newest and more dangerous iteration of the cult of productivity is the 'intellectual worker'

3. No Time for Philosophy
Philosophy which needs wonder and stillness is threatened by a busy age
German Philosopher Josef Pieper believed a return to true leisure may be the remedy for our troubled age
Joseph Pieper's classic Leisure - the Basis of Culture continues to yield influence and insight
The root cause of our idolatry of work is a faulty understanding of human knowing

4. The New Knowledge Worker as Nietzschean Superman
The intellectual worker is a result of our modern epistemology
Refusal of the Gift
Ancient / Medieval epistemology was based on receptiveness or openness to the being of things
"Listening-in to the being of things" - Heraclitus

5. Philosophy, all Work all the Time
For Kant the epistemological enterprise is entirely active
exclusively 'discursive'
'not merely looking'
For Kant human knowledge lies strictly in:
"investigating,articulating, joining, comparing, distinguishing, abstracting, deducing, proving"
Ultimately, for Kant, philosophy is a form of work

6. Two Kinds of Knowing
Ancient & Medieval philosophers held a more expansive view of reason and epistemology
Until modern philosophy, reason consisted of two branches
Ratio - discursive reasoning as defined by Kant
Intellectus - derived from prayer, intuition, meditation, philosophical contemplation, etc
Essence of knowing lies "not in the effort of thought as such, but in the grasp of being, in the discovery of reality"

7. The Danger of Functionalism Hidden in the Cult of Work
Two theses behind the concept of the information worker
All human knowledge is derived from active discursive activity
Philosophical effort determines philosophical truth
In the modern world work has come to be valued solely in terms of its usefulness
All workers including knowledge workers now reduced to functionaries
Functionalist reductionism is a threat to the dignity of the human person

8. The Liberal Arts Rightly Understood Are the True Basis for Wisdom and Leisure
There is an endearing value to some non-useful things and activities
Wisdom for its own sake
Liberal arts teach that philosophy is a search for wisdom rather than a quest to become a master of knowledge
The liberal arts teach us to order ourselves through right reason to our true good
"Moral law originates in Being; the Good is that which is according to reality"