Praise of idleness

LÉloge of idleness (original title: In Praise off Idleness ) is a test of Bertrand Russell published for the first time in 1932 in Review off Reviews . Its length is with the measurement of the covered subject, indeed it counts only 5026 words in its original version.

The principal thesis is that the man observes a nonreasonable worship of the work which leads it to work always more, it for what it would be necessary to put a term. Russell affirms that four work hours per day would be enough to make live all the population in a sufficient comfort while the remainder of time would be devoted to the leisure, with idleness. The design of the leisure or idleness at Russell approaches the Latin Otium rented by Sénèque.

This leisure would be devoted to all the forms of cultures (of most popular with most intellectual) whose practice would be encouraged by a released education. Other related topics level in the book: the Pacifism, the policy (that Russell turns in derision), the denunciation of the landowners who live in the idleness at the expense of the others, the denunciation of the Soviet mode (Soviet Union) which also obeys the dogma of work and that in an authoritative way, the worship of the effectiveness, the problem of enfermement of the intellectuals in their sphere, far away from the reality of the worker and the distance of the worker of the good leisure (that nonliability and enriching civilization).

The concept of vacation either as a simple recovery necessary for the body, but as opportunity of discovering new experiments of life is also present, with thirty years in advance on what one will name later the civilization of the leisures .

Let us note that Russell takes again the example of the factory of pins of Adam Smith with a bit of mockery.

Quotations

  • "To believe that WORK is a virtue is the cause of great evils in the modern world the way of happiness and from prosperity passes by a methodical reduction in the travail"

  • " The leisure is essential to civilization (...) thanks to modern technology, it would be possible to distribute the equitable leisure of way without carrying damage to the civilization"
  • " Without a considerable sum of leisure at his disposal, a man does not have access to the majority of the best things of the vie"
  • " The modern methods of production gave us the possibility of making it possible all to live in ease and safety. We chose in the place, overwork for the ones and misery for the others: in that, we showed ourselves animals well, but there is no reason to persevere in our silly thing indéfiniment."

See too

Related articles

  • the Right to the idleness , delivers Paul Lafargue (1880)

  • Sociologie of the leisure

External bonds

  • '' In Praise off Idleness '' (www.zpub.com)

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