Leisure is an End That Can Only Be Enjoyed Without Burdens

But even when the work ethic reigns supreme, leisure holds a potent moral valence. Although we may not have much say over how we make money, we do have a choice about what we do in our free time. If work represents is, leisure represents ought: How we choose to use it will either embody our understanding of the good life or reveal the depth of our degradation. What is time well spent? Philosophers and social critics have long pondered variations of that question and offered rather consistent insights over time, even across radically different eras. Many have extolled a leisure ethic, and none would say that time well spent lies in ambitious careerism or in drifting on a sea of addictive content. Most would agree that flourishing in time consists of free, active, thoughtful engagement with the world in accordance with one’s nature.

Such flourishing can best be achieved in activities pursued for their own sake during time that is truly one’s own. To the classical Greek philosophers (who generally had the luxury of knowing what true leisure felt like), time was best spent freely developing one’s own faculties, observing the world, and contemplating the universe. Hence, in the Theaetetus, Plato draws a distinction between a lawyer-orator, representing work (ascholia), and a philosopher, representing leisure (scholé). Both use knowledge, but while the philosopher lives for knowledge itself, the lawyer-orator values it primarily as a tool for achieving some other end. The lawyer-orator’s time and intelligence are committed to a servile art. When he wakes up in the morning, everything he does is in the service of his clients’ demands, his own ambition, or some other insatiable appetite. He lives a life of means with no ends.

Leisure thus represents engagement with ends—the age-old sources of meaning in life. Ends are determined by the process of eliminating means: If the reason you work is to support your family, your job is a means and your family is an end. But ends can be truly valued only when you are unburdened by life’s stresses or compulsions within your own mind.