The Poetics of Meaningful Work: An Analogy to Speech Acts

This article explores the relation between work and the word, or poiesis broadly construed. I draw a correlation between the literal and symbolic levels of meaning in metaphor to the necessary and figurative levels of meaning in work, arguing according to Paul Ricoeur's theory of metaphor that the necessary is redeemed by figurative transformations of meaning that are possible only in and through work.

International Review of Social History, 1989

Labour, work and action are the three elements that constitute Hannah Arendt's vita activa. Together, and in combination, they represent Arendt's account of what it means to be human. The vita activa is a radical and profound challenge to two traditions in political thought. 1 The first tradition Arendt opposes is one that privileges contemplation and theoretical knowledge, the vita contemplativa, over action. She traces this view to ancient Greek political thought, which is continued in Christian ideas about the proper ends of human life. In essence, this tradition disengages from the world and demotes and diminishes the value of political action. The vita activa recovers an alternative tradition that values action and worldliness. Second, Arendt opposes a modernist tradition that, while it rejects the vita contemplativa, values labour and work over political action. In other words, Arendt not only defends the vita activa, she also defends a particular hierarchical ordering of its elements-privileging political action over work and labour. Arendt's great contribution to contemporary political thought is her conceptualization of political action as a distinct category of philosophical enquiry. While a great deal of attention has been given to Arendt's notion of action, it is important to see how it fits together with the other elements of the vita activa. I will therefore discuss labour, work and action in order and end with a brief survey of some major criticisms.

Revue internationale de philosophie, 2016

The paper is a critical analysis of Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy of work as it is formulated in a number of essays from the 1950s and 60s. It begins with a reconstruction of the central theses advanced in ‘Travail et parole’ (1953) and related texts, where Ricoeur sought to outline a philosophical anthropology in which work is given its due. To give work its due, from an anthropological standpoint, is to see it as limited by counter-concept of language, according to Ricoeur. The paper then argues that this way of understanding the anthropological significance of work is not only internally problematic, but at odds with phenomenological insights to be found elsewhere in Ricoeur’s oeuvre, particularly Le Volontaire et l’involontaire (1950). The final section of the paper makes some suggestions for how the phenomenological and anthropological poles of a philosophy of work might be better integrated, and the ‘nexus between speech and work’ better described.

Hypatia Reviews Online, 2018

http://web.cortland.edu/nagelm/ ** When I was a teaching assistant for an ethics class, I relished preparing the undergraduate students for the eventuality of our strike for union recognition. I told them that Kant would favor the strikers, because we were being used as a mere means to an end. (After all, the state's National Labor Relations Board refused to recognize graduate employees as workers and compared our status to prisoners.) So, with "serfs at work" signs, I appealed to the ethics students that they also needed to support our dignity campaign. I was delighted to see that Andrea Veltman, a veteran Hypatia contributor, makes a business case for Kant's defense of the humanity in persons, that is, treating workers as ends in her illuminating chapter "Autonomous and Oppressive Work" (89-92). She boldly argues for a radical transformation of current business practices with consideration of the categorical imperative.

Comparative Sociology, 2020

Though work is important for people’s self-esteem and recognition, the sociology of work pays little attention to the meaning of work. This reflects that work in capitalist societies tends to be alienated. But empirical findings show that employees nevertheless try to appropriate their work by asking for its meaning. They claim for a meaningful work and for the possibility to execute work in a meaningful way. If they have to carry out work they feel to be meaningless they can suffer psychological strain. Meaning has not only an individual dimension but it refers to the meaning for society and other people and there are social institutionalizations of recognized meanings of work. Fordism and flexible capitalism are connected to different forms of alienation and difficulties to appropriate work as meaningful. Therefore, meaningful work is embedded in relations of collegiality and cooperation and can be damaged by the fragmentation of work.

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 1994

Philosophy Now - Issue 160, 2024

Alessandro Colarossi has insights for the bored and understimulated. If you've ever found yourself staring blankly at a spreadsheet or nursing a lukewarm cup of coffee while daydreaming about your next vacation, this is for you. Yes, you, the one who periodically contemplates existential questions between email exchanges and Zoom meetings. If your work feels like a necessary yet uninspiring pursuit, a means to fund your 'real life' outside the office, let us delve together into the philosophical underpinnings of work. Who knows, we might find ways to render the banal a little more bearable, or even meaningful. Aristotle and the Dignity of Work Aristotle, one of the most influential philosophers in Western thought, had distinctive views on work. He made a clear distinction between chrematistics (wealth acquisition) and oikonomia (household management). In his view, work performed purely for the sake of livelihood, or chrematistics, was not inherently virtuous; it was simply a means to an end. However, work that contributed to the well-being of the community, or oikonomia, was considered virtuous as it served a higher purpose.

Research in …, 2010

The meaning of work literature is the product of a long tradition of rich inquiry spanning many disciplines. Yet, the field lacks overarching structures that would facilitate greater integration, consistency, and understanding of this body of research. Current research has developed in ways that have created relatively independent domains of study that exist in silos organized around various sources of meaning and meaningfulness. In this paper, we review the meaning of work literature in order to propose new frameworks within which to classify existing work and to seed new work. Our review is organized by the major sources of the meaning of work on which extant research has focused, and by the mechanisms through which work is proposed to become meaningful. We analyze the evolution and current state of meaning of work research, identifying core patterns and assumptions that have defined research in this area to date, and offer a theoretical framework based on this body of research that illuminates the main pathways to meaningful work. Throughout, we outline several promising directions for future research that we hope will stimulate further generative inquiry in this rich area of study. #

Revista de Adminitração Mackenzie, 2018

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