work
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Beyond the Product: Standing Behind Our Work
Work becomes one way of caring for what we have received. We develop inherited capacities and return them, altered by attention and judgment, to the common world. None of us begins from nothing, and none of us can truthfully claim complete ownership of the conditions that made our contribution possible. Continue reading
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Writing Without a Guarantee: The Risk of Work That Matters
I still do not know whether writing this book is professionally prudent. Perhaps it will strengthen future work; perhaps it will remain largely separate from my employment. It may find a modest readership, or its public life may take a form I cannot presently imagine. Continue reading
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Constitutive Work, Recognition, and Why Hannah Arendt Matters
Going through a layoff can be devastating. When I got laid off from a Christian University that had been struggling financially (typical of such post-secondary institutions in the 2000s), I needed to come to the deep logic which eliminated me from the equation. After all, I was in my early 50’s, and I had thought… Continue reading
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Work, Democracy and Inequality: A Message for the Center-Left, Part 3
Jesus famously said as he was being crucified, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.” The human artifice has essentially crucified the human condition. And, like the calamitous natural disasters that characterize a planet in revolt against the industrialization that is characterized by exploitation of the Earth, so too, a populist… Continue reading
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Work: The Technocratic Perversion of Human Life
Technocratic capitalism can either overrun humanity or it needs to be forced back into its lane. Continue reading
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Value of Leisure
. We yearn to “make the most of” our free time, so we are constantly giving our evenings, weekends, and vacations over to our self-advancement. Labor-market precarity and the growth of the gig economy have sharpened these incentives. Pure leisure now feels like pure indulgence – as if we are gluttons. Continue reading
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Value of “Work”
Amid the seeming disorder – the uncertainty and fear, a silent revolution is happening during the corona crisis: a revolution in the way we assess work. The drumming and clapping for health care workers, the public praise for those who stack supermarket shelves – all of this suddenly appears natural to us. And our applause… Continue reading