Muße in relation to leisure
Josef’s Pieper’s text ‘Muße und Kult’ is titled ‘Leisure: The Basis of Culture’ in its English translation. Aa pointed out previously any translation from Muße into leisure has always immensely annoyed me mainly because it is moving the idea of Muße into a different sphere. While leisure is the opposite of work (which would be Freizeit in German), Muße is not the opposite of it. Take this quote for example:
‘A break in one’s work, whether of an hour, a day or a week, is still part of the world of work. It is a link in the chain of utilitarian functions. The pause is made for the sake of work and in order to work, and a man is not only refreshed from work but for work. Leisure is an altogether different matter; it is no longer on the same plane.’1
In order for this to make sense in English, the word leisure needs to be replaced with Muße, because leisure is a day or a week off work and can have the utilitarian function of refreshing the worker for work. It is Muße and not leisure that is on a different plane.
Given that ‘[L]eisure is define as a multidimensional construct’2 and can cover everything from sport, tourism, travel, health to wellbeing, most people will have a personal take of what leisure is to them namely the things they do, when they are not at work. Yet all these activities can still include elements of obligation and time pressures which means Muße cannot occur. Terms such as leisure activities, leisure centres or studies like the economics of leisure exist yet there could never be anything like Muße activities, Muße centres or the economics of Muße (well, I guess there could as laid out in the marketability of Muße).
After a long week, we only have the energy for passive pastimes, such as watching TV or sport. How would you spend a Saturday if you’d only done a 20-hour week? Russell guesses that you’d re-discover a capacity for play and dancing. However, he’d rather you were creatively engaged with higher pursuits, such as art, philosophy and poetry. Since such creative endeavours require leisure time, and since they are so much more rewarding than work or passivity, it is a political imperative to shrink the average working week. Education will be crucial too, of course; otherwise we won’t be able to use the extra time to contribute to civilisation. (So our politicians are wrong about the aims of schooling: it should be a preparation for leisure, not work.) 3
Hence art and creative work need leisure time and Muße to flourish. And maybe the question should not be, whether we can produce art under pressure, but what kind of art are we making, if we are constantly working towards time-contraints? Are many of our outputs and creations just hurried exercises in ticking deadline boxes? Is this website one of those examples?
- Josef Pieper, Leisure as the basis of culture / The Philosophical Act, (Random House, 1963) Kindle ebook, p.49 ↩
- Denis Auger, Gabrielle Thériault & Romain Roult, A conceptual interpretation of the relationship between leisure and its foundational disciplines: A conceptual model of leisure theory, Loisir et Société / Society and Leisure, 43:2, (2020) 229-252, DOI: 10.1080/07053436.2020.1788795 ↩
- Will Bynow, The Mobile Philosopher, Matter of Lunch and Death, (London: Octopus, 2020) ↩