Abstract
This chapter intends to show the essential nature of human activity, which turns labor into more than a mere commodity. Human beings’ fulfillment is more relevant than the external product of work.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Weber’s theses in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1958) have been heavily debated and, as Kurt Samuelson asserts (Religion and Economic Action: the Protestant work ethic, the rise of capitalism and the abuses of scholarship, University of Toronto Press, 1993) they have been of great influence.
- 2.
This article contains several sharp views, but it should be noted that its core argument is Marxist, with all the troublesome implications that entails for an approach to labor (see Hannah Arendt 1959, J. Vialatoux, Signification humaine du travail, Les éditions ouvrières, Paris, 1953, pp. 206–210, Rafael Corazón González, Fundamentos para una filosofía del trabajo, Cuadernos de Anuario Filosófico, n. 72, Pamplona (1999, pp. 9–10), and José Ángel García Cuadrado, Antropología Filosófica, Pamplona, Eunsa 2001, pp. 206–207).
- 3.
He cites Metaphysics, IX in, e. g.: I, q. 18, a. 3, ad 1; I-II, q. 3, a.2, ad 3; In IX Metaph, l. 2, n. 1788; l. 8, n. 1864; In VI Eth, l. 3, n. 1151; In I Pol, l. 2, n. 53; De Potentia, q. 3, a. 15c. Cf. also I, q. 23, a.3 ad 1; I, q. 56, a.1c; I-II, q. 31, a. 5c; In Pol, Prooemium, n. 6, De Potentia, q. 9, a. 9, ad 4; q. 10, a. 1c; In VI Metaph, l. 1, n. 1152; In XI Metaph, l. 7, n. 2253. All the works by Marietti, Taurini.
- 4.
Cf. I-II, q. 18, a. 6c and q. 20, a. 3c.
- 5.
On this approach, see Pinckaers, Le renouveau de la moral, Casterman, 1964, and Joseph de Finance, "L'acte moral et le sujet", Sapientia, 100–102, 1971, pp. 411–422.
References
Agazzi, Evandro. 1992. Per una riconduzione della razionalità tecnologica entro l’ ambito della razionalità pratica, In Sergio Galvan (a cura di), Forme di Racionalita Pratica, Franco Angeli, Milan, 17–39.
Aquinas, Thomas (S. Thomae Aquinatis). 1948. Summa theologiae, Marietti, Taurini/Romae.
Arendt, Hannah. 1959. The human condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, transl. Sir David Ross (1925; 1954) Oxford University Press, London and New York.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, transl. and introduction by Terence Irwin, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis, 1999.
Aristotle. 1941. The basic works of Aristotle, edited and with an Introduction by Richard McKeon, Random House (reprint of the translations prepared under the editorship of W. D. Ross, Oxford University Press), New York.
Aristotle. 1984. The complete works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Aristotle. 1958. The politics of Aristotle, ed. and transl. by Ernest Barker, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dupré, John, and Regenia Gagnier. 1996. A Brief History of Work. Journal of Economic Issues 30(2): 553–559.
Frey, Bruno. 1997. Not just for money: An economic theory of personal motivation, Elgar.
Gallagher, David. 1995. Person and ethics in thomas aquinas. In Acta philosophica, 4/1, Rome, 51–71.
Grimaldi, Nicolás. 2003. Semántica del trabajo, in Montserrat Herrero (coord.), Sociedad del Trabajo y Sociedad del Conocimiento en la Era de la Globalización, Prentice Hall, Madrid, 11–15.
Hargreaves Heap, Shaun. 2004. Economic rationality. In eds. John B. Davis, Alain Marciano, Jochen Runde, The elgar companion to economics and philosophy, Elgar, Aldershot, 442–460.
Löwith, Karl. 1982. Max Weber and Karl Marx. London: George Allen & Unwin.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1984. After virtue. Notre Dame, Indiana, Second Edition: University of Notre Dame Press.
Pinckaers, Servais. 1986. Ce qu’on ne peut jamais faire, ed. Un. Fribourg- Ed. du Cerf, Fribourg (Suisse).
Weber, Max. 1958. The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (translated by Talcott Parson) Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York.
Wojtyla, Karol. 1979a. Teoria e prassi: un tema umano e cristiano, In ed. Dominicane Napoli, Atti del congreso internazionali teoria-prassi, Genova Barcellona, 1976, Vol. 1, 36–37.
Wojtyla, Karol. 1979b. The acting person. Dordrecht, Boston and London: D. Reidel Pub. Co.
Wojtyla, Karol. 1993. The problem of the constitution of culture through human praxis. In Karol Wojtyla, Person and community. Selected essays, translated by Theresa Sandok, Peter Lang, New York, 263–275 (original: “Il problema del costituirse della cultura attraverso la ‘praxis’ umana”, in Rivista di Filosofia Neoscolastica, LXIX, 1977).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Crespo, R.F. (2013). Human Labor. In: Philosophy of the Economy. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02648-0_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02648-0_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-02647-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-02648-0
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)