CONCEPT
Total Work (die Welt der totalen Arbeit)
Pieper's 1948 diagnosis of a civilization in which productive activity has become the sole measure of human worth — a condition that does not merely overwork its members but renders leisure unintelligible as a positive human achievement.
Die Welt der totalen Arbeit — the world of total work — was Pieper's name for the emerging post-war order in which every human capacity was being reduced to raw material for production. Total work is not a condition of overwork. It is a philosophical orientation in which the only legitimate human activity is productive activity. In this world, the philosopher is asked what her research produces, the artist what his painting is worth, the person sitting on a bench what she is accomplishing. Leisure is not prohibited; it is rendered unintelligible. The vocabulary in which leisure could be understood as a positive achievement has been replaced by a vocabulary in which every capacity is instrumentalized. The achievement subject who drives herself toward unlimited productivity is the characteristic figure of this world, and productive addiction is its characteristic pathology.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Pieper's