We would all be idle if we could', Dr. Johnson

Résumé du document

The relationship between human beings and work or idleness has been widely debated by many philosophers and writers, including the British poet and novelist, Samuel Johnson. The author of the Dictionary of the English language also wrote poems on idleness during the eighteenth century. Advocating the fact that "we would all be idle if we could" is not a revolutionary saying, but I would like to question the term of idleness itself. That's why I will try to explain why idleness is the ultimate goal of any individual and will depict how our societies are structured to prevent us from reaching this goal.

Extraits

[...] Hannah Arendt explained that work was alienation, but she argued afterwards that it structured our societies so much that staying idle would lead to chaos. Indeed, human beings can't get rid of work, and that is why Dr Johnson said we could”. Historically speaking, there were living examples of people who roughly stayed idle for their entire life. The Aristocrats didn't really work and earned money from their investments and lived on their private income. This way of life still exists, but it is a marginal phenomenon, it was also widely contested while the French revolution. [...]

[...] 'We would all be idle if we could', Dr. Johnson The relationship between human beings and work or idleness has been widely debated by many philosophers or writers, including the British poet and novelist, Samuel Johnson. The author of the Dictionnary of the English language also wrote poems on idleness throughout the eighteenth century. Advocating the fact that would all be idle if we could” is not a revolutionnary saying, but I would like to question the term of idleness itself. [...]

[...] Nowadays, historians notice that the first holidays allowed in France in 1936 triggered in the country a process that consisted in giving more leisure time. It was carried out throughout the twentieth century with the establishment of the 40 worked-hours, and finally the well- known 35 hours. Moreover, this worldwide process was developped in a context of Marxist denounciation of the work, especially in the factory world. Marx explained, from what he saw in the end of the 1860's, that specialisation was alienation for human being and the symbol of the proletariat being exploited by the capitalists. [...]

[...] Even if Dr Johnson was not contemporary of this period, the aristocrat idleness was peripheral compared to the condition of peasants, idleness seemed as well an unattainable dream. As a conclusion, I would say that idleness is indeed the goal of every human kind. If we associate idleness and leisure time, it is obvious that a long term process of working hour's reduction has raised in developed countries. Therefore, human beings tend to give more credit to idleness. But anyway, work remains the central value in our industrial societies and doesn't seem to be threatened by the wish to be idle. [...]