Work, Leisure, and the Search for Wisdom in Five Authors

Introduction: What Is Wisdom?

The study of philosophy is often thought of as the gaining of knowledge. At least, so it is for many philosophy students embarking upon a college course that attempts to introduce them to the canon of Western thought and to give them the basis for asking the right questions about their daily lives and their daily pursuit of wisdom — in class and outside of class.

What, then, is wisdom? And how does one best obtain it — through the hard discipline of work and lived experience, or through the reflective freedom that leisure affords? These questions animate the five texts examined here: Plato's account of The Last Days of Socrates, Henry David Thoreau's Walden, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Josef Pieper's Leisure: The Basis of Culture, and Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.

Socrates and the Equation of Truth with Wisdom

After reading the philosopher Socrates, who stands at the beginning of the Western tradition of thought relating to wisdom, one might be tempted to equate wisdom with simply getting a clear and unbiased — or truthful — view of the world and human nature. Unvarnished truth, in all of its ugliness, ultimately gives one the greatest access to a true form of happiness and, thus, to true wisdom.

This is why, according to Socrates, it is better to face death in a logically coherent fashion than it is to live a life of lies. It would be a lie, he tells his friends, not to drink the hemlock and to escape Athens — having profited from the societal structure of freedom and democracy all of his life, the very structure that enabled him to teach. Thus Socrates espouses his teachings, accepts the verdict of his Athenian peers, accepts the wisdom that was the focus of his life, and dies rather than attempt to escape and live dishonestly.

Thoreau, Huxley, and the Question of Work Versus Leisure

Aldous Huxley, writing many years after the classical Greek philosopher, creates a satirical picture of a false world that, like Socrates, equates truth with wisdom. But Huxley creates a society that, unlike democratic Athens, does not seem to be undergoing a temporary madness in condemning a man for speaking freely. Society in Huxley's science-fictional vision is entirely mad in the way it even biologically reproduces, much less educates its young. In the Brave New World, truth and happiness are incommensurate, and thus wisdom of any real and lasting kind is untenable alongside joy.

Similarly, in his earlier writings, Henry David Thoreau attempted to leave his society to find out the answer to the question: what is wisdom? Unlike the mid-twentieth-century British author, rather than entering a world of self-generated satiric fiction of the mind, Thoreau actually attempted to change his physical life circumstances by going into the woods and seeking wisdom through simplicity — the simplicity of hard work, which he hoped would ultimately produce wisdom.

The implication of both Huxley and Thoreau is that free time, or leisure, is a kind of soma — a fruitless activity that leads humanity into a state of mindless satiation or pleasure that is the antithesis of wisdom, drawing people away from the true source of satisfaction in life. That satisfaction, or wisdom, is hard-won because it comes through difficulty; struggle is the source of the getting of wisdom.

Conclusion: Experience, Knowledge, and the Getting of Wisdom

Ultimately, Frankl provides the most instructive example of what wisdom is. The getting of wisdom is the constant and perhaps fruitless task to grasp what is true — one that does not necessarily create happiness but provides a lasting form of satisfaction and a meaningful life beyond the physical.

However, to access this understanding one needs an open mind and a wide range of real-life experiences, encountered physically "in the raw" as Thoreau would have it — not necessarily in terms of harsh physical suffering, although this may be what life offers, as it did Frankl. But one must also be granted a certain level of philosophical understanding so that the experience of life and physical effort does not embitter the heart, or drive one to seek easy leisure once the ordeal is over. With knowledge, life experience can inform the self.

Unlike Socrates — perhaps the most removed from the modern perspective and the least personally instructive of the five — Frankl does not choose to die. He lives on, not just as a man but as a philosopher shaped by his ordeal. In doing so, he both embodies and expresses the truest understanding of wisdom among all five of the thinkers examined in this survey of the search for truth.

Works Cited

Frankl, Viktor E. Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy. New York: Touchstone, 1984.

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. Harper Perennial, 1998.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden and Other Writings. New York: Bantam, 1983.

Pieper, Josef. Leisure: The Basis of Culture. Trans. Gerald Malsbary, 1999.

Plato. The Last Days of Socrates. Trans. Hugh Tredennick and Harold Tarrant. London: Penguin, 2003.