Work—What Is It?

Al Gini

Al Gini is a professor of philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago, a contributor to Chicago Public Radio, and associate editor of Business Ethics Quarterly. In this excerpt from his book My Job My Self, Gini explores the meaning of work in our society.

You can’t eat for eight hours a day, nor drink for eight hours a day—all you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason man makes himself and everybody so miserable and unhappy!
—William Faulkner

In perhaps the most poetic phrasing I have ever come across on the topic of work, Pope Pius XI said, “Man is born to labor, as a bird to fly.”1 More parochially, sociologist Peter Berger wrote “to be human and to work appear as inextricably intertwined notions.”2 The first sounds like a gift and a blessing; the other more like a report and a curse. The truth of the matter, I think, lies somewhere in between.
For most of us, working is an entirely nondiscretionary activity, an......

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Title: Work, What Is It?
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