Working (Its Meanings and Its Limits)

The wide range of readings in Working: Its Meaning and Its Limits proposes different ways of thinking about something most of us do every day—work. As part of the Ethics of Everyday Life series, these readings are an invitation to reflection and conversation. They focus not on rules for the workplace or on dilemmas in business ethics but on one of the most fundamental aspects of human existence in every time and place.

Gilbert C. Meilaender presents varied readings that explore many of the ways in which human beings have thought about the place of work in life—its meanings, its limits, and its relation to other obligations, to the life cycle, to play, and to rest. The readings in this volume range in time from the world of ancient Israel and the classical world of Greece and Rome to contemporary American society. They range in complexity from “The Little Red Hen” to philosophers such as Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre, and in genre from poetry by Kipling and George Herbert to essays by Dorothy Sayers and Roger Angell; from novels by Tolstoy and Twain to treatises by Marx, Aristotle, and Karl Barth—all placed in the context of an extended discussion of the meaning of work in human life by Meilaender’s introduction.

Working: Its Meaning and Its Limits enables any reader interested in understanding the moral and spiritual significance of work in our lives to enter into a conversation not only about what we do but who we are.