Idleness

"For millennia, idleness and laziness have been regarded as vices. We're all expected to work to survive and get ahead, and devoting energy to anything but labor and self-improvement can seem like a luxury or a moral failure. Far from questioning this conventional wisdom, modern philosophers have worked hard to develop new reasons to denigrate idleness. In Idleness, the first book to challenge modern philosophy's portrayal of inactivity, Brian O'Connor argues that the case against an indifference to work and effort is flawed--and that idle aimlessness may instead allow for the highest form of freedom. Idleness explores how some of the most influential modern philosophers drew a direct connection between making the most of our humanity and avoiding laziness. Idleness was dismissed as contrary to the need people have to become autonomous and make whole, integrated beings of themselves (Kant); to be useful (Kant and Hegel); to accept communal norms (Hegel); to contribute to the social good by working (Marx); and to avoid boredom (Schopenhauer and de Beauvoir). O'Connor throws doubt on all these arguments, presenting a sympathetic vision of the inactive and unserious that draws on more productive ideas about idleness, from ancient Greece through Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Schiller and Marcuse's thoughts about the importance of play, and recent critiques of the cult of work. A thought-provoking reconsideration of productivity for the twenty-first century, Idleness shows that, from now on, no theory of what it means to have a free mind can exclude idleness from the conversation."--Provided by publisher

The Anxieties of Idleness: Idleness in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture investigates the preoccupation with idleness that haunts the British eighteenth century. Jordan argues that as Great Britain began to define itself as a nation during this period, one important quality it claimed was industriousness. However, this claim was undermined and complicated by many factors, such as leisure's importance to class status. Thus idleness was a subject of intense anxiety. One result of this anxiety was an increased surveillance of the supposed idleness of those members of society with less power to wield: the working classes, the nonwhite races, and women. Jordan analyzes how the "idleness" of these groups is figured, in traditional literature and in extra-literary works. Idleness was also a concern for writers of the day, as writing became a money-earning profession. Jordan examines the lives and works of two writers especially obsessed with idleness, Samuel Johnson and William Cowper.

Yoshida Kenko (c. 1283-1352) was a Buddhist priest, a reclusive scholar and poet who had ties to the aristocracy of medieval Japan. Despite his links to the Imperial court, Kenko spent much time in seclusion and mused on Buddhist and Taoist teachings. His Essays in Idleness is a collection of his thoughts on his inner world and the world of Japanese life in the fourteenth century. He touched on topics as diverse as the benefits of the simple life ("There is indeed none but the complete hermit who leads a desirable life"), solitude ("I am happiest when I have nothing to distract me and I am completely alone"), lust ("What a weakly thing is this heart of ours"), the impermanence of this world ("Truly the beauty of life is its uncertainty"), and reading ("To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations--such is a pleasure beyond compare"). To enter Kenko's world is to enter a world of intimate observations, deceptively simple wisdom, and surprising wit.

Roman and medieval poets and authors not only explored the physicality and sexuality of love, driven by passion and desire, but also saw love as a labour, a project to be worked on and achieved to reach the final goal.

The Buddhist priest Kenko clung to tradition, Buddhism, and the pleasures of solitude, and the themes he treats in his "Essays, " written sometime between 1330 and 1332, are all suffused with an unspoken acceptance of Buddhist beliefs.

How to be Idle is Tom Hodgkinson's entertaining guide to reclaiming your right to be idle. As Oscar Wilde said, doing nothing is hard work. The Protestant work ethic has most of us in its thrall, and the idlers of this world have the odds stacked against them. But here, at last, is a book that can help. From Tom Hodgkinson, editor of the Idler, comes How to be Idle, an antidote to the work-obsessed culture which puts so many obstacles between ourselves and our dreams. Hodgkinson presents us with a laid-back argument for a new contract between routine and chaos, an argument for experiencing life to the full and living in the moment. Ranging across a host of issues that may affect the modern idler - sleep, the world of work, pleasure and hedonism, relationships, bohemian living, revolution - he draws on the writings of such well-known apologists for idleness as Dr Johnson, Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson and Nietzsche. His message is clear: take control of your life and reclaim your right to be idle. 'Well written, funny and with a scholarly knowledge of the literature of laziness, it is both a book to be enjoyed at leisure and to change lives' Sunday Times 'In his life and in this book the author is 100 per cent on the side of the angels' Literary Review 'The book is so stuffed with wisdom and so stuffed with good jokes that I raced through it like a speed freak' Independent on Sunday Tom Hodgkinson is the founder and editor of The Idler and the author of How to be Idle, How to be Free, The Idle Parent and Brave Old World. In spring 2011 he founded The Idler Academy in London, a bookshop, coffeehouse and cultural centre which hosts literary events and offers courses in academic and practical subjects - from Latin to embroidery. Its motto is 'Liberty through Education'. Find out more at www.idler.co.uk.

Idleness, Indolence and Leisure in English Literature is the first study to provide transhistorical perspectives and cutting-edge critical analyses of debates concerning idleness in English literature. The topicality of the subject is emphasized by two pieces of sociological analysis.

The book is entitled Life in Idleness. So basically the book is on not wasting our time or our lives on things not serious or trying to make the reader think more about what he says and does in life so he can do things that are productive and not unproductive to himself or society. I wrote it with an aim to be more productive, and only be productive and not idle in our lives, or well get nowhere. If we do things in idleness while our lives stands still and make no gains in the world, time keeps creeping by without us noticing it, and we continue to get older and not realize that we have become unproductive in society. In the end, all we gain in life those that decides to live a life in idleness is time moving by while his or her life stands still being unproductive and useless to society. Thats the reason for the clock picture on the book. The book is telling people to do things that are only productive and meaningful in order for any country or society to gain from your existence. Not doing things that are meaningful or productive to society is a burden to a society because were all born to help each other and be productive and not be unproductive. We have to seek during our lifetime professions or jobs that helps every society to learn and to make every society better either by inventing things to make every persons life better or the like. The main chapter in the book though is my new terms in rhetoric.