What’s It All About?

This blog space is dedicated to exploring various topics within the philosophy of work by drawing on a wide range of disciplines—such as, ethics, political philosophy, sociology, economics, psychology and business studies.

The Philosophy of Work is addressed to questions and problems relating to issues of well-being and justice as they bear upon and indeed are created by the various kinds of human work. It also involves explicitly philosophical concerns about how modern notions of work have developed (e.g. genealogy, hermeneutics, critical history) and what we can say is the essential nature of work (e.g. phenomenology, Hegelian and Marxist thought, Aristotelianism). Conceptions of work extend as far back as Plato and Aristotle, and if you thought ancient Greek philosophy was made obsolete by virtue of our historical “progression”, you might want to think again! Perhaps nothing demonstrates this more than Aristotle’s well known comment “We are at work in order that we may be at leisure” and how this priority has been seemingly reversed.

Dr Todd Mei
Philosophy
University of Kent