Manual Work

Manual Work
All the foregoing implies that manual work is a useful, not a terminal, activity.

But notice that useful is often equated with “good,” as if anything not useful could not be good in any way. Such language, which is bad in daily life, may be dreadfully deceptive in philosophy.

A thing useful is that which leads to a desirable state of affairs; whatever is useful is relative to an excellence that lies beyond utility.

However, the essentially useful character of an activity is often hidden by concomitant pleasure; and so in order to obtain a precise notion of the useful and to see that it is not identical with the good, we must think of operations that have no desirability of their own and would not be desired at all if they did not lead to objects of desire.

Walking a few blocks from home to school is a thing useful, but it is also pleasurable. An example of a thing purely would be to walk the same distance in a blizzard.

Work so definitely has the character of useful activity that, of the end is placed in the activity itself, what would be work under other circumstances becomes something other than work.

For instance, it is very handy for a family to have a man whose hobby is fixing and improving everything in the house.

Is this man working? The case is somewhat uncertain. If he is doing things useful because they are needed, his activity is a sort of work.

But if, having retired prematurely with such means that he can hire all the help he pleases, he does things by himself in order to avoid boredom, his activity is really a hobby.

The purpose being in the activity itself, it cannot be called work without qualification.
Manual Work