The Works of The Mind

The Works of The Mind
What do architects or engineers do? They plan and direct manual work. That means that by their special knowledge they control physical activities which result in a building, a canal, or a machine.

They are thus involved in an intellectual relation which because of its direction may be called for short, “Man and Nature.”

Ever since the time of Renaissance, there has been a tendency to identify science with the rational process aimed at the shaping of nature according to man’s purposes.

We find this inclination in Leonardo da Vinci, in Francis Bacon and in Descartes whom proposed a science that would make men “les mattres et possesseurs de la nature.”

By the time of the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century, this reductionists view of science had become so prevalent that it finally caused a reaction.

Among those who rejected the view that the only science was the science of nature was Auguste Comte. He believed that he had discovered a science for the control and transformation of society which was superior to the science of nature.

Speaking in general, scientific knowledge is useful to man in his social life as well as in his relation to nature, and the possession of this knowledge is usually quite rewarding to the scientist, personally.

But science, strictly speaking, must also be seen as aiming toward the final purpose of discursive rational process as such, which we shall call contemplation of truth or simply contemplation.
The Works of The Mind

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

Manual Work

Manual Work
In both theory and popular usage, manual work is distinguished from any other kind of work by its direct relation top physical nature.

What kind the word “direct” excludes here is the human intermediary; the tools and the machines are by no means excluded.

For instance, to till the land with a tractor driven plow is manual work; but the gentlemen farmer who merely gives orders to his farm hands is not a manual worker even though he may a worker in some sense.

The other characteristics features of manual work, which may be less familiar but are no less self-sufficient, are the following:

• Manual work is a transitive activity. While this term also means transient, fluid, nonlasting, “transitive” here designates the properties of passing from an agent into a receiver.
  
  Also in some metaphysical contexts a transitive action is defined simply as the production of an effect, and thus an action whose effect remains within the agent is still considered transitive.
  
  Here, transitive activity is understood in a restricted sense to designate only those actions whose effect is external to the agent.
  
  Hammering, shaping, melting, cutting are transitive actions in this restricted and strongest sense.
  
• Manual work is an activity by way change. It belongs to the physical type in sharp opposition to the psychological operations which do, or at least may, exist by way of rest.
  
  To work is to bring about a change in an external matter.
  
  When that change has come to an end the worker’s activity belongs to the past. Like many metaphysical simplicities, this has far-reaching implications.
  
  To make a chair is to bring about a change in the wood, the nails, the straw and the glue of which the chair is made.

Manual Work

The Concept of Work

The Concept of Work
The daily life of man is composed of things whose meaning is hidden in the mystery of their familiarity.

Other examples would be love, companionship, sincerity, honor, sport, ennui and community-feeling.

Many would think that those things of familiarity we experience when we speak of honor or of work is not caused by the kind intelligibility which places an object above definition.

Time needs to be defined. Its familiarity is not that of a primary notion, and “work” is immensely farther than “time” from the condition of primary intelligibility.

Being anterior to any definition, however is only one of two causes of indefinability; the other is the lack of essential unity.

A complex whose components are not compromised within one essence cannot be defined.

For instance, it is possible to define the physician, and it is possible to define the singer, but it is possible to define the singer who is also a physician, or the physician who is also a singer.

Thus our second problem is that right now we cannot be sure whether the term “worker: conveys an essence or a mere aggregate of intelligibilities.

Indeed, as Werner Sombart would have it, the word might be without any real meaning, albeit usable it conversation because meanings may be assigned to it at will.

And so all that can be said at this point, even assuming work to be an essence, is that determining the approach from which the intelligible unity of work may be perceived remains a difficult problem.
The Concept of Work