The Economics and Political Science Room
Leisure the Basis of Labor is a review of Michael J. Naughton's Getting Work Right: Labor and Leisure in a Fragmented World. Here's what caught my attention. I think too much in modern life we Adam 1s and have lost sight of being Adam IIs.
With regard to a life of competing halves, Dr. Naughton looks at the understanding of the “two Adams” in the great Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik’s work. Rabbi Soloveitchik saw the depiction of the creation of man in Genesis 1 with the command to have dominion over the earth and subdue it as a depiction of one dimension of human existence. This “Adam I” is driven by the desire to know and to do and to solve problems. The depiction of “Adam II” in Genesis 2 is that of “man the receiver,” a contemplative being who “seeks meaning not primarily in his achievements but in his received relationships with family, friends, and God, as well as in the experience of the natural world: sickness, death, love, suffering, and play.” The problem has been with us always, perhaps particularly with men, but especially in a dynamic commercial society do people feel that the Adam I side of our existence is encouraged and nourished, but the Adam II side is starved and left for later. We are not urged to be contemplative but to think instrumentally about the world. What can I do with X? How can I make more money? How can I advance my career? These are all good questions, but they are not the deepest questions.
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