Festivity, Tradition, and HopeJosef Pieper and the Historical Meaning of Human Praxis

In Josef Pieper’s famous work, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, the discussion of leisure, philosophy, and wonder takes place within the backdrop of the everyday world of work. Leisure, which exists for its own sake, becomes the counterbalance to a world of work that tends to absorb the whole of the human person into a utilitarian schema of means for an end. However, the totalization of the world by work is itself an effect of the Enlightenment’s notion of progress, which asserts that the perfection of man and society can be organized and attained through reason and sustained physical and political effort alone. Such a claim runs in the face of Christian tradition that sees the end of the human person as created for relationship with God. Thus, Pieper recognizes this Enlightenment project as in no way benign insofar as it collapses the meaning of human existence to finite temporality and inner-worldly history.¹ The meaning of human life becomes tied up with the logical unfolding of history and culture towards their preordained goal. A recent example of this project would be Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man, which argues that the final achievement of technologically advanced, politically liberal, and capitalist societies seems to be the inherent rational goal of man’s political and scientific efforts.² Such a thesis makes a claim not only about the meaning of human existence but the nature of its final fulfillment as well. Thus, Pieper concludes that the ultimate meaning of history must be considered by the philosopher who is also a believer.

In his works The End of Time and Hope and History, Pieper takes up the challenge of evaluating the Enlightenment’s theory of history, how it should be judged, and if there is any evidence that mankind’s future promises a continual progress towards a utopian world. In these texts and others, Pieper presents a competing vision of the meaning of human existence and history, one that is informed by a philosophical reflection on sacred tradition. This larger framework provides the needed horizon to understand the arguments in Leisure: The Basis of Culture. Pieper’s argument could be summarized as follows: Due to the nature of Christian Revelation, the hope of the believer must remain unspecified or undetermined. To be otherwise would destroy the true pilgrim character of man’s earthly existence since it would make man vulnerable to a false presumption concerning the attainment of his final end. Yet, if human hope is unspecified, this makes man’s work to some degree provisional, as we do not know the true significance of our efforts. To overcome this situation, Pieper shows that our hope is a response to a promise that can be experienced in the nature of festivity itself. The affirmation of human life and the world, which is the basis of the religious feast, becomes not only the source for our rest in the world but also our work. The work of faith becomes the manifestation of our true hope and the end and meaning of human life.

History and the End of Time

History, for Pieper, can become a field for philosophical reflection when it goes beyond the factual occurrence of events. Indeed, the meaning of history for a philosopher takes in not only the past but also the present and future. To determine if there is a goal or meaning to history as a whole implies that one can research both the beginning and end of time: where the end stands in a relation of completion to an absolute beginning. However, the categories of an absolute beginning and end transcend the limits of human reason alone. This means, for Pieper, that if the philosopher wants to truly understand the radical meaning of history, she will have to consider those insights of the religious traditions concerning the origin and end as part of her inquiry. The failure to do so, by methodically reducing the sphere of sources, would cease to make the inquiry truly...