On leisure and culture: why human things exist and why they are "unimportant"

Modern Age, Fall, 2004 by James V. Schall

Why do things exist rather than not exist? If precisely "nothing," in the most literal sense of the word, ever once, as it were, "existed," no thing would still "exist." Ex nihilo, nihil fit--a most basic of first principles of being. Why, among the vast diversity of things that do exist, are there also human things, clearly different from non-human things both above us and below us on the scale of being? Why does the existence of human things include the capacity to know the other things that are? Why can we only know ourselves by first knowing something that is not ourselves? And are these things that exist, human and non-human things, "important?" Important to whom? To what? For what?

We like to agree with Aristotle that nothing is made "in vain," especially ourselves. Yet, who or what might "need" us, or at least want us to be? Leisure and culture are the conditions and circumstances in which we try to respond to such questions. These are the things we do when all else is done. Our lives are not, and cannot be, exhausted in the necessary. Our being is not intended merely to keep us in existence as if just living were our highest good. We know the purpose of a doctor when we are sick, namely to restore us to health. But what if we are "healthy"? What are the activities of health that fill our days? Surely they do not consist merely in efforts to keep us alive. We would like to know the answers to questions about what is just because we would like to know, just because knowing itself is a delight.

At first sight at least, such sophisticated-sounding notions as leisure and culture seem relatively insignificant compared to making and acquiring the basic necessities of life--food, clothing, shelter, economics, the production of things, war, trade. We are incessantly being urged by our churches, by our voluntary agencies, by our media to concern ourselves with the needy and the poor of various sorts. We sometimes wonder if this latter concern is not in itself an escape from or avoidance of more fundamental questions. With so many things wrong or lacking in the world, in any case, why on earth, of all things, are we to be worried about "culture" and "leisure?"

Is not this leisure something we cannot "afford?" And "culture" comes from cultus, the notion that the highest things arise from ritual worship of the gods. Could anything be more fanciful? This same accusation, of course, was that which used to be leveled at believers by Epicureans, Marxists, and sundry militant atheist positions. The concern for the highest things, it was charged with some urgency, deflected us from those things that must be done for the good of the world. Culture, religion, leisure, worship were luxuries we cannot afford. It is because of them, it was charged, that the more "basic" things were neglected.

Yet, there are those who suspect that if we do not concern ourselves with things that are not "necessary," not "important," we will never really get to those things that are commonly thought to be necessary in a worldly sense. "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you." At first sight, such an admonition, even with its scriptural authority, seems absurd. It advocates the wrong priority. If we first produce "all these things" by ourselves, we then can worry about the highest things in good time. They might be nice, but we can get along fine without them. Surely we can only worry about the Kingdom of God after we have enough material things. Then we can waste time on such fanciful questions for which no one has any clear answers anyhow.