Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs: Teaching, Writing, Playing, Believing, Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing
    Unavailable
    On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs: Teaching, Writing, Playing, Believing, Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing
    Unavailable
    On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs: Teaching, Writing, Playing, Believing, Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing
    Ebook238 pages3 hours

    On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs: Teaching, Writing, Playing, Believing, Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing

    By James V. Schall

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Teaching, Writing, Playing, Believing, Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing


    Echoing philosophers such as Josef Pieper, Schall explains how the modern world has inverted the rational order of human affairs, devaluing the activities of leisure and placing an exaggerated emphasis on utilitarian concerns. Though he does not deny the importance of those necessary and prosaic activities that take up the bulk of our daily lives, Schall puts these pursuits in perspective by asking, what do we do when everything we have to do is done?

    Defending the importance of simply wasting time, losing ourselves in play, and Chesterton’s claim that “a thing worth doing is worth doing badly,” Schall contends that the joy that accompanies leisure, festivity, and conviviality gives us a glimpse of the eternal. Such activities also enable us to get beyond ourselves—indeed call us beyond ourselves—and are therefore essential if we are to rightly order our worldly concerns. For as Schall reminds us, neither man nor his projects are the highest things in the universe, and it is only by understanding this fact that man can attain to his true dignity.

    Citing Aristotle, Samuel Johnson, Charlie Brown, and New Yorker cartoons with equal sobriety, Schall unfolds a defense of both Being and being, of the radical contingency and therefore goodness of existence itself. On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs is an instructive volume whose countercultural message is of vital importance.

     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMay 13, 2014
    ISBN9781497648876
    Unavailable
    On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs: Teaching, Writing, Playing, Believing, Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing
    Author

    James V. Schall

    James V. Schall, S.J., was a Professor of Political Philosophy from 1977 to 2012 at Georgetown University, where he received his Ph.D. in Political Th eory in 1960. Three times he was granted the Award for Faculty Excellence by the senior class at Georgetown’s College of Arts and Sciences. He wrote hundreds of essays and columns and more than thirty books, including On Islam, The Order of Things, and Another Sort of Learning from Ignatius Press.

    Read more from James V. Schall

    Related to On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs

    Related ebooks

    Religion & Spirituality For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Rome Vs. Chicago

      Jan 31, 2019

      Rome Vs. Chicago
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Smutty Mystic

      Feb 10, 2022

      The Smutty Mystic
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Charmed Life of Frank Wilczek

      Mar 17, 2021

      Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek’s new book, Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality, is both a way of thinking about the abundance that characterizes our exterior and interior worlds, and a kind of alternative to traditional religion, a way of being “born aga

      13 min read

    • Article

      The Dark Side of Awe

      Jan 29, 2024

      The Dark Side of Awe
      10 min read

    • Article

      Clearing His Head

      Feb 14, 2021

      Clearing His Head
      4 min read

    • Article

      Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency

      Jul 14, 2017

      I read non-fiction books that I thought might indirectly tell me something about fiction, even though they were really about something else. The post Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Joss Lake

      Jun 16, 2021

      Joss Lake
      5 min read

    • Article

      BOOKMARK THIS read…listen…stream

      Jan 26, 2021

      The Path Back to Connection in a Fractured World Sarah Wilson • Dey St. Anyone who read Sarah Wilson’s First, We Make the Beast Beautiful, her remarkable 2018 memoir about shifting our approach to anxiety and mental illness, will have high expectatio

      8 min read

    • Article

      Understanding A Life

      Jan 23, 2018

      Understanding A Life
      11 min read

    • Article

      Starting Over Is What’s Hard: The Millions Interviews Mary Laura Philpott

      May 15, 2019

      It’s frighteningly easy to settle into being someone you don’t want to be, because that settling can happen so gradually. The post Starting Over Is What’s Hard: The Millions Interviews Mary Laura Philpott appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      B.J. Hollars Explores the Midwest’s Strangest Corners

      Aug 27, 2019

      Mysteries aren’t something to be solved, but something to be embraced. We don’t need to conquer; we just need to be curious. For me, that’s where the revelation lives—in the not-knowing. The post B.J. Hollars Explores the Midwest’s Strangest Corners

      10 min read

    • Article

      Of Faith and Tragedy

      Dec 3, 2018

      Ecco, 235 pp., $27.99 “WHY RELIGION, OF ALL THINGS?” a confident young physicist asks the young Elaine Hiesey, while she is pursuing her graduate studies at Harvard. “Why not something that has an impact in the real world?” His question is, for her,

      4 min read

    • Article

      Through the Human Lens: The Millions Interviews Meghan O’Gieblyn

      Aug 23, 2021

      I’m always baffled when self-professed “rationalists” object to the supernatural claims of religion—that a virgin could give birth, that God could be three persons. Modern science contains just as much mind-bending absurdity. The post Through the Hu

      10 min read

    • Article

      Scientists Have No Defense Against Awe

      Jun 12, 2016

      Eileen Pollack, author of The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys’ Club, hinted at the complexity of the relationship between science and the soul in a recent essay: “We need scientists who recognize the reality of this illusion we st

      5 min read

    • Article

      Clearly, God Loves Me: The Millions Interviews Nada Alic

      Sep 21, 2022

      "The whole point of art is to ask, 'Are you seeing what I’m seeing?'" The post Clearly, God Loves Me: The Millions Interviews Nada Alic appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    Reviews for On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs

    3.5/5

    10 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      James Schall has written another masterpiece, this time combining lovely readability with extraordinary utility. It reminds me of comparable pieces by Josef Pieper and possibly C. S. Lewis. It's a eulogy on the importance of reading great books and making them lifetime companions and sources of insight. This is a refreshing counterpoint to the early twenty-first century's cultural quagmire, with its intelligence, clarity, and self-assurance.