Beyond The World Of Total Work

The paper is the reflection on the plight faced by contemporary understanding of leisure and its practice. On the one hand, with the scientific and technological progress and productivity development, human society has been being out of deprivation and gradually moves towards an affluent society, which has increasingly more leisure time. On the other hand, in a growing number of leisure time, as people engages in a variety of utilitarian activities, trivial chores, consumer entertainment, etc., the true leisure is obscured. How to understand the predicament faced by contemporary issues about leisure? How should we make good use of more and more leisure time? What is the nature of leisure? These questions constitute the starting point and the foothold for our thinking.The contemporary real diagnosis science's thinkers have carried on the respective stipulation to the leisure from angles of time, activity and psychological experience. This has deepened our understanding to the concept of leisure in certain stratification plane, and guided the contemporary leisure practice. Because they use the empiricism method and the single angle of view, causes these thinkers to a leisure word limits general meeting faced with these outside its concept radiation scope experience fact challenge and the puzzle. The definitions of the term of leisure always face with the challenge and puzzle from the experience facts outside its concept radiation scope. In other words, the stipulation based on the experiential summarization which is difficult to hit the reality completely has lost the universality and the critique value the concept of leisure should have their own.The classical view of leisure which based on the abstract human nature and appealed to transcendent being accords great importance to pure meditation and is in pursuits of the dead, eternal body. It demonstrates the inherent relevance between leisure and freedom nature of human and the metaphysical pursuit and at the same time, also confines the meaning of leisure to the inner consciousness areas, eventually leading to religious mysticism, thus it neglects or even denies the reality of life.Facing the time difficult position and the reality development's demand, Marx's unique understanding to the concept of practice has provided a new possibility for us to ponder the basic question of leisure. Through the free and conscious productive practice, or the practice of labor and the production of practice, Marx eliminated thoroughly traditional philosophy separating the world into the mortal world and the heaven, this shore and the other shore. From the other side of heaven back to the reality of this shore, all things mystified can have a reasonable solution by human's practice and its understanding. In other words, by the traditional philosophy, human's freedom and leisure can only be achieved in the field of the transcendental spirit. But in the view of Marx, human's freedom and the leisure have experience's feasibility, which produces and realizes in the history. From this, the essential connotation of leisure is expanded from the intrinsic consciousness's meditation to the realistic creativity life of free and conscious, thus overcame the abstract opposition between the leisure and the work theoretically which formed by the formerly intellectual understanding of leisure. This unifies labor and leisure the humanity practiced unifies the leisure and the work through the historical development of human practice.Therefore, leisure is not idleness, not out of work, nor is doing nothing, rest or recreation, but another kind of "work", the aufheben of work alienation. It contains a dimension of self-denial and self-transcendence of human. This kind of leisure is not the contemplation of Classical Age based on the abstract human nature, not contemplation of God like middle ages Christianity, nor is the restoration and the compensation after alienated labor, but is the creativity life of free and conscious based on certain material culture and the agent's ability enhancing, is the product of human history progress and the development.The metaphysical dimension of the nature of human life is highlighted by the self-denial, self-improvement and self-development, and continuing to create culture - the spirit dimension, constantly searching for the self-transcendence, and so on in the creative practice of free and conscious. Based on the realistic road opened by Marx's concept of practice, as human's realistic creativity life of free and conscious, leisure is not only with critical and transcendence demonstrating the liberty nature of human life, but also appealing to the realistic ways of social history. Such life can be pursued through the individual conscious action in the present historical condition. Viewing leisure as creativity life of free and conscious reflects the unity of fact and value, ideal and reality.Contemporary so-called consumer society and leisure society takes the self-proliferation logic of capital as its internal principles. It is essentially still a world of total work. The popular recreation developed from the world of total work does not reflect the freedom nature of leisure as productivity and creativity. Although the popular recreation booming in contemporary greatly enriches and enhances people's daily lives, it is essentially still working for the unlimited proliferation of capital and an important way to increase capital itself. Because popular recreation based on the desire and sensual pleasure is an important part of the production and consumption cycle in the. Therefore, the alienation professional work and popular recreation together constitute the perfect picture of contemporary world of total work world. The so-called "leisure" the popular recreation brings is just an illusion.The development of productive forces and the progress of civilization has been promoting by the world of total work. Unlimited self-proliferation of capital will eventually lead to its self-collapse and create positive conditions for the arrival of a true leisure time. Today we are entering the "affluent society", working hours are getting shorter, more and more free time, however, most people are content with material consumption and vulgar popular entertainment, and not been to a real life of leisure. Therefore, we need to strengthen the leisure education and leisure culture, and continuously improve the cultural quality and recreational capacity of the subject, so that the growing wealth of free time become a real space of freedom and comprehensive development of human. At the same time, this creative transformation of free time and its active use gathers strength for the collapse and destruction of the world of total work. In this sense, leisure as the creativity life of free and conscious is again the self-denial and inner beyond of the world of total work.In order to better describe the theory purpose above-mentioned, the paper combines the western labor and the historical evolution of the leisure concept and the leisure implication from the thought of Marx, on the basis of comparison and analysis of the various leisure, we will get the concept of leisure and the people reveals the free essence and the inner relation between life happiness, and formed the relevant leisure to understand the essence, which could in this view to criticism and examine the modern leisure life dilemma encountered.According to this thought, in the first chapter we analysis and comb every important historical period of western people to understand the relation between work and leisure, the purpose is to form a clear understanding on the concept of work and leisure through the historical evolution. On this basis, the second chapter we will focus on analysis and explore Marx thought which contains the leisure implication, thereby we can get another kind of the leisure understanding which different from traditional western. The third chapter combined with recreational etymology inspection, we will comparison and analysis of the modern leisure concept, in order to understand the differences and connections between the traditional leisure concept and the Marx's leisure concept, thus forming the general provisions of leisure, i.e., in essence the leisure is man's free creative life. The fourth chapter formed in front of the understanding of the essence of leisure, criticizes the main form of modern leisure practice and popular recreation, points out the survey and analysis of modern leisure life predicament mainly comes from the inner marriage about the popular recreation and alienation professional work. They common serve with the unlimited self-proliferation of capital logic which is the guiding principle of the world of total work. And beyond rule of capital logic is the fundamental way to crack the contemporary dilemma of leisure life. Finally we mainly combine the culture and Social conditions of China, investigate the problem should be noted in the process of moving towards the "universal leisure society", and the contemporary significance that the leisure education has to cultivating the man of leisure, and take all these as the realistic thinking of the road to beyond the world of total work.