“Augustine’s acknowledgement toward the genius of the damned presages what only later becomes a hallmark of Catholic theology, the adage that grace perfects nature and does not destroy it. The futility of our natural powers only gains its requisite dignity with the order given to it by God, not by the arbitration of our fallen wills or a lust for death shared with lifeless machines. The bourgeois affinity for parochial labor and the polity’s need for mobilization both resound in the twilight of antiquity, when Augustine reads in Virgil’s Georgics the same poetic condescension and misplaced praise. Labor properly so called belongs to the free man and in fact makes a man free. Salvation, like work, both sets us free and enrolls us in the civic responsibility of a polity. Work, like salvation, enjoys both a metaphysical and an economic status.” WorkFreedomGraceSalvationSt AugustineCity Of God Book:The Invention of Work Source: The Invention of Work
“Work as a metaphysical act, the very “act of being” must be distinguished from labor; work as a remunerative economic invention must be distinguished from subsistence.” WorkLaborWork EthicActWage SlaveryWage Slave Book:The Invention of Work Source: The Invention of Work
“Work, thence identified as consistent, indefinite and systematic remunerative labor, foists its demands upon the employee and not the employer.” WorkEmploymentWork EthicEmployeesWage SlaveryWage Labor Book:The Invention of Work Source: The Invention of Work
“While Europe appears to maintain more reticence embracing it, in America there is no question that work can only be discussed as a secular sacrament, with all the indignity one might expect from such a degrading genus. The Protestant qualifier to Protestant work ethic long ago dissipated, leaving the peculiarly American artifact of viewing one’s wages as a moral reward, one’s continuous employment as a state of grace and one’s retirement as an earthly paradise merited by one’s good works.” WorkRetirementWork EthicAmerican CultureWage SlaveryProtestant Work Ethic Book:The Invention of Work Source: The Invention of Work