CHAPTER X

PERSON, WORK AND RELIGIOUS TRADITION

John Farrelly

            As regards the problem which has exited, and which still exists, in facing modernity there may be a certain parallel between Christianity and the Chinese cultural tradition. In the West in the 18th and 19th centuries there was a period of rapid modernization in economic, social and political life. Many leaders in this process rejected the Christian tradition as more of an obstacle than a help in the modernization process. They attacked this tradition as identified with the old order, and sought to build the future on completely different foundations. The destructive forces in some of these modernizing trends have worked themselves out in history, so that now some leaders in these different fields look more sympathetically to the potential of the Christian tradition. Meanwhile, many who kept faith with the Christian tradition had for many years been reinterpreting the premodern religious tradition and philosophy in order to bring out their potential for the present and the future.

            Similarly, China has in Confucianism a great and ancient tradition which sought "the Great Harmony". Originally and in many of its later representatives it was a humanism in the sense of being based on an insight into the difference between human beings and other material beings, not in the sense of denying transcendence to human beings: it considered the unity of Heaven and man to be central for realizing the Great Harmony.1 It would seem that such a tradition is not limited to past interpretations which seemed simply to justify the status quo. I do not presume to suggest how its potential for the present can be utilized, but perhaps an explanation of a current reinterpretation of the Western religious tradition and philosophy in view of a central modern problem may be suggestive for comparable problems.

            One of the most important problems of our time, if not the most important, is building genuine communities in which the rights of individuals are recognized. One of the most serious foci of this pro-blem is found in the sphere of work. Profound problems concerning the meaning and organization of work disturb and divide our societies and world. Can classical religious traditions and philosophies have something to offer toward the solution of the complex problems of a later age?

            One way to answer these questions in through an analysis of a recent attempt to use religious traditions and a philosophy of the person to explore the meaning and organization of work. Here I am referring to the work of Karol Wojtyla, a Western Christian philo-sopher who grew up in a Communist country, studied phenome-nology and taught philosophy for many years. Later he was elected Pope John Paul II and among his activities wrote an encyclical Laborem Exercens, On Human Work.2 (The following numbers in parentheses refer to the numbered sections of this work.) Here will be taken not as an authoritative religious document, but as a notable effort to reflect upon the contemporary problem of work from the resources of a religious tradition and a philosophy of the person. As such it can be of interest to philosophers of other traditions and can be evaluated critically. In this document John Paul draws on many resources available to those of different faiths and cultures. We shall look to the richness of these resources in illuminating the meaning of work and providing norms for its organization. In this brief analysis, I will (a) indicate the context of this document, (b) show that John Paul II does turn to religious traditions and to the philosophy of the person and how he understands them, (c) give several ways in which he draws on these resources in order to understand and organize work in our time, (d) reflect on the legitimacy of his use of these resources, and conclude by asking how other religious resources may be so used.

THE CONTEXT OF THIS DOCUMENT

            John Paul II grew up in Poland, and besides his ecclesiastical career studied philosophy, received a doctorate in the field and taught it for over a decade. He contested the official interpretation and organization of work in his country on both philosophical and religious grounds, while also critiquing Western capitalism. After being elected Pope, he wrote this document on labor in 1981, com-memorating the 90th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical, Rerum Novarum, the first papal encyclical treating modern social problems. Thus he treats the issue in the context of a long succession of papal documents on the questions.

            As context for this document we should recall also, as does John Paul II, some of the basic conflicts that have characterized the world of work in the last few centuries. In early industrialization there was a basic conflict between the entrepreneurs as owners or administrators of productive property and the mass of people who by their labor shared in the production process.(11) Entrepreneurs very commonly sought to maximize their profits; they considered labor only within an economic perspective as one of the forces of pro-duction, and tried to establish the lowest possible wages and most inexpensive working conditions for their employees. This led to great injustices, as well as to a reaction by many who thought that the root of this evil was the private ownership of productive property. Mar-xists interpreted the problem as one of class conflict; they presented themselves as the spokesmen for the proletariat, and by various means, including revolution, sought to seize control of countries to impose collectivist systems. This, however, did not assure justice, but led rather, among other evils, to a bureaucratization of work in which the individual found himself no more than a cog in an immense machine. The injustices led to the establishment of unions of laborers who fought for just wages and working conditions, insurance, and other benefits. Early capitalism was significantly changed in the process.

            But the problems remain and have evolved. In the West today there is widespread unemployment, hunger and hopelessness. The conflict between capital and labor, which previously had been prima-rily a problem within a particular country, has now become a global issue. Moreover, new technological developments, a new realization of the limits of the resources of the world, and a concern for damage to the environment that has already resulted from industrial pollution pose new problems for the meaning and organization of work. This then is the context in which John Paul II wrote about human work.

RESOURCES: RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS AND

            A PHILOSOPHY OF THE PERSON

            John Paul does not attempt to give technical answers to the problems of the workplace in our time, but rather to uncover the basic human meaning of work and to reflect on this meaning and its moral implications. In fact, he writes that the purpose of his document is:

To highlight . . . the fact that human work is a key, probably the essential key, to the whole social question, if we try to see that question really from the point of view of man’s good. And if the solution -- or rather the gradual solution -- of the social question . . . must be sought in the direction of "making life more human", then the key, namely, human work, acquires fundamental and decisive importance.(3)

Thus, he explores the meaning of work as described in the following and he turns to the resources of religious tradition and of a philosophy of the person for this purpose.

            In seeking to shed light upon human problems, the document turns to the Judaeo-Christian Scriptures as a communication from the divine source of human wisdom. These Scriptures, in the same fashion as the sacred writings of other religions of the world, can be appreciated by men and women of quite different traditions also as a sedimentation of human wisdom, as we shall here. In literary forms appropriate to its time and to the purpose of its author the first book of the Bible gives an account of the beginnings of the world and of man. It does so in a way that leaves no doubt that there is meaning in human persons and their lives. It tells us that "God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created him." And "God blessed them, saying, `Be fertile and mul-tiply; fill the earth and subdue it."3 And God gave them dominion over all the earth, which dominion then is one way in which man images God.

            In the gift of dominion is included the commission to work, for in their work human beings share in the work and purposes of the creator. The range of what God has committed to man’s dominion is vast. It includes all the resources of the physical world and extends into the indefinite future, for this commission to the first couple is meant for all mankind. No future development of the resources of the world lies outside its embrace. In principle, therefore, the phy-sical world is subordinate to humankind and is placed within its dominion to serve the human good.

            An inquiry into the meaning of work should distinguish its objective from its subjective meaning. Any work, because of its specific nature, has its internal goals. Agriculture, for example, has as its goal the production of food; industry is for the manufacture of goods for human use. Goals specific to a certain form of work constitute its objective meaning. Technological developments have enormously increased the scope and, at times, the quality of human work as it fulfills these goals. Technology is thus man’s ally, though at times it can seem to be his enemy.

            Work can also, however, be considered subjectively or in relation to man as its agent and goal. As John Paul writes:

Man has to subdue the earth and dominate it, because as the ‘image of God’ he is a person, that is to say, a subjective being capable of acting in a planned and rational way, capable of deciding about himself and with a tendency to self-realization. As a person, man is therefore the subject of work. . . . Various actions belonging to the work process . . . must all serve to realize his humanity, to fulfill the calling to be a person that is his by reason of his very humanity.(6)

            The divine commission to dominate the world is realized in relation not only to the things of the world, but to the work itself, i.e. through maintaining the order whereby man is served by his work, rather than allowing himself to be subordinated to its service. "This dimension conditions the very ethical nature of work."(6) It has an ethical value because it is an act of a person, "a conscious and free subject, that is to say, a subject who decides about himself."(6)

            The basis for deciding the value of work is not primarily its objective meaning, but its subjective meaning. Work can have de-grees of objective meaning, but the primary basis for the dignity and value of work is "man himself, who is its subject."(6)

This leads immediately to a very important conclusion of an ethical nature: however true it may be that man is destined for work and called to it, in the first place work is "for man" and not man "for work".(6)

The objective purpose of any kind of work cannot have a definitive meaning in itself, for "in the final analysis it is always man who is the purpose of work, whatever work it is that is done."(6)

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE MEANING AND

            ORGANIZATION OF WORK

            Religious tradition and elements of a philosophy of the person reinforce one another in the light they cast on the meaning and or-ganization of work. Several implications are drawn by John Paul from the topic thus illumined.

            The Priority of Labor. A central principle for the organization of work that flows from both religious tradition and a philosophy of the person is the priority of labor. To be given the commission to subdue the earth means that man is to dominate all the resources of the world. These resources are not created by man; they are given to him by nature and so ultimately by the creator. Man can modify these resources, as he does in successive stages of technological sophistication in production through history, thereby providing for himself more ingenious and effective "workbenches", as it were. Through the domestication of animals, through agriculture, through industrialization, and through the sophisticated technology of our time, man establishes increasingly effective instruments to aid him in his labor. All that goes by the name of productive property, or capital, is really a collection of such instruments. No matter how so-phisticated be this instrument, it came from resources which God placed in nature for man to discover and modify. It is the historical product as well of the generations of labor that honed and developed the instruments of production we now have. These instruments are still fruitful because of the work of many people at the present time. Man is superior to all of this, no matter how impressive it may be. He is to dominate this whole order, because he alone is a person, and has been given the commission to subdue the earth.

            Thus an opposition between capital and labor does not derive from the production process itself. The opposition arose from a materialistic culture that tends to view the whole production process from the perspective of material consequences, of products and money. In this "economism" man and capital both are considered as "forces of production". Labor is considered as a "merchandise" that laborers sell to the employers who own and organize productive property.

            The error of this perspective and the injustices to which it has led come from considering labor and capital as being on the same level and as simple parts of an economic equation. Man is treated as an instrument of production, and not as the effective subject of work. In the process of production, however, "labor is always a primary efficient cause, while capital . . . remains a mere instrument or instrumental cause."(12) This instrument conditions man’s work, but it does not constitute "an impersonal `subject’ putting man and man’s work into a position of dependence."(13) "Man -- as the subject of work and independent of the work he does -- man alone is a person."(12) The practice and theory of work has to be in accord with the primacy of the person.

            Private Property. The solution to the conflict between capital and labor is not a denial of the right to the private possession of pro-perty, even productive property. In accord with the constant Chris-tian tradition, the Pope reaffirms the right to such ownership. Moreover, the expropriation of productive property and the trans-ferral of its administration to a collectivity or the state in no way assures that the human rights of the workers will be respected. Such organization can easily lead to bureaucratization, with the result that the worker feels him or herself simply a cog in an immense machine with no sense that he or she is genuinely forwarding his or her own good through his work. There may be instances in which there are sufficient reasons to socialize some productive property, but the basic solution to the conflict between capital and labor is found in recognizing that owners of property are not morally free simply to use their property as they wish.

            The resources of the world were given to serve the needs of all humankind. Privately owned instruments that facilitate pro-duction are in fact the products of the work of generations of la-borers through the ages. As they are the fruit of many people’s work, so too their present fruit is the result of people’s labor. Thus owners of property must use their property within this context.4 They are to use their property not in a way that obstructs the initial and abiding purpose of the resources of the world, namely, to serve the needs of all, but in a way harmonious to that purpose. Moreover, property owners should seek ways to give laborers a more active voice in the productive process and a more substantial share in its fruits. The worker "wishes to be able to take part in the very work process as a sharer in responsibility and creativity at the workbench to which he applies himself."(15)

            Work as Humanization. Through sin humans turned away from God, as is reflected in a certain resistance one encounters in one’s work. Scripture says that God told Adam and Eve after their sin: "In the sweat of your face shall you eat bread."5 Human work, physical, intellectual, administrative, or parental usually involves effort or difficulty. Work nonetheless continues to be a good for man. Though, despite its difficulty, work may well be enjoyable, "It is also good as being something worthy, that is to say, something that corresponds to man’s dignity, that expresses this dignity and increases it."(9) It is good to transform the world and make it more adaptable to human needs.

            Through work man also transforms himself and, in a sense, "becomes `more a human being’."(9) Work calls him to exercise vir-tues such as industriousness, patience and creativity. Work can, it is true, be used to degrade man as when he is exploited or subjected to forced labor; but this is counter to the inherent meaning of work. Moreover, through work man not only shapes himself but is enabled to build a family, for work gives him the means to found a family and raise children. Through work man can contribute to the common good of his society, to the development of a culture and a civilization. By work, indeed, human beings share in God’s creative activity. They can further his creative plan and continue his work.(25)

            Through their toil men and women can share in the redemptive work that Christians associate with Jesus Christ, thereby contri-buting to the building of the Kingdom of God. Through human labor "`human dignity, brotherhood and freedom’ must increase on earth."(27) This theme deserves further analysis. In this document John Paul also offers us thoughts on the rights of the worker, on the duties of the employer and of what he calls the `indirect employer’, i.e., the laws of a political community and the international economic order that affect the conditions of work and so the rights of workers.

NOTES ON THE USE OF RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS

            AND A PHILOSOPHY OF THE PERSON

            John Paul II in effect combines these two sources in the use he makes of them, but it is appropriate for us to reflect briefly on each in turn.

            Tradition. The use of religious tradition in this document is in line with the work of Gadamer and others who contend, against the philosophers of the Enlightenment and their followers, that the resources of our traditions can legitimately and fruitfully be brought to bear upon the present.6 Rather than relying on a notion of human knowledge modeled on the physical sciences or on mathematics, which models discount the authority of tradition, we should acknow-ledge the central importance of the knowledge which has been passed on as the heritage of a community, and hence as having an authority based on the community’s experience of living through time. Our access to this sort of heritage comes through being born into a family whose language and symbol systems mediate a people’s interpretation of reality. This interpretation has been gained from an experience in history and has been handed down to our generation in a tradition embodied in a variety of traditional forms.

            Such an interpretation of reality affords a vision of the goals of human life which possesses an intrinsic authority and a normative quality for a people -- one that contains in germ that people’s notion of human excellence and is exemplified in its great men and women viewed as paradigms or "archetypes" of human excellence. The authority of such a past is not so much limiting as enabling. It is but natural to recognize our dependence on others who have knowledge and competence, for example a medical doctor. The same is true of our dependence on "the contribution of extended historical experi-ence" in our cultural heritage. Such recognition can lead us to acknowledge a normative "vision which both transcends its own time and stands as directive for time to come" for our own communities. The active and formative influence of tradition makes it a living influence in our own time, one that enables us "today to determine the specific direction of our lives and mobilize a community of consensus and commitment." It can, as well, enable us to recognize those deformations specific to our own time.

            Such a heritage can have particular relevance to new issues that a people faces in the present, particularly in its social life. John Paul’s use of tradition is one illustration that our heritage can promote a creative exercise of freedom in our day. To act freely in the present one must know one’s identity, which is impossible without an active appreciation of one’s heritage. A purely abstract knowledge of humanity is inadequate. Over time there is, as it were, a dialectic in our interpretations of our past. Time can open up new possibilities of understanding our past, and such dialogic engagement with our past can give us access to fruitful possibilities for the revision of meaning.

            John Paul finds in Scripture also an important resource for a social critique in our time. Critique is carried on when our interests are placed within a larger context of interests such as unity, good-ness and truth. A critique of ideologies presupposes the development of communicative action by free persons. For this to happen in our world, controlled as it is by technology, we must search first within our own heritage for resources of emancipation. Some modern social critics look back for these resources to the period of the Enlightenment, but the Western heritage has deeper roots in the Biblical tradition. To recall and celebrate this heritage is to reopen a channel of inspiration and guidance for social change that speaks directly to the liberation of the poor and the alienated.

            The Person. Before he was Pope, John Paul wrote a book entitled The Acting Person in which he used a phenomenology of the person to argue for the need of a metaphysics of the person.7 A number of other contemporary philosophers would also hold that nothing less than a metaphysics can do justice to our experience of being persons.

            One example is found in Thomas Tracy’s book, God, Action and Embodiment.8 In it, he seeks to mediate between a classical Thomistic and a Whiteheadian philosophy and theology. He notes that we understand a person through intentional agency. That is, we know a person through his or her character traits, the ways in which the person orients himself or herself to action, to self, to others. This differs from the way we know other things in our environment. It is proper to a person to initiate activity, and thus we know a person not so much by what happens to him or her but by what he or she does and the intentionality which this action expresses. Unlike, behavio-rism, Tracy’s approach would define as personal action not simply the external event or happening, but that event in relation to intentionality. Far from being seen dualistically, the human person in his or her bodily action is a psycho-physical unit. Further, that we are an enduring reality through time is shown by our "story" and by the responsibility we take for past acts.

            The concept of the human being as a person is not confined to the Western cultural context. Without implying complete cross-cultural agreement as to the understanding of person, it is notable that Keiji Nishitani of the Kyoto school of philosophy writes: "There is no doubt that the idea of man as a personal being is the highest idea of man which has thus far appeared. The same may be said as regards the idea of God as personal being."9

            The distinctiveness of the human being when compared with all other material reality, a distinctiveness expressed by the term "person", gives grounds for considering humans to be superior to all else in the material order. This distinctiveness constitutes the grounds for our sense of a special dignity intrinsic to each human being that deserves the respect of the person, of other individuals, and of those holding economic and political power. Here we have the crux of John Paul’s argument that work is for man and not men for work, that the human and technology cannot be considered on the same plane, nor can humans be reduced to the status of a techno-logical tools. This human distinctiveness underlies John Paul’s conviction -- one that he is far from being alone in affirming -- that the worker must be considered as a person and that the organization of the economic order must accord with that value.

            One may well ask why the results of a hermeneutic reflection on Scripture and the conclusions drawn from a philosophy of the human person coincide to such an extent. Both are grounded in, and reflect, experience. Much that is seen as divine revelation within the religious tradition has been recognized as such precisely because it comes from such a depth of human reflection on the experience of a people that the resulting wisdom is recognized as God’s gift and not simply human discovery. Also, a philosophy always reflects the culture in which it was born. In the West, philosophical under-standings of the human being as person were not independent of the Judaeo-Christian experience of divinity as personal and the personal names of Father, Son and Holy Spirit for God in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Both religious tradition and the insights of philosophy will, if the depth of their understanding of the human condition be sufficiently penetrating, have relevance for times and places other than those in which they were first elaborated.

            In conclusion, let us note that other religious traditions have their own resources both for the humanization of the world of work and as a line of defense against the domination over man that can so easily be conceded to technology and science. Professor Vincent Shen makes this quite clear in the case of Confucianism:

On the theoretical level, Confucianism emphasizes the priority of human subjectivity and intersubjectivity over logical and technological systems. In other words, according to Confucianism, man has to be master and not slave of science and technology. All development of the latter must be in the service of the unfolding and realization of human potentiality.10

NOTES

            1. Tang Yi-jie, Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, Christi-anity and Chinese Culture (Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1991), pp. 51-54.

            2. Pope John Paul II, On Human Work (Laborem Exercens), Sept. 14, 1981. U.S. National Catholic News Service translation (Washington: United States Catholic Conference, 1981). The num-bers found in parentheses in the text refer to the sections into which the document is divided.

            3. Genesis 1:27-28.     

            4. Pope John Paul cites here Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II, 66, 2 and 6.

            5. Genesis 3:19.

            6. In my remarks on this topic, I rely on George F. McLean, "Hermeneutics and Heritage", in his Man and Nature (Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy and the Univer-sity Press of America, 1989).

            7. Karol Wojtyla, The Acting Person (Boston: Reidel, 1979).

            8. Thomas Tracy, God, Action and Embodiment (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984).

            9. Quoted in Hans Waldenfels, Absolute Nothingness. Foun-dations for a Buddhist-Christian Dialogue (New York: Paulist, 1980), p. 80.