Within the depth-psychology and humanistic-scholarly corpus, ‘Labor’ emerges not as a neutral economic category but as a charged site where soul, technology, social structure, and religious meaning intersect. The broadest tension runs between labor as a form of sacred participation — evident in Hesiod and Vernant’s analyses of Greek agrarian religion, where hard toil establishes a covenant with divine powers — and labor as an alienating or purely instrumental force, critiqued by Sardello, Fromm, and implicitly by the Bhagavad Gita commentary. A second axis opposes the ancient identification of labor with use-value and craft excellence (Vernant on Plato and Aristotle) against the modern abstraction of labor into exchange-value and ‘the bottom line’ (Sardello, Easwaran). Ricoeur, engaging Arendt’s triad of labor, work, and action, offers the philosophical sharpest formulation: labor’s products are consumable and impermanent, marking time as passage rather than duration. Simondon interrogates whether labor is even a foundational social infrastructure or merely one tension among others. Benveniste tracks the Indo-European linguistic roots of hiring and wage relations, grounding the concept historically. The spiritual literature (Philokalia, Climacus) preserves a separate register: ascetic labor as the discipline of the intellect. Together these voices reveal ‘labor’ as a problem of the soul’s relation to necessity, production, and the divine.
The consumable nature of the products of labor points up its precariousness… the time of labor is passage, the time of the work is duration.
Ricoeur, via Arendt, distinguishes labor from work and action by the perishability of its products, arguing that labor’s temporality is one of passage rather than enduring creation.
, Oneself as Another, 1992thesis
Division of labor alters egotism. It produces the feeling that ‘I can no longer do anything alone.’… We are still at a stage of soul development at which this sense of labor produces an unsolvable dilemma.
Sardello argues that the division of labor creates a soul-level contradiction between working for oneself and working for others, and that resolving this tension is the path beyond economic egotism.
, Facing the World with Soul: The Reimagination of Modern Life, 1992thesis
Work on the land is participation in an order both natural and divine that is superior to man… Undertaking the set task and working hard and tenaciously at it is valuable and prestigious insofar as it establishes a relationship, a kind of reciprocal bond, with the gods.
Vernant demonstrates that in archaic Greece, agricultural labor was not a technical transformation of nature but a form of religious comportment establishing covenant with divine justice.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983thesis
As Marx noted, in the ancient world the division of labor is seen exclusively from the point of view of the product’s use value. Its purpose is to make each product as perfect as possible.
Vernant, invoking Marx, shows that ancient Greek division of labor was oriented toward qualitative excellence and use-value, not toward maximum productive output — a fundamentally different psychology of work.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983thesis
There are perhaps other infrastructures than the exploitation of nature by men in society, other modes of relation to the milieu than those that pass through the relation of elaboration, i.e. through labor. The very notion of infrastructure can be critiqued: is labor a structure, or indeed a tension.
Simondon challenges the Marxist axiom that labor is the foundational social infrastructure, proposing instead that labor may be merely one tension within a broader field of collective individuation.
, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020thesis
work is the most essential social link and that men are citizens by reason of the network of complementary professional activities that unites them… neither Plato nor Aristotle seems to disagree with Protagoras about the role of the division of labor.
Vernant documents the ancient philosophical consensus that the division of labor is the structural precondition of the polis, making citizenship and social life intelligible.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting
poiesis is defined by contrast with praxis. In acting, a man acts for himself; he does not produce anything but his own activity.
Vernant articulates the classical Greek distinction between poiesis (productive labor oriented toward an external end) and praxis (action whose end is the activity itself), a distinction foundational to depth-psychological accounts of meaningful work.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting
it is through strictly regulated efforts and hard work that man may enter into contact with the divine powers. Through work, men become a thousand times more dear to the immortals.
Vernant, reading Hesiod, establishes that disciplined agricultural labor functions as a spiritual practice that intensifies the peasant’s relationship to divine favor and cosmic order.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting
conducere was applied to the hiring of labor of any kind… once this notion of ‘hiring’ had become established, conducere was employed for ‘leasing’ of land, a house.
Benveniste traces how the Latin term for labor-hire evolved from military recruitment, revealing that the economic concept of waged labor carries an inherited semantics of compulsion and command.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973supporting
locare ‘to put a thing in the place where it belongs’ became specified in the sense of ‘hire’ once it was applied to men or their work.
Benveniste shows that the Latin vocabulary of hiring labor derived from spatial placement, suggesting that the commodification of labor was linguistically grounded in concepts of order and proper positioning.
, Indo European Language and Society, 1973supporting
From Pandora’s box emerged all the ills and sufferings that plague mankind — old age, labor, sickness, vice and passion.
Edinger cites the mythic origin of labor as an ill released from Pandora’s box, positioning toil as part of the price of ego-consciousness and the separation from the archetypal Self.
, Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche, 1972supporting
the names Jacob and Israel refer respectively to the ascetically active and to the contemplative intellect which through ascetic labor and with God’s help overcomes the passions and through contemplation sees God.
The Philokalia tradition identifies ascetic labor as the active dimension of the spiritual path, the necessary discipline by which the passions are subdued prior to contemplative illumination.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
We tend to overwork… as a means of self-escape, as a way of trying to justify our existence. Busy-ness, he contended, was the true laziness, a failure to engage fully and responsibly with oneself and the world.
McGilchrist, drawing on Pieper, frames compulsive labor as a flight from genuine self-encounter, inverting the common valuation that equates productivity with virtue.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
Sattvic economics… counts human costs as well as material ones, and its bottom line measures the whole rather than the benefit to a few.
Easwaran contrasts an economy oriented toward the whole person (sattvic) against one that reduces labor and production to monetary aggregates, aligning the Gita’s categories with a soul-centered critique of capitalism.
, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting
The exact opposite concept is found in the two texts of Exodus… The eternal inspires Betsabel with a ‘universal’ skill so that he can do every type of work and make every kind of artistic product.
Vernant notes in passing the biblical counterpart to the Greek division-of-labor ideal: the divinely gifted craftsman whose comprehensive skill contrasts with the Greek artisan’s strict specialization.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983aside
You must watch, labor, conquer certain desires, you must depart from your kinsmen, be despised by your slaves, laughed at by those who meet you.
Epictetus enumerates the labors required of the aspiring philosopher, deploying labor not as productive work but as an ascetic regimen of self-mastery.
, Discourses, 108aside