We can begin, like the Scholastic masters, with an objection: videtur quod non ... ""It seems not to be true that..."" And this is the objection: a time like the present [i. e., a few years after the Second World War, in Germany] seems, of all times, not to be a time to speak of leisure. [...] That is no small objection. But there is also a good answer to it. [...] For, when we consider the foundations of Western European culture (is it, perhaps, too rash to assume that our re-building will in fact be carried out in a ""Western"" spirit? Indeed, this and no other is the very assumption that is at issue today), one of these foundations is leisure. We can read it in the first chapter of Aristotle's Metaphysics. And the very history of the meaning of the word bears a similar message. The Greek word for leisure (σχολή) is the origin of Latin scola, German Schule, English school. The names for the institutions of education and learning mean ""leisure."" (Josef Pieper)

We can begin, like the Scholastic masters, with an objection: videtur quod non ... ""It seems not to be true that..."" And this is the objection: a time like the present [i. e., a few years after the Second World War, in Germany] seems, of all times, not to be a time to speak of leisure. [...] That is no small objection. But there is also a good answer to it. [...] For, when we consider the foundations of Western European culture (is it, perhaps, too rash to assume that our re-building will in fact be carried out in a ""Western"" spirit? Indeed, this and no other is the very assumption that is at issue today), one of these foundations is leisure. We can read it in the first chapter of Aristotle's Metaphysics. And the very history of the meaning of the word bears a similar message. The Greek word for leisure (σχολή) is the origin of Latin scola, German Schule, English school. The names for the institutions of education and learning mean ""leisure.""

Josef Pieper

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answer assumption begin carry chapter culture education english european fact few german good greek history issue latin learning leisure meaning mean message metaphysics non objection origin perhaps present quod rash read scholastic school second similar small speak spirit times time war western word world today years names masters germany schule

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