“""We work in order to be at leisure."" […] Doesn't this statement appear almost immoral to the man or woman of the world of ""total work""? Is it not an attack on the basic principles of human society?
Now I have not merely constructed a sentence to prove a point. The statement was actually made — by Aristotle [Nichomachean Ethics X, 7 (1177b4–6)]. Yes, Aristotle: the sober, industrious realist, and the fact that he said it, gives the statement special significance. What he says in a more literal translation would be: ""We are not-at-leisure in order to be-at-leisure."" For the Greeks, ""not-leisure"" was the word for the world of everyday work; and not only to indicate its ""hustle and bustle,"" but the work itself. The Greek language had only this negative term for it (ά-σχολία), as did Latin (neg-otium).
The context not only of this sentence but also of another one from Aristotle's Politics (stating that the ""pivot"" around which everything turns is leisure [Politics VII, 3 (1337b33)]) shows that these notions were not considered extraordinary, but only self-evident. […] Could this also imply that people in our day no longer have direct access to the original meaning of leisure?”

—  Josef Pieper

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, pp. 4–5

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Josef Pieper45
German philosopher 1904–1997

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