On the Nature, Limits, Meaning, and End of Work (Reading Augustine)

Articulating an Augustinian treatment of the nature, limits, meaning, and end of work, this volume will push Augustinian studies toward a more-detailed engagement with issues of political economy. Zachary Settle argues that we inhabit a culture that insists that our life’s meaning is bound up in our work; we experience constant pressures at work to be more efficient and productive; and we know the ways in which our work-structures contribute to a seemingly ever-growing, corrosive system of poverty and oppression. These cultural assumptions regarding work, along with a cluster of other labor-related problems (i.e. automation, wage depression, wage theft, the rise of a flexible labor force, a lack of worker representation, over-work, and productivism) have rightfully raised a number of questions about the nature, meaning, and limits of our working lives and working structures. This book sets out the ways in which St. Augustine offers us—in piecemeal fashion—elements with which we can assemble an alternative vision. By examining his understanding of the role of work in the context of the monastery, we see his understanding of both the ways we should undertake our work and the ends toward which we should direct that work during our lives in a sinful world. Settle draws on these piecemeal treatments of work scattered throughout St. Augustine’s varied writings in order to develop and articulate a unified theology of work.

Zachary Thomas Settle holds a PhD in theological studies from Vanderbilt University, USA. He is the editor-in-chief of The Other Journal and the co-editor of Dreams, Doubt, and Dread: The Spiritual in Film (Cascade, 2016).

Miles Hollingworth is Research Fellow in the History of Ideas at St. John's College, Durham. His writing on Augustine has won awards from the Society of Authors (2009 Elizabeth Longford Grant for Historical Biography) and the Royal Society of Literature (2009 Jerwood Award for Non-Fiction). He is the author of The Pilgrim City: St. Augustine of Hippo and his Innovation in Political Thought (also published by Bloomsbury), which was shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society's Gladstone History Book Prize.