Should work be based solely on needs {paying your rent etc.}, or can it also be enjoyable? Philosophy began with the question, what is ? Or, why is there something rather than nothing? Why are we here? What we are doing and why? Rather than blindly following the gospel of technological progress and the religion of consumerism as our only salvation, perhaps we would do well to return to some of these early questions, as well as to a fundamental question of ethics: “what is the good life?” Is work limited to the good life?
How might Hegel’s notion of “work” provide a model for “un-alienated labor?” It would seem that Hegel links “work” to forms of “self-realization”, which require a conception of freedom that is not simply “freedom from” constraints but “freedom to” work, as well as “against” and “within” necessary constraints like Nature. Thus Hegel conceives of the slave as achieving “recognition” by workin on Nature as a medium of reflection that also provides as a certain resistance, which all forms of reflection in fact require-the taint of the mirror as it were. {The paper or opaque surface behind the glass}