@article{Limits:4807,
      recid = {4807},
      author = {Stephens, Michael J},
      title = {The Limits of Work},
      publisher = {University of Chicago},
      school = {Ph.D.},
      address = {2022-08},
      pages = {189},
      abstract = {Work, paid and unpaid, plays a substantial role in most of  our lives. The question the dissertation aims to address is  whether, or to what extent, it ought to do so. This  question is approached through an analysis of the  relationship between work—encompassing both paid market  work and unpaid household work—and individual  well-being.

Assessing the appropriate boundaries of the  working day and working life—the amount of work we should  allow economic, social, and legal forces to compel—is  partly a matter of asking whether work ought to be relied  upon to play the various social and political roles we  often set for it. The more our lives are taken up with  work, the more our chances of living a good life depend on  how it goes with us at work—on the opportunities and  limitations inherent in both the activity of work and in  the dominant institutions in the context of which work is  performed. Partly as a function of the amount of time we  spend engaged in it, work will play a major role in shaping  who we are and can be.

There are reasons to believe that  work should not be relied upon or required to play such an  expansive role. The dissertation challenges widespread,  optimistic assumptions about the relationship between work  and well-being by exploring the ways in which market and  household production can damage or restrict the exercise of  capabilities central to human flourishing: work is an  unsuitable or unreliable venue for immersing oneself in  activities performed for their own sake (autotelic  activities); commonly undertaken in contexts that involve  dependence on the arbitrary will of another; ill-suited to  developing certain capacities that are necessary for active  participation in civic life; and can be stultifying with  respect to exercises of the power of self-directed choice.  The upshot is that we should not be either indifferent to  or supportive of the overlapping pressures that give rise  to a work-dominated life. Public policy should be oriented  towards a greater distribution of “free time”—time in which  we have meaningful choices to refrain from paid or unpaid  work.

An objection echoes throughout the dissertation:  namely, that we ought to concentrate on ameliorating the  scope for human flourishing within work, rather than  limiting the scope of work itself. While there is much we  can do to reduce the harms of work as it is at present and  the critiques of work elaborated upon are intended to help  inform how this might be done and why it should, it is  argued that there are limits to how far most work can be  transformed so as to be consistent with the promotion of an  adequate range of human capabilities. Furthermore, the  dissertation highlights the ways in which these two goals  can come into conflict, and identifies cases in which we  would be better off foregoing some efforts at reshaping the  world of market and household work if doing so would enable  us to expand the availability of free time.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/4807},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.4807},
}