Meaningful Work
Meaningful Work
also in instilling and reflecting virtues such as honor, pride, dignity, self-discipline and self-respect. Work also attaches to a sense of purposefulness and personal identity, and meaningful work can promote both personal autonomy and a sense of personal satisfaction that issues from making
oneself useful. Further still, work bears a formative influence on character and intelligence and provides a primary avenue for exercising complex skills and garnering esteem and recognition from others. The author defends a pluralistic account of meaningful work, arguing that work can be meaningful in virtue of developing capabilities, supporting virtues, providing a purpose, or integrating elements of a worker's life. In light of the impact of meaningful work on living well, the author argues
that well-ordered societies provide opportunities for meaningful work, that individuals would be well advised to pursue these opportunities, and that the philosophical view of value pluralism, which casts work as having no special significance in an individual's life, is false. The book also
addresses oppressive work that undermines human flourishing, examining potential solutions to mitigate the impact of bad work on those who perform it. Finally, a guiding argument of the book is that promoting meaningful work is a matter of ethics, more so than a matter of politics. Prioritizing people over profit, treating workers with respect, respecting the intelligence of working people, and creating opportunities for people to contribute
developed skills are basic ethical principles for employing organizations and for communities at large.
Author: Andrea Veltman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 10/18/2016
Pages: 248
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.70lbs
Size: 9.50h x 6.10w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9780190618179
Review Citation(s):
Choice 04/01/2017
About the Author
Andrea Veltman is Associate Professor of Philosophy at James Madison University. She works primarily in ethical, political and feminist philosophy. In addition to publishing scholarly articles in these areas, she is editor of Social and Political Philosophy (Oxford, 2008) and co-editor of Autonomy, Oppression and Gender (Oxford, 2014), Oppression and Moral Agency (Special Issue of Hypatia, 2009) and Evil, Political Violence and Forgiveness (Rowman and Littlefield, 2009).