Work, as the opening chapters of Genesis show and as the Church has continually affirmed, “is a fundamental dimension of man’s existence on earth.”1 It is not merely recompense for the Fall, but part of man’s original condition and an integral dimension of the imago Dei.2 Indeed it is this intrinsic relation between human being and doing and making, the fact that making is an integral dimension of human nature, that makes human labor susceptible to such profound distortion by sin and such a potent vehicle for oppression. It is also why “human work is a key, probably the essential key, to the whole social question.”3 But what does this really mean?
1. Laborem exercens, 4.
2. “Man is the image of God partly through the mandate received from his creator to subdue, to dominate, the earth. In carrying out this mandate, man, every human being, reflects the very action of the creator of the universe” (Laborem exercens, 4). John Paul II defines work as “any activity by man, whether manual or intellectual, whatever its nature or circumstances; it means any human activity that can and must be recognized as work, in the midst of all the many activities of which man is capable and to which he is predisposed by his very nature, by virtue of humanity itself.” Though I will suggest later in the essay that there is an element of “creative making” in all such activity, this definition of work is broader than the classical understanding of téchnê and includes activities that would not, on that understanding, be considered making. Though I acknowledge and would want to retain a distinction between making proper and other kinds of work that are not productive in the traditional sense, I use “making” and “work” more or less interchangeably.
3. Ibid., 3.