The Humane Arts: On Leisure

all right ladies and gentlemen thank you for coming I I actually forgot it was this week fortunately my friend wendle I was at lunch with him and he said I'll see you Thursday I said oh no it's not it's next week no it was this week it turns out and hence it wasn't in the paper yet uh good so I guess it was good you all remembered somehow uh even though I did not so thank you for coming um if you remember last time oh I I talked about this whole notion of the Humane arts and and my my general thinking is that it's made up of a series of behaviors that are unique rather than any sort of institution or government form or historical condition other than that because what makes for these fluorescences that we've discussed of the Arts literature you know the things that we associate with civilization and and what makes life worth living um is Lar largely due to the way many individuals live their lives and what I mentioned that we're going to be talking about you know heart of conversation um letter writing um cafes and salons these sorts of subjects they all require one common element and that is time time Leisure is the key word here what they require is Leisure it turns out that leisure while it sounds simple enough is a really subtle and complicated idea and so I thought a good place to start we'll be trying to figure out what it is we mean by Leisure whether or not we have it who's had it what does it look like how would we know when we had it and how does it apply to all this stuff there you go it's a long list um if you got your little handouts I will talk about this uh briefly uh this is going to be more of an interactive series as well I'm going to make you do things not just me so this will be fun I hope um all right so Leisure and time now anybody who's read the documents from 50 100 a thousand years ago you always get this impression of where do they get the time you know people say oh I don't have enough time to write letters I don't have enough time to go forong I ...