Leisure

Laughs are in short supply in the academic world unless that world is serving as the victim of satire. So full marks to the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom for loading Deep Utopia – his reflections on life in a ‘solved world’, perfected by technology and science – with self-mockery and slapstick. Bostrom isn’t the first to fret about the travails of extreme leisure. John Maynard Keynes feared that economic abundance would produce more disgusting aristo-like behaviour. It’s nice to see how mighty minds can be so wrong. Bostrom cites John Stuart Mill being seriously depressed by the prospect, as humanity solved its problems, of there not being enough music to

Free Time is an academic journey through two-and-half millennia of leisure options. The central question put by the historian Gary Cross, is: why do we not have more free time, and when we do, why do we waste it, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, on ‘fencing, dancing and bear-baiting’ or their modern equivalents? We start with ancient Greek philosophers, including Socrates and Aristotle, who reckoned that life was all about free time. We should work to fulfil our basic needs and then use our leisure for scholé (self-improvement): for culture and reflection. The vita contemplativa was superior to the vita activa (though Socrates was also fond of a