Free time as a necessary condition of free life

Contemporary Political Theory, Vol. 8, No. 4, pg. 373-393.

Jeff Noonan

Human life is finite. Given that lifetime is necessarily limited, the experience of time in any given society is a central ethical problem. If all or most of human lifetime is consumed by routine tasks (or resting for the resumption of routine) then human beings are dominated by the socially determined experience of time. This article first examines time as the fundamental existential framework of human life. It then goes on to explore the determination of time today by the ruling value system that underlies advanced capitalist society. It concludes that the equation 'time is money' rules the contemporary experience of time, and goes on to argue that this experience deprives those who live under this ruling value system of a central requirement of free human life: the experience of time as an open matrix of possibilities for action (or free time).

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