For the Ancient Greeks, the Good Life depended on how you could use your time. Their idea of time differed from modern thinking. They divided it into four categories. They distinguished between labour, activities done for pay or as a slave, which they avoided, and work, activities done around the home, in philia (civic friendship), associated with care, craftsmanship and creativity. And they distinguished between recreation, mainly physical activities, sport and participating in drama, from which they learned the values of empathy and compassion, and leisure or schole, the combination of participation in public political life and education, in the broad civilising sense of the term.
Progress was measured in how much time could be devoted to schole, particularly public action in the agora, the commons, in which citizens could forge morality and the capacity to be political. Vitally, it was recognised that this required deliberation and learning. A special place was also given to what Aristotle called aergia, idleness, regarded as vital for contemplation.
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