Daily Philosophy

Daily Philosophy

"Touching Fish" #74

Aristotle and the frustration of meaningless work

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Dr Andreas Matthias
Jan 27, 2021
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Welcome back to another instalment in our series on Aristotle and how to apply his philosophy to our everyday lives! As the first month of our challenge is coming to an end, so is our engagement with Aristotle himself and his philosophy. From next week on, we will talk about two other, modern philosophers, who were influenced by Aristotle’s thoughts but who also each had their own, interesting spin on the question of how to live a happy and worthwhile life: Bertrand Russell and Richard Taylor.

Today, this being the mid-week post, we want to have a last look at the world of work and its problems.

Touching fish

Last week, the Guardian had an article titled “Touching fish craze sees China's youth find ways to laze amid '996' work culture”. This was a bit puzzling on the first look, so I tried to read it and understand what it was talking about. Turns out, in case you don’t know (like I didn’t), that “996” means having to work from 9 in the morning to 9 in the evening, 6 days a week.

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