In the effort to regain a space of true leisure, to bring about a fundamentally correct attitude and "exercise" of leisure, the real difficulty of th… - Josef Pieper

The eye of perfected friendship with God is aware of deeper dimensions of reality, to which the eyes of the average man and the average Christian are not yet opened.

In leisure — not only there, but certainly there, if anywhere — the truly human is rescued and preserved precisely because the area of the "just human" is left behind over and over again — and this is not brought about through the application of extreme efforts but rather as with a kind of "moving away" (and this "moving" is of course more difficult than the extreme, active effort; it is "more difficult" because it is less at one's own disposal; the condition of utmost exertion is more easily to be realized than the condition of relaxation and detachment, even though the latter is effortless: this is the paradox that reigns over the attainment of leisure, which is at once a human and superhuman condition). As Aristotle said of it: "man cannot live this way insofar as he is man, but only insofar as something divine dwells in him." [Nichomachean Ethics X, 7 (1177b27–28)]

Now it is not our purpose here to condemn this world, from the standpoint of some "holiday-world" of philosophy. No words need be wasted on saying that this work-a-day world is very much with us, that in it the foundations of our physical existence are secured, without which no one can philosophize at all! Nevertheless, let us also recall, that among the voices which fill the workplace and the markets ("How do you get this or that item of daily existence?" "Where do you get that?" etc.) — in the midst of all these voices suddenly one calls above the rest: "Why is there anything at all, and not nothing?" — asking that age-old question, which Heidegger called the basic question of all metaphysics! Must we explicitly state how unfathomable this philosopher's question is, in comparison with that everyday world of needs and purposefulness? If such a question as this were asked, without introduction or interpretation, in the company of those people of efficiency and success, wouldn't the questioner be considered rather … mad?