3000
Thanks to Tom’s tremendous efficiency and faultless work ethic, the onwork repository has now moved beyond its 3000th entry.
A large part of the references that have been entered since the post celebrating 2500 have been citations gleaned through the multitudinous and bountiful writings of Michel Foucault, as well as secondary literature directly inspired by him, in history, sociology, management studies, business ethics, industrial relations, and other disciplines. The post we wrote to canvass those references to Foucault’s oeuvre has attracted the highest number of readers yet.
We have also entered references to the publications of German anthropologist Gerd Spittler, whose writings document the importance of work in non-Western cultures. Hopefully time will soon allow a post to be published on anthropological approaches to work. Contrary to many assumptions, ethnographic and anthropological studies of work do not necessarily demonstrate that its centrality is restricted to Western societies or modern times.
Currently, Tom and I are busy working on two German thinkers who in the 1930s provided metaphysical interpretations of their time directly indedbted to Nietzsche, in which work played a central role. The first of these thinkers is Ernst Jünger whose Total Mobilisation of 1930, and even more importantly his 1932 Der Arbeiter, had a major influence on the thinking of Martin Heidegger. There are several ways in which Heidegger’s writings continue to impact debates on work. We will publish a post very soon discussing the references entered in the repository that show the significance of Jünger’s and Heidegger’s thinking for current debates on the centrality of work.