Originally published in 1925, C. Delisle Burns’ _The Philosophy of Labour _attempts to lay down key aspects of labour and the working class of that time period, covering aspects such as economic obstacles, standards of living and patriotism. Burns does not draw on past philosophers or sociological thinkers of the working-class and instead chose to focus only on the attitude of the workers in factories, mines, roads, railways and other forms of manual labour. This title will be (...) of interest to students of philosophy. (shrink)

The current conception of liberty is both negative and individualistic. It rests upon obsolete assumptions. Philosophers may be conscious of the defects of such assumptions, but even that is doubtful; and clearly the average journalist or politician is by no means aware of them, for the advocates of “ liberty,” in the old sense, have a very weak case, and its opponents attack it on the wrong grounds. The controversy in the lecture-room is not important. The quarrels of commentators are (...) trivial. But there is a mortal conflict between the advocates and opponents of liberty in the sphere of government, industrial organization, and education. In the policies of those who have social power the conflicting conceptions of liberty are operative; and the battle is still uncertain, because it is normally fought upon the basis of unexamined assumptions. (shrink)

Only one adult in a hundred gets his food and clothing without doing anything directly in exchange for them. The other ninety-nine form active parts of the system of relations in society which will be called, in what follows here, economic; and even the one in the hundred who does not give, takes something, as children and imbeciles take, out of the store of services which are economic life. Boots and bread are but the bridges over which one man is (...) connected with another, through services exchanged. The philosophy of social life, therefore, must “place” these economic relations in the whole complex unity of human experience. The science of economics analyses some of the aspects of the relations of men in exchanging services, and it provides a language which is already sufficiently current to be used here without full explanation of the terms. Therefore, without more ado, the philosophical aspects of the economic system may be considered in the terms of economic science, but outside the frontiers proper to that partial analysis. (shrink)

The life of man in society provides the subject-matter for many different sciences. It is analysed usually by reference to the kind of relation which connects men; and so, if men buy or sell one from the other, economics gives an account of the factors in such a relation; if a policeman directs traffic and the citizen obeys, political science explains government. But clearly no one of these relations between men is altogether independent of the others. Social life is the (...) whole complex of human relations, and there is no man at all who is not thoroughly social. The fundamental fact of mental life life is not the atomic but the related individual. No mind exists which is not in contact with other minds; and there is no mind whose fundamental characteristics are not social. (shrink)

Not for the first time in the history of our tradition, we are conscious of the defects of our inheritance and look doubtfully forward to a future whose structure we can hardly surmise. There was a Decline of the West in the first years of our era and again at the close of the Middle Ages. Now once more the beliefs and customs are shaken, on which our tradition is based; and there is no certainty that we shall carry forward (...) what that tradition has so far achieved into a new form of civilized life. But, on the other hand, there is no reason to suppose that Western Civilization will disappear. (shrink)