IDLENESS, MORAL ASPECTS OF

Idleness is inactivity, although when applied to persons it is often understood less as a negation than as a misdirection of activity, as when a person busies himself with trivial or futile things and neglects what is serious and worthwhile. In contrast to terms sometimes taken as its synonyms—laziness, indolence, and slothfulness—it may or may not have moral connotations. The enforced idleness of workers in times of general unemployment, for example, is not a moral situation, so far, at least, as the workers are concerned. Idleness is the substantive of the adjective idle, which comes from the Middle English and Anglo-Saxon idel, meaning vain or useless. This sense persists in the use of the adjectival form, but the current meaning of the substantive tends to emphasize the derived notion of inactivity, and it is often accompanied by the disparaging suggestion of culpable laziness. This trend to a moral sense brings the meaning of the word close to that of other terms more familiar in the Latin tradition—otiositas, pigritia, segnities, and torpor. However, because the meaning of these terms is only indifferently conveyed by the English "idleness," this word is not commonly used in manuals of asceticism, moral theology, or ethics. Laziness, or sloth in the sense of spiritual laziness, are the more common terms.

Idleness, even when voluntary, is not necessarily sinful. Eagerness to improve each shining hour can be excessive, for a man has need of rest and relaxation (see eutrapelia). When in the overall picture too much time is given to relaxation, there is inevitably some fault because of the neglect both of duty and of the opportunity for good. Thus it is stated in the Rule of St. Benedict, "Idleness is an enemy of the soul" (ch. 48). The law of work is the law of man's nature as well as the law of God (Gn 2.15; 3.19). Created imperfect, man must use his faculties to develop them. Idleness is a threat to, if not a frustration of, this process. In this sense it is opposed to all virtue, rather than to any virtue in particular, and this perhaps explains why St. Thomas Aquinas treated it only in passing (Summa theologiae 1a2ae, 41.4; 44.4 ad 3), associating it with fear, and specifically the fear of the exertion that work would entail.

Since idleness is culpable because it involves the neglect of something obligatory, its specific nature and gravity as a sin depends on the character of the obligation that is left unfulfilled. Sometimes idleness is blameworthy because of its source, as when it comes from a disinterest in or distaste for the spiritual values that should arouse one to effort and activity (see acedia). Finally, idleness can be culpable because it provides an occasion of sin, "for idleness is an apt teacher of mischief" (Sir 33.28). The specific malice in this case is indistinguishable from that of the mischief to which it generally leads.

Bibliography: e. vansteenberghe, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. a. vacant et al. (Paris 1903–50) 11.2:2023–30.

[p. fitzgerald]