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Print ISSN 1223-0685
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Petre COMŞA
Universitatea “Valahia” din Târgovişte
Costea MUNTEANU
Academia de Studii Economice din Bucureşti
It is particularly well-acknowledged that working is a means of relating to the world and our neighbours. Daily activity, carried out over several hours for several years, serves to organise in a very specific way our understanding of the world and our neighbours. The fact is that “within us are impressed the manners of comprehending the world and how we relate to our fellow men, as they are shaped through thousands of hours of labour, such that, to a great extent, our vision of the world and life bears the print of the labour we exert all throughout our lives”, as noted by Adrian Sorin Mihalache. On the other hand, today’s technology has considerably permeated most occupations, the tendency being that robots, computers, automation systems, automata and intelligent machines are replacing people in labour to a greater and greater extent. Therefore, the ever-increasing scope of gadgets and tech services “reveal the signs and signals of a profound metamorphosis of labour” (idem), with the overuse of technology leading to the atrophy of man’s powers and ability to open himself to the world. In this sense, we find great relevance in the ideas developed by the French novelist and philosopher Michel Henry: “Since the dawn of the industrial era and as a simple consequence of the progressive replacement of «the working force» with natural energies, it was possible to foreshadow the diminishment of the activities of workers to that of mere supervision, which is tantamount to the atrophy of nearly all the subjective potentialities of the living individual and, thus, to rising disquietude and discontent”. Our intention with the present study is to attempt a modest exposition of the teaching of Eastern Orthodox Christianity on labour and to highlight landmarks that may, on the one hand, shed light on the way to a more profound understanding of the consequences of the deep metamorphosis of labour we are currently witnessing, and, on the other hand, to offer clues on the developing position of Christians to these dynamics.

ŒCONOMICA no. 3/2021
Keywords: Eastern Orthodox Christianity, technology, work, automation, history, culture
JEL: Z10, Z12, Z13
Orthodox Reflections on Labour [Reflecţii ortodoxe despre muncă]