As has often been observed, neither the thinkers of antiquity nor those of the Middle Ages exhibited a great theoretical interest in the social value or even the ethical significance of labour. Throughout this long period of history, the labour an individual had to carry out to make a living, and thus under compulsion, was understood more or less solely as a heavy burden. It signified daily toil and the state of personal dependency attaching to a lowly social rank. Consequently, there was no cause to subject it to any kind of moral consideration. Indeed, as Moses Finley reports (1999, p. 81) ‘[n]either in Greek nor Latin was there a word with which to express the general notion of ‘labour’ or the concept of labour as a general social function’ (see too Arendt, 2013 [1958], pp. 81 ff.). Famously, with the advent of modernity, the very opposite begins to become the case. In this period, in the wake of various intersecting processes of cultural revaluation and economic transformation, labour developed into a positive credential of free existence and a presupposition of social integrity: the Protestant ethic led to a gradual upgrading of the value of labour, because it was interpreted as a sign that one possessed a capacity for inner-worldly asceticism. In the course of the establishment of capitalist economic practices, the liberation of labour from personal dependency in legal terms gave rise to the idea that gainful work could henceforth be proof of a free decision, and it thus provided the precondition of individual independence. And over time, the more the intellectual union between these two revolutions was strengthened, the more it would go on to influence the cultural self-understanding of modern societies in the capitalist west: what was previously the sheer necessity of earning a daily crust was now understood as proof of social emancipation and freedom. Nobody provided a better conceptualisation of this transformed self-conception than Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who devoted an entire chapter of his ‘Philosophy of Right’ of 1821 to the emancipatory value of labour; here, he tells us that every (male) member of civil society ‘is somebody’ through ‘his competence’ and his ‘regular income and means of support’, i.e. possesses the social status of a full-fledged citizen, and will find ‘his honour’ in this recognised existence as a professional (Hegel 1991 [1821], § 253).

正如人们经常看到的那样，无论是古代的思想家还是中世纪的思想家，都没有对劳动的社会价值甚至伦理意义表现出极大的理论兴趣。纵观这段漫长的历史，个人为谋生而必须进行的劳动，因此在强迫之下，或多或少地被理解为一种沉重的负担。它象征着每天的辛劳和依附于社会地位低下的个人依赖状态。因此，没有理由对其进行任何形式的道德考虑。事实上，正如摩西芬利报告（1999 年，第 81 页）“[n]无论是在希腊语还是拉丁语中，都没有一个词可以用来表达‘劳动’的一般概念或作为一般社会功能的劳动概念”（见Arendt, 2013 [1958], pp. 81 ff.)。众所周知，随着现代性的到来，情况恰恰相反。这一时期，随着文化重估和经济转型的各种交叉过程，劳动发展成为自由存在的积极凭证和社会完整性的前提：新教伦理导致劳动价值逐步提升，因为它被解释为一个人具有内在世俗禁欲主义能力的标志。在资本主义经济实践的建立过程中，劳动从法律上的个人依赖中解放出来，产生了这样一种观念，即有报酬的工作从此可以成为自由决定的证明，从而为个人独立提供了先决条件。随着时间的推移，这两次革命之间的思想结合越是加强，它将继续影响资本主义西方现代社会的文化自我理解：以前赚取日常收入的绝对必要性现在被理解为社会解放和自由的证明。没有人能比格奥尔格·威廉·弗里德里希·黑格尔（Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel）更好地对这种转变的自我概念进行概念化，他在 1821 年的《权利哲学》中用一整章来论述劳动的解放价值。在这里，他告诉我们公民社会的每个（男性）成员“ 他在 1821 年的《权利哲学》中用一整章来论述劳动的解放价值；在这里，他告诉我们公民社会的每个（男性）成员“ 他在 1821 年的《权利哲学》中用一整章来论述劳动的解放价值；在这里，他告诉我们公民社会的每个（男性）成员“通过“他的能力”和他的“正常收入和支持手段”成为某人，即拥有一个成熟公民的社会地位，并将在这个公认的专业存在中找到“他的荣誉”（Hegel 1991 [1821 ]，§ 253)。