Experience of Work – Anthropology and Axiology of Personal and Social Relations from the Vantage Point of Human Development

Abstract

The author assumes that experiencing personal good is constitutive
for the meaningfulness of performed professional work as a kind of human activity aimed at the public good. This is because personal
good experienced in the first place allows for the actual realization of the common good. The feeling of personal interest is interpreted in the context of the holistic concept of man, in which man remains conscious of the relationships between his thoughts, experiences and accompanying bodily sensations. At the same time the author points out that the experience of work may be either developmentally positive or destructive. It depends on the ethos of work, which comprises both external conditions, organized by the employers, and personal conditions, which are the responsibility of the employees themselves. In various parts of the text the author draws on the ideas of such authors as Jozef Tischner, Martin Buber and Alexander Lowen. Especially the studies of Lowen were the basis of pinpointing the empirical indicator of the sense of personal
good, which is the sensual pleasure accompanying the engaged performance of the activities determined by your professional work.