This article explores the concept of labour through a diremptive reading of Polish philosopher Stanislaw Brzozowski’s essay “Prolegomena filozofii ‘pracy’” (“Prolegomena to a Philosophy of ‘Labour’”) written in 1909. This essay appears as a chapter in his main work Idee: wstep do filozofii dojrzalości dziejowej (Ideas. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Historical Maturity), first published in 1910. In “Prolegomena,” Brzozowski defines labour as an inner gesture that delineates the duration of life. In the interpretation of this definition the influence of Henri Bergson on Brzozowski’s thought is stressed. Inspired by Bergson, Brzozowski understands labour as the only ground-creating—and therefore metaphysical—activity of humanity, when faced with the absence of transcendent grounds for existence in modernity. Emphasis is placed on Brzozowski’s insistence in “Prolegomena” that labour is irrational in its delineation of the absolutely new. He describes it as the α of the inner gesture of labour that cannot be known until it is performed. This unknown α is interpreted as his way of describing the groundlessness of the ground-creating activity of labour, and that this groundlessness means that labour eludes the control of the subject.

中文翻译：

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斯坦尼斯瓦夫·布佐夫斯基“劳动”哲学中劳动的非理性

本文通过直接阅读波兰哲学家 Stanislaw Brzozowski 于 1909 年撰写的文章“Prolegomena filozofii 'pracy'”（“Prolegomena to a Philosophy of 'Labor'”）来探索劳动的概念。这篇文章作为他主要著作的一章出现Idee：wstep do filozofii dojrzalości dziejowej（思想。历史成熟哲学导论），首次出版于 1910 年。在“Prolegomena”中，Brzozowski 将劳动定义为一种描绘生命持续时间的内在姿态。在对这个定义的解释中，强调了亨利·柏格森对 Brzozowski 思想的影响。受到柏格森的启发，Brzozowski 将劳动理解为人类唯一的创造地面——因此也是形而上学——的活动，当面临现代性存在的超验基础的缺失时。重点放在 Brzozowski 在“Prolegomena”中的坚持，即劳动在描绘绝对新事物时是非理性的。他将其描述为劳动的内在姿态的α，直到它被执行才能知道。这个未知的 α 被解释为他描述劳动创造地面活动的无根据的方式，这种无根据意味着劳动逃避了主体的控制。