Labor, Sloth, and Depression

The most misunderstood vice of our time is probably sloth. But to correctly understand sloth, one must first understand what a vice is. Quite simply, a vice is a bad habit, trained by repeated sin and inclining one to sin more. But a key element of every vice is a disordered passion. Our passions are good when properly ordered, but they multiply evils when disordered. Thus most vices can be defined according to specific passions. For example, fear is a useful passion that helps us avoid evil, but fear that causes more evil than it avoids means cowardice. Anger is a healthy response to confront evil, but anger that causes more evil than it battles is called wrath. Joy is felt when some good is possessed, but joy in response to evil is a sign of hatred.

It is vitally important to understand this distinction; that vice is a condition which manifests itself in the passions, but sin is a specific action. They are closely connected: Sin comes from vice, and vice is fostered by sin. For example, a man who eats too much does so because he is infected with gluttony; and every time the man eats too much, he becomes more gluttonous. But to say that a man is a glutton is only to say that he is inclined to eat too much. Knowing of his gluttony does not necessarily imply knowledge about his particular sins, past or present.

So then, which disordered passion amounts to sloth? Sorrow. St. Thomas defines sloth for us as follows:

“Sloth, according to Damascene (De Fide Orth. ii, 14) is an oppressive sorrow, which, to wit, so weighs upon man's mind, that he wants to do nothing... Hence sloth implies a certain weariness of work... Accordingly, [sloth] denotes sorrow for spiritual good...” (ST II.II, q. 35, a. 1)

Note that sloth implies a weariness of work, but that is only an effect. The essence of sloth is sorrow, specifically sorrow in response to good. A healthy sorrow is the response to an evil that cannot be avoided, which is the same as the loss of some good. When evil is first encountered, we may react with anger (in an attempt to remove the evil) or fear (in an attempt to escape it). If either fails, we are confronted with an insurmountable or inescapable evil, and we become sorrowful. Because anger or fear usually precedes sadness, both wrath and cowardice can lead to sloth (cf. Evagrios, “Praktikos,” 10).

Sloth is also called “acedia.” Acedia literally means “having no enemy” and the sense behind this meaning should be clear from what we now know. If sloth is an oppressive sorrow for good, then there is nothing left to be done in the face of evil: Neither good nor evil makes a difference. Cowardice reinforces sloth, because it keeps one at a distance from anything that might stir his soul to action. Likewise, wrath, far from being the antipathy to cowardice, is a companion to both cowardice and sloth. Wrath is an overreaction to evil and even mistakes the good for something to be despised and resisted. Often the man who spends much of his effort avoiding difficulty, forgoing many good things as a result, will become overwhelmed with passion if he finds himself cornered by it. Hence the coward may resort to wrath, and the wrathful coward is likely to be slothful, because he is so strongly moved away from anything in which he might find joy.

The effect of sloth is not always weariness for labor. Today, it is often the case that one labors too much rather than laboring too little. Laboring too much is a sign of vice because labor's purpose is to make leisure possible. If we labor to the exclusion of leisure then we are fostering sloth, because we are shrinking away from the good and are not working as we ought.

Because sloth is a disordered sorrow, it is often mistaken for “depression,” a physiological disorder. This confusion is partly due to the fact that vice generally evokes disapproval, whereas sorrow arouses pity; so a vice manifested in disordinate sorrow is unlikely to be considered a vice at all, especially by those without a sound moral formation. One who is misled into thinking that he is “depressed” would do well to make a concerted effort at cultivating the virtues opposed to sloth, and note whether his depression begins to subside.

The opposite of sloth is zeal, which is an intense love and devotion to the good. And zeal is accompanied by courage (the opposite of cowardice) which endures suffering for the sake of the good. He who has true zeal does not labor as much as he can; he labors as much as he needs to serve God and his neighbor. Likewise, courage does not suffer the pains of labor for their own sake, but for the sake of laboring well and attaining the good.

The virtues are not aimed at merely any good that one happens to notice. They are ordered in a heirarchy of goods, and ultimately at God,Who is Goodness itself. Thus all activities must be guarded by virtue according to their proper order: Pleasure and entertainment for the sake of labor, labor for the sake of leisure, and leisure for the glory of God.

Let us pray to God in the words of St. John Cassian, that He may stir up in us a feiry zeal, and that our souls, “which had been occupied by a sorrow that works death, will be taken by a godly sorrow and one full of joy. That which had been wasted by acedia, will at once be tilled by courage.” (Conferences V.23)