This entry belongs to the Shahrur glossary. Here, work appears as a general term associated with conscious movement and human accomplishment, not as an exact synonym for act.
Meaning in Shahrur
Work is a general conscious movement. Its value lies in the fact that it denotes a broad field of intentional human conduct, before it is determined as a specific act or a defined effect.
Distinctions
- It differs from act; work is more general, while an act is a specific and delimited work.
- It is adjacent to righteous work because righteousness is a normative description of work and its effect, not merely another name for work in general.
- It is linked to human responsibility because it presupposes awareness and purposeful movement.
Foundational links
- general work and specific act
- act
- righteous work
- synonymy
- semantic distinctions
- humanity, freedom, and responsibility
Its place in the atlas
This entry establishes the pair work/act within the line of rejecting synonymy: similarity in usage does not permit the erasure of the general/specific relation between the two terms.