>>6483074It is quite deeper than it seems at first glance.
>boredomWork not only occupies our time, but also tires us in a good way: instead of focusing our creative energy on mindless things, like cheap entertainment, drinking or destroying things, it fights boredom by putting this energy into something constructive and beneficial.
>viceThis one is perhaps the less intuitive of the three at first, but also turns out to be the most important: because it is ingrained in the culture of the time that only good people participate in the fabric of society, and therefore fight vice, it is an exceptional reversal of the philosophy of work that prevailed from the Greeks. The Greeks considered work as being a negative, a lowly form of occupation that only the commoners and slaves would partake in, while the citizens of the City would only do politics, and create laws. Saying work prevents vice is a complete reversal of this: it implies that work is necessary to distinguish good and evil, to make wise judgment, and therefore, to participate in politics. It is form this idea, partly derived from protestant philosophy, that this phrase so greatly demystifies. It is also at the origin of the idea of putting a tax on political participation: to ensure that only the people who work have a say in politics.
>needThis one seems very obvious at first, but it is also more complex. Need can not only be understood from a personal point of view, as in, getting money and being off of poverty, but also in a general and global sense: the idea that, without work, society collapses. Without work, men don't innovate, don't create, and in essence, are not human. Without work, they revert back to a primitive form living off what the land gives them, without creating the staples of human society. And considering how Europeans saw primitive people at that time, it is easy to understand how it would be seen as a negative.
