m1,1

First off, "noteworthy" is suspect since it indicates something inconsequential or subsidiary, which in a book full of "notes" we can take to mean exactly the opposite, that here in fact is something quite important (we could have a long discussion on the status of the "note" in the Arcades Project).

The word conjunction has a number of meanings, each of which becomes operative in the passage. Most basically, it is (1) an action or instance of two or more events or things occurring at the same point in time or space; (2) an alignment of two planets or other celestial objects so that they appear to be in the same, or nearly the same, place in the sky; and (3) a word used to connect clauses or sentences, or to coordinate words in the same clause. So we want to keep aware of these three meanings as we assess and notate this passage.

What experiences a conjunction here, and how does that take place? Taking the passage at face value, there is a conjunction, really meaning a relationship, between the Greek branding of practical labor as a base aspiration for riches and the somewhat later link to the denigration of the tradesman, or by extension of trade itself. In the context of the section on idleness, which as we know is a primary characteristic of the flaneur, these two tendencies position the idler as the non-slave, someone opposed to the crass accumulation of money, with higher aspirations, beyond capital, a true citizen of the polis, democratic. This idea of conjunction is these two things happening in relation to each other.

The second idea of conjunction gravitates toward the grammatical. The passage, or more precisely the citation, shows how contempt for artisans and then trade as a whole was baked into the very structures of words themselves. We first see how the word for artisan, "banausos," was a synonym for contempt! And in fact "everything related to tradespeople or to handwork carries a stigma." We then see that the leisure/trade binary goes even more deeply into the genetic makeup of language itself, with the conjunction of schole/leisure and ascholia/business, and then otium/leisure with neg-otium/business.

Lastly there is a mythical or astral conjunction here since there is an association of leisure with the heavenly, a conjoining of these two, as much as there is an association and conjoining of the tradesman with the god Mammon.

But even separating out these three definitions of conjunction and seeing how they work in this passage, we've still only scratched the surface of what is to read this passage, read the text of the Arcades Project. Since we should also look at the idea here that those engaged in practical labor, artisans, tradespeople, trade itself, are excluded from citizenship in the republic. The only citizens in democracy are those, like the flaneur, who don't work for a living, who while away the time and can thereby access not only their thoughts but their very soul. Those who do not have leisure are effectively soulless, hence literally made into slaves. Again, this idea, this construct, is built into our cosmology, built into our language. The dichotomy is there all the way from Plato to the 1938 publication of, noting the similar opposition again in the title, Mechanisme et philosophie.