“The 'meaning' of life is not to be found in anything other than that life itself.”

— Henri Lefebvre

From Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1 (1947/1991)
Context: The 'meaning' of life is not to be found in anything other than that life itself. It is within it, and there is nothing beyond that. 'Meaning' cannot spill over from being; it is the direction, the movement of being, and nothing more. The 'meaning' of a proletarian's life is to be found in that life itself: in its despair, or conversely in its movement towards freedom, if the proletarian participates in the life of the proletariat, and if that life involves continuous, day-to-day action (trade-union, political...).

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The 'meaning' of life is not to be found in anything other than that life itself." by Henri Lefebvre?

Henri Lefebvre 17

French philosopher 1901–1991

Robert Hughes (1938–2012) Australian critic, historian, writer

Things I Didn't Know (2006)

“The meaning of life is life itself.”

Bob Geldof (1951) Irish singer-songwriter, author and political activist

“Mechanics is a means or discipline for the realization of life, but not life itself. It ought to carry us to life itself.”

César Vallejo (1892–1938) Peruvian writer

La mecánica es un medio o disciplina para pealizar la vida, pero no es la vida misma. Esa debe llevarnos a la vida misma, que está en el juego de sentimentos o sea en la sensibilidad.
Source: Aphorisms (2002), p. 53

“People want to find a 'meaning' in everything and everyone. That's the disease of our age, an age that is anything but practical but believes itself to be more practical than any other age.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Quoted in: Ingo F. Walther (1996), Picasso, p. 67.
Attributed from posthumous publications

“It is life that educates, and perhaps love more than anything else in life.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 2 : On Youth

“Affirmation of the world, which means affirmation of the will-to-live that manifests itself around me, is only possible if I devote myself to other life.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics
Context: Affirmation of the world, which means affirmation of the will-to-live that manifests itself around me, is only possible if I devote myself to other life. From an inner necessity, I exert myself in producing values and practising ethics in the world and on the world even though I do not understand the meaning of the world. For in world- and life-affirmation and in ethics I carry out the will of the universal will-to-live which reveals itself in me. I live my life in God, in the mysterious divine personality which I do not know as such in the world, but only experience as mysterious Will within myself.
Rational thinking which is free from assumptions ends therefore in mysticism. To relate oneself in the spirit of reverence for life to the multiform manifestations of the will-to-live which together constitute the world is ethical mysticism. All profound world-view is mysticism, the essence of which is just this: that out of my unsophisticated and naïve existence in the world there comes, as a result of thought about self and the world, spiritual self-devotion to the mysterious infinite Will which is continuously manifested in the universe.