Critique of Everyday Life 1

Hegel says, "The familiar is unknown." Henri Lefebvre, one of the 20th century's prominent thinkers, looked at the familiar at a time when the everyday foundation of the "political drama" was forgotten, philosophers overlooked the everyday in their search for truth, and literati pursued miracles and adventures:

"Where does the real change take place? In the un-mysterious depths of everyday life!"

He focuses on the critique of everyday life, which maintains its quality as the fundamental dynamic of change and revolutions, at a time when power relations, commodity fetishism, and alienation are reproduced anew every day.

Starting from the theory of alienation, which lies at the core of Marxist criticism, Lefebvre reveals it in all its aspects in modern life. While examining the relationship between humanities and philosophy, and politics and ideology, he re-establishes the unity of the individual and the social, and consciousness and action within the simplicity of daily life. Dream, art, play, morality, imagination, politics, science... When these are removed, only the "meager residue" of everyday life remains, yet it is also the soil from which these "high" activities flourish:

"All we have to do is open our eyes, simply discover the vast human content of the most humble phenomena of everyday life."