Dialog in the Museum

Luxury is often criticized and often even glorified. But what is luxury anyway? This purely descriptive question plays no role in the humanities. At present, there is no luxury research that attempts to define systematic criteria. The lecture developed a phenomenological proposal beyond all evaluations: If someone associates an aesthetic experience with the particular form of an object, this can constitute luxury.

In contrast to pomposity, luxury arises from the experience of ownership. The superfluous and irrationally extravagant becomes luxury when pure possession is experienced as an attempt to “escape the slavery of purpose,” as Adorno put it. Luxury is different from beauty. While the latter is linked to the experience of purpose without purposefulness, beauty is linked to the experience of purposefulness without purpose.