The Philosopher

Raoul Vaneigem

The face

The background

Nationality:
Belgian
Schools:
Situationist International

The synopsis

Raoul Vaneigem (born 21 March 1934) is a Belgian writer renowned for his 1967 book, *The Revolution of Everyday Life*. He studied romance philology at the Free University of Brussels from 1952 to 1956 and was an active member of the Situationist International from 1961 to 1970. Alongside Guy Debord, Vaneigem was a principal theorist of the movement. His slogans notably appeared on Parisian walls during the May 1968 uprisings. *The Revolution of Everyday Life* challenged 'passive nihilism,' a concept Vaneigem viewed as a passive acceptance of modernism leading to conformism. His prose was often described as more poetic and spirited than Debord's. After departing the Situationist International, Vaneigem continued to write, defending ideas of a free and self-regulating social order, often using pseudonyms. He also authored works defending freedom of speech.

The works

The quotes

Our task is not to rediscover nature but to remake it.
Raoul Vaneigem
Who wants a world in which the guarantee that we shall not die of starvation entails the risk of dying of boredom?
Raoul Vaneigem
The eruption of lived pleasure is such that in losing myself I find myself; forgetting that I exist, I realize myself.
Raoul Vaneigem
In the kingdom of consumption the citizen is king. A democratic monarchy: equality before consumption, fraternity in consumption, and freedom through consumption.
Raoul Vaneigem
We can escape the commonplace only by manipulating it, controlling it, thrusting it into our dreams or surrendering it to the free play of our subjectivity.
Raoul Vaneigem
Work to survive, survive by consuming, survive to consume: the hellish cycle is complete.
Raoul Vaneigem
Ideally a book would have no order in it, and the reader would have to discover his own.
Raoul Vaneigem
The key is within each of us. No instructions come with it.
Raoul Vaneigem
Daily life is governed by an economic system in which the production and consumption of insults tends to balance out.
Raoul Vaneigem
In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create.
Raoul Vaneigem
Everything has been said yet few have taken advantage of it. Since all our knowledge is essentially banal, it can only be of value to minds that are not.
Raoul Vaneigem
People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.
Raoul Vaneigem
The same people who are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work are also arguing, singing, drinking, dancing, making love, holding the streets, picking up weapons and inventing a new poetry.
Raoul Vaneigem
It is entirely up to us to invent our own lives.
Raoul Vaneigem
Purchasing power is a license to purchase power.
Raoul Vaneigem
To be rich nowadays merely means to possess a large number of poor objects.
Raoul Vaneigem
There are more truths in twenty-four hours of a man's life than in all the philosophies.
Raoul Vaneigem
What could I wish for the present but to take the greatest pleasure in being what I am?
Raoul Vaneigem
Work is the opposite of creativity.
Raoul Vaneigem
As poverty has been reduced in terms of mere survival, it has become more profound in terms of our way of life.
Raoul Vaneigem
Never before has a civilization reached such a degree of a contempt for life; never before has a generation, drowned in mortification, felt such a rage to live.
Raoul Vaneigem