Everyday Life

Author: Agnes Heller Year: 1970 (written 1967–68; first published in Hungarian as A mindennapi élet, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. English translation by G. L. Campbell, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984 — the edition ingested here) Source type: book Raw file: raw/books/heller_1970-everyday-life.md

(Page references below cite the printed page numbers of the 1984 English edition, which the raw text preserves as markers.)

Summary

Heller's Everyday Life is the foundational Budapest School theory of the quotidian, written in 1967–68 "in the midst of a period when the slogan of the 'renaissance of Marxism' was coined" (p. viii). Heller defines everyday life as "the aggregate of those individual reproduction factors which, pari passu, make social reproduction possible" (p. 3) — a definition that is historical, not ontological: the everyday exists in every society, but its content and structure are always those of the concrete person in a concrete social order. The book analyses (I) the categories of the person — particularity, the subject of everyday life in all alienated societies, versus individuality, the person who consciously synthesizes particularity with the generic; (II) the dialectic of everyday and non-everyday activities (work/labour, morals, religion, politics/law, science, philosophy, art) through Lukács's criterion of homogenization; (III) the organizational framework of the everyday — the sphere of species-essential objectivation 'in itself' (tools and products, custom, language) with its common properties (repetition, rule-character, sign system, economy, situatedness) and the general schemes of everyday conduct and knowledge (pragmatism, probability, imitation, analogy, over-generalization, the rough treatment of the singular case); and (IV) everyday knowledge (doxa, never epistémē), everyday contact, space, and time, culminating in the claim that everyday life can become 'being-for-us'. Against Heidegger, Heller insists that the everyday "can be changed, humanized and democratized, in spite of the constancy of some of its patterns" (p. x): its alienation is the product of social relations, not of its structure. The preface states that this book established the framework of her entire subsequent philosophy, by a method combining "a phenomenological approach and an analytical procedure" — the Aristotelian analysis of phenomena construed through Husserl and "a critically modified Heidegger" (p. ix).

Key Claims

Definition: Everyday life is "the aggregate of those individual reproduction factors which, pari passu, make social reproduction possible" (p. 3). No society can exist without individual reproduction, and every human being, whatever their place in the division of labour, has an everyday life — but its content is always the reproduction of a concrete, historical person (p. 3).
Immediate environment: Everyday life takes place in and relates to the person's immediate environment: "The terrain of a king's everyday life is not his country but his court" (p. 6). Yet the skills, affects and attitudes appropriated there (courage, self-control, loyalty, gratitude) are the very means by which one transcends that environment (p. 7): "It is in everyday life that human beings are tested as to whether they are — in Goethe's words — 'grain or husk'" (p. 7).
Particularity: The particular person is born with qualities, capabilities and a particular viewpoint; only a few affects are purely particularistic (envy, vanity, cowardice, jealousy, selfishness); we-awareness is itself a form particularity can take. "Particularity is the subject of alienated everyday life" (p. 14).
Individuality: Individuality is a development, never a possession: "The coming-to-be of the individual begins where the acceptance of the ready-made ends" (p. 20). "The individual is that person who synthesizes within himself the contingent singularity of particularity and the generality of the species" (p. 20). Only the individual has self-consciousness — "self-awareness as relayed from consciousness of species-essence" (p. 21).
Choice, autonomy, catastrophe: Alternative choice belongs to species-essence 'in itself'; autonomy is choice on which the individual imprints their own individuality. "All autonomy is therefore relative autonomy" (p. 24). "Catastrophe has nothing to do with tragedy: catastrophe arises from an erroneous choice between alternatives, tragedy is the result of an autonomous choice and cannot be classified as 'erroneous'" (p. 23).
Class and group: In 'history hitherto' every person is a class-unit (p. 28); society's codebook is relayed through face-to-face groups, which are the lowest, most primitive degree of social integration and cannot realize the whole person (pp. 30–32); the community, by contrast, is the terrain of the whole man, with a relatively homogeneous value system (pp. 34–37). We-consciousness can suppress particularity or — as in war — release it: identification with the 'we' "can instill fresh life into" particular affects (pp. 41–43).
Objectification: "In itself and without remainder, everyday life is objectification" (p. 47); in Lukács's terms, everyday activities are those in which "the whole man takes shape" (p. 47).
Everyday thinking: Everyday thought has an invariant structure (pragmatic, slow-changing) and variable contents; it is marked by three undifferentiated anthropologisms — anthropologicalness (dependence on human perception, e.g. the 'rising' sun), anthropocentricity (orientation to one's own life — paradoxically, everyday life is less anthropocentric towards species-being than art or philosophy), and anthropomorphy (analogy of the world with one's own life; overcome only by individuals with a general Weltanschauung) (pp. 50–53).
Homogenization as the criterion of the non-everyday: The everyday/non-everyday line is drawn objectively, not subjectively: emergence from the everyday means being "absorbed" into a single homogeneous sphere of objectivation (law, science, art, moral genius), with concentration on one task, sifting of particularity, and generalization of the personality (pp. 56–59). "'Everyday' and 'non-everyday' are ideal types of activity, and empirical overlapping does not impair the validity of the homogenization criterion" (p. 59).
Work and labour: Marx's two words mark the dual aspect of one process. Work is the species-essential activity that produces for others; labour — under alienation — "is the performance of particularity, a part of the everyday life of particularity": "The performance of work always creates and recreates the 'person's' life; but alienated performance of work only re-creates the 'person's' particularity" (p. 64). Everyday thinking construes work as 'what has to be done' — Tom Sawyer's fence (p. 62). Heller notes in a footnote that this work/labour distinction "is not the same as that made by H. Arendt" (p. 270 n1).
Morals without a sphere: Morals "can be defined as the practical relationship of the 'person's' attitude and decisions to values and normative expectations" (p. 70) — a relationship immanent in all spheres, not a separate sphere and not an ideology (though ideological elements map onto it). Its four factors: supersession of particularistic motivation, selection of values, constancy ('strength of character'), and applicability — the last requiring Aristotle's phronesis (pp. 70–74).
Moral customs vs moral obligations: Every society runs on two demand structures: concrete norms (moral customs — the field of operation of everyday life) and abstract norms (moral obligations — the universal values postulated by the species); their contradiction expresses "the discrepancy between historically valid and universally valid values" (p. 80), and trying actually to live by species-essential demands "courts death" (p. 81). Everyday ethics rests on custom-observance, reciprocity (retaliation and help, per Weber), and four basic virtues — promise-keeping, truth, gratitude, elementary loyalty — which "not even a band of robbers" can dispense with (pp. 84–85).
Moral conflict and catharsis: Contrary to Kant, the decisions whose moral content transcends the everyday usually arise not from a clash of particularity and norm but from "a conflict of disparate generic (species-essential) demands" (p. 76). Moral homogenization is momentary; the moment that transforms the 'after' from the 'before' is catharsis (pp. 87–88).
Religion: Religion is "an ideal community" integrating across real communal divisions (p. 90); "Religion is always the organizer of everyday life, and often its main organizer" — rites cover the natural summits of life (birth, adulthood, mating, death) and the calendar itself (p. 93). The figure of Jesus is read as "the species-essential individual per se," whose regeneration the codified church betrays (pp. 92–93).
Politics and law: Political activity is part of everyday life only as simple reproduction of the person's position; from bourgeois society on, everyone must be 'politically informed'. "Political ideology sets itself the task of conserving, of nurturing particularity" (p. 98) — deterring the dissatisfied "from trying to change their lives, or indeed from imagining that their lives are worth changing" (p. 98). Law "partition[s] this particularity," setting limits and prescribing the obligatory (p. 99).
Science: Natural science aims at de-anthropomorphization and runs counter to everyday consciousness. Heller distinguishes four relations of everyday and non-everyday thought: intentio recta¹ (ordering everyday data), intentio recta² (raising them — Socrates' slave, the 'sense of wonder'), intentio obliqua¹ (philosophy/social science — understandable from life-experience), intentio obliqua² (modern natural science — alien to everyday life) (pp. 100–101). Technological penetration of everyday life now demands more scientific knowledge than ever, in a reciprocal "osmotic system" (pp. 102–103).
Manipulation: "Scientific-technological manipulation has taken over all the negative functions of religion, without its compensating positive aspects" — fattening particularity, replacing myths with the myth of technology, the leader, the qualified professional (p. 106). Yet Heller refuses the totality thesis: "Man has always shown himself capable of finding adequate ways of rebelling against any given form of alienation" (p. 106).
Art: "Art is the self-consciousness of mankind, and works of art are always bearers of species-essence 'for itself'" (p. 107); in creation and reception particularity is suspended, and the 'beforehand' (Lukács) of reception decides which works can elevate us to catharsis (p. 108). Beauty is heterogeneous: the farmer's wheatfield is beautiful only as "a bonus over and above its utility" (pp. 109–110). Art alone, per Rilke, says "Du musst dein Leben ändern" (p. 191).
Philosophy: "Philosophy unites the functions of science and art" — consciousness and self-consciousness of human development (p. 110); the philosopher must live his philosophy, making his everyday life "a documentation of his philosophical position" (pp. 111–112). There is a "necessity of philosophy": once science-technology takes over religion's negative functions, philosophy must convey "species-essential values for everyman in his everyday setting" (p. 112).
The paradigm of objectivation: Species-essential objectivation 'in itself' — the empirical universal of tools/products, custom, and language — is "the fruit of human activity, and, at the same time, the pre-condition of all human activity" (p. 118). "The realm of the 'in itself' is the realm of necessity" (p. 118); objectivations 'for itself' (science, art, philosophy, morals, religion) embody the freedom humanity has achieved (p. 119). "No Great Wall of China separates species-essential objectivations 'in itself' from those that are 'for itself', or the particularistic person from the individual" (p. 122). 'Being-for-us' names the internalization of contents as adequate (p. 120); "Alienated everyday life is the realm of the 'in itself'" (p. 121).
Repetition and disengagement: The 'in itself' sphere is governed by repetitive praxis and thinking (Lefebvre's 'repetitive'/'inventive', reworked); "there is no such thing as purely repetitive thinking" (p. 129) — repetition frees capacity for inventive problem-solving (Gehlen's Entlastung/disengagement), while intuition completes it where generalization fails (pp. 129–133). "Species-essential activity 'in itself' is reiterated activity" (p. 135).
Common properties of the 'in itself': repetition ('thus-ness', repeatability 'by anyone', repeatedness as the basis of repeatability); rule-character and normativity (normative fields bounded by a 'critical limit' whose transgression produces the catastrophes of everyday life); the sign system (sign vs signal; sign vs symbol — "a worn-out dress is not the same dress, but a tattered flag is the same flag"); economy (minimum exertion, minimum inventive thought, minimum time); situatedness (occasional vs standing sentences) (pp. 134–147).
Everyday knowledge is doxa: "Everyday knowledge is always opinion (doxa), never philosophical or scientific knowledge (epistémē)" (p. 203) — verified only in concrete practical action; "Epistémé begins where the 'taken-for-grantedness' of knowledge itself becomes questionable" (p. 204). In everyday life 'true' and 'right' coincide (p. 200); belief is not an epistemological category but "the registration of subjective certainty" (p. 206); 'blind faith' is the particularistic person's belief, 'trust' the individual's (pp. 209–210).
Everyday knowledge and mass communication: Everyday knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation, increasingly by mass media, which "is never addressed to the 'person'" — knowledge can no longer be 'made to measure' (p. 187); scientific facts infiltrate everyday thought as items detached from their matrix (vitamin C) (pp. 189–190): "Everyday knowledge will accommodate the statement that the earth is an oblate spheroid just as readily as the statement that it is supported by a giant tortoise" (p. 190).
Everyday contact: Contact is always between occupants of positions in the division of labour; hierarchical relations are "principally alienated," and the real antithesis of inequality is not equality but "free equality" — genuinely 'man to man' contact (pp. 217–219). Everyday life becomes alienated "when all my human contacts are for me contacts with means" (pp. 220–221). Heller endorses C. Wright Mills's critique of the merely 'well-informed': passive knowledge leads "to a trivialization of human personality" (p. 223). Alienated conversation degenerates into chit-chat (Ionesco); silence can be as alienated as speech (pp. 226–227).
Play: Play deploys capabilities "without incurring their real-life consequences"; its only moral prescription is to go by the rules; it involves subjective freedom only. Three types: fantasy-play, mimetic games, rule-games. Under high alienation, play becomes escape — "we end as slaves to a game which we took up precisely because it offered subjective freedom" (Dostoievsky's gambler) — and the world of "that's what everyone does" forms, where "we relate to social norms as if they were the rules of a game" (pp. 227–231).
Orientative feelings: Love, hate and indifference orientate us in everyday contact; who and what we love is socially prefabricated (children 'love' parents as a social requirement); the essential factor in personal relationships is reciprocity; freely chosen relationships based on worthiness "encompass the highest values of everyday life" (pp. 231–236).
Everyday space and time: Everyday space is anthropocentric (right/left, up/down, near/far; Simmel's 'close' relatives); the everyday needs a "home": not simply house or family, but familiarity plus confidence plus warmth (p. 239). Everyday time is anchored in the present; irreversibility is an organic fact of everyday knowledge, against which religion offers compensation (p. 240); boredom (Kierkegaard) is the product of a monotonous, feverish, 'clock-bound' round, and its cure is purposeful activity, not mere inactivity's opposite (p. 243); the pace of life has quickened since capitalism, and 'punctuality' and time-partitioning now outrank spatial measurement — "compare the number of people who wear a watch with the number who carry a foot-rule" (pp. 242–243).
Collisions: Quarrels (clashes of particularistic interests) differ from altercations (clashes of opinion motivated by generic values); a feud perpetuates conflict as an end in itself. The 'idyll' is a narrow-minded (Marxian) ideal — at best "a beautiful and noble interlude" giving man "a moral breathing space worthy of him" (pp. 247–251).
Contentment: Contentment is an amalgam of pleasure and usefulness; the split between 'useful to me' and 'useful to others' is a mark of alienation (Mandeville's falsification). "The feeling of satisfaction which derives from being useful to others is the only kind of everyday contentment which has an unambiguously positive value-content" (p. 255).
Against Heidegger: Heller accepts Heidegger's analysis of alienated everydayness but denies its necessity: "I do not question Heidegger's penetrating analysis of alienated everyday life. I deny however that everyday life must necessarily be alienated. In the final analysis, the reason for the alienation of the everyday world is not its structure, but those social relationships by virtue of which an alienated relationship with everyday life becomes the typical relationship" (p. 257). The individual knows "where to abandon repetition in favour of an innovatory approach," when to drop pragmatism, when over-generalization turns into prejudice (pp. 258–259). Everyday life is hierarchized through a world-view — the "conduct of life" (pp. 260–261).
Happiness vs the meaningful life: Two types of 'being-for-us': happiness (antiquity's 'limited fulfilment'; since the Renaissance only Plato's 'happiness of the moment' survives) and the meaningful life — life in an open world of new challenges, continually renewed. The 'aesthetic life' ("the artist of life") is its aristocratic counterfeit: it lacks 'useful to others' and thus "the 'aesthetic life' is aristocratic, while the meaningful life is democratic in principle" (p. 268). The consciously chosen task of the meaningful life is "to create a society in which alienation is a thing of the past" (p. 269).

Connections

Concepts:

everyday-life — the primary object of the book; Heller supplies its fullest philosophical definition
particularity-and-individuality — Heller's central anthropological distinction
species-essentiality — the Marx/Lukács category Heller places at the centre of the analysis
objectivation-in-itself-and-for-itself — the book's organizational paradigm
homogenization — the objective criterion separating everyday from non-everyday activity
repetition — Heller's repetitive vs inventive praxis and the repeatability of the 'in itself'
doxa-and-episteme — everyday knowledge as opinion, never science
colonization-of-everyday-life — Heller's political ideology/manipulation thesis (Marxist counterpoint to Lefebvre)
life-world — Heller's explicit argument that the everyday is not the life-world
work-leisure-distinction — the work/labour distinction and its polemic against Arendt
ethics — moral customs vs moral obligations, phronesis, moral individuality
play — Heller's taxonomy of games and the morals of play
appropriation — appropriation of the 'ready-made' world as the core everyday activity
dwelling — Heller's analysis of 'home' (familiarity + confidence + warmth)
temporality — everyday time: irreversibility, boredom, the right moment
everyday-architecture — indirect: objects, custom, and the critical limit structure the everyday environment
habitus — Bourdieu's parallel (non-identical) account of embodied everyday practice
strategy-and-tactic — de Certeau's tactics answer a different (weaker-subject) version of the everyday
Alienation (no single page): earth-alienation and world-alienation — the Arendtian parallels and contrasts to Heller's Marxian alienation thesis

Authors:

heller-agnes — author
marx-karl — the source of 'species-essence' (Paris Manuscripts) and of the work/labour distinction
arendt-hannah — explicitly corrected in the notes: Heller's work/labour distinction "is not the same" as Arendt's
lefebvre-henri — the other great Marxist theorist of the everyday; source of the repetitive/inventive praxis terms
de-certeau-michel, felski-rita, colebrook-claire — the wiki's other theories of the everyday
heidegger-martin — the anti-Heideggerian practical intent of the book (preface and ch. 13)
(Referenced but not paged: Georg Lukács, Alfred Schütz, Arnold Gehlen, Max Weber, Ernst Bloch, Ernst Fischer, Hannah Arendt, L. S. Vigotski, A. N. Leontiev, Bronisław Malinowski, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Norwood Russell's belief-analysis via Russell)

Debates:

theory-of-the-everyday — Heller is the fourth canonical voice: the everyday as humanizable structure (transform from within)
everyday-vs-iconic-architecture — the everyday as the terrain where iconic architecture's claims are tested
critical-theory-and-architecture — Heller situates her phenomenological work "far closer to the so-called 'critical theory' than to Schütz" (p. xii)

Related source notes:

'Everyday Life:' a sui generis ontology? (Paolucci 2015) — the secondary literature on this book, ingested earlier
The Invention of Everyday Life (Felski 2000) — Felski reconstructs the everyday from Heller (repetition, home, habit)
Critique of Everyday Life (Lefebvre 1991) — the counterpart project
Everyday Life in the Modern World (Lefebvre 1971)
The Human Condition (Arendt 1958) — the labour/work/action triad Heller's footnote distinguishes her work/labour pair from
Being and Time (Heidegger 1927) — the everydayness Heller accepts as analysis and rejects as destiny
The Social Construction of Reality (Berger & Luckmann) — the Schützian line Heller distances herself from
The Politics and Potential of Everyday Life (Colebrook 2002)
The Practice of Everyday Life (de Certeau 1984)
Everyday Life: The Transformation of the Meaning of Agency (Başeren 2011)
Everyday Life: Philosophical Roots (Chirinos 2009)

Direct Quotes

"If individuals are to reproduce society, they must reproduce themselves as individuals. We may define 'everyday life' as the aggregate of those individual reproduction factors which, pari passu, make social reproduction possible." (p. 3)

"Everyday life always takes place in and relates to the immediate environment of a person. The terrain of a king's everyday life is not his country but his court." (p. 6)

"Where there is no generalization, where there is no promulgation of human species-essentiality, there is no human particularity." (p. 9)

"Particularity is the subject of alienated everyday life." (p. 14)

"The coming-to-be of the individual begins where the acceptance of the ready-made ends, and can be suspended — in both respects, it is important to notice." (p. 20)

"The individual is that person who synthesizes within himself the contingent singularity of particularity and the generality of the species." (p. 20)

"Catastrophe has nothing to do with tragedy: catastrophe arises from an erroneous choice between alternatives, tragedy is the result of an autonomous choice and cannot be classified as 'erroneous'." (p. 23)

"In itself and without remainder, everyday life is objectification." (p. 47)

"In this sense, homogenization means that the individual is 'absorbed' in a given homogeneous sphere of objectivation, and concentrates his activity upon one single objective homogeneous sphere of action." (p. 57)

"The performance of work always creates and recreates the 'person's' life; but alienated performance of work only re-creates the 'person's' particularity. As the alienated performance of work, 'labour' is the performance of particularity, a part of the everyday life of particularity." (p. 64)

"Primarily, however, morals is a practical relationship finding expression in action, and in the decisions and attitudes which initiate action." (p. 70)

"What is peculiar is that most decisions whose moral content transcends the everyday do not in fact arise from a clash between particularity and the socio-generic demand structure, but from a conflict of disparate generic (species-essential) demands." (p. 76)

"And woe betide anyone who tries actually to live up to species-essential demands." (p. 81)

"No human community — not even a band of robbers — has ever found it possible to dispense with these basic virtues, if only in relation to their own members." (p. 85)

"Religion is always the organizer of everyday life, and often its main organizer." (p. 93)

"One function of political ideology is to seek to deter those who are dissatisfied with their everyday lives from trying to change their lives, or indeed from imagining that their lives are worth changing. … That is to say, political ideology sets itself the task of conserving, of nurturing particularity." (p. 98)

"'Scientific-technological' manipulation, as it is today, has taken over all the negative functions of religion, without its compensating positive aspects." (p. 106)

"Man has always shown himself capable of finding adequate ways of rebelling against any given form of alienation, so why should we assume that this will not or cannot happen in the case of 'scientific-technological' manipulation?" (p. 106)

"The realm of the 'in itself' is the realm of necessity." (p. 118)

"All objectivations 'for itself' embody human freedom, and express that degree of freedom achieved by humanity at any given time." (p. 119)

"Alienated everyday life is the realm of the 'in itself'." (p. 121)

"No Great Wall of China separates species-essential objectivations 'in itself' from those that are 'for itself', or the particularistic person from the individual." (p. 122)

"Species-essential activity 'in itself' is reiterated activity." (p. 135)

"A worn-out dress is not the same dress, but a tattered flag is the same flag." (p. 142)

"Pragmatism is not a 'short-coming' in everyday thinking." (p. 166)

"Everyday knowledge is always opinion (doxa), never philosophical or scientific knowledge (epistémē)." (p. 203)

"Epistémé begins where the 'taken-for-grantedness' of knowledge itself becomes questionable." (p. 204)

"Everyday knowledge will accommodate the statement that the earth is an oblate spheroid just as readily as the statement that it is supported by a giant tortoise." (p. 190)

"But it is never addressed to the 'person'." (p. 187) — on mass communication as the transmitter of everyday knowledge

"The world of 'that's what everyone does' takes shape, and we relate to social norms as if they were the rules of a game." (p. 231)

"'Home' is not simply house, roof, family. There are people who have houses and families but no 'homes'." (p. 239)

"I do not question Heidegger's penetrating analysis of alienated everyday life. I deny however that everyday life must necessarily be alienated. In the final analysis, the reason for the alienation of the everyday world is not its structure, but those social relationships by virtue of which an alienated relationship with everyday life becomes the typical relationship." (p. 257)

"The difference between the two — and it is a difference which puts them worlds apart — is that the individual knows where to abandon repetition in favour of an innovatory approach to a problem." (p. 259)

"Thus, the 'aesthetic life' is aristocratic, while the meaningful life is democratic in principle." (p. 268)

"Everyday life, however, is not an attitude, rather it encompasses (or at least it can encompass) different attitudes, including reflective-theoretical attitudes. It is the objective fundament of every social action, institution, of human social life in general." (p. xi)

"I argued that everyday life can be changed, humanized and democratized, in spite of the constancy of some of its patterns. The emphasis put on the possibility of such a change was intended as a challenge to the Heideggerian position." (p. x)

"Is suffering injustice better than committing it? If this is 'moralizing', then so be it." (p. x)

"In spite of its phenomenological approach, the present work is far closer to the so-called 'critical theory' than to Schütz." (p. xii)

"It is a tough world into which we are born and in which we have to make our way. In this tough world, people work, eat, drink (usually less than they need) and make love (usually by the rules)." (p. 15)

Open Questions

Heller asserts the need "to become individual exists, and so does the need for objectivations 'for itself'" but concedes that "to this question, there is, at present, no answer" (p. 258): what grounds the "invincibility of the human substance"? Is this a residual essentialism the book never cashes out (Paolucci's "least successful" dialectic)?
How far does the sphere of objectivation 'in itself' overlap Berger & Luckmann's social stock of knowledge and Garfinkel's background expectations — is Heller's paradigm compatible with the ethnomethodological programme she never engages?
Heller's 'critical limit' of normative fields: could it be operationalized as a design concept for everyday architecture (the point where action "no longer corresponds to the norm")?
Heller insists everyday life "encompasses" reflective-theoretical attitudes (p. xi) — does this accommodate de Certeau's tactics, or does her scheme's hierarchy (particularity → individuality → species-essence) foreclose the horizontality tactics presuppose?
Does the work/labour distinction, expressly opposed to Arendt's, survive the blurring of work and everyday life documented empirically by Maycroft (2007)?