Concept
Personal life
Overview
Personal life is the course or state of an individual's life, especially when viewed as the sum of personal choices contributing to one's personal identity.
Apart from hunter-gatherers, most pre-modern peoples' time was limited by the need to meet necessities such as food and shelter through subsistence farming; leisure time was scarce.
People identified with their social role in their community and engaged in activities based on necessity rather than on personal choice. Privacy in such communities was rare.
The modern conception of "personal life" is an offshoot of modern Western society. Modern people tend to distinguish their work activities from their personal life and may seek work–life balance.
It is a person's choices and preferences outside of work that define personal life, including one's choice of hobbies, cultural interests, manner of dress, mate, friends, and so on. In particular, what activities one engages in during leisure-time defines a person's personal life. Religious authorities, moralists, managers and personal-development gurus have seized on the concept of an individual life as a fulcrum for potential control and manipulation.
People in Western countries, such as the United States and Canada, tend to value privacy. Privacy includes both information privacy and decisional privacy; people expect to be left alone with respect to intimate details of their life and they expect to be free from undue control by others.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
This is done two ways. First, by keeping the idea which is brought into it, for some time actually in view, which is called CONTEMPLATION. 2. Memory. The other way of retention is, the power to revive again in our minds those ideas which, after imprinting, have disappeared, or have been as it were laid aside out of sight.
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1
States what Personal life is; the author is tied to Personal life in the knowledge graph.
We may, no doubt, very possibly persuade ourselves that the Ideal is retained because we have here an appearance as though the personal life is in full union with the universal and its legalized constitution, remaining consistently in such unity; but it will be observed that here the universal does not assert its dominating power in the _particular person_, as we found the heroic Ideal demanded, but only in and…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1
States what Personal life is; opens on Personal life.
The sort of belief that religious experience of this type naturally engenders in those who have it is fully in accord with Fechner's theories. To quote words which I have used elsewhere, the believer finds that the tenderer parts of his personal life are continuous with a _more_ of the same quality which is operative in the universe outside of him and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on…
William James, A Pluralistic Universe
States what Personal life is; names Personal life.
Philosophers who discussed Personal life
Related ideas
- Internet
- Individualism
- John Locke
- Individual and group rights
- Music
- Autonomy
- Metaphor
- Western world
- Nation
- Performing arts
- Property
- Myth
- Colonial history of the United States
- Technology
- Tokyo
- Tao
- United States Declaration of Independence
- Personhood
- Personal identity
- United States
- Cosmos
- Self-actualization
- Canada
- Ancient history
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Cynicism (philosophy).