Economists distinguish between necessities, such as apparel, food, and shelter, and luxuries, such as pottery. Some of us violate that distinction, of course, in our behavior as consumers. And the values that we exercise through our purchasing express our philosophical stance. We who can find pottery to be more necessary than more-conventional “necessities” are prepared to divert months of income to a purchase.
Philosophy in practice is the act of rejecting a multitude of possibilities in favor of a single choice. The political and economic freedom that we enjoy today is the legacy of individuals who put their philosophy into practice. Their choices sometimes entailed great personal risk. We incur no such risk in exercising our aesthetic preferences as consumers, but the value of our choices hinges on the gravity of the commitment that we bring to those decisions.
