Luxury originally meant freedom from necessity, not consumption.

Evidence

The human being is a creature of luxury. In the original and authentic sense, luxury is not a practice of consumption. Rather, it means a mode of living that is free of necessity. Freedom is based on deviation: luxuriance, getting away from necessity (Notwendigkeit). Luxury transcends the intention of averting need (die Not zu wenden). But today, consumption is co-opting even luxury. Excessive consumption amounts to unfreedom: compulsion corresponding to the unfreedom of labour. Luxury as freedom – like play that is truly free – can be thought only beyond the world of work and consumption. Viewed in this light, it stands close to asceticism. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 117

Categorization

• DEFINE: Recovers an etymological/redefined sense of luxury as freedom from need, opposed to consumption.
• XREF: connects to: Modern efficiency erases the ceremonious generosity that once defined luxury travel; Living a life of luxury obscures true understanding of existence. — Leo Tolstoy, A Confession, 181; Freedom originally meant friendship, not isolation — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 15

Broader Connections

• Modern efficiency erases the ceremonious generosity that once defined luxury travel #expands (0.72)
• Living a life of luxury obscures true understanding of existence. #contradicts (0.70) — Leo Tolstoy, A Confession, 181
• Freedom originally meant friendship, not isolation #expands (0.70) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 15