Otium is a Latin abstract term which has a variety of meanings, including leisure time for "self-realization activities"[1] such as eating, playing, relaxing, contemplation, and academic endeavors. It sometimes relates to a time in a person's retirement after previous service to the public or private sector, as opposed to "active public life" (the negative negotium meaning "busy-ness"). Otium can be a temporary or sporadic time of leisure. It can have intellectual, virtuous, or immoral implications.
The concept originally expressed the idea of withdrawing from one's daily business or affairs to engage in activities that were considered to be artistically valuable or enlightening (i.e., speaking, writing, philosophy), and had particular meaning to businessmen, diplomats, philosophers, and poets.[2][3]
- ^ As described by Morris Silver, "Those Exotic Roman Elites: Behavior vs. Preferences," Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 56:3 (2007), p. 350.
- ^ Bondanella, Julia Conaway (2008). "Petrarch's Rereading of Otium in De vita solitaria". Comparative Literature. 60 (1): 14–28. doi:10.1215/-60-1-14. Retrieved 9 November 2011.[dead link]
- ^ Garrison 1998, p. 282.