This paper addresses two topics and their relationship. First, I offer a new analysis of the concept of luxury. I argue that luxury is a dynamic and relational category, best defined in terms of three distinctive forms of pleasure, rooted in an avoidance of the ‘routine’ or ‘default’, and always commensurable with a market framework. As I show, this differs markedly from standard approaches from Seneca to Hegel to Berry in which the key idea is that luxury is unnecessary. My position has implications for the relationship between luxury and concepts such as connoisseurship, and it allows full recognition of the luxuries of the poor as well as of the rich. Second, I show how an analysis of luxury might support an analysis of ‘the human’: my focus here is Plato’s “City of Pigs”, the austere society of Republic, Book II. I argue that this offers an alternative to the long-running and often confused battles over ‘humanism’: I illustrate this claim by contrasting my strategy with later Heidegger’s hugely influential “Letter on ‘Humanism’”.