Raison d'être

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Look up raison d'être in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Raison d'être is a phrase borrowed from French where it means "reason for being"; in English use, it also comes to suggest a degree of rationalization, as "The claimed reason for the existence of something or someone".

The French concept is more elaborate than a simple statement. Once the reason an object exists is defined, criteria to measure the object's degree of success can be enumerated. For example, a phone has the purpose of enabling communication between two people. Some phones meet that goal better than others. When measurable criteria are known, gaps can be identified that show where the particular object fails to meet the prototypical object's reason for being. When gaps have been fully identified, strategies can be implemented to close the gaps and bring the object closer to the true fulfillment of its raison d'être.

In the truest sense of raison d'être, French philosophers lay an elaborate road map of descriptive text that contrasts the current status of an implementation of a prototypical object with the purist view of perfection that the object should achieve without the hindrance of imperfections. The philosophical road map brings to a crescendo the imperative urgency that motivates participants to immediately take the steps necessary to achieve all the intended qualities that an object was designed to exemplify.

Raison d'être may also refer to:

• Raison d'être (band), a Swedish dark-ambient-industrial-drone music project
• Raison D'etre, an album by Australian jazz fusion guitarist Frank Gambale
• Raison D'etre, an album by Czech band Lvmen
• "Raison d'etre", a song by Japanese rock band Dir en grey
• "Raison d'etre", a song by Japanese rock band Nightmare used as opening theme of the anime Claymore
• "Raison d'etre", a song by Japanese rock band deadman
• "Raison d'etre", a song by Japanese Electronic/rock band Denshiki Karen Ongaku Syudan (also known as Denkare)
• "Raison d'être", a song used as the ending theme of the Chobits anime by Japanese singer and voice actress Rie Tanaka
• "Raison d'etre", a song by British rock band Buzzcocks
• Raison d'être, a central theme in the Japanese anime series Ergo Proxy
• Raison d'être, an American Ale brewed by Dogfish Head

[edit] See also

• Raison d'État

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.