ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the conceptual foundations of key terms in the discussion about meaning, experience and their relatedness to leisure, and to teases out some of the most fundamental attributes, antecedents and empirical referents of these concepts. First, it conceptually analyses the terms 'meaning', 'experience' and 'meaningful experience'. Then the chapter addresses the way leisure scholars have related to the theme, and the insights gained from those analyses of 'meaningful experiences'. Meaning is a continuous movement between integration and disintegration in which significance is allocated to relationships, contexts, patterns of everyday life, past and future. Susan Wolf points out that philosophical models of human motivation fall into two categories: that of self-interest and that of 'something higher'. When addressing the subjective quality of an experience, one will find that it is difficult to catch in one and the same word since the English language does not have adequate synonyms for it.
