James Hogg
11/24/2008 11:02:00 AM
On Sun, 23 Nov 2008 22:54:28 -0500, James Beck
<jdbeck11209@yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Sun, 23 Nov 2008 16:22:32 +0000, James Hogg
><Jas.HoggOUT@SPAM.gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Sat, 22 Nov 2008 15:03:27 +0200, Renia <renia@DELETEotenet.gr>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>James Hogg wrote:
>>>> On Sat, 22 Nov 2008 13:21:11 +0200, Renia <renia@DELETEotenet.gr>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> James Hogg wrote:
>>>>>> And if the family is such a good model for an entire society as
>>>>>> in this case, why not apply other family principles to the state,
>>>>>> such as the strong helping the weak, redistribution of wealth,
>>>>>> and so on?
>>>>> Non sequiteur [sic]. Where, in the quote above, did Rush suggest family is a
>>>>> good model for an entire society?
>>>>
>>>> He didn't. I suggested it by extension. Readers are allowed to
>>>> think for themselves and draw their own conclusions from a text.
>>>
>>>That would normally be so, except the conclusion you drew just wasn't
>>>there. You suggested it yourself, by extention, as you say.
>>
>>No, I said by extension.
>>
>>Anyway, to get back to patriotism. The word isn't recorded in
>>English until 1716. Even later are French patriotisme (1749) and
>>German Patriotismus (1761). The adjective patriotic is first
>>recorded in 1737 in the modern sense. Before that it had the same
>>meaning as the late Latin word patrioticus: "of or belonging to
>>one's country".
>>
>>Patriot is older, but the earliest sense is "fellow-countryman".
>>At first the modern meaning could only be expressed by combining
>>the noun with ?good?, ?true?, ?worthy?, or some other
>>commendatory adjective. ?Patriot? on its own meaning a patriotic
>>person is rare before 1680. At that time it was often applied to
>>a person who supported the rights of the country against the King
>>and court, rather than a nationalist.
>>
>>So you can see when the modern concept of patriotism arose: in
>>the same century as the modern concept of the nation. Before
>>that, English speakers had no abstract noun to denote the love of
>>one's country. If they wanted to talk about that, they had to use
>>a more cumbersome phrase.
>>
>>Words and ideas go together. Patriotism is not a primordial,
>>natural sentiment or there would have been a word for it.
>
>Fascinating theory. What is the native English word for 'zeitgeist?'
>Are you arguing that only the Germans noticed that eras could be
>characterized by things other than calendar date? Is it your argument
>that individual words carry more information than phrases, too? How
>about books?
I think that the words we have available to us exert some
influence on the way we think and the way we categorise the world
around us (and a literate culture like ours classifies the world
in a completely different way from an oral culture, as Luria,
Goody and Ong have shown).
If a concept is important to the speakers of a language, they
tend to have an easy linguistic way to express it. In the 18th
century, English speakers obviously developed a need to speak
about patriotism as an abstract concept, so the word was created
to express the idea. People may have felt some sort of love for
their country before this, but they spoke and wrote about it in
different ways. You would need to read a lot of writings from the
16th and 17th centuries to see exactly how they expressed this
without using the word "patriotism", but I think it's a safe bet
to say there was an increase in the frequency of talk about this
concept in the 18th century. Patriotism became a vogue word
because the idea became fashionable at the time. It was part of
the, well, Zeitgeist.
And the same applies to that word which you brought up. I'm not
arguing that only the Germans noticed that eras could be
characterized by things other than calendar date, but it was a
German who felt the need to encapsulate the idea in a single word
in 1789 (the 18th-century date is no coincidence), first recorded
in the phrase "zeit- und nationalgeist". Note the simultaneous
invocation of a national spirit in the days when the idea of
nationalism was burgeoning.
So, the concept of patriotism was "invented" at the time when the
Zeitgeist required it.
>Your argument would be stronger if ran more the other way. That is,
>'patriot' was a perfectly good word with a nice, pleasant meaning
>until it got hijacked and wordsmithed into 'patriotism,' which now
>seems to mean pretty much whatever the speaker thinks it means. IOW,
>it morphed from a general collective noun into a polarizing
>catagorical signifier.
It morphed from the concrete word "patriot" meaning "someone from
your own country" into "someone who supports the country against
the king" and then "someone who loves and supports his nation".
Then a need was felt for an abstract term to express the
sentiment felt by this kind of patriot, which is how the word
"patriotism" came into being. And as you rightly point out, that
sentiment can take different forms and the word can mean pretty
much what the speaker thinks it means.
The meaning certainly has changed, according to the Historical
Dictionary of the Enlightenment (p. 314):
"during the 18th century patriotism belonged with such inclusive
and cohesive values as humanity and beneficence. In the discourse
of the second half of the 18th century, a person who provided
relief for the poor, or objected to excessively harsh penal laws,
or who criticized institutions such as serfdom or slavery, was
likely to be described as a good patriot".
This could be one ingredient in the kind of patriotism that
Benjamin Rush, the humanitarian, abolitionist and opponent of
capital punishment, meant in 1773 when he wrote: "Patriotism is
as much a virtue as justice, and is as necessary for the support
of societies as natural affection is for the support of families.
The Amor Patriae is both a moral and a religious duty. It
comprehends not only the love of our neighbors but of millions of
our fellow creatures, not only of the present but of future
generations."
However, it is clear that his patriotism also included an element
of early nationalism. Those beloved "fellow creatures" are only
fellow Americans. A sense of community with all the other people
in the young republic obviously did not come naturally but had to
be instilled from above. A nation had to be built by educating
the young to produce homogeneous patriots. Rush describes this in
his essay "Of the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic":
"The first remark that I shall make upon this subject is, that an
education in our own, is to be preferred to an education in a
foreign country. The principle of patriotism stands in need of
the reinforcement of prejudice, and it is well known that our
strongest prejudices in favour of our country are formed in the
first one and twenty years of our lives."
"I conceive the education of our youth in this country to be
peculiarly necessary in Pennsylvania, while our citizens are
composed of the natives of so many different kingdoms in Europe.
Our schools of learning, by producing one general, and uniform
system of education, will render the mass of the people more
homogeneous, and thereby fit them more easily for uniform and
peaceable government."
Freedom of religion did not mean freedom from religion.
Christianity had to be inculcated too:
"Such is my veneration for every religion that reveals the
attributes of the Deity, or a future state of rewards and
punishments, that I had rather see the opinions of Confucius or
Mahomed inculcated upon our youth, than see them grow up wholly
devoid of a system of religious principles. But the religion I
mean to recommend in this place, is that of the New Testament."
And all this candidly admitted brainwashing is intended to have
the following effect:
"From the observations that have been made it is plain, that I
consider it is possible to convert men into republican machines."
James