I've asked some hare-brained questions on this forum, but this one may at first seem to be the worst: Just what do we mean by "civilization?" (Or "civilisation," among the more civilised. )
When one considers Freud's "Civilisation and its Discontents," or Macaulay's statement that civilisation without its mercy is a most frightening spectacle, or Gandhi's quip, after being asked what he thought of Western civilisation, "I think it would be a good idea," one must ask whether the commonly held assumptions as to its meanings no longer bear any relationship to the Latin civitas from which it is derived. Has the idea of a group living under a commonly agreed-upon set of principles driven us to insanity or to inhumanity?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: <Asa Lovejoy>,

quote:

a group living under a commonly agreed-upon set of principles driven us to insanity or to inhumanity?

If the principles are are agreed by a substantial majority, then it is probably fair to say that the society to which the rules apply is civilised by its own standards.

However, as has been proved over the centuries, different groups have different standards and as many powerful nations have discovered (the British in the 19th century and the Americans now) trying to impose your own ideas of civilised society onto others is a dangerous business - and one which usually seems to fail.

Your guess is as good as mine, Asa. Of the etymology, we have Latin civis 'citizen', civilis 'of/pertaining to citizens; private rights', civitas 'citizenry; the body politic' (in Silver Latin and beyond 'city'), and civilitas 'politeness'. And an observation: almost ever civilization I've read about or observed has a set of rules and customs by which one ought to live which is disjunct from their actual behavio(u)r.

Anyone else reminded of the Firesign Theater:

Civilization.., HO!

Anyone else reminded of the Firesign Theater

Yes. And before the inevitable (link and link).

Probably because of the use a the letter "z" in the spelling of the title of this thread, the first thing that came to mind was the computer game, Civilization.

OK, fine and dandy, but just what does the word mean nowadays? Is it any different form the meaning a century or two ago?

Interesting question, Asa.

I tried to approach it by looking up the earliest usage in OED. The difficulty is that OED's earliest cite (apart from a specialized technical meaning in law) makes it clear that the word was already in common use.

1772 BOSWELL Johnson xxv, On Monday, March 23, I found him [Johnson] busy, preparing a fourth edition of his folio Dictionary. He would not admit civilization, but only civility.

I checked Googlebooks for earlier hits. There are many, but most of them are clearly mis-dated by the search engine, but this one appears to date to 1768:

Not only the individual advances from infancy to manhood, but the species itself from rudeness to civilization.

Shu, I note that your citation is from an "Essay on the History of Civil Society." Thus the 18th Century moral philosophers considered civility and society, from sociis (L. friends; allies) to be separate entities that were eventually conjoined. Therefore might a clan be "civilized" within itself, but uncivilized to outsiders?