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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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 Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 9:27 am Post subject: |
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| There's no reason to get confused by similarities that have nothing to do with the original use of the word (the word civil didn't come into use to mean polite until well after the word civil war was created). |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 10:17 am Post subject: |
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| mithridates wrote: |
| There's no reason to get confused by similarities that have nothing to do with the original use of the word (the word civil didn't come into use to mean polite until well after the word civil war was created). |
Not so sure. Have you read Norbert Elias's The Civilizing Process? He treats the French civilit� and civilisation concepts philologically, tracing them back to feudal times and indeed a bit further than that -- that is, before nation-states emerged and before "civil wars" could have existed. One of Western Civ's most important books, by the way.
One problem with the debate on whether Iraq has descended into civil war is that it is so politically charged. It is not a debate between disinterested social scientists. Rather, it is a debate between fiercely loyal partisans, one side out to hang the other for causing civil war and destroying world peace; the other out to justify and defend its policies and actions. Usually people who claim Iraq has descended into civil war are those who attack W. Bush and U.S. Middle East policy; those who question this are those who defend W. Bush and U.S. Middle East policy.
In this polarized environment, no one will have much luck convincing anyone on this issue. People's minds are already made up and that is that. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 11:01 am Post subject: |
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Apparently the word civility is older than the use of civil war by a few years, but the word civil meaning polite didn't come into use for quite some time. So says http://www.etymonline.com anyway:
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civil
1387, from L. civilis "of or proper to a citizen," alternate adj. derivation of civis "townsman" (see city). The sense of "polite" was in the L., from the courteous manners of citizens, as opposed to those of soldiers. But Eng. did not pick up this nuance of the word until 1606, though civility dates from c.1384. "Courteous is thus more commonly said of superiors, civil of inferiors, since it implies or suggests the possibility of incivility or rudeness" [OED]. Civil war "battles among fellow citizens or within a community" first recorded 1387 (in England, the 17c. struggle between Parliament and Charles I; in U.S., the War of Secession, 1861-1865). Civil rights is from 1721, specifically of black U.S. citizens from 1866; civil liberty is from 1788. Civil disobedience coined 1866 by Thoreau as title of an essay originally published (1849) as "Resistance to Civil Government." Civil Service originally c.1785, in ref. to the non-military branch of the East India Company. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 11:46 am Post subject: |
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| But it is linked with "courtesy," at least according to Elias, which derives from "courtly behavior" among other feudal-era demands of knights errant residing at court... |
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