[lit-ideas] Town & Country
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009 17:44:51 EDT
In a message dated 6/20/2009 5:28:27 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
wokshevs@xxxxxx writes:
Aristotelian conception of morality that privileges the norms and
principles of
one's own polis and habitus on criteria of "the good life," "the authentic
life," "the virtuous life." And this has definite value to be sure.
-----
It strikes me that there are two moralities:
-- the morality of the 'city slickers'
-- the morality of the mouse of the 'country' (not town).
So Kant and Aristotle (etc.) are wrong.
Obama said, "It is raining, and I endorse that both
as a citizen of the United States of America
and as a citizen of the World.
People objected, "I'm not a citizen of the world".
"Kosmopolites" was a joke invented by the Greek, but so was 'polites'.
I have been to LACONIA, in Peloponnese. SPARTA is the "Capital" -- and
"Spartans" they are -- the polis. But what was "around" the polis? The
country, not the town.
The had to _extend_ the concept of 'polis' to COVER, unnaturally, the
'country' around them. But surely the economical infra-structure, to echo Marx
is:
COUNTRY ---> SUPPORTS TOWN
and not vice versa.
Think of New York City and New York State. (NY SUPPORTS NYC -- and not
vice versa).
For any city (town) worth her name, there is a country surrounding it.
Perhaps that's the origin of 'countryman', or 'fellow countryman'.
In Italian (and Adriano Palma, though not a native speaker) will agree
with me,
there's "paese"
--- The national anthem of Argentina was written first in ITALIAN, by
Luigi Illica
"e la bandiera del paese mio"
"it's the flag of my country"
The equivalent of Italian 'paese' is Spanish 'pais', and that is used
exactly as 'country'.
But in Italian remains the original sense of 'old sod' or something like
that.
Or cfr. England -->
UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN & NORTHERN IRELAND
(country)
England (sub-country? no! Country)
S. Ward's original 'country' ('paese' in Italian)
Bedfordshire.
Some 'counties' in England still bear the origin as original kingdoms:
Sussex -- kingdom of the Southern Saxons,
etc.
----
So one can say that one's loyalty is -- for one's town ('polites', cives)
or one's country (paese). And that _is_ confusing, in cases where for
example, the capital of one's country (London, Buenos Aires) is not really in
a
_real_ county! (But I survive! -- do you?)
Cheers,
JL Speranza
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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