Editing Civilization (section)

== History of the concept ==
[[file:Grün - The End of Dinner.jpg|thumb|''The End of Dinner'' by [[Jules-Alexandre Grün]] (1913). The emergence of [[table manners]] and other forms of [[etiquette]] and [[self-restraint]] are presented as a characteristic of ''civilized'' society by [[Norbert Elias]] in his book ''[[The Civilizing Process]]'' (1939).]]

The English word ''civilization'' comes from the French {{lang|fr|civilisé}} ('civilized'), from {{langx|la|civilis}} ('civil'), related to {{lang|la|civis}} ('citizen') and {{lang|la|civitas}} ('city').<ref name=":6">{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3041K2Zv76AC&pg=PT73 |title=The SAGE Glossary of the Social and Behavioral Sciences |last=Sullivan |first=Larry E. |year=2009 |publisher=SAGE Publications |isbn=978-1-4129-5143-2 |page=73 |language=en |access-date=20 June 2015 |archive-date=30 December 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161230003359/https://books.google.com/books?id=3041K2Zv76AC&pg=PT73 |url-status=live }}</ref> The fundamental treatise is [[Norbert Elias]]'s ''[[The Civilizing Process]]'' (1939), which traces social [[mores]] from [[Court (royal)|medieval courtly society]] to the [[early modern period]].{{efn|It remains the most influential sociological study of the topic, spawning its own body of secondary literature. Notably, [[Hans Peter Duerr]] attacked it in a major work (3,500 pages in five volumes, published 1988–2002). Elias, at the time a nonagenarian, was still able to respond to the criticism the year before his death. In 2002, Duerr was himself criticized by Michael Hinz's {{lang|de|Der Zivilisationsprozeß: Mythos oder Realität}} (2002), saying that his criticism amounted to hateful defamation of Elias, through excessive standards of [[political correctness]].<ref>{{cite magazine |magazine=[[Der Spiegel]] |url=http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-25327104.html |issue=40 |volume=2002 |date=30 September 2002 |title=Denker: Entlarvende Briefe |language=de |access-date=16 October 2014 |archive-date=28 February 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190228225831/http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-25327104.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>}} In ''The Philosophy of Civilization'' (1923), [[Albert Schweitzer]] outlines two opinions: one purely [[materialism|material]] and the other material and [[ethic]]al. He said that the world crisis was from humanity losing the ethical idea of civilization, "the sum total of all progress made by man in every sphere of action and from every point of view in so far as the progress helps towards the spiritual perfecting of individuals as the progress of all progress".<ref name=":8">Albert Schweitzer. ''The Philosophy of Civilization'', translated by C. T. Campion (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1987), p. 91.</ref>

Related words like "civility" developed in the mid-16th century. The abstract noun "civilization", meaning "civilized condition", came in the 1760s, again from French. The first known use in French is in 1757, by [[Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau]], and the first use in English is attributed to [[Adam Ferguson]], who in his 1767 ''[[Essay on the History of Civil Society]]'' wrote, <!-- Keep original spelling please. -->"Not only the individual advances from infancy to manhood but the species itself from rudeness to civilisation".<ref name=Benveniste>Cited after [[Émile Benveniste]], {{lang|fr|Civilisation. Contribution à l'histoire du mot}} [''Civilisation. Contribution to the history of the word''], 1954, published in {{lang|fr|Problèmes de linguistique générale}}, [[Éditions Gallimard]], 1966, pp. 336–345 (translated by Mary Elizabeth Meek as ''Problems in general linguistics'', 2 vols., 1971).</ref> The word was therefore opposed to barbarism or rudeness, in the active pursuit of [[Progress (history)|progress]] characteristic of the [[Age of Enlightenment]].

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, during the [[French Revolution]], "civilization" was used in the [[Grammatical number|singular]], never in the plural, and meant the progress of humanity as a whole. This is still the case in French.<ref name=velkley/> The use of "civilizations" as a countable noun was in occasional use in the 19th century,{{efn|For example, in the title ''A narrative of the loss of the Winterton East Indiaman wrecked on the coast of Madagascar in 1792; and of the sufferings connected with that event. To which is subjoined a short account of the natives of Madagascar, with suggestions as to their civilizations'' by J. Hatchard, L.B. Seeley and T. Hamilton, London, 1820.}} but has become much more common in the later 20th century, sometimes just meaning culture (itself in origin an uncountable noun, made countable in the context of [[ethnography]]).<ref name=":10">"Civilization" (1974), ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]'' 15th ed. Vol. II, ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', Inc., 956. Retrieved 25 August 2007.</ref> Only in this generalized sense does it become possible to speak of a "medieval civilization", which in Elias's sense would have been an oxymoron. Using the terms "civilization" and "culture" as equivalents are controversial and generally rejected so that for example some types of culture are not normally described as civilizations.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Lottick |first1=Kenneth V. |title=Some Distinctions between Culture and Civilization as Displayed in Sociological Literature |journal=Social Forces |year=1950 |volume=28 |issue=3 |pages=240–250 |doi=10.2307/2572007 |jstor=2572007 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2572007 |issn=0037-7732 |access-date=19 September 2023 |archive-date=24 October 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231024040544/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2572007 |url-status=live |url-access=subscription }}</ref>

Already in the 18th century, civilization was not always seen as an improvement. One historically important distinction between culture and civilization is from the writings of [[Rousseau]], particularly his work about education, ''[[Emile: or, On Education|Emile]]''. Here, civilization, being more rational and socially driven, is not fully in accord with [[human nature]], and "human wholeness is achievable only through the recovery of or approximation to an original discursive or pre-rational natural unity" (see [[noble savage]]). From this, a new approach was developed, especially in Germany, first by [[Johann Gottfried Herder]] and later by philosophers such as [[Kierkegaard]] and [[Nietzsche]]. This sees cultures as natural organisms, not defined by "conscious, rational, deliberative acts", but a kind of pre-rational "folk spirit". Civilization, in contrast, though more rational and more successful in material progress, is unnatural and leads to "vices of social life" such as guile, hypocrisy, envy and avarice.<ref name=velkley>{{cite book|title=Being after Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in Question |last=Velkley |first=Richard|year=2002|chapter=The Tension in the Beautiful: On Culture and Civilization in Rousseau and German Philosophy|pages=11–30|publisher=The University of Chicago Press}}</ref> In [[World War II]], [[Leo Strauss]], having fled Germany, argued in New York that this opinion of civilization was behind [[Nazism]] and German [[militarism]] and [[nihilism]].<ref name=":11">"[https://archive.org/details/LeoStraussGermanNihilismIntegral1941 On German Nihilism]" (1999, originally a 1941 lecture), ''Interpretation'' 26, no. 3 edited by David Janssens and Daniel Tanguay.</ref>