Plato: Eco-Hunk
When I was an undergraduate at the University of Massachusetts, I wiggled into a two-semester Greek class at Smith College. Although I had to deal with occasional condescension from the bona fide Smithies, the hours I spent reading Plato in the original Greek are among the things I miss most about college. (Actually, there are a few other things I miss too.) It makes me sad that Greek and Latin are considered outdated and irrelevant; the classics have so much to teach us.
Case in point: “Local Economy” — The word economy comes from the Greek oikos which means home. Economy, at least etymologically, refers to household affairs, so the idea of a local economy is redundant. The idea of a global economy, on the other hand, is etymologically nonsensical unless you consider the Whole Earth your home. But maybe that’s the whole point. We don’t have a sense of our roots.
Ecology, I think, has the same root. Home.
(Disclaimer: There is a good argument that Plato was not, in fact, an Eco-Hunk because of his ideas about the disconnect between the spiritual and the material world. If I remember correctly, David Abram wrote a book called Spell of the Sensuous which talks about this. Stephan Harding’s Animate Earth deals with this briefly as well.
Even if Plato wasn’t officially an ‘eco-hunk’ people who lived that long ago had no choice but to be in touch with the natural world….their lives were very directly connected to it every day, as they woke up in unheated houses and ate only local foods. Basically until about 100 or so years ago, everyone was very closely tied to their local environment, whether they liked it, or not, which makes them all more environmentally savvy than most of us today.
Thanks for the reminders of the etymology of language too…how far we’ve gone from the original meanings of things!
04/20/07 » 7:30 am »
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04/30/07 » 9:07 am »