"What is a Nation?" by Ernest Renan, 1882

William Joyce
William Joyce
10.6 هزار بار بازدید - 7 سال پیش - Note:  In this essay Renan
Note:  In this essay Renan compares the races of Europe to one another and not to other races such as the Indian, African or Asian races.

Renan disavows globalism @42:30,  "At the present moment, the existence of nations is a good and even necessary thing.  Their existence is the guarantee of liberty, a liberty that would be lost if the world had only one law and one master."

@38:31 after describing what a nation is not, Renan begins to describe what it is, "A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle.  Two things which properly speaking, are really one and the same, constitute this soul, this spiritual principle.  One is the past the other is the present.  One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present consent, the desire to live together, the desire to continue to invest in the heritage that we have jointly received.
Messieurs, man does not improvise.  The nation like the individual is the outcome of a long past of efforts, sacrifices and devotions.
Of all cults, that of the ancestors is the most legitimate: our ancestors have made us what we are.  A heroic past with great men and glory (I mean true glory) is the social capital upon which the national idea rests.  These are the essential conditions of being a people: having common glories in the past and a will to continue them in the present; having made great things together and a wishing to make them again.  One loves in proportion to the sacrifices that one has committed and the troubles that one has suffered.  One loves the house that one has built and that one passes on.  The Spartan chant, "We are what you were; we will be what you are", is, in its simplicity, the abridged hymn of every fatherland."

Text of a conference delivered at the Sorbonne on
March 11th, 1882, in Ernest Renan, Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?, Paris, Presses-Pocket,1992. (translated by Ethan Rundell)

Source:  https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...

Wikipedia article for Renan's "What is a Nation?" (Note: article does not mention "ancestry"):  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_is...
7 سال پیش در تاریخ 1396/09/10 منتشر شده است.
10,651 بـار بازدید شده
... بیشتر