Word: publica
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...problem arises at the outset, when Sennett defines public life in a private, idiosyncratic and almost arbitrary way. Rather than updating the classical idea of res publica he exhumes from the attic (a notion of private citizens redefining themselves by subordinating their individual interests to the greater good of the community) Sennett merely fabricates a new definition. Public life "flowers" in Sennett's world when the proper "balance" is found between the public and private realms. The material for these conditions existed, according to Sennett, in 18th century London where citizens created through women's elaborate wigs, men's formal...
...word Republic I use as Thomas Paine, propagandist of the American Revolution, used it in his Rights of Man, to mean "not any particular form of government" but "the matter or object for which government ought to be instituted . . . res-publica, the public affairs, or the public good; or, literally translated, the public thing." This word describes the shared public concerns of people in different nations, the community of those who share these concerns...
...Commonwealth" has nothing to do with sharing riches. The word took root in Renaissance Europe as an equivalent for the old Roman res publica, i.e., the public good or the common weal. Oliver Cromwell's dictatorship in England (1649-53), after the execution of King Charles I, was therefore dubbed "the Commonwealth." The U.S. colonies liked the self-governing implications of the word, and several states (e.g., the Commonwealths of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania) still bear the name. As early as 1852, British officials were employing commonwealth as a euphemistic name for empire. It has now grown to mean...
TIME'S Aug. 6 story on the Andrea Doria disaster left me transfixed. The facts were the same as those handled by other publica tions, but the story emerged alive and tender, in a way that tore right into...
...attention was arrested by the startling similarity of your first "conviction" to some words of Cicero found in his De Re Publica, III, 33. TIME says, "That God's order . . . includes a moral code . . . not subject to man's repeal, suspension or amendment." Cicero said, "There is indeed a true law . . . unchanging, everlasting ... It is not allowable to repeal, amend or suspend...