Disputatio:Hetaeria

message: Plures, fortasse pleraeque linguae vocabulis a secta deductis utuntur, itaque cultus conversio manifesta non est. Fortasse oportet locutionem adhibere, cf. Russice тоталитарная секта, "secta totalitaria". Vel enormis, abnormis, devians, malitiosa, malevola... Lesgles (disputatio) 01:44, 4 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Romani saec. I et II Christianitatem hoc modo viderunt -- vide Plinii et Traiani epistolas de Christianitate exstirpenda (Plin. Ep. 10.96-97). Plinius Christianitatem neque cultum neque religionem nuncupat (sed certe potuit). Appellat semel (sicut iudex loquens) "culpa vel error"; de decreto Traiani loquitur qui tales "hetaerias" vetaverat. Iudices non sumus: minime dicere volo Christianitatem "errorem" vel "deviantem" esse sive fuisse. Ergo propono "hetaeria". Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:11, 4 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: :Censeo Anglice cult per se iudicium esse ("X is not a religion, it's a cult!"), sed hetaeria mihi placet. Lesgles (disputatio) 22:39, 5 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: ::Decet 'hetaeria' aperte. Optime. Licet mihi. Velim emendare (et fontem ponere, Lesgles). Tandem sensu hodierno retinere velim tamen ab hinc antiqua extant hetaeriae.Jondel (disputatio) 07:30, 6 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
Pono notitiam 'Movenda|hetaeria' ut convenit.Jondel (disputatio) 09:26, 6 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
White's (1938): hetaeria, Anglice 'a religious brotherhood, fraternity' significans. Cassell's (1968): hetairia (non hetaeria), Anglice 'a secret society'. Similiter Traupman (2007): hetairia, Anglice 'secret society'. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:42, 6 Octobris 2014 (UTC)

text: Then White's depends more closely on the Lewis & Short tradition, agreeing with them both on spelling and English translation. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 18:19, 6 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
Hetaeria devians ? So far, cults have been secretive.  It is hard to decide what exactly is wrong (malevola, malitiosa)? I would like to insert 2 or 3 of the first English sentences at the English wiki, and mention 'cultus' as the deriviation for the corresponding word in many languages.Jondel (disputatio) 13:08, 9 Octobris 2014 (UTC)

text: In Greek �ἑταιρεία/ἑταιρία can mean association or brotherhood in the abstract or a specific political club, not necessarily religious and not necessarily sinister. In order to disambiguate and leave the space for an article on Ancient Greek hetaeries, how about hetaeria improba? Lesgles (disputatio) 18:11, 12 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: :There is an issue orof relativity. E.g. What is 'improba' may not be too wicked to others. However what makes a cult, is the practises it has, which mainstream society would not accept. 'divergens' (hetaeria divergens)seems safe.Jondel (disputatio) 12:30, 17 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
Re "Cultus (Anglice cult) sensu hodierno": what's the sensus antiquus of the word cultus from which this cultus is being distinguished? And how does it differ from the sense of secta? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 18:32, 12 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: ::I guess cultus has a range of senses, this no doubt included,  but what we are trying to define here is something more restricted than the basic sense. I agree strongly with Jondel that we cannot call them something like improba. We are in the same world as the people who are members and leaders of these groups. That is why I used the analogy of early Christianity above. We are not emperors or lawgivers. We are observers. We can say what effects such groups have had but we have to avoid POV.

text: ::Secta is good. Would it serve alone, or does it need disambiguation? Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:10, 17 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: :::But here's my argument: the word cult itself in the modern sense is by definition a POV, and I feel that we should describe it as such. (Compare the English Wikipedia definition: "a religious or other social group with socially deviant and novel beliefs and practices".) Mormonism, Scientology, etc. are considered cults in some European countries, but religions in America. No group nowadays wants to be named a cult, or a secte in French, but we need a good translation for this undesirable label that modern society uses, just as we have an article on heresy. I see this article as a place to discuss the controversy, the claims made by anti-cultists, and the responses by those labeled as cults. We could have another article on new religious movement, the neutral category used by modern sociologists.

text: :::Cultus: If we give priority to the classical perspective, this is all positive: "culture", "refinement", "veneration". Then in English (and some other languages) it began to be used to refer (from a dominant Christian perspective) more to pagan cults, and then finally in the 20th century to sinister groups that brainwash their members.

text: :::Secta: classically neutral: "group of followers", "school", "party"; mostly neutral in English, I think (="religious denomination"). But in other languages it has become negative, perhaps because of the Catholic perspective that claiming to follow a particular narrow path/school/faith means you are not following the "one true" faith.

text: :::Hetaeria: negative when it was used by Pliny and Trajan to refer to Christians, but the Greek etymon is more neutral.

text: :::If we want one word, the modern English sense of cult is so distant from cultus that we should reject this, though as Jondel says it should probably be mentioned somewhere in the article. I imagine we could find some Renaissance sources using secta as a derogatory label, and Andrew already found the classical derogatory usage of hetaeria. As for disambiguation, another option could be something like "Secta (appellatio controversa)". Lesgles (disputatio) 19:07, 17 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
In anthropology, the only sense where cult hasn't gone out of fashion is in the phrase cargo cult, and even that formulation is being challenged by modern authorities, leaving such things to be called movements, associations, and religions. See, for example, the Prince Philip Movement, referring to an organization whose members worship Prince Philip. It's probably best to avoid the use of a Latin term for cult altogether, except for organizations that call themselves cults, if any do. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 01:26, 19 Octobris 2014 (UTC)

text: We may need to move this away, indeed, but as Lesgles says, and also already together with secta, we need to relate it's modern usage as a deviating ('weird')group.Jondel (disputatio) 10:03, 19 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: :[Edit conflict:] In general, we don't take any account of possible unwelcome meanings of words in other languages that happen to be related to Latin words. We couldn't ever write anything if we we were frightened of that. If indeed "cult" in this sense is POV in English (I have never myself used the word in this sense and I don't know) then that's unlucky for people writing encyclopedias in English, but it hasn't got anything to do with us. Assuming we are talking about a real concept (which I think we are) we just need to find a non-POV Latin word for it if we can.

text: :I still think "hetairia", as it is used in Latin (see Pliny's Letters, and Lewis and Short) is OK. It is not actually a derogatory word -- Trajan and Pliny, as educated Romans, would hardly have used it in a way that clashed with its Greek sense -- but has the implication that people who join find themselves doing things which are secret from and believing things which would be unacceptable to people who don't join. A secret society, in other words. Pliny and Trajan are using it about (what they considered to be) a religious secret society. That seems to me to make it suitable.

text: :"Secta" is quite OK, but its normal meanings are not perhaps exactly what we want, because they imply a division in an existing larger group, and don't necessarily imply activities from which non-members are excluded. There is no derogatory implication in it that I can see (via Lewis and Short). If some people use "secta" in a disapproving way, others don't, so it's still available to us. Since its range of Latin meanings is wider, we would have to disambiguate it. But I don't understand why "(appellatio controversa)": have the members of these groups objected to being described by the Latin word "secta"? Why would they? So I suspect a secret purpose there :=) to write an article about exactly those groups that American English speakers currently call, disapprovingly, "cults". That's not the way we work (is it?) To define the English word "cult" in this sense and to find a Latin equivalent is a job for Victionarium (isn't it?) But if there's a real useful concept here that we can define and name and write an article about, then, whether our readers approve of the groups we mention, or disapprove of them, or are members of one of them, shouldn't affect the matter. Hmm, now, am I right?. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 10:43, 19 Octobris 2014 (UTC)

text: :OK, now, rereading what Lesgles writes, I see the point of writing an article about groups which some people would describe as bad and others not. The example of Scientology is a very good one. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 15:36, 19 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: ::That's unproblematically a religio and an ecclesia, legally incorporated as the Church of Scientology; however, it could reasonably be called a novus motus religiosus and is so categorized in Wikipedia (see below). IacobusAmor (disputatio) 20:05, 19 Octobris 2014 (UTC)

text: :But I'm not sure we can really do that, can we? because if there is no external consensus that they are e.g. criminal, all we can do is to list the potential members of this category and footnote such facts as that they have (a) been outlawed somewhere, (b) been deprived of the legal status of a religion somewhere, (c) been described as brainwashers etc. in reliable sources. Well, if it can be done, I encourage the writer(s). But in that case the name of this article or enumeration has to be as morally relative as the surrounding world: I would drop my "Hetaeriae" and tentatively suggest instead "Sectae ..." or "Religiones alicubi interdictae" or "S/R alicubi deprecatae" or "S/R persuastrices dictae" (that would be the Latin for brainwashing, I think). Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 15:36, 19 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: ::To be clear, I wouldn't support calling groups cults willy-nilly; we can only write things like "X in Francia ?hetaeria habetur" etc., and cite reliable sources. We must try to avoid expressing our own POV, but I see nothing in Wikipedia's policies that prohibits describing POV concepts in non-POV terms. In fact, in a short article we need not even name any specific groups. To take another analogy, we have an article on rassismus, but in biographies, for example, we can only say "X a Y rassista appellatus est".) That there is now a concept of cult in many countries, and not just in the English language, is demonstrated by the many interwikis at :en:Cult. ¶ For the naming issue at hand, I am now ambivalent between hetaeria and secta, as long as the articles make clear historical meanings in Latin clear. For disambiguation, my remaining idea is to go back to using hodiernus in some way. I also like the idea of lists of religiones alicubi interdictae, etc. but would still like to have a descriptive article, partly to have something to link to when translating a sentence like this from :en:Scientology:

text: ::* "the organization is considered a cult (secte) in France and Chile... Scientology is one of the most controversial new religious movements to have arisen in the 20th century. The church is often characterized as a cult..." Lesgles (disputatio) 00:42, 20 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: :::OK, handy example again! As a translation in text of that first partial sentence, since Pliny and Trajan as lawgivers had their beady eyes on hetaeriae, we can surely say "Haec societas hetaeria habetur in Francia et Chilia (secte, secta absoluta)." I hope I have the Spanish term right. We would have to give the correct term in each country, but replace the Eng. "cult" with our chosen Latin word. Surely, for our replacement of Eng. "cult" in this first Wikipedia sentence (= religious society officially characterised as undesirable) we can hardly hope to find better than "hetaeria". It might do for the last partial sentence as well, though that may be based on impressionistic sources and may require a POV term -- couldn't say without reading more. But I too (like you below) don't really feel like discussing this at much more length! It may well sort itself out as the articles are written. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 08:57, 20 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
Andrew, your example for its use on Christians was very useful.
I really feel it should be Hetaeria divergens or even Hetaeria improba as Lesgles suggests. Mainstream society simply can not accept groups that 'hear voices from God to kill themselves and others, etc.' They all may not be that extreme nor criminal, but you simply would be forced to advice people, your kids for example, to stay away from them. Jondel (disputatio) 15:26, 21 Octobris 2014 (UTC)

text: Verbis similibus damnaverunt Romani indignabundi molestos saeculo sexto decimo Protestantes. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 11:24, 22 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Movenda? 

message: Pro multis organizationibus quas diurnaria vilia cultus appellare solent, Wikipedia locutione New Religious Movement et nominibus propriis utitur. Exempli gratia, Iacobi Jonesii motus quem diurnaria vilia Anglice cult appellabant recte appellatur The People's Temple of the Disciples of Christ (fortasse 'Templum Populare Discipulorum Christi'), vel simpliciter People's Temple ('Templum Populare'). The article New Religious Movement and related categories suggest that the oldest religious movements to be considered new are Ecclesia Iesu Christi Diebus Ultimis Sanctorum, Testes Iehovah, Christian Science, and Shakers. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:36, 19 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Iam habemus categorias Novi motus religiosi et Novi motus religiosi Christiani. Quis commentarium Novus motus religiosus scribet? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:41, 19 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: :The terms & attitudes cited in Wikipedia's article Anti-cult movement might be of interest. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:46, 19 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: ::An entire academic journal, Nova Religio, is devoted to this topic: it "publishes scholarly interpretations, original research, literature reviews, and conference updates with a focus on New Religious Movements, including Ancient Wisdom and New Age groups, new movements within established religious traditions, alternative Christian religions, new Jewish movements, religious organizations based on Asian teachings, new religious movements from the Middle East, African, African American and Black movements, and immigrant religions in Diaspora." IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:59, 19 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: :::I like novus motus religiosus, and though I'd eventually prefer a separate article for the controversial label, for now I'd be fine with a few sentences on the controversy in this article. If we need to, we could even use cult or secte as foreign words in italics. OK, now I think I've said all I can say on the subject, and I'm off to my cult meeting. :) Lesgles (disputatio) 00:46, 20 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
I would be initiating this article (or feel free to start it), probably with a translation of the first 2 or 3 sentences plus other essential elements.Jondel (disputatio) 10:25, 24 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Novus motus religiosus

message: Could someone one help me with the latinatis. Could Someone point out what is ambiguous in the article. Thank you.--Jondel (disputatio) 07:42, 25 Octobris 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I just came back to this. I don't have time for the rest, sorry Jondel, but, well or badly, I rewrote the first sentence of each paragraph. Adding "devians" in the pagename is superfluous so I removed it. Trajan already used "hetaeria" alone in the sense of a religious society of which right-thinking persons disapproved, and as a title we can't do better. (Note that "deviant" still appears in the definition.) The second paragraph seemed to want to get back to using the term "cultus", but it won't do for us, because it may have a negative connotation in English but it hasn't in Latin, bad luck. Incidentally, I learned of the English connotation for the first time from the above discussion: I have heard all sorts of religious groups called "cults", of course, but I didn't know it was being used pejoratively. I must get out more.

text: Cicero did use the phrase "malus cultus" meaning (I think) bad upbringing or bad company and their effects. That's negative, but not very close to the topic of this article. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:56, 28 Augusti 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Latinatis