Abstract
The word "civilization" seems to have a precise place and date of birth, namely the French language and Victor Riqueti de Mirabeau's treatise L'Ami des hommes (1756, publ. in 1757). Émile Benveniste's study ("Civilisation. Contribution à l'histoire du mot" [1954], in Problèmes de linguistique générale, I, 336-345) identified an almost contemporary use of the corresponding English word - " civilization " - used by Adam Ferguson, An Essay of the History of Civil Society (1767, but already written in 1759). Consequently, Benveniste concluded his study by setting an alternative for future research to resolve: "whether civilization was invented twice in Europe in France and England, independently and around the same date, or whether it was French alone that introduced it into the vocabulary of modern Europe"(Problèmes de linguistique générale, I, p. 345). Today's lexicographic tools enable us to answer this question, and in an unexpected way: the word appeared long before Mirabeau (with the same meaning), and English preceded French.
The history of the word almost naturally leads to further reflection on the genetic relationship between the idea of "civilization" and that of ius civile, i.e. law, with which it shares an obvious semantic trait. The process of civilization (under various names) has always been the subject of narratives, on the scale of the whole of humanity or of given human groups. These narratives often use the origin of law as a parameter to establish when the threshold of civilization is reached (and thus include an implicit value judgment). This reflection on "civilization as narrative" will take us back to Roman Antiquity (which is a repertoire of "civilization patterns") and then again to contemporary times. In fact, several disciplines continue to use these narratives as a means of understanding and framing the increasingly abundant data available on human groups of the past.
Returning to the word and to narratives can contribute to reflection on our categories and on the relationships between the various disciplines that question the history of man in society.
