Current Usage
Ethos can simply mean the disposition, character, or fundamental values peculiar to a specific person, people, culture, or movement. The Ethos refers to the spirit which motivates the ideas and customs. As T.S. Eliot wrote, "The general ethos of the people they have to govern determines the behavior of politicians." One historian noted that in the 1920s, "The ethos of the Communist party dominated every aspect of public life in Soviet Russia."
Ethos may change in response to new ideas or forces. Ideas of economic modernization imported from the West in the 1930s brought about in Jewish settlements in Palestine "the abandonment of the agrarian ethos and the reception of...the ethos of rapid development".
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Famous quotes containing the words current and/or usage:
“Beneath the azure current floweth;
Above, the golden sunlight glows.
Rebellious, the storm it wooeth,
As if the storms could give repose.”
—Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841)
“I am using it [the word ‘perceive’] here in such a way that to say of an object that it is perceived does not entail saying that it exists in any sense at all. And this is a perfectly correct and familiar usage of the word.”
—A.J. (Alfred Jules)