Raison d’etre? Say What?
09 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Questions
So I am supposed to write an essay about political geography, and part of the directions say to ‘identify the raison d’etre for your countries’. I had no idea what this term meant but I checked it out on Google. It comes up with something from the Merriam Webster Dictionary online, and apparently the definition is something along the lines of ’the reason or justification for existence’. I’m impressed that the French managed to condense all that philosophical meaning into two words, but really, what is anything’s reason for existing?
It’s like the timeless question ‘what is the meaning of life’. While everyone has their own personalized answers or thoughts regarding this question, how does one write conclusively about why a country exists? Is it even a valid question? My solution was to omit that particular content in the hopes that it will be overlooked. The rest of the paper is pretty good though.
