Concept

Exile

Overview

Exile or banishment is primarily penal expulsion from one's native country, and secondarily expatriation or prolonged absence from one's homeland under either the compulsion of circumstance or the rigors of some high purpose. Usually persons and peoples suffer exile, but sometimes social entities like institutions (e.g. the papacy or a government) are forced from their homeland.

In Roman law, exsilium denoted both voluntary exile and banishment as a capital punishment alternative to death. Deportation was forced exile, and entailed the lifelong loss of citizenship and property. Relegation was a milder form of deportation, which preserved the subject's citizenship and property.

The term diaspora describes group exile, both voluntary and forced. "Government in exile" describes a government of a country that has relocated and argues its legitimacy from outside that country. Voluntary exile is often depicted as a form of protest by the person who claims it, to avoid persecution and prosecution (such as tax or criminal allegations), an act of shame or repentance, or isolating oneself to be able to devote time to a particular pursuit.

Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile."

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Exile is discussed.

"Apollo the chaste god, exile from heaven," let me keep a religious silence, as Herodotus[945] says. And Empedocles commences his system of philosophy as follows, "It is an ordinance of necessity, an ancient decree of the gods, when anyone stains his hands with crime and murder, the long-lived demons get hold of him,…
Plutarch, Plutarch's Morals
a chapter is titled for it; names the idea; opens on it
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
That particular Flight of Unfortunates has long since fled again, and vanished; and new have come and fled. In this convulsed revolutionary epoch, which already lasts above sixty years, what tragic flights of such have we not seen arrive on the one safe coast which is open to them, as they get successively vanquished, and chased into exile to avoid worse! Swarm after swarm, of ever-new complexion, from Spain as from…
Thomas Carlyle, Life of John Sterling
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
If in a fit of anger a husband kills his wedded wife, or the wife her husband, the slayer shall undergo the same purification, and the term of exile shall be three years. And when he who has committed any such crime returns, let him have no communication in sacred rites with his children, neither let him sit at the same table with them, and the father or son who disobeys shall be liable…
Plato, Laws
states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
There are circumstances in which a man may be of more use to his fellow-countrymen outside his country than within it. Then he should listen only to his own zeal and should bear his exile without a murmur; that exile is one of his duties. But you, dear Emile, you have not undertaken the painful task of telling men the truth, you must live in the midst of your fellow-creatures, cultivating their friendship in…
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile
states what it is; names the idea
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
Some writers on the life of Dante will have it that in Ravenna he spent the greater part of his exile, and that when he is found elsewhere--in Lucca or Verona--he is only on a temporary absence from his permanent home.[123] But this conclusion requires some facts to be ignored, and others unduly dwelt on. In any case his patron there, during at least the last year or two of his life, was Guido Novello of Polenta…
Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri
names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Read the chapter · Open in the reader

Exile

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Exile

Related ideas

Place in the tradition