Hospitality refers to the relationship between a guest and a host, wherein the host receives the guest with goodwill, including the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers.
Hospitality was an important theme in the past and in particular in Ancient Greece.
In Greece was used the term Xenia to talk about the relationship between hosts and guests.
Xenia was based on three no-written rules:
-
The respect from host to guest.
-
The respect from guest to host.
-
The guest should also provide a gift if they have one.
The host should be friendly whit the guest and they also should give food and drink to the guest. Xenia was considered to be particularly important in ancient times when people thought gods mingled among them. If one had poorly played host to a stranger, there was the risk of incurring the wrath of a god disguised as the stranger.
An example of Xenia was in Homer’s poems.
Xenia is an important theme in Homer's The Odyssey. Every household in the epic is seen alongside xenia. Odysseus' house is inhabited by suitors with demands beyond the bounds of xenia. Menelaus and Nestor's houses are seen when Telemachus visits. There are many other households observed in the epic, including those of Circe, Calypso, and the Phaeacians. The Phaeacians, and in particular Nausicaa, were famed for their immaculate application of xenia, as the princess and her maids offered to bathe Odysseus and then led him to the palace to be fed and entertained. After sharing his story with the Phaeacians they agree to take Odysseus to his home land. We also see a new rule in the guest-host relationship. He states that you should not beat your host in a competition because it would be rude and could damage the relationship between you and your host.
We can find another example of Hospitality Kant.
In fact Kant talk about this topic in the third article of the Perpetual Peace.
He thought Hospitality was the principle of cosmopolitan law.
He said the heart was as a common place where all the people could stay and so we must have the same possibility to own a part of heart.
Populations must give to guests the visit law and they must permit to all men to be a component of the society.
Talking about the war between each population, Kant introduced an original point of view: inequality between people is one of the main causes of war. Hospitality and peaceful coexistent is the most fixed guarantee of peace.
Quest'opera è distribuita con Licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale 4.0 Internazionale.