By Nick Jones, philosophy professor, University of Alabama-Huntsville
*Winner of the 2011 Whetstone-Seaman Faculty Development Award

1

We live in a pluralistic society. Persistent disagreement is inevitable. The source of this disagreement is an abundance of fundamentally different evaluative perspectives. Each perspective reflecting a unique history, culture, and tradition, prioritizes values and guides our actions toward realizing those values in ways that diverge, often with dramatic effect, from the priorities and guidance of competing perspectives. Absence of common purpose manifests itself as absence of consensus. Authenticity and integrity, put into action, further erode communal coherence. Standing up for what we believe, in the face of persistent disagreement, requires that others stand down or resist. But this erosion stops short of outright fissure, for what continues to unite all parties is their common condition. Despite our disagreements, despite the fundamental irreconcilability of our most treasured convictions and priorities, we must, for reasons of geography if nothing else, live out our lives in a fragmented society.

It is difficult to associate with those who reject our fundamental values, who hold values that we find insignificant or corrupt and advocate actions that we find misguided or repugnant. It is difficult to feel comfortable in their presence, to know how to interact with them, to want to interact at all (Bogard 2006). But these interactions are inevitable, if not in our everyday lives, then at least in our political ones, where the bonds of our common union ensure, through the mutual influence of part upon whole and whole upon part, that what affects one affects all others.

The virtue most often mentioned as fostering harmony when present and permitting discord when absent is civility. According to a survey by the Center for Political Participation at Allegheny College, 95% of Americans believe that political civility is important to a healthy democracy (Page 2010. Margin of error: ±2.8%). CivilityProject.org, launched in January 2009 to “alter the increasingly uncivil tone in our country in general and politics in particular,” encourages all citizens, and especially our political representatives, to take a Civility Pledge, promising to “be civil in my public discourse and behavior,” “be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them,” and “stand against incivility when I see it.”

As of January 2011, only three members of Congress had signed the pledge (Goodstein 2011). The explanation for this is not clear. Perhaps they were unaware of it. Then again, perhaps they see civility as a sign of weakness, hampering their ability to defend against political attacks, hindering their advocacy of policies for which, in their opinion, compromise means defeat, and decreasing their chances of gaining or retaining political majorities (Heard 2007).

There is some reason to accept this second explanation. In March 2010, members of the Democratic National Committee asked their counterparts in the Republican National Committee to co-sign a statement calling for “elected officials of both parties to set an example of the civility we want to see in our citizenry” and for all Americans

to respect differences of opinion, to refrain from inappropriate forms of intimidation, to reject violence and vandalism, and to scale back rhetoric that might reasonably be misinterpreted by those prone to such behavior (Bellantoni 2010).

Republicans treated the request as a political power play: refusing to sign would allow the Democrats to claim that Republicans endorse uncivil behavior; consenting to sign, however, would give Democrats a tool to wield against them later. Rather than signing, Republicans maintained that they already condemn incivility. Democrats responded as expected, accusing Republicans of refusing to take responsibility for their actions and of drifting away from civil discourse toward extremism (Barr 2010). Both parties seem to agree, though, that their political opponents merely give lip-service to civility, desiring its appearance but not its substance.

Civility sounds good. But when society’s fragmentation means that exercises of political power favor some values at the expense of others, when the very fate of our country seems to hang in the balance, obstinacy and integrity sound good, too. We are left to wonder: Is civility a good thing, or is only the appearance of civility what matters? In his 1961 Inaugural Address, John F. Kennedy maintained that “civility is not a sign of weakness.” 85% of Americans think that civil behavior is no hindrance to gaining or maintaining political office (Page 2010). But even if this were true, even if civility reaps the same rewards as incivility, doubting cynicism does not seem to be entirely misplaced.

JFK went on to say that “sincerity is always subject to proof.” Presumably he meant to draw our attention to the possibility of declaring civility a virtue while yet behaving uncivilly. Many politicians seem to act despicably until someone takes offence, whereupon they backtrack, insist upon being quoted out of context or misunderstood, and even, in some cases, charge their accusers of being uncivil in leveling accusations. Many of these same politicians retain power, and in some cases gain it, at the expense of their more civil peers.

Idealism says that civility is worth it, that “civility is an essential component of a healthy, vibrant democracy that encourages civic engagement” (Vernon 2010). But perhaps this idealism is naïve. In 2008 a group of influential Catholics, fearing that calls for more civility were designed to silence pro-life anti-abortion movements, urged other Catholics to ignore those calls when it comes to what they call, in their words, “morally repugnant practices that are counter to the common good and that should be unwelcome in a just … society” (C-FAM 2008). When fundamentally divergent moral perspectives clash, when the good for some appears absurd or abominable to others, and when political winners steer the country’s moral course, civility seems insignificant. Why engage opposing points of view, rather than disenfranchise them, when more involvement means more compromise? Why favor civility over obstinate integrity? Any attempt to understand what civility means in the 21st century needs to address these questions.

2

CivilityProject.org’s Civility Pledge embodies common sense wisdom about civility, indicating that civil behavior involves being “respectful of others whether or not [one] agree[s] with them.” Let’s take this as at least a partial truth about civility and try to imagine ways in which a society might foster this kind of respect. This will give us some perspective on what civility looks like at a societal level, by helping us to fill out features of civility that common sense tends to overlook.

The most obvious social mechanism for fostering respect among persons is the law. Laws are publicly accessible rules that regulate our interactions with others. Some of these laws, moreover, regulate interactions in ways that encourage us to respect others. Think here of equal employment opportunity laws, laws against segregation and discrimination, and laws protecting fundamental human rights.

Let us imagine, then, a Society of Civil Laws, where civility is a matter of obeying laws meant to foster respect among persons. Let’s imagine this society to be pluralistic like ours, but where disagreements are deep and persistent and where consensus is an impossible ideal. Would this society be civil?

To some extent, yes. People will respect others by virtue of obeying the laws. This is a good thing. But, no matter how extensive the laws may be, there inevitably will be large swathes of behavior regulated by no law at all. Moreover, people in the Society of Civil Laws can be uncivil by respecting the laws without respecting people. This incivility might be overt. For example, in October 2010, Houston Votes, a voter registration organization in Texas, received a series of emails. Here is one:

Citizens from all over Texas will be coming to Houston to watch you fraudulent Marxist pigs. Be forewarned, you will be watched at every turn, and your corrupt Marxist organization will be targeted! (Reilly 2010)

Even if these emails are legal, they are not respectful. But not all examples of law-abiding incivility need be so blatant. For example, in August 2007,

Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid withdrew a major defense from the [Senate] floor when he didn’t prevail on an amendment relating to Iraq. He then rudely refused to yield to Republican Members to speak on routine unanimous consent requests (Wolfensberger 2007).

Reid broke no procedural rule. Yet his refusal to yield the floor was “a denial of common courtesy.” He followed the rules, but only grudgingly, and only in a way that worked to his perceived advantage. A more commonplace example makes the same point. Imagine that the Society of Civil Laws has housing laws that prohibit discriminating on the basis of race. And imagine a landlord renting to someone of a different race but going out of his way to make the tenant uncomfortable by hurling insults whenever the opportunity arises or intentionally making necessary repairs at inconvenient hours. The landlord violates no law. But his behavior is far from civil.

The lesson of the Society of Civil Laws is that civility involves more than obeying laws meant to foster respect among persons. The most obvious way to imagine a more civil society is to imagine one in which people not only obey laws meant to foster civility but also obey social norms meant to do so. These norms will tend to be unspoken rules about how to be respectful of others. They regulate behavior that escapes the reach of law, provide extra-legalistic resources for reprimanding behaviors that foster discord, and offer guidance for when and how to assert legal rights. These norms might lead people to not make a fuss about people’s disabilities, to not be hostile or threatening toward others in public spaces, and so on.

This Society of Civil Norms would be more civil than the Society of Civil Laws. Politicians would show common courtesies to each other; citizens would not accost each other with threatening emails or name-calling; landlords would be respectful hosts rather than harassing tyrants. But even the Society of Civil Norms will contain plenty of opportunity for incivility. Even if its members obey all the rules, explicit and implicit, for respecting others, they can do so with disrespectful attitudes and thereby undermine the spirit, but not the letter, of the rules. Obeying rules for respecting other people is compatible with not communicating attitudes of respect toward those people.

For example, had Reid yielded the Senate floor to Republicans but, in doing so, remarked that he was yielding only out of respect for precedent and not because he thought that the Republicans deserved the floor or that they had anything worthwhile to say, he would have violated no law or norm for being civil. But he also would not have communicated an attitude of respect toward his fellow Senators. Likewise, an adulterer might respect his wife by concealing his affair rather than flaunting it, but the nature of infidelity precludes his communicating this respect to his wife (Calhoun 2000).

More interestingly, consider situations in which people obey rules for respecting others while simultaneously communicating attitudes of disrespect. Imagine a person who is careful not to intrude upon his neighbor’s property when doing yard work but who goes out of his way to remind the neighbor that he is not happy about this, sarcastically declaring to the neighbor, “Don’t worry, I won’t step on your precious land.” Or think of a business owner in a society with an affirmative action law, hiring a minority employee in obedience to the law only to remind the new employee, each day at work, that he was hired because of his minority status (Calhoun 2000).

A polity lacking full-bodied civility, such as the Society of Civil Laws or the Society of Civil Norms, incurs several harms. Its population flirts with fragmentation and turmoil; its members harbor contempt and resentment. (See also Meckler et al. 2011.) Each uncivil interaction allows displays of dominance by some to widen their distance from others, and those toward whom incivility is directed risk becoming alienated or excluded from political projects that affect everyone. Moreover, those unwilling to engage civilly with competing evaluative perspectives tend to avoid engaging with competing epistemic perspectives. Not communicating with those who have different beliefs, or communicating with them only to dismiss their opinions as irrational or nefariously ideological, is not an effective way to discover truths about how personal choices and political policies influence people’s lives. When incivility encourages epistemic closure by silencing or distorting disagreements, when the standard of legitimate belief in others is conformity to one’s personal beliefs, when intolerance breeds misinformation and misunderstanding, platitudes and propaganda replace genuine, truth-directed discussions about how to flourish in a pluralistic society.

In order to imagine a society that embodies civility in both letter and spirit, we must imagine one in which people do not merely obey laws and conform to social norms, but do so in ways that communicate to others the kind of respect such codes are meant to encourage. This is more a matter of sincerity than substance. It concerns not so much what people do as the authenticity with which they do it. The fact of the matter is that the employer who hires a minority and the neighbor who avoids trespassing on the adjacent lawn violate no law or custom; but they are not genuinely civil unless they communicate respect for these rules and respect for their fellow citizens. This requires behaving in ways that reflect a genuine appreciation of others’ values and priorities, even in the face of radical and persistent disagreements.

Communicating respect is a way to acknowledge the moral value of others and include them as co-participants in a community rather than isolate them as enemies or impostors. We do this by observing both the letter and the spirit of social conventions that allow us to disagree without being disagreeable, and that allow us to claim and care for our “identity, needs, and beliefs without degrading someone else in the process” (Institute for Civility in Government). This can be a tricky thing. Certainly “it’s hard to formulate a coherent set of standards” for civil behavior (Chait 2010). But this is only because it’s hard to put into words the myriad customs and traditions, grown organically over time, that constitute the norms of civil interaction for any society. A physicist can know how to identify subatomic particles from high-energy collision photographs without being able to explain the procedures she follows; and the Olympic gymnast can know how to jump gracefully on the balance beam without being able to write down the rules she makes her body follow. So, too, can we observe rules of civility without being able to state what those rules are.

3

Displaying respect can be a tricky thing, not because formulating standards of civility is difficult, but because, in a morally imperfect society like ours, the conventions for being civil can preclude our displaying other virtues. For example, old-fashioned norms of civility preclude men from offering to help a hostess clean up after dinner; but a socially critical moral point of view might, instead, demand that men help, and this point of view would not interpret male assistance as especially considerate (Calhoun 2000; Frye 1983).

This tension between civility and morality typically goes unnoticed, so much so that one might wonder whether we have failed to imagine an even more civil society, one in which people not only obey laws, follow social norms, and communicate respect for others in appropriate ways, but also guide these displays with morality rather than mere social convention. Certainly we have not imagined that the rules in the Society of Civil Norms have any particular connection to morality. In a morally perfect society, perhaps they would. But to be realistic we need to imagine civility in a morally imperfect society such as ours, where there is fundamental and persistent disagreement about which behaviors are ethical and which are not.

There are two ways to imagine this. The first, as we’ve done already, is to imagine that civility is entirely a matter of following the letter and spirit of social conventions for displaying respect toward others, regardless of whether those conventions themselves are ethical. The second is to imagine that displays of civility are tempered by a concern for morality. This second possibility allows that, sometimes, people display civility in ways that are at odds with social conventions for doing so, and that, sometimes, they do not display civility toward morally repugnant behaviors. This society attempts to ameliorate the tension between civility and morality. But it cannot do this in a pluralistic society, where there is persistent disagreement about what morality requires of us, based upon fundamentally incompatible moral perspectives. Civility is the referee that, among other things, regulates discussions of controversial topics, so that conversations continue rather than break off. But in order for this regulation to happen, guidance for the displays of civility cannot be set by any particular morality. For then, rather than helping conversations to continue, civility would allow conversations to end when there are disputes grounded in divergent moral principles. And this is when civility is most needed (Calhoun 2000).

The only guide for when and how to be civil is something applicable to all moral perspectives equally, something about which there is extensive social consensus, something that encourages displays of respect when clashes of morality encourage displays of disrespect. The only guide that does this, that safeguards the possibility of a common social life in the face of radical moral disagreement, is social convention considered without regard for morality. Civility thus conceived produces a kind of social coherence that preserves differences among conversational participants without seeking conformity from them. This kind of civility has a “watery fidelity” that, “being independent of both rivalry and tender, … may subsist where one is present or the other absent” and thereby enable mutual association in the absence of communal solidarity (Oakeshott 1975).

4

Civility is “something which a good many people are inclined to promote, even though they may not be entirely sure what they are promoting” (Schmidt 2000).  This is where thought experiments, imagining life in different kinds of societies, can help. These experiments show that promoting civility involves not only promoting respect for others but also promoting sincere displays of that respect. They also show that being civil is difficult, not because the rules of civility are hard to formulate but, instead, because civility requires practice in balancing the demands of morality and the demands of social convention.

There is, of course, a “general agreement that something called ‘civility’ is a good thing … because it brings about the conditions that sustain the existence of a ‘civil society’” (Schmidt 2000). This is akin to saying that justice is good because it promotes a just society, or that laws are good because they promote a lawful society. These claims might be true, but they are not informative: they do not indicate why civility, or justice, or lawfulness is valuable. More can be said. Societies which lack civility risk fragmenting into conflicting factions, their members stressed and alienated from each other and thereby in danger of losing the ability to view those with whom they disagree as having moral value. (See also Fields 2011.) The presence of civility, in contrast, preserves social coherence in the absence of uniform perspectives, safeguarding the possibility of a common social life in the face of radical moral disagreement.

But how can we improve the level of civility in our society? How can we get beyond rhetoric exhorting others to display respect toward opposing perspectives, to honor the fundamental worth of those with whom they disagree, to temper the urge for political victory with a concern for social cohesion? Asking people to sign civility pledges is one way to go. College- and secondary-level courses on civility are another, and in fact seem to be taking off across the country within the past year (Lanman 2010; Jacks 2010). And then there are forums like this, which give people a chance to listen to and reflect upon the meaning of civility.

These are all fine ideas. Yet they all treat the fostering of civility as something that originates from an external source, as if getting people to be more civil is akin to installing a new program on a computer. The flaw in these approaches is that the program won’t take if the hardware isn’t ready: Apple software just won’t run on Dell hardware without some special preparation. (See also Brooks 2011.) A Buddhist joke makes a similar point:

Once upon a time, a man asked a Buddhist hotdog vendor to make him one with everything. So the vendor gave the man a hotdog topped with mustard, ketchup, relish, chili, and so on, declaring “That’ll be $2.50.” The man gave the vendor $5 and, after a pause, asked, “Where’s my change?”  The vendor replied, “Change comes from within my friend.”

The point generalizes.  Incivility is nothing new in our political discourse, nor are calls to restore civility to society (Coloroso 2009).  For example, Benjamin Barber, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, remarked in 1997 that America had reached a new level of incivility, where

[d]ivisive rhetoric has become not only disagreement between parties but a rejection of the legitimacy of the other side, validating a position that your opponents are immoral, un-American and possibly worthy of being subjected to violence (James 1997).

He cited as evidence abortion clinic bombings, radical militia movements, and the Oklahoma City bombing. When concerned citizens order up some civility by adding special programming to people’s everyday lives and then ask, “Where’s the change?” the answer must be “Change comes from within, my friend.”

If we want people to be more civil toward each other, we should encourage people to be more civil to themselves. This is, admittedly, an odd suggestion. Admonitions to be civil generally aim to stimulate changes in the ways we treat others rather than changes in the way we treat ourselves. Lamentations about the withering of civility tend to stem from observations about the mood of our political culture rather than the state of our individual characters. Civility is not something we are wont to think of as affecting a person alone. But people being civil to themselves is a precondition for the civility of any society which those persons compose.

5

Each of us has a self that is “decentered, distributed, and multiplex,” “the sum total of its narratives, [including] within itself all the equivocations, contradictions, struggles, and hidden messages that find expression in personal life” (Gallagher 2000). We often possess, as part of our very being, a plurality of fundamentally incommensurable attitudes. Some of us struggle with over-eating, finding it hard to resist rich desserts while at the same time yearning to be free of food addictions and have self-control with respect to food consumption. Some of us feel family obligations pulling us to persist unhappily in our jobs, but also resilient youthful ambitions pulling us to find our bliss. These conflicts appear as struggles at self-interpretation, and how we resolve them, in order to create coherent life narratives, helps to shape our identities (Taylor 1985).

The plurality of attitudes within each of us resembles the plurality of perspectives in our society. This is no superficial analogy. Just as we must live out our lives within a fragmented society, we must live out our identities with fragmented personalities. The meaning of our life, like the meaning of our society, is informed by multiple perspectives, many of which have some claim to our allegiance, none of which eliminates the possibility of change through fresh insight. Moreover, just as it is difficult to associate with those who reject our fundamental values, to know how to interact with them, and even to want to interact with them, it is difficult to acknowledge our conflicting attitudes, to know what to do with them, or even to want to do anything with them. Our desire to be someone urges us to reconcile fundamental conflicts of our attitudes; our desire for freedom, to avoid committing ourselves irrevocably to a particular way of being no matter its costs (Beauvior 1976). What’s a person to do?

If civility in a social context involves not only respecting other people’s conflicting perspectives but also communicating that respect to those people, we might imagine that civility in a personal context involves both respecting our conflicting attitudes and, somehow, communicating that respect to ourselves. This communication likely takes the form of endorsing the presence of our conflicting attitudes in a way that fosters emotional coherence (see Sahdra and Thagard 2003). Perhaps a good way to see the benefit of such civility in a more concrete way is to briefly consider what happens when it is absent.

If we are civil to ourselves by respecting our conflicting attitudes and approving the presence of those attitudes despite their incommensurability, then one way we can fail to be civil to ourselves is by respecting our attitudes without approving their presence. This is a subtle form of intra-personal incivility. It appears in the homosexual who has “come out” but secretly loathes his sexual preferences; in the drug addict who finds staying clean so difficult that he convinces himself, even while he values recovery, that he does not deserve it and therefore does not really want it; and in the abused spouse who loves her partner, wants to leave, but convinces herself that a hostile home is preferable to the unknown. The product of this kind of incivility is shame, guilt, embarrassment, self-contempt, microcosmic parallels to, say, the feelings minorities have when told their accomplishments are due entirely to affirmative action.

Not all intra-personal incivility is this subtle. There are more straightforward cases in which people simply fail to respect some of their conflicting attitudes. Consider the father who desires to be a good father but, disapproving of his daughter’s homosexuality, convinces himself that “tough love” requires shunning her for perceived immorality; the Catholic who is pro-life but also a fervent supporter of the death penalty; the retiree who, while railing against those who use welfare programs, gladly receives Medicare and social security benefits far exceeding his lifetime contributions. The common ingredient among these kinds of incivility is an inability to acknowledge conflicts among attitudes and consequent estrangement from some of them. The father mistakes espousing love for practicing it; the Catholic confuses valuing life in name for valuing life in fact; and the retiree condemns entitlements in name but not entitlements in fact. The result is hypocrisy. Those who fail to respect their conflicting attitudes risk becoming strangers to themselves, the authenticity of their lives endangered by a self-imposed alienation from their values, the clarity of their moral judgments obscured by a weakness of character that disposes them to react to challenging situations with fear and anxiety rather than acknowledge uncertainty and ambiguity.

Those who are civil toward themselves are neither hypocritical nor self-loathing. Though their attitudes are not uniform, they do not deceive themselves in order to mask or ignore attitudinal conflicts. Knowing when not to be too obsessed with virtue (Schmidt 2000), they endure a perpetual ambiguity among their attitudes, failing to resolve their inner conflicts, acknowledging that failure while yet affirming the worth of their competing values. This is a level of authenticity unavailable to those who suppose that integrity requires fixing priorities among their attitudes once and for all, and who thereby isolate themselves from fresh and creative perspectives.

Civility, then, in a personal context, is good by virtue of producing emotional coherence among incommensurable attitudes and ambiguous priorities. This good is unavailable to those who pretend to be civil to themselves, and it remains good even if unacknowledged by others. More to the point, however, civility within a person is a precondition for the person being civil to others. It is the fertilizer that makes the soil ready to produce a bountiful crop, the primer that allows walls to take on brilliant new colors, the software update that allows a computer to run multiple programs without crashing.

When we are civil to ourselves, we respect the plurality within ourselves in a sincere way. This enables us to imagine similar plurality in others and, by extension, in society at large. For the difficulty in genuinely respecting ambiguity in ourselves is realizing that our priorities are not clear-cut, and from this it is but a small leap to recognizing that those who prioritize their values in other ways are not so different from us as we initially might believe. In contrast, when we are not civil to ourselves, when we cannot recognize the fundamental ambiguities of our identities, we lack a basis from which to imagine that others might not only be grappling with similar ambiguities but also resolving those ambiguities to the best of their abilities in ways other than we would choose.

6

Supposing that civility in society requires civility within members of that society, pragmatists will want to know how we can develop this virtue in ourselves. If prioritizing some attitudes over others in acting resembles allowing some people rather than others to pass through a crowded doorway, perhaps being civil to ourselves resembles giving way to others with equal right to pass through the door, and being uncivil to ourselves resembles shoving others aside or pretending they don’t exist in the first place. But how shall we decide which persons pass, which attitudes prevail?

There is probably not much advice to be given by way of rules, since civility is a virtue and practicing virtue demands attention to context in ways that rules cannot handle. Nor is there time to say much on the topic. Rilke, however, in his correspondence with a young military cadet, gives some advice that might point in the right direction:

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Do not seek the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer (Rilke 2000).

As a virtue, civility is a good to be lived rather than possessed. It is learned as all virtues are learned and sustained as all virtues are sustained, through practice, amidst uncertainty, patiently and unrelentingly.

Acknowledgements
I thank Andy Cling, Ryan Jordan, Bill Melanson, Bill Roche, Joshua Smith, and Bill Wilkerson for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Works Cited
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As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let’s use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together. —President Obama.[1]

The focus of this paper is to demonstrate the normative nature of civility within certain public contexts.  Specifically, I explore civility as a manifestation of a specific type of moral respect.  As such an expression, I argue that civility should be understood as more than mere politeness; rather it is a moral obligation of respect due to another person, by virtue of that person’s autonomy (i.e.  having the capacity for rational decision-making).  In conjunction with this, I will also argue that this civil moral respect serves as a necessary condition for the possibility of self-actualization.  This latter claim will entail demonstrating that the realization of authentic subjectivity must be located within defined social contexts (the public sphere) in which one’s participation as citizen is made possible.

I begin with an exploration of Axel Honneth’s neo-Hegelian analysis of intersubjectivity in order to show how an authentic account of respect is dependent on social recognition.  Honneth’s theory of recognition then is used to understand the injurious forms of disrespect and to shed light on the problems of incivility. Once the theoretical move has been made to establish respect and citizenship as intersubjectively situated and contextually located, the analysis of the moral injury of incivility can take place.  I will argue that this occurs in two ways.  First, incivility within the public sphere impedes the achievement of self-actualization by preventing individuals from authentic participation in democratic decision-making.  As such, it precludes individuals from their realization as citizen.  Secondly, incivility facilitates moral injury in so far as it negates the identity of a person as an equal.  In other words, to experience disrespect via incivility places one in a position of inferiority in relation to the offender; that is, one is not to be considered a person deserving of respect and thus not on equal terms with those who are.  To be disrespected is thus, implicitly, to be categorized as “Other.”

I will define the public sphere in accordance with Jurgen Habermas’ designation: as a domain of rational public discourse in which individuals address issues and exchange ideas associated with the common good in a rational and discursive manner.  As such, it is necessary for one’s realization as full member of the community.   This arena is to be located outside of various state apparatuses and thus is considered to be a space in which democratic freedom can be realized, in so far as citizens can dialogically address, support, or criticize state practices.  Furthermore, the public sphere, in its ideal setting, is taken to be a domain in which participation is open to all; regardless of class, ethnicity, or gender, all voices are said to have access to the communal discussion and as such can participate in the community’s decisions to direct its (and their own) future.  In addition, I will argue that elements of this political ideal are found in contemporary practices of town hall meetings and will explore the issue of civility as practiced there.  This is not to suggest that town-hall meetings are the only locale in which a form of the public sphere emerges; rather the emphasis is to explore how civility (and concomitantly incivility) plays out in a specific and well known arena.

I conclude the essay by invoking Nancy Fraser’s argument that the normative claim of respect undergirding the notion of the public sphere (and intersubjective recognition) raises important questions concerning how various forms of incivility/disrespect manifest themselves in non-public spheres (namely in private and civil/economic realms).   The suggestion here is that the reasons for why we should reject incivility as anti-democratic also serve as strong justifications for taking egalitarian social reform seriously.

Social Recognition and the Normative Foundations of Legal Respect

In order to show how civility is a manifest form of respect, and concomitantly how incivility is a form of disrespect, I must first show the nature of respect as it relates to social recognition.  In order to do this I draw upon the work of philosopher and critical theorist Axel Honneth.  Honneth’s work on recognition has set the framework by which study into the nature of recognitive moral injury is to be understood and is an invaluable resource for comprehending the myriad ways in which the struggle for respect plays out intersubjectively.   Of particular importance for my analysis is to show how Honneth’s position, informed by the work of G.W.F. Hegel and George Herbert Mead, illustrates the development of respect concerning legal recognition (rights), and highlights the necessary conditions that make this recognition possible.   By outlining this development, the nature of morally injurious disrespect will become clearer.

The nature of legal rights, Honneth argues, lies in the idea of reciprocating recognition.   We only know ourselves as legal persons when we are cognizant of the fact that we have certain obligations toward others and that they have obligations toward us.   Hence the normative foundation of legal rights is predicated on our ability to take on the perspective of what Mead called the “generalized other.”   We see other members like we see ourselves: as citizens with rights that require certain behaviors toward others and we expect certain behaviors in return.[1] In other words, to view others as rights bearing citizens we must see them as autonomous, reasonable moral individuals who are capable of carrying out the obligations established by the legal order.   The legitimacy of modern law then is, in part, established on a model of recognition that emphasizes the fact that individuals are morally accountable for their actions.[2]

Here Honneth is clearly invoking a Kantian paradigm of normativity.  According to Kant, people have inherent dignity that requires they be treated as ends in themselves (not merely as a means to an end).   Because individuals are rational, they are free to coordinate their actions in accordance with reason.  In doing so, rational beings cause themselves in a way that is impossible for non-rational organisms, since these latter beings are only motivated by external or instinctual elements.  Hence, only the rational person is free, and given that the concept of morality presupposes that one is responsible/culpable for one’s actions, only a free person can be moral.   Of course the Kantian position immediately invokes questions concerning the criteria that are to be used in establishing personhood, and this is precisely the point that Honneth wants to emphasize.   What Kant is attempting to establish is an account of the necessary conditions for the possibility of being considered a moral being, but this question, as we will soon see, is dependent on the historically located conditions that allow individuals to manifest their rationality.   The exploration of this issue, Honneth argues, is precisely what has occurred within the development of legal theory in modern societies in the last century.  Honneth writes,

The determination of the capacities that constitutively characterize a human being as a person is therefore dependent on background assumptions about the subjective prerequisites that enable participation in rational will-formation.  …The cumulative expansion of individual rights-claims, which is what we are dealing with in modern societies, can be understood as a process in which the scope of the general features of a morally responsible person has gradually increased, because, under pressures from struggles for recognition, ever new prerequisites for participation in rational will-formation have to be taken into consideration.[3]

Honneth’s goal here is to link the development of rights-claims to the struggles individuals undertake for recognition.  In other words, the failure to be recognized as an autonomous person is to suffer serious moral injury; it is to be misrecognized as something to which no respect is due and in which no dignity adheres.   Hence, the struggle for social recognition begins in civil society as a struggle for legal recognition (i.e. the struggle to be socially recognized as a person who is autonomous and therefore has certain fundamental rights: including protection of life, liberty, and property).   But once we understand the recognitive moral foundation upon which this establishment of legal right occurs, we are committed to looking at how the autonomous nature of a person is to be manifested; that is, to just recognize someone as having rights is not enough, they must be able to actualize these rights.  The establishment of legal protection of basic civil liberties thus quickly leads to considerations of political participation.  Individuals must be able to “participate in processes of public will-formation” by which their rational natures are actualized as both person and as citizen.[4] In the United States, this clearly invokes the women’s suffrage and civil rights movements of the 20^th Century.  However, this expansion of the conception of recognition is not limited to such movements; instead it brings with it a further development: the struggle for fairness.[5]

Just as the struggle for participatory rights developed out of the recognitive moral foundations that ground civil liberties, so too is the struggle for fairness similarly justified.  There are certain necessary conditions that must be met in order for individuals to be able to participate in rational will-formation.  Central to this claim is the idea that individuals have a right to some distribution of basic social goods, since their welfare must be established if they are to participate in any process of public will-formation.[6] In other words, in order to recognize someone as being a legal person, not only must we recognize their need to actualize their rational nature in public participation but we must also recognize that they can only achieve this insofar as they meet a certain social standard of living.

In this sense, then, to recognize one another as legal persons means more today than it possibly could have at the start of the evolution of modern law.  In being legally recognized, one is now respected with regard not only to the abstract capacity to orient oneself vis-à-vis moral norms, but also to the concrete human feature that one deserves the social standard of living necessary for this.[7]

It should be noted here that Honneth is invoking an immanent critique of modern rights based societies.    At this stage in his argument Honneth need not invoke a new moral paradigm upon which to ground moral claims, rather, he is, to steal a phrase from Ronald Dworkin[8], attempting to show what moral consequences must follow if we are to take rights seriously. [9] These moral consequences (e.g. political participation and social welfare) are the necessary developments which stem from the moral presuppositions inherent within liberal societies.   However, while this immanent analysis (shaped by the works of T. H. Marshall and Stephen Darwell)[10] insightfully addresses the objective conditions that must be met for society to recognize the autonomous individual fully, Honneth finds that it only partially addresses the issue.  What is missing from this account is the subjective component (i.e.  the individual’s reflective stance toward society) and hence the intersubjective exchange that Honneth argues is at the heart of the issue.   What is yet to be seen is what Honneth posits as the “practical relation-to-self”, or to be more specific, the establishment of self-respect.[11]

On Self-Respect

Self-respect, Honneth argues, emerges when one becomes aware that one deserves the respect of others.  This awareness is predicated upon the societal establishment of legal rights that protect civil liberties and ensure political participation.  Honneth argues that,

It is, of course, only with the establishment of universal human rights that this form of self-respect can assume the character associated with talk of moral responsibility as the respect-worthy core of a person.  What is required are conditions in which individual rights are no longer granted disparately to members of social status groups but are granted equally to all people as free beings; only then will the individual legal person be able to see in them an objectivated point of reference for the idea that he or she is recognized for having the capacity for autonomously forming judgements.[12]

Here Honneth’s analysis builds upon Joel Feinberg’s formulation of respect: rights serve as an objective symbolic expression that confirms one’s perception of oneself as morally responsible.[13] In much the same way Hegel had argued that authentic self-consciousness required confirmation by another autonomous person, so too does Honneth (following Feinberg) characterize the objectification that occurs in the act of making a rights claim: to appeal to society to recognize my claim of basic civil liberties or political participation is to express my understanding of myself as a morally responsible individual worthy of respect, as well as to appeal for social confirmation.[14]

The failure to achieve this social verification constitutes a significant form of moral injury in that it undermines one’s appreciation of self. Honneth writes,

This refers to those forms of personal disrespect to which an individual is subjected by being structurally excluded from the possession of certain rights within a society.  We have initially construed the term ‘rights’, only roughly, as referring to those individual claims that a person can legitimately expect to have socially met because he or she participates, with equal rights, in the institutional order as a full-fledged member of a community.  Should that person now be systematically denied certain rights of this kind, this would imply that he or she is not being accorded the same degree of moral responsibility as other members of society.  What is specific to such forms of disrespect, as exemplified by the denial of rights or by social ostracism, thus lies not just in the forcible restriction of personal autonomy but also in the combination with the feeling of not enjoying the status of a full-fledged partner to interaction, equally endowed with moral rights.  For the individual, having socially valued-rights claims denied signifies a violation of the intersubjective expectation to be recognized as a subject capable of forming moral judgements.[15]

To be denied basic civil liberties is not just to suffer physical or social harm but it is also to suffer a morally injurious form of disrespect in which one is denied the status of being worthy of respect.  Such a state brings with it a shattering of one’s own self-confidence because it designates one as not having the necessary criteria for being human (which requires obligations to respect basic human rights).  But the same is true of forms of social marginalization in which a person is essentially prevented from social interaction and the means by which to manifest his or her rational nature as a citizen of society.  This too brings with it a concomitant form of disrespect, namely, an awareness that one has been designated as less than a full practicing member of society.  That is, one becomes aware that one is not a person capable of being moral or political, as such, one loses a significant form of self-respect. This latter type of disrespect occurs when one is excluded from participating in voting practices or in activities that occur within the public sphere in which one can communicate concerns and ideas about the general good with other members of society.  It is to this issue of the public sphere that I now turn to show more clearly why social ostracism is a serious form of disrespect.

The Public Sphere and the Town Hall Meetings of 2009

In order to show how disrespect emerges in participatory practices, it is first necessary to be clear on the nature of the public sphere itself.   One of the more notable analyses of the political and moral implications stemming from discursive disrespect is found in Nancy Fraser’s essay “Rethinking the Public Sphere.”[16] Fraser, developing Habermas’ work on the subject, defines the public sphere in the following way:

It designates a theater in modern societies in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk.  It is the space in which citizens deliberate about their common affairs, hence, an institutionalized arena of discursive interaction.  This arena is conceptually distinct from the state; it (is) a site for the production and circulation of discourses that can in principle be critical of the state.  The public sphere in Habermas’s sense is also conceptually distinct from the official-economy; it is not an arena of market relations but rather one of discursive relations, a theater for debating and deliberating rather than for buying and selling.  Thus this concept of the public sphere permits us to keep in view the distinctions between state apparatuses, economic markets, and democratic associations, distinctions that are essential to democratic theory.[17]

Given this articulation of the public sphere we can glean significant insight into what Honneth understood as participating in discursive will-formation.  It is the public sphere in which individuals can dialogically raise issues of central importance to their own lives and can exchange ideas (including those critical of current state policies) concerning the proper direction of social/political development.  It is important to note that individuals here are to be understood as being free (in the idealized model) from political pressures and economic forces that structure life outside of the public sphere itself.   The very nature of democratic decision-making seems dependent on this idea since individuals must be free from various forms of coercion in order to be considered autonomous (and any form of democracy in which the will of the people is coerced would be seemingly fetishistic in nature).  In other words, liberal democratic societies legitimate their ideals of self-rule on the grounds that people are free to form and act on their own ideals/values.  But as Honneth has shown, this requires some form of intersubjective relations between members of society and here is where the public sphere emerges as being of central importance.  Without this free sphere of discursive exchange, individuals would not be able to formulate their ideas and values (i.e. individuals do not exist in a vacuum – they are socialized via language, culture, tradition, etc. – we are, in other words, social creatures).   Hence, we must be cognizant of the various forms of exclusion that prevent people from participating in practices in which this type of discursive will formation occurs. According to Fraser,

Thus, at one level, the idea of the public sphere designated an institutional mechanism for “rationalizing” political domination by rendering states accountable to (some of) the citizenry.  At another level, it designated a specific kind of discursive interaction.  Here the public sphere connoted an ideal of unrestricted rational discussion of public matters.  The discussion was to be open and accessible to all; merely private interests were to be inadmissible; inequalities of status were to be bracketed; power was to be excluded; and discussants were to deliberate as peers.  The result of such discussion would be “public opinion” in the strong sense of a rational consensus about the common good.[18]

Two ideas stand out here.  First, the ideal of the public sphere champions the common good over limited views of mere self-interest.  To participate in the public sphere presupposes a view of the social as commonly shared in which any attempt to instrumentalize the state as means to one’s own particular ends is a failure to perceive oneself properly as equal member of society.   Second, any form of exclusion, including those based on gender, race, or class, from public deliberation would clearly constitute a breach of the ideal of democratic accountability.   This type of exclusion can manifest itself in a variety of ways, but I want to focus on one such historical context to help explicate what I take to be a serious form of incivility and disrespect: the negation of the public sphere in the hostile town meetings of 2009.

While the public sphere is a complex and multifaceted arena in which a variety of discourses and exchanges can take place, one significant space in which this sphere manifests itself is in the practice of town-hall meetings.  Here individuals meet to discuss, debate, and criticize various issues that affect the local community often in the presence of their federal and/or state representatives.  While again this is but one small part of what constitutes the public sphere, it is nonetheless an important social space in which individuals can manifest and actualize themselves as citizens.  By focusing on the town hall as a discursive space of the public sphere, important insights into the nature of civility and respect can be illuminated and historically contextualized, particularly in light of recent events.

In late summer 2009, several congressional representatives held town hall meetings to discuss the upcoming vote on health care reform.  Opponents of the reform effort gathered en masse at many of these events to disrupt the proceedings by any means possible.   According to The New York Times Congressional members and individual citizens (who articulated ideas favorable to reform) were vehemently shouted down, insulted, and ridiculed.[19] The Times further reported that many of these rallies had been coordinated and supported by conservative media personalities including Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck with the specific intent to create a disruptive, loud, and hostile atmosphere.  At many of these events, the attempts were successful.

What the experience of the town hall meetings of 2009 demonstrates is a profound form of incivility.  It was a concerted effort to impede, disparage, and denigrate individuals in such a way as to negate the very possibility of rational discourse.  In other words, the goal was to annihilate, through discursive incivility, the public sphere from becoming manifest.   The practices seen here, whether by shouting down or humiliating the supporters of a public health care policy, effectively prohibited several individuals from being able to participate in discursive decision-making.  This had the effect of placing these individuals in a position of inferiority in which they were not able to participate as equal members of the democratic decision-making public.  By virtue of this exclusion, these individuals were denied the opportunity to exchange (intersubjectively) their ideas and values, and as such, they were denied the opportunity to participate in social will-formation.  To exclude participation in this manner was to negate the means by which they were to actualize themselves as citizens; hence, it effectively constructed their identity in terms of a subordinated “Other.”  Moreover, this misrecognition created a subjective experience of seeing oneself as not being worthy of consideration; that is, it prevented individuals from seeing themselves as persons who were capable of moral responsibility and as such it constructed an identity of one who was devoid of personal dignity.   Such an act of marginalization constituted a profound form of incivility and disrespect.[20]

To respect an individual properly in this inculcation of the public sphere requires, at the very least, that individuals be given the opportunity to express their ideas as equal members of society. [21] In doing so, one recognizes the individuals as persons that are morally responsible and autonomous.  And this requires a presupposition of the participating persons as being worthy of being heard and taken seriously; it is, in another words, to recognize the other as a peer.  But being excluded from articulating a view point is not the only form of disrespect associated with participation in public spheres.  There are at least two other forms of disrespect: 1) the denigration of individuals via the pejorative characterizing of certain group identities and associations and 2) the institutional patterns of status inequality that prevent recognition as a peer.

The first of these concerns can be seen in the various attempts to delegitimize individuals by associating them with groups or parties that are said to have disreputable moral and/or political intentions.  Opponents of health care reform often depicted their opposition as being beholden to totalitarian or socialist ideologies and thus unworthy of being considered in public discussion (hence one motivation to block the discourse).  The designation of “liberal” came to take on a pejorative characterization in many conservative circles (and vice versa) which had the effect of poisoning the well of rational discourse.  By this I mean that once individuals are perceived to be morally and politically suspect (and thus establishing them as persons of nefarious character) they can no longer properly participate in rational dialogue since any position articulated will immediately be considered dubious in nature.  Such characterizations of one’s opposition effectively negates the presupposition of moral responsibility that is required for participation and thus, given Honneth’s analysis above, prevents one from being considered an equal/peer, which constitutes a manifest form of disrespect.[22]

Status Equality and Recognition

This issue of status equality, however, raises larger questions about the possibility of achieving recognition of others as peers.  As Fraser points out, there is a significant distinction between treating someone as if they were a peer and treating someone as an actual peer.[23] The reality of modern liberal societies is one of extraordinary social stratification.  It is one thing to say that I recognize you as if you were my equal by ignoring the significant status disparity between us; it is another altogether to actually be an equal in which no such disparity exists.   Socio-economic mal-distribution can work in the service of exclusion much in the same way that mob disruptions did: economic deprivation (including, ironically, a lack of affordable health care) can just as easily prevent individuals from participating in the public sphere as full equal members of society.[24] Moreover, Fraser highlights the ways in which individuals can also be placed in positions of subordination via misrecognition through what she calls “institutionalized patterns of cultural value” in which popular (dominant) cultural values are embodied in social institutions (e.g. marriage laws, welfare policies, racial profiling, etc.). [25]

In each of these cases, interaction is regulated by an institutionalized pattern of cultural value that constitutes some categories of social actors as normative and others as deficient or inferior. …In each case, the result is to deny some members of society the status of full partners in interaction, capable of participating on a par with the rest.[26]

Fraser’s argument here is especially disquieting.  Given that institutionalized forms of misrecognition (whether economic or cultural) can lead to status subordination and inequality, to be concerned about ameliorating disrespect and incivility is not just something that concerns the way in which we discursively engage other members of society (although obviously this is important); rather, it is also to be concerned with transformative change at the institutional level, a far more complex and difficult task.  Unfortunately, the scope of this essay prevents an exploration of the issue here; nevertheless, if we are to take civility seriously, future examinations must at some point address this issue comprehensively.

So where does this leave us?  In the end what does civility mean in the 21^st Century debate?  It means that we must recognize individuals as:  1) morally responsible and autonomous beings, 2) as having a right to participate in discursive public arenas, 3) as being entitled to the necessary conditions that allow for self-actualization, and 4) as actual equals.

Footnotes
[1] Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts.  (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1995), 108.
[2] Honneth, 114.
[3] Honneth, 114-115.
[4] Honneth, 115.
[5] Honneth, 115.
[6] Historically, this development has played out in the striving for universal public education and basic economic security (and currently in the United States, in the push toward universal health care).
[7] Honneth, 117.
[8] Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously.  Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1978.
[9] The attempt to establish normative foundations for a critical theory of society based on recognition is an issue that Honneth takes up in several of his later works, most notably in Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory, Redistribution or Recognition?  A Political-Philosophical Exchange (co-authored with Nancy Fraser), and Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea.
[10] Honneth, 112-117.
[11] Honneth, 118-121, 129.
[12] Honneth, 119.
[13] Honneth, 119.
[14] Honneth, 120.
[15] Honneth, 133-134.
[16] Nancy Fraser.  Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” Condition.  (New York: Routledge, 1997).
[17] Fraser, 70.
[18] Fraser, 72.
[19]Ian Urbina.  “Beyond Beltway, Health Debate Turns Hostile.”  The New York Times.  8 August, 2009.
[20] The concerted effort (coordinated by various invested interests often from outside the local community) to prevent the topic of expanded public health care from being properly discussed can be seen as constituting a denial of Honneth’s third type of legal respect: the establishment of conditions necessary to allow individuals to participate in political decision-making.  To prevent individuals from access to affordable health care is to deny them the possibility of actualizing themselves as full members of society.   Unfortunately, a comprehensive analysis of this issue is beyond the scope of this paper.
[21] This does not mean that one has to acquiesce to the positions articulated.
[22] Of course, the same goes for all forms of characterizations that attempt  to attribute pejorative traits to individuals by virtue of their being members of specific groups (usually subordinate groups) such as gender, class, race, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, culture, etc.
[23] Nancy Fraser.  “Institutionalizing Democratic Justice.”  Pragmatism, Critique, and Judgment:  Essays for Richard Bernstein.  ed. Seyla Benhabib and Nancy Fraser.  (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2004), 127- 128.
[24] Fraser, “Institutionalizing Democratic Justice,” 128.
[25] Fraser, “Institutionalizing Democratic Justice,” 129.
[26] Fraser, “Institutionalizing Democratic Justice,” 129-130.

Bibliography
Dworkin, Ronald.  Taking Rights Seriously.  Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1978.
Fraser, Nancy. “Institutionalizing Democratic Justice.”  Pragmatism, Critique, and Judgment:  Essays for Richard Bernstein.  Edited by Seyla Benhabib and Nancy Fraser.  Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2004
Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” Condition.  New York: Routldege, 1997.
Fraser, Nancy and Axel Honneth.  Redistribution or Recognition?  A Political-Philosophical Exchange. New York: Verso, 2003.
Honneth, Axel.  Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory.  Malden, Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2007.
Reification.  A New Look at an Old Idea.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammer of Social Conflicts.  Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1995
Urbina, Ian.  “Beyond Beltway, Health Debate Turns Hostile.”  The New York Times.  8 August, 2009.

One need not be an especially close observer of contemporary American society to have noticed that, though our public discourse may be described in many ways, ‘civil’ is probably not the most apt of the terms one might choose. From elected officials to sports talk radio hosts, vitriol seems to be the order of the day. Indeed, it is difficult to think of a more timely question than the one we have been asked to address here: what does civility mean in the twenty-first century debate? What does it mean for us to be genuinely civil—and to promote civility—in the years to come?

In what follows, I hope to take a step toward answering these questions. My view is that the meaning of civility is not something that changes radically from one century to the next, though each generation may need to be reminded afresh of what civility is and why it matters. The obstacles to civility are another matter. These may vary widely from culture to culture, and may come from unexpected places. In the first part of this essay, I will offer an account of the nature of civility as a social virtue, which is of particular importance in pluralistic democratic societies. I will argue that all of us have good reason to value and promote civility, both for its own sake and for our benefit. In the second part of the paper, I will identify a number of prominent threats to civility in our present social context. Some of these threats are posed by mainstream American culture; others, perhaps surprisingly, find their home in the American academy. My hope is that a keener awareness of these threats may enable us to stand against them in defense of civility and to be increasingly civil ourselves.

A virtue, as I will employ the term, is a pattern of attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions to act that are characteristic of an admirable human person. A human person is admirable, on my account, when she manifests a variety of excellences, and a person manifests an excellence when she exercises a natural capacity fully or at least well. Thus the genuinely virtuous person is one who cultivates her intellectual, physical, and moral skills and employs them wisely. To live virtuously is to live well. To be virtuous is to flourish as a human being.

This understanding of the nature of virtue is an ancient one; admirers of Aristotle will hear echoes of his Nicomachean Ethics in these definitions. This understanding is also a controversial one, for it assumes that there are indeed such things as “natural” capacities and that there is a difference between using those capacities well and using them poorly. Many will object to such assumptions. After all, the thinking goes, who are we to say what counts as natural or unnatural, or as good or bad? Is it not obvious that there are a host of possible views with respect to such issues? To assert that there are objective evaluative standards with respect to human behavior, one might fear, is to take the first step on a path toward dogmatism, intolerance, colonialism, misogyny, racism, and myriad other forms of intellectual barbarism.

Such fears are both understandable and commonplace, but I believe that they are nevertheless misguided. I will return to them later and explain why we ought not endorse the line of thinking that underlies them; for now it will suffice to note that even if there are no objective standards that can be employed in determining whether a person lives well or lives poorly, it does not follow that there are no useful evaluative standards whatsoever. After all, a standard need not be grounded in some deep metaphysical truth in order be useful, or even in order to lay claim to a degree of objectivity. Consider the rules of a game. In baseball, a person who hits the ball and runs to first base acts well with respect to the appropriate standards; a person who fails to hit the ball, or who hits the ball and then runs directly to third base, does not. These judgments are wholly dependent on human conventions—the point of the game could have been to avoid making contact with the ball; runners could have been required to run clockwise along the base paths—but this fact does not make such judgments false or unfounded. If you hit the ball and run to first, you have acted well, baseball-wise. If not, you have acted poorly.

Like a ballplayer whose play may be evaluated with respect to the object of a game, so may our lives be evaluated with respect to their object—even if we are skeptical of claims about human life as such having a determinate purpose. Granted a certain conception of what a well-ordered life or well-ordered society looks like, we may assess whether we are living well or living poorly with respect to that conception. Insofar as there are goals we take to be ours, there is nothing worrisome about evaluations of our attitudes, feelings, and actions in terms of their contribution to those goals. And it does seem safe to say that there are many such goals. For example, consider: the acquisition of knowledge, living at peace with one’s neighbors, good physical health, cultivating deep and meaningful relationships with others, and pursuing equal opportunity for all persons. At a bare minimum, it seems safe to say that these ideals are very widely embraced at our time and place in history. They are central to our shared conception of what a well-lived life looks like, and thus enable us to make substantive evaluative claims about whether a particular life is being well or poorly lived.

With respect to the excellence of human life per se, we may remain open to the possibility that there are many different, mutually exclusive, and equally acceptable conceptions of what it means to live well. As long as we are able to identify some conception that captures our idea of a well-lived life, we will be in a good position to claim that there is such a thing as genuine virtue—at least, virtue for us. That will be enough for present purposes.

What, then, of civility? I have already suggested that civility should be thought of as a virtue—a character trait exemplified by the best among us—and we are now in a position to see that the attitudes and dispositions of the civil person (about which I will say more below) almost certainly do have a place in our shared conception of the well-lived life. A person who manifests the virtue of civility treats others with respect and is fair-minded in her dealings with those with whom she disagrees. In a word, she flourishes in her relationships with her fellow citizens. She lives well, and does so in a way that the uncivil person does not. The importance of this point cannot be overstated, as it reveals one of the respects in which civility is of value. Anyone who embraces our conception of the well-lived life ipso facto has reason to value civility for its own sake.

Of course, some may be doubtful about there being any determinate conception of human excellence to which we can appeal, and hence about the merits of civility. If “the well-lived life” is a fiction, then it seems silly to praise the virtue of civility for its contribution thereto. Two further observations about the nature of virtue will help allay this worry. First: let us note that each virtue has its proper domain. That is to say, each virtue is appropriate to, or exemplified in, particular dimensions of human life. The virtue of courage, for example, is exemplified in fearsome situations. A virtuous agent is disposed to behave courageously when presented with a threat to her life or well-being. The virtue of curiosity belongs to the intellectual domain of human life; the curious person asks questions and seeks answers about how things are. Civility manifests itself in the social domain of life: how we relate to other people, especially to those with whom we disagree. To be civil is to treat our fellow citizens with respect, to seek to understand their perspectives and the reasons that can be offered in support of those perspectives, and to desire to engage with others in pursuit of the common good.

It is in pluralistic democratic societies like ours that the virtue of civility plays an especially important role. A system of government in which legislative and executive power are ultimately derived from the persons being governed can function well only if competing ideas can be expressed freely and publicly, so that voters are able to make informed decisions about public policy. Likewise, individual citizens in a democratic society need to be competent to understand the relevant ideas as well as the arguments made on their behalf and the criticisms raised against them. For the system to work well, all parties to public disputes need to be willing to be proven wrong, recognize their own cognitive biases and limitations, and assume that their political adversaries are not without wisdom and insight. Healthy (and helpful) public debate presumes that rational dialectic is a valuable tool for acquiring truth: prospects for making progress are enhanced when we seek it together. In other words, pluralistic democratic societies suffer when civility is absent from their public discourse. Thus even those among us who question the value of civility in its own right have strong instrumental reasons for promoting its embrace.

The second general observation about virtue to which we ought to attend is this: virtues do not exist in isolation from one another. Often, the cultivation of one virtue requires the cultivation of another. Even more often, one’s ability to cultivate a particular virtue can be greatly enhanced through cultivation of another. Let us take athletic excellence as an example. On the definition of ‘virtue’ offered earlier, it seems clear that athletic excellence is indeed a virtue: an outstanding athlete is someone who exercises a natural capacity, or set of natural capacities, extremely well. It is impossible, however, to acquire or sustain athletic skill in the absence of other virtues. Self-discipline, determination, and patience are all traits that must be present, at least to some degree, for a person to manifest athletic excellence. Other virtues may be relevant too. For example, the pursuit of athletic excellence will be hindered if one holds false beliefs about human physiology and nutrition, and few strategies for minimizing false belief are as effective as cultivating the intellectual virtues: inquisitiveness, open-mindedness, and so on. The best route to the exemplification of any particular virtue may turn out to be the pursuit of all of them.

The virtue of civility is no exception. The civil person is respectful; he treats others well for their own sakes, not merely because doing so is a means to an end. The civil person is open-minded, willing to listen to others’ points of view and to change his mind if reason dictates so doing. The civil person is humble, not assuming that his opinion is more likely to be true than that of another, merely because it is his own.[1] In a closely related vein, the civil person is charitable toward others, willing to assume until proven otherwise that their beliefs and goals find their source in some worthwhile concern. The truly civil person desires that all would flourish, engaging in public dialogue for the sake of the common good, not merely to advance his own agenda or to protect his own interests.

To be civil, in other words, is to manifest a variety of excellences in one’s dealings with others. Genuine civility requires far more than polite behavior, which—though better than rudeness—is quite compatible with utter contempt for one’s fellow citizens. Genuine civility requires that we value other persons, seek to learn from them, and desire to work with them for the benefit of all. Surely a person who manifests these attitudes is a person whom most of us would find admirable (at least in these respects, if not in others). In addition, those who are skeptical about the intrinsic value of civility must nevertheless acknowledge that its exemplification would be a boon to the social health of any pluralistic democratic society. All of us, therefore, have compelling reason both to embrace this conception of civility and to become increasingly civil ourselves.

Granted this conclusion, it is reasonable to wonder why civility seems to be in such short supply these days. Incivility has become undeniably mainstream. It is expected and accepted that those who are involved in politics (candidates and commentators alike) will demonize their opponents. The political laity is quick to acquiesce to this approach, and to extend it to discourse of all kinds. One need merely survey the responses posted in online forums devoted to news, or sports, or science, or the academy, or any of a host of other subjects to see incivility in action. The problem is a pervasive one.

Of course, the problem may also be an inescapable one. Incivility may be an unavoidable aspect of the human condition. I am neither an anthropologist nor a historian, and I do not claim to have any helpful insights into the prevalence of incivility across the globe or through the centuries. Let us note, however, that even if incivility is indeed normal for humans living in society, this does not imply that incivility is a good thing, or that we ought to stand idly by and do nothing about it. To the contrary, if incivility is to some degree unavoidable, then we should be especially careful to guard against it, and to do what we can to establish a cultural milieu wherein civility is promoted and incivility diminished as much as possible. Toward that end, I offer the following diagnosis.

It is possible to discern at least five significant and widely shared attitudes in our society, that are essentially inhospitable to the virtue of civility. Two of these—moral pragmatism and anti-intellectualism—find their primary home in popular culture. The other three—empiricism, relativism, and the hermeneutics of suspicion—are characteristic of the contemporary academy. These five ideas are at least loosely interrelated, and while none of them can be said to logically imply incivility, together they foster an environment in which it can be expected to flourish, and in which it is difficult for civility to find a foothold. The remainder of this essay will defend these claims. A word of caution is appropriate, however. It should be emphasized that I will be discussing these ideas as they are commonly understood or can be expected to be understood. More subtle interpretations of most of these ideas exist, and some of those interpretations may be immune from the criticisms I will raise. Since the question at hand concerns why civility seems in fact to be in such short supply, this point is of minimal importance. For present purposes, the issue is not whether these ideas could be developed in ways that pose no necessary threat to civility, but what their effects on civility actually are.

Let us begin with the three “academic” ideas, partly because these should be of particular interest to those who work in the humanities, and partly because the ideas that take hold in our universities tend to lay the foundation for beliefs and attitudes in the broader culture.

Empiricists take the methods and results of the hard sciences as paradigms for knowledge. We can truly claim to know some proposition, the thinking goes, when it can be verified by way of the five senses, when experimental results are repeatable by others, and so on. As a claim about sufficient conditions for knowledge, this is quite plausible. When a proposition meets these standards, it seems safe to say that the proposition is something that we know, or at least reasonably believe. Many go further, however, and take the requirements of empiricism to be necessary conditions for knowledge (or rationality). This is both a theoretical and a practical mistake.

At the level of theory, this kind of empiricism is deeply flawed. Indeed, it is self-refuting, which is as serious a flaw as a theory can have. Consider the following propositions:

• A thing cannot be both F and not-F at the same time and in the same sense.
• If hypothesis H1 implies the existence of evidence E, and hypothesis H2 implies the non-existence of E, and E exists, then E confirms H1 relative to H2.
• All things being equal, the simplest explanation of a phenomenon should be preferred.
• Our senses provide us with generally reliable information about the world.

It should be clear that none of these four propositions can be empirically proven. The first is a law of logic, the second and third are principles of rationality, and the fourth is an assumption about the trustworthiness of our cognitive apparatus. All four are presumed in scientific investigation, but none can be scientifically established and, therefore, cannot count as items of knowledge on the empiricist approach described above. If this is so, then empiricism implies that scientific investigation itself rests on unknowable (or unreasonable) premises.

Things get even worse for the empiricist if we consider this claim:

(E) Only propositions that are empirically verified should be believed,
which is simply another way to state the kind of empiricism under examination here. The problem with (E), of course, is that it is expresses a proposition that cannot itself be empirically verified. Thus anyone who comes to believe (E) should immediately cease to believe it, on pain of rational inconsistency.

On a practical level, empiricism threatens to undermine any kind of moral claim, including putatively uncontroversial ones like we ought to be more civil. The reason for this should be obvious: like the laws of logic, principles of rationality, and principle (E), moral principles are not the kinds of things that we can establish on empirical grounds. An intellectual climate in which empiricism rules is an intellectual climate in which skepticism will abound about what we ought to do, how we should treat each other, and what has real value. The idea that civility is worthwhile for its own sake is not an idea that can be expected to take hold in such a climate. Likewise for the civility-promoting ideas that all human beings merit respect, or that wisdom may be found in unexpected places (certainly the scientifically illiterate masses have nothing to teach us!), or that it is wrong to use deceptive means to attain one’s political ends.

Not everyone in the academy is an empiricist, of course, but many of those who are not have embraced some form of relativism instead, which—from the perspective of defending civility—can hardly be thought to be an improvement. Of the various kinds of relativism, the most common is probably moral relativism, which also happens to be the most salient to our topic. A moral relativist is anyone who affirms the following:
(R) A moral principle, M, is valid for a person, S, if and only if (and because) S embraces M.

At first blush, moral relativism might appear to be just what defenders of civility need. The thinking goes like this:

In our society, there is substantial disagreement about a host of moral issues. If people embrace moral objectivism (i.e., the belief that moral principles can be valid for, or applicable to, persons who do not embrace those principles), then they will be prone to impose their views on other people. Anyone who believes that some moral views are objectively “right” and others are objectively “wrong” is a threat to tolerance and civility.

Therefore, we should reject moral objectivism. By accepting and promoting (R), we can create a culture in which tolerance for others thrives. You will recognize that your convictions are right for you, I will recognize that my convictions are right for me, and we will be able to live together respectfully and at peace.

This reasoning is flawed in two important ways. First, the assumption that belief in moral objectivism necessarily leads to intolerance and incivility is straightforwardly false. A person can—indeed, many people do—believe that among the many objectively valid moral principles that must be respected by all are such principles as these:

• One should treat others with respect even when one disagrees with them;
• We ought to promote morally correct beliefs and behavior by means of persuasion rather than coercion; and
• A just society is one in which people have the freedom to act in (some) ways that are morally wrong.

Someone who affirms the objective validity of these principles can hardly be thought to pose a serious threat to tolerance or civility, even if he does so with maximal and utterly unshakeable confidence.

In addition, one may believe in the existence of objectively valid moral principles without assuming that one knows what all of those principles are, or that one’s own attitudes are ipso facto more likely to be defensible than anyone else’s. In short, the moral objectivist may (and hopefully will) adopt the very perspective on moral disagreement that is characteristic of those who manifest the virtue of civility. He will be humble with respect to his own ability to correctly discern moral truth, will presume that others have insights that are worthy of his consideration, and will be willing to change his mind when presented with a rationally compelling case for a position contrary to his own. There is no inherent tension between being a moral objectivist and advocating for civility.

The second mistake made by pro-civility defenders of moral relativism is that they fail to see that their position, while not strictly speaking self-refuting like the empiricism discussed above, is seriously self-undermining. The worry that objectivism will lead to intolerance and incivility is predicated upon the assumption that tolerance and civility really are worthy of our allegiance; the person who fails to see any value here has missed something of great importance. On (R), however, a person who does not embrace the principle that others merit our respect is therefore not obliged to treat others with respect. Likewise, if we accept (R), then we must recognize that anyone who sincerely believes that she is justified in imposing her controversial views on us therefore is justified in imposing her controversial views on us. And someone who genuinely values the acquisition of political power more than he values honesty has not acted wrongly when he wins an election by fraud or by spreading lies about his opponent. By my lights, these implications of (R) count as compelling reasons to reject it. Whether or not this is so, I think it must be agreed that moral relativism is no less unfriendly to civility than is radical empiricism.

The connection between a third important idea and civility (or rather, incivility) may be somewhat more obvious. The “hermeneutics of suspicion” have been a prominent feature of the American academy, especially the humanities, for decades. This approach derives in large part from the three great masters of suspicion—Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud—who argued that many things are not what they seem. A text, or an economic system, or a religious tradition, or any other human institution or creation must be deconstructed in order for its true nature to be ascertained. The human condition is often one of false consciousness, wherein we are ignorant of the explanations of our attitudes and hence do not understand their real meanings, as when (according to Marx) we fail to see that capitalism is not grounded in defensible conceptions of distributive justice but is instead, or fundamentally, a tool for the oppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie.

It is important to acknowledge that the hermeneutics of suspicion are not, unlike empiricism and relativism, inherently flawed. There is much wisdom in such an approach, and—as long as we are willing to deconstruct our own worldviews with the same gusto we apply to the deconstruction of others—embracing it can go a long way toward promoting civility. After all, we have already noted that the virtue of civility goes hand-in-hand with the virtues of inquisitiveness and humility, and the hermeneutics of suspicion require us to think carefully about the difference between what is said (by ourselves as well as others) and what is real.

Nevertheless, there are two ways in which this approach can and does pose a threat to civility. One appears when we ignore the caveat just issued and treat our own positions as privileged, as being immune from the project of deconstruction. When this happens, we cease to be humble and we can no longer claim the mantle of fair-mindedness. In the absence of humility and fair-mindedness, there is no civility. The second threat to civility comes when one assumes that all claims must be deconstructed, that the “real” issue is always one of power or sex or self-interest or oppression or whatever. Civility is undermined when we take it on a priori grounds that those with whom we disagree have a self-serving agenda that underlies their claims about what is true and just and wise. If we are to be genuinely civil in our interactions with others, we must engage with them in good faith. A civil person will assume until proven otherwise that her opponents’ claims are grounded in some worthwhile concern. Conversely, anyone who assumes that others are always up to something cannot realistically hope to manifest the virtue of civility.

Empiricism, relativism, and the hermeneutics of suspicion also help to foment two further ideas that are widespread in American popular culture and which are equally problematic with respect to promoting the virtue of civility: moral pragmatism and, surprisingly, anti-intellectualism. Moral pragmatism is the view that a person is justified in doing whatever advances her own interests. It is a predictable outgrowth of the three views just discussed. If moral duties and moral values are unknowable (in light of empiricism), and if what seems right to you is right for you (à la relativism), and if all human interactions ultimately boil down to power struggles (as implied by the hermeneutics of suspicion), then the notion that one owes respect to one’s fellow citizens, or that we have a duty to promote the common good even when doing so requires us to make sacrifices, or that it is important to deal fairly with others, may seem rather quaint. And insofar as we reject those ideas, of course, we will not be civil people.

Anti-intellectualism is an equally significant threat to civility, for civility requires us to be willing to think carefully about others’ ideas as well as our own and to consider and evaluate reasons and arguments that are offered on behalf of those ideas. Someone who disdains the life of the mind will neither value nor cultivate the intellectual virtues necessary for genuine civility. Obviously, anti-intellectualism is in no way derivable from empiricism, relativism, and the hermeneutics of suspicion, but it may be understandable as a reaction to those ideas. When it is believed that the American academy—the hub of intellectual life in our society—is in large measure devoted to a set of ideas that together cast enormous doubt on our ability to discover anything that looks like Truth (with a capital ‘T’), when the intelligentsia are perceived as promoting a worldview in which nothing can be known outside the hard sciences and nothing has value outside of one’s own arbitrary preferences, it is unsurprising that many people come to view the life of the mind and its concomitant intellectual virtues as a waste of time. Why would one bother to ask hard questions about one’s own beliefs or investigate others’ with an honest and open mind when one has been taught that claims about the true and the beautiful and the good are, at the end of the day, mere social constructs with no basis in reality?

In short, it seems safe to say that the absence of civility in contemporary American society is—at least in large measure—the unsurprising result of ideas that have held sway for many years in the American academy. Almost sixty years ago, C. S. Lewis made a similar claim about British society: “In a sort of ghastly simplicity,” he wrote, “we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful” (Lewis 1944, 37). For those of us who are lovers of both civility and the academy, these words ought to seem uncomfortably apt. We value civility, but our institutions often (perhaps unknowingly) promote ideas that threaten it. The challenge before us seems clear. Whether the twenty-first century sees an increase in civility or its further erosion may depend, in no small measure, on whether our universities foster a culture of ideas in which the virtue of civility makes sense.

Works Cited
Brooks, David. 2011. “Tree of Failure.” New York Times, 14 January.
Lewis, C. S. 1944. The Abolition of Man. MacMillan; reprinted by Touchstone (New York, 1996).

As a scholar whose primary focus has been anchored in 19th-century rhetoric and literacy, I found writing about civility in the 21st century a challenge, and when considering what it might mean, I found myself being able to define it only by what it should NOT mean. It should not mean campaigning for office by exploiting your opponents deficiencies in order to highlight your capabilities. It should not mean employing all methods of propaganda to forward personal agendas. It should not mean sabotaging legitimate efforts toward growth and change simply because someone else thought of them first. Nevertheless, when my cursory glance at civility in the public sphere had settled, like a noble archivist and scholar of language, I returned to my rhetorical roots—classical rhetoric. As Plato accounts at length in The Republic, Socrates offers extensive instruction about the various characters of man and how those characters influence our perspectives on our moral and civic responsibilities (Book 8). Ultimately, the more civic responsibility is left in the hands of the people, the more anarchy and chaos will result. I imagine that political scientists and rhetoricians alike might find themselves arguing on either side of this divide, but what comes to mind as the most profound portion of Socrates’ argument is the assertion that in a democracy, citizens “[pay] no attention to what kind of life someone led before he entered political life! All anyone has to do to win favour is say he is a friend of the people” (270). He goes on to say that “These and related qualities will be the ones possessed by democracy. You’d expect it to be an enjoyable kind of regime—anarchic, colourful, and granting equality of a sort to equals and unequals alike” (270). He also facetiously refers to democracy as a “heaven-sent way of life” and as a “civilised” city where people do what they want when they want (269). Given the historical origin of the discussion of the polis which ultimately evolves into later discussions of civilitas with Cicero, Tacitus, Sallust, Plutarch, and Livy, I would argue that even though our democracy is more of a republic and fundamentally different from that which Socrates describes, civility in the 21st Century looks exactly as it should—anarchical, chaotic, and unruly.

Probably the most notorious and most recent incident that called civility into question for scholars and the general public alike was Congressman Joe Willson’s outburst of “You Lie!” during President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress on September 9, 2009. For many weeks after, the issue of civility in the 21st century was being seriously reconsidered. Regardless of the bi-partisan condition of our system of government, the one thing most Americans would agree, and certainly one who holds a seat in Congress would understand, is that no matter how one might feel about the MAN (or hopefully someday WOMAN) in the office, citizens should respect the OFFICE of the presidency. The president of the United States of America is one decided primarily by a populous vote, and though the winner might not be one’s personal choice, he is representatively the choice of the people. Understanding this context, one would be remiss not to question what would cause such unforgettable disrespect during a very formal address.

The day following Wilson’s outburst, in her article titled “So Much for Civility,” Gail Collins of The New York Times wrote, “Let me go out on a limb and say that it is not a good plan to heckle the president of the United States when he’s making a speech about replacing acrimony with civility” (A 43). Even though it is clear on which side of the partisan debate Collins has landed (as the balance of the article suggests that the Republican commitment to balance the budget seems only natural since they messed it up in the first place), one cannot deny that indeed Congressman Wilson had a lapse in judgement. The rhetoric of the Obama administration has been very deliberate and committed to advocate civility over all else. Even in the wake of the Wilson outburst, Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times articulate the decision of the Obama administration to refuse to engage in racial discourse surrounding the incident in their article titled “White House is Sitting Out the Race Debate.” They cite aides to the president for reporting that Obama did not want “to be distracted by the charges and to focus on health care and the rest of his policy agenda” (A1). Zeleny and Rutenberg go on to quote Colin Powell, former joint chief for saying, “The issue there is not race, it’s civility. . . . This is not to say that we are suddenly racially pure, but constantly talking about it and reducing everything to black versus white is not helpful to the cause of restoring civility to our public dialogue” (A1). They close the article by articulating that Obama’s goal “is to be seen as a president who happens to be black rather than the nation’s first black president” (A1). Likewise, a USA Today Editorial calls for civility in public discourse using John McCain’s response to comments about Obama at a Republican rally during the 2008 presidential campaign. When a man at the rally indicated that he was “ ‘scared’ of the prospect of an Obama presidency, McCain responded by calling his opponent ‘a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with’ and ‘a person that you do not have to be scared (of) as president of the United States’ ” (20A). The editorial hails McCain as a model for other politicians to follow.

Even those who are opponents of the Obama administration acknowledge his repeated engagement in the rhetoric of civility. Kimberly A. Strassel of The Wall Street Journal acknowledges that Congress will test “Mr. Obama’s promise of a new civility” (A13). Even Strassel’s colleague, Karl Rove, in all out attack on President Obama’s civil rhetoric acknowledges the extensive civil discourse. Rove quotes Obama extensively:

‘We cannot expect to solve our problems if we all we do is tear each other down,’ Mr. Obama said. He spoke against ‘demonizing’ political opponents or ‘questioning their motives or their patriotism.’ It is ‘not the hurt feelings or the bruised egos’ such rhetoric causes that’s problematic, the president assured us. No, this ‘kind of vilification and over-the-top rhetoric’ discourages ‘compromise . . . undermines democratic deliberation . . . robs us of a rational and serious debate.’ It can even ‘send signals’ that ‘violence is a justifiable response.’ There is a need in politics, as the president said, to ‘treat others as you would like to be treated, with courtesy and respect.’ (A17)

Rove spends the balance of the article attacking Obama and the Democratic party’s lack of civility. He states that the words are right, but that Obama contributes to incivility between parties. Rove’s position is problematic primarily because he extensively quotes Obama and accuses him of “slash and burn politics,” but nothing in the words Rove cites indicates a partisan perspective. Obama’s message could have just as easily been intended for and received by a democrat as a republican. Rove closes out his rant with a call for “Mr. Obama . . . to back up his inspiring call to civility with action.”

Another opponent, Jonathan Chait of The New Republic, in his article “A Non-Fighting Faith: Where Obama should Shove his Plea for Civility” acknowledges that when Obama appeared on the national scene, “he set himself apart with his willingness to intellectually engage his opponents” (2). He quotes Obama for saying “I will listen to you, especially when we disagree” (2). He attributes Obama’s particular talent as his “hallmark” from The Harvard Law Review. He cites places throughout Obama’s public discourse in which Obama refers to himself and the Democratic Party as victims of Republican unfounded attacks. He even quotes Obama’s reference to 200 years of uncivil discourse that dates back to the Jefferson administration. Chait’s point is that he would like for the call for civility to cease:

The parties’ constant efforts to claim the rhetorical high ground and to blame the other side for all the nastiness is a pander to the public’s childlike belief in unanimity and concord. If they really wanted to raise the level of discourse, they would level with the public about the necessity of argument. (2)

Like Chait, I would agree that argument is essential in order for the public to be able to hear a variety of perspectives and make informed decisions; however, name calling does not make for sound argument. The fact that incivility has been part of the political discourse for more two hundred years does not justify these acts; it simply means that the American public has been subjected to more than 200 years of inappropriateness.

Obama clearly built his presidential campaign platform on the theme of change: “Change We Can Believe In” evolved into “Change We Need.” In his administration, he has made every effort to make good on those promises, despite battling verbal attacks of character. His efforts began on election night when he gave his address in Grant Park in Chicago, Illinois. Theodore Sheckels argues in his article “Place, Genre, and Polyphony in Barack Obama’s Election Night Address” that Obama transformed the election night speech from “one delivered to the convention to one delivered to the people” (395). Sheckels goes on to argue that throughout his campaign, Obama went about the rhetorical business of redefining the spaces for presidential campaigning: he announced his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois as Lincoln had done before him; he moved his acceptance of the nomination speech from convention hall to a nearby stadium; and he moved his victory speech to Grant Park, the site of the infamous Democratic National Convention of 1968 where violent demonstrations and riots had been held. These political decisions were made in an effort to demonstrate civility not only through the rhetorical high road, but also through subliminal messages of space and place.

However, despite his best efforts, even the one who has called for a renewed civility has fallen victim to uncivil discourse. When Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested at his home during the early months of the Obama administration, President Obama, much like Congressman Wilson, had a lapse in judgement. Obama accused the Cambridge police of “acting stupidly,” without having all of the necessary facts to make the claim. In the spirit of political correctness, President Obama apologized and had both Gates and Sergeant Crowley, the arresting officer, to the White House for a beer.

Though the election of the First African-American president has provided much fodder for incivility, it has certainly not been the exclusive source in the public sphere. In a USA Today article titled “In God-fearing USA, Where is the Decency?,” Tom Krattenmaker offers a plethora of political narratives that demonstrate the level of incivility operating in political discourse. Krattenmaker claims “sadly, the vitriol and meanness are making it virtually impossible for those we elect to do their job and govern” (11A). He goes on to quote pundit Thomas Friedman for saying that our “national power failure” is “the failure of our political system to unite, even in a crisis, to produce the policy responses America needs to thrive in the 21st Century” (11A). The balance of the article offers multiple accounts of incivility in political discourse: 1) U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida ran commercials calling his opponent Daniel Webster “Taliban Dan” for his supposed religious fanaticism. 2) Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana produced ads accusing his opponent, Democrat Charlie Melancon, of supporting illegal immigrants and produced ads with dark-skinned Mexicans climbing through a hole in a fence. It was later discovered that Vitter had an affair with a prostitute despite his traditional Christian perspective. 3) George Wood, a top official in the Assemblies of God Church, signed a Covenant for Civility, but later asked that his name be removed when it was purported that he was “keeping company on the rolls with persons who ‘reject the moral teachings of Scripture’ ” (11A). 4) Mark DeMoss (Atlanta Public Relations Executive) and Larry Davis (former Clinton administration attorney) attempted to create a Civility Project, in which all public officials (every member of Congress and every sitting governor) were invited to sign and return a civility pledge: only Frank Wolf of Virginia and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut obliged. Krattenmaker’s article highlights the most severe examples, but certainly does not account for all of the mudslinging that has become so commonplace in political discourse.

Though my discussion here has primarily focused on national politics, as a newly transplanted Alabamian, I have discovered that Alabama is not without civility concerns. In the very early days of his work as our newly elected, pro bono governor, Robert Bentley assured a crowd at the Dexter Street King Memorial Baptist Church, an African-American Baptist Church once led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that he was the governor for all Alabamians:

I was elected as a Republican candidate, but once I became governor, . . . I became the governor of all the people. I intend to live up to that. I am color blind. There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit, but if you have been adopted in God’s family like I have, and like you have if you’re a Christian and if you’re saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister. Now I will have to say that, if we don’t have the same daddy, we’re not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother. (cbs.news.com)

Many Alabamians were horrified at Bentley’s remarks. It generated concern from Muslim, Jewish, and Atheistic communities. Though Bentley was quick to make apologies to anyone whom his words may have led to feel “disenfranchised,” many interpreted his speech as the reflection of much deeper issues: privilege and an exclusively Christian wordview. Those who share true Christian principles know that the Bible calls for us in the books of Matthew and Mark “to love thy neighbor as thyself” (King James, Matt. 19:19 and 22:39; Mark 12:31 and 12:32), and in the book of Luke, when a certain lawyer asks Jesus “who is my neighbor?,” Jesus tells the parable of “the good Samaritan” (King James, Luke 10:29-36). These scriptures do not specify that we are to love our “Christian” neighbors as ourselves, but all neighbors. Loving only those with shared value systems and culture is not a civil demonstration, but one rooted in hate and intolerance.

As a new scholar to the state of Alabama, and one whose previous work found its substance in local and regional, 19th-century, rhetorical histories, I have become interested in the wealth of rhetorical history in Alabama, particularly from the 19th century. Taking a cue from the quarterly publication, Alabama Heritage, on Wednesday, February 16, 2011, I attended an event listed in the “Becoming Alabama” section of the Calendar of Events—“ ‘The Man and the Hour Have Met:’ William L. Yancey Greets Jefferson Davis in Montgomery” by Ralph Draughton, Jr. The event was described as being a “lecture and reception cosponsored by the ADAH [Alabama Department of Archives and History] and the First White House of the Confederacy on the occasion of Yancy’s famous welcome to Jefferson Davis” (52). As a 19th-century rhetor, I expect to attend events like these and get a little bit hot-under-the-collar; it is the nature of the period. I expected to show up at the event and hear a rhetorical analysis of the speeches of these famous confederates; however, I was not at all prepared to embark upon a “celebration” of said occasion. I was surprised to see some participants had donned period clothing, others had brought subtle paraphernalia of the confederacy, and all were commemorating Jefferson Davis’ inauguration as President of the Confederacy. I sat on the edge of the stage, as the room was so crowded that there were no seats left, and I wondered if this was some kind of crude joke. I know that there are those within this community who claim this event represents “heritage, not hate,” but what I experienced that evening was far from civil. It was a celebration in remembrance of an event that represents one of the most shameful parts of American history, and it did so without any effort at reconciliation or acknowledgement of what the confederacy symbolized. I found myself asking these questions: Is this the 21st Century? Is this not a hostile/uncivil environment for African-Americans? What does civility in the 21st century mean? Had I not some minimal concern for my safety at the close of the event, I might have broached those topics during the “Question and Answer” period, but instead, I quietly slid out a little early, as I did not want to be forced to play nice afterwards, and I sat in my car with my husband in total disbelief.

I am grateful to my dear friend, Dr. Vershawn Ashanti Young, author of Your Average Nigga: Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity and more recently the edited collection From Bourgeois to Boojie: Black Middle Class Performances, who helped me to ground my experience in two meaningful ways: first, to consult W. E. B. Du Bois’ Harvard commencement on Jefferson Davis, the man, and second, to write about the incident (Young, Personal Communications, February 17, 2011). Du Bois’ Harvard commencement address on June 25, 1890 was titled “Jefferson Davis as a Representative of Civilization.” Much of what Du Bois said about Davis speaks to his strength as a man and as a soldier, and I guess that couching his discussion in this way allowed Du Bois to deliver the address to a welcoming audience. However, the parts of the address I find most compelling were Du Bois’ analyses, not his superficial compliments. He dismissed Davis’ actions by framing them in the “type of civilization” of which he was a product. Du Bois described America as a place that did the following:

made a naturally brave and generous man, Jefferson Davis—now advancing civilization by murdering Indians, now hero of a national disgrace called by courtesy, the Mexican War; and finally, as a crowning absurdity, the peculiar champion of a people fighting to be free in order that another people should not be free. (Aptheker 14)

I found DuBois analysis of Davis settling, especially when he concludes that the world “has needed and will need its Jefferson Davises” (Aptheker 15 ). They keep the issues fresh and remind us that there is still work to be done to achieve civility in the 21st century.

So, what is civility? Once again, I return to what it is not. Civility is not insensitive to diversity of religion and does not hide heinous bigoted practices behind the guise of Christianity—Christ loved all people and considered them children of God and therefore his brothers and sisters. Nor is civility insensitive to issues of race. Though I respect the fact that the Obama administration chose not to allow a focus on race to detract from the issue of healthcare, I challenge the perception that what we want from our leaders is “color-blindness” as Governor Bentley suggests. Critical Race Theorists (CRTs) argue that “if racism is embedded in our thought processes and social structures as deeply as many CRTs believe, then the ‘ordinary business’ of society—the routines, practices, and institutions that we rely on to effect the world’s work—will keep minorities in subordinate positions” (22). We have to be prepared to “see” color and respond to it for what it is, and aggressively address racial and socio-economic disparities in our governmental system. Obama states in The Audacity of Hope, “to think clearly about race, then, requires us to see the world on a split screen—to maintain in our sights the kind of America that we want while looking squarely at America as it is” (276).

Even our Alabama campuses have had recent issues with civility. When a student/students purport[s] to be justified in using racial slurs because they are enacting their first amendment rights then I respond that First Amendment rights end where oppression begins, and that severe and punitive actions should be taken. I appreciate the recent efforts by University of South Carolina president, Dr. Harris Pastides, in addressing the issue of civility. In response to South Carolina Congressman Wilson’s outburst of “You Lie” to the commander-in-chief, Pastides decided to work toward an initiative that would “persuade new generations of students to restore civility to a society that, in his view, is growing increasingly divided” (Marcus 18). Pastides began by offering an honors course in civility and plans to extend the offerings next year to include a broader range of students. Additionally, he has asked that the university’s existing honor code be amended to include civility, and he has lined up controversial speakers to help students broaden their understanding of the world. Dr. Pastides said that they read a principled statement in advance: “We’re not asking you to keep quiet, and we’re not asking you to convert. We’re asking you to respect the speaker and listen” (Marcus 18). Additionally, Johns Hopkins University has a civility initiative that involves 16 other universities and a grant from the Ford Foundation for a program titled, “Difficult Dialogues, which promotes religious, political, and racial pluralism” (Marcus 18). Though I have struggled with my definition, South Carolina and Johns Hopkins seem to be moving in the direction of aptly defining what civility might mean in the 21st century.
Works Cited
Alabama Heritage 99 (Winter 2011). “Becoming Alabama: Calendar of Events:” 52.
Chait, Jonathan. “A Non-fighting Faith.” The New Republic 27 May 2010: 2.
Collins, Gail. “So Much for Civility.” The New York Times 10 Sep 2009: A43.
“Debate Stirs Ugly Passions: It’s Time for Civility.” Editorial. USA Today 25 Mar
2010: 20A.
Delgado, Richard and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. New
York: New York UP, 2001.
Du Bois, W. E. B. Against Racism: Unpublished Essays, Papers, Addresses, 1887-1961. Ed. Herbert Aptheker. Amherst: U of Massachussetts P, 1985.
The Holy Bible. King James Version. Gordonsville, TN: Dugan Publishers, Inc., 1984.
Krattenmaker, Tom. “In God-fearing USA, Where is the Decency?” USA Today 25 Oct 2010: 11A.
Marcus, Jon. “When the South Called Time on the American Uncivil War.” The Times Higher Education Supplement (1946): 6 May 2010, p. 18.
Montopol, Brian. “Alabama Governor: Only Christians are my Brothers.” 17 Jan
2011. cbsnews.com
Obama, Barrack. The Audacity of Hope. New York: Vintage Books, 2008.
Plato. The Republic. Edited. G.R.F. Ferrari. Trans. Tom Griffith. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2000.
Rove, Karl. “The President and the Politics of Civility.” Wall Street Journal 6 May
2010, eastern ed.: A17.
Sheckels, Theodore F. “Place, Genre, and Polyphony in Barack Obama’s Election
Night Address.” American Behavioral Scientist 54(4): 394-405.
Strassel, Kimberly A. “Congress will Test Obama’s New Tone.” Wall Street Journal 23 Jan 2009: A13.
Zeleny, Jeff and Jim Rutenberg. “White House is Sitting Out Race Debate.” The New York Times 17 Sep 2009: A1.

By W. Jason Wallace, Ph.D., Samford University

“Civility,” wrote New York Times opinion columnist David Brooks after the January 2011 Tucson, Arizona shooting, “is a tree with deep roots, and without the roots, it can’t last. So what are those roots?  They are failure, sin, weakness and ignorance.”  If Brooks is correct, the roots of civility are hard to uncover in the 21^st century.  They are hard to uncover, at least, if we agree that civility involves limitations on human nature; that it cannot thrive in an environment of indulgence, narcissism, license, and immodesty.  Civility, according to Brooks, is the opposite of self love, and the problem over the past 40 years or so is that “we have gone from a culture that reminds people of their own limitations to a culture that encourages people to think highly of themselves . . . over the past few decades, people have lost a sense of their own sinfulness.” Brooks’ interpretation could, perhaps, be dismissed as a relic of Augustinian conservatism.  In fact, he closes his observations by quoting the most Augustinian of 20^th century Neo-Orthodox theologians, Reinhold Niebuhr: “Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.  No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint.  Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.”  Augustinian, indeed.  Yet, even if one disagrees with Brooks’ theological analysis, it should be acknowledged that he, with help from Niebuhr, locates the loss civility where few public intellectuals dare to tread.  He views civility as an analogue of human nature best understood through an organic metaphor.  Human behavior has “deep roots,” and the health of these roots determines how durable the practice of civility.[1]

Put another way, civility, human nature, and virtue ethics share an important relationship, and this relationship, like all relationships, can be healthy or it can be unhealthy.  Civility, in other words, is a moral question whose meaning is part of a larger composite picture of how we define human purpose.  To address questions of civility or incivility is to address how a person, or a group of people, understands moral relationships.  The 21^st century debate over civility, whether involving politics, religion, economics, or education, will have to confront the difficult problem of what it means to be a moral agent who shares moral relationships.  To this end, shallow conceptions of civility as manners or civility as tolerance must deepen to include civility as the cultivation of virtuous habit and the right ordering of human goods.  This essay argues that future conversations about civility should take into consideration the following three points:  First, civility is not so much a code of rules as it is the disciplined habit of self-moderation.  Civility as moderation is learned through the virtues of prudence and wisdom, and the locus classicus of virtue ethics is found in Aristotle and religious adaptations of Aristotle.  Second, civility is neither lost nor is it in serious decline.  Rather, reasons for civility are lost or in decline due to the changing intellectual conditions of modernity and post-modernity.  Put simply, neither Aristotle nor religious adaptations of Aristotle matter much anymore.  Civility retains social utility and rhetorical capital, but moral justifications that at one time secured civility are, by and large, at best, viewed as artifacts and at worst, as private opinions.  Finally, civility may indeed, as David Brooks suggests, involve a Christian component.  That component, however, needs to be clarified if it is to be useful.  Christianity, especially in its American version, is not uniform.  Different expressions of Christianity have different theological emphases.  How Christianity is expressed and what it considers important for the common good reveals much about its relevance to the question of civility.

Academics and cultural observers have long decried the rise of incivility, particularly as it affects public discourse.  Democracy, they fear, is losing its once great potential to the vulgar, mean, and indifferent.  Since the 1960s, critics spanning the liberal to conservative political spectrum have voiced concerns about the health of civility in Western democracies.  Typical of the criticisms is Jean Bethke Elshtain’s argument that people have become more aware of a “deepening emptiness” to public life, “a kind of evacuation of civic spaces.”[2] This anxiety is heightened by a number of very real social changes in both Western Europe and the United States.  The end of the Cold War, shifting immigration patterns, expanding corporatism, easy credit, the internet, aging populations, and technological convenience are just a few of the changes which have affected political and social life in the West for the last 25 years.  Go back 45 years and the situation proves even more complicated.  In the United States, desegregation, “white flight” to the suburbs, birth control, illegal drugs, rising divorce rates, Roe v. Wade, and the emergence of the religious right generated a cacophony of interest groups competing to be heard in the public square.  This competition has led to heated debates over the implications of pluralism for democratic conceptions of nationhood and citizenship. Sociologist James Davison Hunter famously labeled these intense debates as part of a broader “culture war” encompassing abortion rights, school prayer, affirmative action, and, in general, the identity politics of gender, class, religion, race, and sexual orientation.  Democracy’s discontents and the idea of a culture war are no longer the isolated groaning of a few disaffected intellectuals.  Public leaders on opposite sides of the ideological divide recognize deterioration in those modes of behavior and conversation that make a civilization civil.[3]

We can begin to address the problem when we recognize that neither pluralism, nor angry politics, nor irresponsible citizenship, nor bad behavior are uniquely modern quandaries.  The Ancients faced dilemmas surrounding these issues as well.  They determined that civility belonged to a larger conceptual framework of virtue ethics, specifically the virtue of moderation.  If people are going to be at peace with themselves and with others, they must learn to moderate their passions.  The Greeks, in particular, recognized that passion could be disruptive for both public and private life.  In 431 B.C. Athenian commercial interests and Spartan military interests collided in a violent contest that spanned a quarter of a century.  Thucydides tells us that a year before the fighting began, as hostilities mounted, Archidamus, King of Sparta, counseled moderation.  Archidamus knew Spartans built their international reputation on war and rumors of war.  But he also knew that Spartan toughness and aggression had more often than not been tempered by prudence and caution.  He admonished that Sparta owed its success at warfare to prudent respect for enemies, that, “through our orderliness we are rendered both warlike and wise.”  He further urged that anger toward Athens should not overwhelm the practice of “prudence and moderation” handed down by Sparta’s ancestors.  “Let us not be hurried into deciding in the brief space of a day about many lives, possessions, cities, and reputations.  Let us decide calmly.”[4]

A generation after the Peloponnesian War, Aristotle offered a more sophisticated development of Archidamus’ point.  In Book Two of his Nicomachean Ethics, he writes, “moral virtue is a mean between two vices, one involving excess, the other deficiency . . . Its character is to aim at what is intermediate in passions and actions.”  Without moderation, argued Aristotle, a person is liable to become a slave to passion, and to be controlled by passion is to be unable to undertake right action or behavior.  People are capable of moderation, and thus civility, because they possess a “rational principle,” and the “function of man is an activity of soul which follows or implies a rational principle.”  Aristotle’s appeal to the possibility of moderation is of a piece with his larger conceptual framework of human nature and human happiness.  All human activity, he argues, aims at some good, or arête, which is to say all human activity strives toward some type of excellence.  The problem is that there are many goods which people may pursue and choices are necessary.  Some pursuits are simply more worthwhile than others.  The virtuous life, however, is the pursuit and attainment of the highest good, and Aristotle calls this highest good eudaimonia, frequently translated as “happiness.”  Aristotle’s understanding of eudaimonia is not happiness as pleasure—i.e chocolate cake, or baseball, or sex makes me happy.  Rather, it is happiness, or better fulfillment, that results from contemplating how one ought to live one’s life, and then moving from contemplation to exemplary action.  Through concepts such as arête and eudaimonia Aristotle gave expression to the possibility of virtue as human activity.  Moderation of the passions is good human activity that directs human nature to its proper telos, its end or purpose.  Accordingly, civility is a type of self-moderation that leads to virtuous public behavior.  Civility is a habit of excellence that allows one to rationally and virtuously engage in public discourse.[5]

For Aristotle, public discourse is relational and the highest good cannot be separated from the responsibility of living in community.  Not only individuals, but communities seek to fulfill their purpose, or end, by striving for the good.  A community’s purpose varies depending upon its scale and the ends for which it exists.  Aristotle argues that the most important community is the city, the chief end of which is the best life possible for its citizens:

Every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always acts in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the city [polis] or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.[6]

Just as human nature relies on reason to check the passions through the cultivation of virtue, so too communities, or communal nature, rely on rational people to check the passions of public life.  Hence, Aristotle maintains that there is a relationship between human happiness, habit, reason, virtue, and the city.  “The best life,” he admonishes in the Politics, “both for individuals and for states, is the life of virtue.”  Civility is a virtue that helps to fulfill the “best life,” because it completes human nature and human purpose.

Aristotle was not naïve.  He recognized that some will not cultivate habits of moderation and civility.  The virtuous, reasonable, and well-mannered life escapes many.  Defining virtue is one thing, acquiring it is another.  Potential does not always reach actuality.  At the end of the last book of the Ethics he struggles to address this problem.  At some point children become adults and have to live public lives with public responsibilities.  They no longer belong to the household of their parents.  If they reach maturity with insufficient self-control or discipline, they are still expected to behave.  Public order takes equal precedent with the private.  Aristotle’s argument relies on the belief that, although difficult, reason, cultivated by education and habit, will lead to civility.  When reason fails to cultivate civility all that is left to maintain the public good is coercion and law.  Law provides the rules, coercion enforces them.  Although law and coercion are necessary, for Aristotle, they are poor substitutes for the well-trained soul that seeks moderation in all things.

Through the long history of the Middle Ages, the Christian tradition provided theological explanations as to why not everyone successfully uses reason to cultivate moderation and civility.  Slowly, the Aristotelian understanding of civility as moderation found new expression in a Christian idiom.  The idea that humans have a nature, a purpose, an ultimate good, as well as social responsibilities, was retained, but also modified by the Church.  Augustine, in the late 4^th and early 5^th centuries A. D., relying on Plato and the Apostle Paul rather than Aristotle, suggested that bad behavior is not so much deficiency as it is depravity.  Incivility for Aristotle meant failure to be virtuous.  For Augustine, incivility was part of a larger complex of biblical concepts that included sin, evil, the will, and redemption.  Before human reason could be used as a positive good in controlling the passions, it had to be reoriented by God toward God.  Because reason suffered from the taint of sin and self-will it would always stumble on the path to virtue.  Hence, civility was indeed the result of a well-trained soul, but the soul was trained first by God’s law and then by God’s grace.  Cupiditas, or wrongly ordered desires, had to be transformed by Caritas, or grace, into rightly ordered desires.  Human behavior was thus oriented not only to the “city of man,” but the “city of God” as well.  Through God’s mercy, and then only as a shadow of heaven, civility is possible.[7]

Thomas Aquinas inherited the intellectual traditions of both Aristotle and Augustine, and, in effect, he masterfully synthesized both.  With Augustine, he recognized the problem of sin and the need for redemption, and with Aristotle he had a high view of the human rational principle and the inevitable need for community.  “Human discipline,” he wrote in the Summa Theologica, “depends, first, on the order of reason . . . and should be according to human customs, since man cannot live alone in society, paying no heed to others.”[8] For Aquinas, reason and revelation complimented one another as positive expressions of God’s creation and God’s redemption.  Aquinas held that only God could directly command and rightly order the soul.  But this did not mean that reason was violated, nor did it mean that reason was helpless in cultivating virtue.  God’s law and human reason worked together.  Divine law educates by encouraging acts of virtue through which we acquire habits of civility.  Punishments, admonitions, and warnings attached to the law are not simply rebukes.  They serve to quicken, or awaken, the reason of the sinner to the reasons for the law.  Virtue, in other words, results from our natural ability to pursue natural goods, and to participate in God’s gracious revelation of our ultimate good.  Civility is a reasonable good brought about through moderation of the passions.  But, it is reasonable because God made it so.  Civilization is more than human law, more than coercion.  It includes the possibility of virtue.  Writing on the subject of human law as an outworking of eternal and divine law, Aquinas concluded that the “possibility or faculty of action is due to an interior habit or disposition, since the same thing is not possible to one who has not a virtuous habit as to one who has . . . many things are permissible to men not perfect in virtue which would be intolerable in a virtuous man.”[9]

What is important to notice about the classical tradition represented by Aristotle, and the Christian tradition represented by Augustine, Aquinas, and early versions of scholastic Protestantism is that the prospect of civility is always related to how we define human nature, human purpose, and moral relationships.  Whether in the language of Athens or the language of Zion, the idea remains that there is an ultimate good, and that humans through reason, faith, or both may participate in that good.  A sense of purposefulness, or final ends, is retained, and objective standards of what constitutes the fulfillment of human purpose find both ethical and metaphysical justification.  Human behavior is part of a larger moral scheme, and civility is important because morality is important.  Not only are morality and civility important, they make sense independently of emotions and private opinion.

The philosophical turn of modernity and post-modernity altered this classical and Christian understanding of moral ends, and in turn, altered the meaning of civility.  The breakdown of medieval Catholicism, the rise of science as an arbiter of truth, successive religious wars, the abandonment of aristocracy, and the growth of capitalism gave birth to a new European, and American, order.  Over time, aspects of this new condition, including improvements in medicine, sanitation, safety, social mobility, and education, greatly improved the lives of millions of people.  But these slow and sometimes subtle social changes accompanied equally slow and subtle changes in moral philosophy.  With the advent of modernity, questions concerning human nature and human purpose became increasingly contentious.  Modern philosophy strove for objectivity, and this quest narrowed the kind of questions asked and answers given, about moral behavior.  Questions of purpose and value fell outside new boundaries of what can be observed, ordered, and explained.  As a result, asking what something is, how it works, and how it can be controlled became more important than asking why something is, and what it is meant to be.  These latter questions came to belong more and more to the realm of speculation, not fact.  Whereas ancient philosophy and the Christian tradition viewed definitions of human nature and human ends as absolutely necessary for achieving and maintaining right behavior, moderns came to see them as abstractions based on excessive conjecture.  Consequently, the moral framework constructed by Aristotle and elaborated by the Church sputtered and gradually faded.

The adjustments to moral philosophy, and to a degree theology, to modernity, and eventually post-modernity, has lingering consequences for the debate over civility in the 21^st century.  Thirty years ago, philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre offered an intriguing critique of the liability which moral theory faces in the wake of 17^th and 18^th centuries.  He argued that the loss of Aristotelianism, as well as its Christian adaptations, resulted not simply in a breakdown of morality, but of moral language itself.  Contemporary life is fragmented, morally perplexed, and arguably uncivil because it can no longer evaluate moral communication.  The shared conceptual scheme that once provided for moral discourse lost its context.  The intellectual environment in which moral language developed meaning and significance was, so to speak, left behind.  Life, however, went on, and with it our desire to maintain moral and civilized relationships.  Unfortunately, all that remains to support our moral and civilized relationships are loose associations, splinters, and pieces of the original and once meaningful moral scheme.  The fragmentation of moral context, however, is not easy to perceive and we continue to act as if some universal ethical order –via common sense, or rights, or family values—still exists.  In other words, we still try to act civilized even though the meaning of civility no longer shares a fixed reference point.  Civility and morality are twin-born of the same philosophical mother, and, as such, they face the same dilemma.  We want them to exist, we agree that we should uphold them, but we are not sure how to pursue them objectively.[10]

Moral responsibility and public behavior are framed almost exclusively today in terms of interests and personal preference.  Keen minds of the Enlightenment period, and slightly thereafter, realized that subjectivism presented a looming threat on the ethical horizon, and they made noble attempts to address it.  In the 18^th century, philosophers like David Hume and Immanuel Kant wanted to allow that both individual freedom and moral order could peacefully coexist.  They held out the possibility that virtue and civility could be maintained apart from speculation about either human purpose or metaphysical absolutes.  They, and other stalwarts of the Enlightenment, sought a truce between the prerogative of freedom from inherited moral authority on the one hand, and the demands of a moral code on the other.  Moral claims, so they argued, could not be reduced to mere choice or personal preference. Individuals, so they believed, could not shape their own identity apart from larger social relationships.  Hume and Kant confronted moderns with the idea of regulating human behavior without philosophical abstraction or religious absolutism.  Moral freedom complimented moral authority.  While Hume grounded morality in sentimental affection and Kant grounded it in rational imperative, neither addressed the prospect that freedom included the option of altogether rejecting virtue, or good behavior.[11]

In the 19^th century the utilitarian theory of John Stuart Mill and the existentialist theory of Søren Kierkegaard tried to correct the deficits they saw in Enlightenment thought.  In doing so, however, they pushed moral theory closer to pure pragmatism and pure choice.  Utilitarianism and existentialism opened the door to the possibility that our behavior is neither rational nor understandable.  Modernity, in other words, slouched toward post-modernity.  Private construction of the idea of the “self” without reference to society, tradition, or even reason supplanted the hope of objective universal truth.  Private interest and individual choice slowly replaced what used to be at least an attempt at consensus about the good and the virtuous.  At the end of the 19^th century, Friedrich Nietzsche prophetically grasped that the seeds of nihilism had been sown.  Christianity and traditional philosophy, including the contributions of the Enlightenment, created illusions of morality.  Behind the illusions is the “will to power,” the hidden desire to master our environment and master others.  “All truly noble morality,” wrote Nietzsche, “grows out of triumphant self-affirmation.”  False morality, by contrast, is a socially constructed language game.  Metaphysics is dead, and pure reason cannot replace it, if even in a ghostly form.  Nietzsche disavowed perennial ideals.  He recognized that people not only would not, but could not make moral decisions based on objectivity, impersonality, universality, and proof.   Moral choices are at bottom functional, and behavior does not have to give account to an irrefutable standard.  As a result, one person’s private conviction about the nature of truth competes in the marketplace of opinions with other people’s private convictions.  The consequences for civility have been harsh.  Moderation has become expendable.[12]

Most people do not call themselves post-modern, nor do they understand values through Nietzsche’s moral paradigm shift.  For that matter most people do not refer to themselves as Aristotelian, or Augustinian, or Thomist.  For some, especially in the United States, to talk about morality is to talk about religious faith.  Many people call themselves Christians.  Their understanding of morality is grounded by their understanding of Christian teaching.  Civility is not a problem for them personally, because their faith tradition tells them that other people have value, that God holds them accountable, and therefore that they should behave.  For some who profess Christianity, the problem of civility rests with either those who do not take their faith seriously, or those who reject Christianity altogether.  Put another way, the problem of civility is framed in terms of the Christian insider and the secular outsider.  For these Christians, faith orders reality; it supplies the narrative of redemption, it provides a worldview.  In a practical everyday way this understanding of Christian morality works, and to some degree it even civilizes.  When pressed, however, the relationship between Christianity and civility is more problematic.  Christian theology offers substantial moral reasons for cultivating moderation and controlling passion.  But, Christianity is also a religion that makes truth claims about human nature, sin, evil, the soul, eternity, and God.  When theological claims enter public space and violate the current reign of private opinion over matters of faith and morals, the result can be very uncivil.

Christianity believes that there is purpose in the world and that life should be governed by final ends.  In other words, Christian truth claims sound very pre-modern.  Moderation of the passions is a good thing, but passion about the truth is hard to suppress.   Christianity can be valuable to the future of civility.  It offers reasons for virtue and a moral code of behavior that could potentially benefit national life.  But for Christianity to be useful to civility, it has to be contained.  Disputes over theological doctrine cannot be allowed to spill into public life because then, Christianity becomes divisive and socially destabilizing.  If, however, doctrinal differences can be minimized in favor of a generic form of consensus Christianity that is adaptable to changes in public life and concerned about public virtue, then perhaps it is useful.  Of course, defining what public life is supposed to look like or how public virtue is to be maintained takes Christianity out of the theological questions and into questions of politics and culture.  Once in the arena of politics and culture, civility, yet again, will be hard to maintain.  For Christianity to be useful to future conversations about civility, its appeal to truths about human nature, human, purpose, and human destiny must be self-contained.  Christianity, at least in its institutional form, will have to decide if contributing to a civil public life is more important than preserving theological distinctives.

Since the Reformation, western Christianity has been theologically divided.  Protestants and Catholics do not share the same hermeneutic.  What is more, Protestants do not share the same hermeneutic.  Because they interpret the Bible differently, their understanding of Christianity is different.  In the early modern period this was a severe political problem.  The public consequences of Christian theology proved not only uncivil, but violent as well.  Today, Christianity has been tamed in large part thanks to the Enlightenment, the exigencies of capitalism, and the fragmentation of post-modernism.  Christianity is not only one more belief in a sea of competing beliefs, it is itself a competing set of assumptions domesticated by political liberalism.  Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, and the all-inclusive evangelical (both liberal and conservative) might disagree about salvation, the sacraments, and church order, but at worst they simply snarl at each other rather than openly debate these questions.  Even if they were to debate these questions, there would be little public consequence.  Unlike earlier periods in history, Christianity, like other rival claims to truth, no longer has a consensus theological position about human nature and human purpose.  In this regard Christianity is no different than so many other rival claims to truth contending in the public square.

The debate over the question of civility in the 21^st century must come to terms with the fact that civility depends on borrowed moral capital from our ancestors.  We selectively choose when we should be outraged by public behavior we find distasteful.  This is true not just for so-called secularists, but for contemporary Christians as well.  Civility is not dead, we are just not sure what it is supposed to be in the absence of a shared morality.  Ancient philosophy and pre-modern Christianity have something to teach us about how to ask questions of human nature.  They give us the language for reorienting the debate over civility in the 21^st century.  Modern Christianity may very well have something to contribute to the question of civility, but it does so by confining theological differences to a separate sphere from the political.  This may or may not be good for the future of civility in the 21^st century.  Whether or not it is good for Christianity remains to be seen as well.

Footnotes
[1] David Brooks, “Tree of Failure,” New York Times, January 13, 2011.
[2] Jean Bethke Elshtain’s  Democracy on Trial (New York: Basic Books, 1995), p. 5.
[3] James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle To Control The Family, Art, Education, Law, And Politics In America (New York: Basic Books, 1992).
[4] Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Steven Lattimore, trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1998), p. 41.  Robert Calhoon, Political Moderation in America’s First Two Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 2-4.
[5] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2nd edition, 2000).
[6] Aristotle, Politics, Book VII, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1998).
[7] Augustine, Confessions, Book VII and VIII, Henry Chadwick, trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
[8] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Book I, in The Political Ideas of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Dino Bigongiari, ed. (Hafner Press: New York, 1953).
[9] Ibid.
[10] Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3^rd edition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).
[11] David Hume, Moral Philosophy (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing , 2006); Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals: With on a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 3rd edition, 1993).
[12] Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality and Other Writings: Revised Student Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Works Cited
Aquinas, Thomas.   Summa Theologica, in The Political Ideas of Saint Thomas Aquinas, edited by Dino Bigongiari.  New York: Hafner Press, 1953.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics.  Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2nd edition, 2000.
________Politics.  Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1998.
Augustine.  Confessions.  Translated by Henry Chadwick.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Brooks, David.  “Tree of Failure.” New York Times, 13 January 2011.
Calhoon, Robert.  Political Moderation in America’s First Two Centuries.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Elshtain, Jean Bethke.  Democracy on Trial.  New York: Basic Books, 1995.
Hunter, James Davison.  Culture Wars: The Struggle To Control The Family, Art, Education Law, And Politics In America (New York: Basic Books, 1992).
Hume, David.  Moral Philosophy.  Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing , 2006.
Kant, Immanuel. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals: With on a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 3rd edition, 1993).
MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue.  3^rd edition.  Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981.
Nietzsche, Friedrich.  On the Genealogy of Morality and Other Writings: Revised Student Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Thucydides.  The Peloponnesian War.  Translated by Steven Lattimore.  Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1998.

A selection committee composed of humanities scholars reviewed the papers blindly and selected the top six for publication in the Alabama Humanities Review. The winner of the contest will also receive a $3,000 development grant and is invited to present his/her paper at the upcoming civility forum. This event will be held at the Alabama Department of Archives and History (Alabama Power Auditorium) in Montgomery on March 25 at 9:30 a.m. The forum is sponsored by AHF and the David Matthews Center for Civic Life.

The presentation will be followed by responses from five Alabamians, including noteworthy Alabama historian and Anniston Star columnist Dr. Harvey H. Jackson; media personality Tim Lennox; Birmingham entrepreneur and author Shelley Stewart; Central High School (Phenix City) gifted education teacher Barbara Romey; and David Mathews Center for Civic Life intern/Auburn University student Alexandria Smith. Christopher McCauley of the David Mathews Center will moderate discussion.

There is no cost to attend and refreshments will be served beginning at 9:00 a.m. For more information, contact the Mathews Center at (205) 665-9005 or AHF at (205) 558-3993.

About the Alabama Humanities Foundation

The purpose of the Alabama Humanities Foundation is to create and foster opportunities to explore human values and meanings through the humanities. AHF is a nonprofit organization funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (of which AHF is the state affiliate), as well as by corporate and individual donors. AHF conducts its own statewide programs, such as the Road Scholars Speakers Bureau, SUPER teacher institutes and SUPER Emerging Scholars for students, and awards grants, on a competitive basis, to nonprofit organizations for humanities projects. For more information on AHF and its programs, please visit ahf.net or call (205) 558-3980.

About the David Mathews Center for Civic Life

The David Mathews Center for Civic Life is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, tax-exempt corporation. The Center’s purpose is to foster infrastructure, habits, and capacities for more effective civic engagement and innovative public decision-making. The Mathews Center is focused on how citizens create political will and sustain public policy through community decisions. For more information on the Mathews Center, please visit mathewscenter.org or call (205) 665-9005.